What is the Mindful Wildflower?

I guess first we have to start with who started the Mindful Wildflower, and that's me! My name is Michelle, I'm a 34 year old woman living in Vancouver, BC. I'm originally from Ontario, but have lived out on the West Coast for the last 3 years. I came out here to find a life. I had thrown myself into a career after an abusive marriage, and realized that I was working and sleeping and not much else. So I moved out to BC to find more of a work life balance, to enjoy some milder winters and was focused on getting mentally healthy. I made an appointment with a psychologist who diagnosed me with Borderline Personality Disorder. I had done my research, so the diagnosis wasn't a surprise. It did get me on a wait list for a DBT program. After about 8 months, I got to attend my first DBT session. It's a group therapy where we learn the DBT skills together each week, and the following week come back with how we applied the skills.

These skills have been so helpful in helping me build a life worth living. That is the whole basis of DBT and is how it was created, by a badass woman who had extreme emotion dysregulation, suicidal ideation, and many harmful behaviours. Marsha Linehan describes it as getting herself out of Hell so that she can teach the skills for others to get themselves out of hell as well. The Mindful Wildflower was created because I share that same vision. I want to help people get out of the hell they are living in, and so I want to help make these resources more accessible. DBT stands for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Dialecticial means creating a synthesis between two seemingly opposing ideas. In DBT those main opposing ideas are acceptance and change. The name The Mindful Wildflower comes from the idea that a flower can bloom anywhere, in the most unexpected of places, but we also have to be mindful to appreciate the blooms, to look for them, notice them and recognize that a flower is not always in bloom.

The Mindful Wildflower