my roots.

I grew up on Vancouver Island, off the coast of Western Canada—giant cedars you just couldn’t put your arms around, crisp salty air of the Georgia Straight, and ever the longing and yearning for exploration. My parents taught me to laugh in the face of adversity and to never give up. From them I learned how to love and how to stand tall. My dad told me when I came back from college: “Stand tall, you are a Schmaling.” My father faced a 25-year struggle with Parkinson’s Disease. He fought it for himself and the family. He never complained. He sucked all the marrow out of life. And my mother, she cared for him, cared for my 3 siblings and I, and she rolled up her sleeves and grew a very successful business. I had an older brother—still do—he’s my best friend to this day. He’s been my brother in arms. And I have two beautiful sisters. We all grew up in battle-tested harbour that was my parent’s marriage. My parents, my siblings, they gave me a safe and secure place from which to leap into the world.

And I grew up playing basketball. Played on the high school team. G. P. Vanier. Go Towhees! Basketball was my first love. I took the sport as far as college, playing in the ACAC (Alberta college conference) for three years. Mountain biking was another passion of mine. Comox Lake, on the edge of Cumberland, had so many trails for my friends and I to explore. And of course there were all those days swimming in the many favourite watering holes along the Puntledge River—Barber’s Hole, Medicine Bowls, Nymph Falls. The Island and all the recreation it offered me, these experiences deepened in me the yearning to go into places I had never been. The geography, the wildness of land meeting ocean, the islands of Denman, Quadra, and Cortez on the horizon, all the love and relationships…these all prepared me for what would become a career in clinical counselling. For what is counselling, and therapy, but a beautiful risk into one’s wild frontier.

“Giant cedars you just couldn’t…

…put your arms around.”

my influences.

Books & Authors

You can tell a lot about a person by the books on their shelf or the podcasts they listen to. It may be helpful for you to know some of the main writers and practitioners in the therapeutic space who have shaped the artistry of my counselling work: