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Reflections 


  • What's your biggest barrier to prioritizing friendships?

    12 May 2025 1:40 PM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    Identifying what gets in the way of the things we want is the first step toward making changes. 

    Want to pursue connections, spend more time with friends and feel like you're involved in your community? We know friendship is vitally important to our overall well-being and yet it often is the last thing we prioritize. 

    What makes it hard to invest in connecting with others? Maybe it's the season of life you're in with small children and no real village. Maybe it's people-pleasing and overcommitment in areas that don't actually feed you. Maybe you struggle with social anxiety or self-esteem. Maybe it's overwhelm from the constant exposure to a world engulfed in tragedy and injustice. 

    When you can pinpoint what keeps you from the connections you want, you can look for resources and support to help you reduce the barriers little by little. Join an activity based group that shares your interests. Ask a friend to support you through saying "no" to a few things. Find a therapist or coach to work on self-compassion and socials skills. Turn down the volume of information you're taking in everyday with screen time limits. 

    Friendship and connection take time. Every small step counts! 


  • Friendship Matters

    5 May 2025 1:18 PM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    Friendship. It's critical! And yet, it's also so easy to let friendships sit on the back burner and allow the "to-do" list to take over, whether it's work or household upkeep. 


    Sometimes when we know why something benefits us, it's easier to prioritize. Instead of seeing friendship as a bonus, what if we were to view it as essential to our health? What would that change?


  • Who Inspires You to Be Creative?

    1 May 2025 1:16 PM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    As we move into May and our focus shifts to friendship and connection, I thought this was a good question to wrap up April's creativity theme. 

    Is there someone in your life who inspires you to engage your creativity? Or invites you into creative practice? 

    Maybe you're that person for someone else! As a species, we love to be invited and included. Don't hesitate to ask friends over to crochet, or collage or make cards! 

    Creativity is such a powerful tool for well-being. It helps us manage stress, improves mood, boosts confidence and problem-solving skills, deepens self-awareness and is often just plain fun! Being creative in community amplifies these effects because of the support and validation we receive from those around us. So if you're looking for a more meaningful hang with friends consider getting creative together!


  • Build Your Own Creative Practice: Community Room Edition

    28 Apr 2025 1:13 PM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    Feeling connected is critical to our well-being and yet we often don't prioritize our social needs. What if we just need to bring a little more creativity to how we get together? 

    What do you love to do? Who might be willing to join you? 

    One of the core concepts from @priyaparker's book "The Art of Gathering" is to be clear with yourself about what your hopes and goals are for any get together, no matter how big or small. Having clarity on what you want helps you shape an event that will actually meet your objective and lets your guests know what to expect. 

    For example, I really enjoy creating opportunities for meaningful conversation and I really love poetry. Plus, I have a beautiful backyard, so last summer I thought it would be fun to host a garden party with a twist. I decided to ask my guests to bring a poem along, with the idea that everyone would read the poem they brought and share why they liked it. 

    When everyone arrived, we settled in and helped ourselves to food and then I thanked everyone for being a good sport and bringing a poem and explained what we were going to do. We went around the table one at a time, reading our poem aloud and then briefly describing why we chose what we did. It was so fun to see what poems were chosen and deeply satisfying to hear the stories behind them. 

    Did all of my guests love poetry? Absolutely not, but they were all willing to join in and see where it would take us. That willingness to be creative together and do something out of our ordinary created a wonderful sense of connection.

    What kind of gathering are you interested in hosting? It doesn't have to be big or elaborate, it just needs clarity and intentionality. Love puzzles? Host a puzzle afternoon. Love baking? Invite some friends for a taste-test party of some new recipes you're trying. 

    Need more inspiration? Check out @priyaparker's work and @jessjanz's Dinner with Strangers series! 

  • Reflecting on Screen Time

    24 Apr 2025 12:41 PM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    Thanks to everyone who came to our Community Conversation around screen time yesterday! We had a great conversation and really appreciated the insight provided by Kathryn and Cady from @islandclinicalcounselling. 


    Kathryn and Cady emphasized that, as with many habits in life, awareness is always the first step toward any kind of change. Do we actually have an accurate understanding of how much we're on our screens? If we were to write down all our phone use (or check our screen time settings more regularly), what would we learn? 

    We can also start to pay attention to what we're feeling or noticing in our bodies when we use our phones or when our phones are not accessible. 

    Based on what we discover about ourselves and our habits we can make more informed decisions about the ways we want to use our phones. If we're looking to reduce our scrolling, starting with bite-sized changes can help us get there. 

    A comment I really appreciated from our participants, was the reminder that you're not alone! Even though its almost impossible to function in our society without a screen, you're not alone in thinking through your habits and wanting to make healthy choices! There's no one-size-fits-all approach to screen time, so don't hesitate to make the choices that work best for you and your family, even if it looks like no one else is making them. 

    And this is where compassion becomes critical. Compassion for ourselves and for others. Let's work hard to be gentle with ourselves as we seek to make changes and gentle with our assumptions about others and their choices. 

    If you're concerned about your phone use or need help getting started with building new habits, working with a compassionate and skilled therapist can help! Reach out to @islandclinicalcounselling.

  • Build a Creative Practice: Mind Room Edition

    21 Apr 2025 11:24 AM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

        

    Engaging our creativity is a practice. Our minds like practices, because routine and rhythm are attractive. The creative part might not come as easily for brains more used to to-do lists and checking off tasks, but our brains are endlessly creative. Sometimes they just need a little push to get started. Prompts are perfect for this. 


    In our Mind Room we have a number of different prompt options: there are journalling questions, a core values exercise and a number of different worksheets related to self-compassion and getting to know yourself better. 

    We also have a number of self-help books and memoirs that can be a good jumping off point for reframing or thinking differently about challenges and experiences. 

    As with any new practice, commitment is the biggest hurdle. When you can designate a time and a place to practice and put it in your calendar, it becomes that much easier to follow through. 


  • Closed for Easter Monday

    21 Apr 2025 8:25 AM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    We are closed April 21, 2025 for Easter Monday. We will re-open Tuesday, April 22nd. See you then! 



  • What gets in the way of practicing creativity?

    17 Apr 2025 11:16 AM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)


    This one is easy for me: not valuing it enough. Even though I know that being creative is so life-giving for me, it's far too easy to rank it low on the list of priorities. 

    Most of us have been raised with some kind of narrative around work and worth. The harder you work, the more you'll succeed, the more valuable you'll be. Taking time to daydream, write poetry, play with collage images and colour doesn't count as "work" and therefore isn't valuable. It takes a lot of intentional practice to shift out of that mindset and value my creative time as equally important to all the other to-dos and responsibilities. 

    What about you? What stops you from engaging your creativity?

  • Building a Creative Practice: Body Room Edition

    14 Apr 2025 9:59 AM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)

    This month we're focusing on creativity and how to build your own unique creativity practice. I think we often have fairly limited definitions of what creativity is. Thinking about the Body Room and how we might use movement creatively made me think immediately of dance. Dancing is amazing and a great way to express ourselves through movement, however it's not the only way! 

    What if we could use movement to help feel our way through a challenge we're facing? What if we invited our bodies to suggest ideas or inspiration and allowed our movements and postures to inform our thinking? What if we paid attention to our current needs and then asked our bodies what they could offer? 

    In our Body Room, we have a number of prompts and guided instructions for different body based mindfulness and breathing practices and I love the descriptions of "Supportive Holds". Intentionally holding ourselves can be a creative way through stress or anxiety. 

    Creativity gives us permission to experiment without expectations, to explore, knowing there could be any number of different paths to take. It can take some of the pressure off "getting it right" and I think our bodies benefit so much from our willingness to be curious and try something new.


  • Art that gets you messy . . .

    10 Apr 2025 9:52 AM | Jessica Schafer (Administrator)


    Why or why not? 

    Is part of why we often stop creating as adults because art can be messy? 

    And what’s wrong with mess? 

    I’m usually in the “No, thanks” camp, and when I dig into why, a lot of it has to do with control. I like to know I’m doing something “right”, to feel like whatever I’m doing will “turn out.” I like a neat, organized environment. I like routine and predictability. I think I’m probably not alone here! 

    Thinking about messy art reminds me that sometimes we need to step out of our comfort zones in order to grow and learn. 

    Sometimes we need to let go in order to be open to new possibilities. 

    Sometimes we need to be less focused on the end result and more focused on fun! 

    Sometimes there’s magic in the mess. 

    Sounds like a metaphor for life.

My Inner Harbour
149 Wallace St, Nanaimo, BC
1-866-791-9454 or 236-312-7376
myinnerharbour (at) gmail.com 


My Inner Harbour is committed to learning about and working toward reconciliation and decolonization. We acknowledge that our space is located on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, specifically the Snuneymuxw First Nation. 

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