welcome
g̱ilakas'la
Hi, and thank you for being here.
Brushed by Cedar Counselling is a space I’ve created with intention - shaped by my lived experiences, my training, and my deep respect for the land and the people I have the privilege of working alongside. Rooted in the sacredness of land, story, and relationship, I offer a space for healing that honours the wisdom, strength, and complexity of lived experience.
Located on the unceded traditional lands of the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ people, my practice is grounded in decolonizing and healing-centred values, with a strong commitment to social justice, cultural awareness, and relational healing.
I carry a mixed ancestry that includes Coast Salish (Quw'utsun), Irish, Scottish, Russian Doukhobor, and English roots. These layers of identity, along with the stories, relationships, and teachings I have received over the years, continue to shape how I understand healing and how I show up in this work. I hold this knowledge with an ongoing commitment to learning, listening, and reflecting on my own place within the work.
My approach to counselling is relational, respectful, and honest. I believe healing happens in connection - to ourselves, to culture, to land, and to one another. I believe in walking alongside people rather than asking them to go places I am unwilling to go myself. Our work is collaborative, and I honour each person's autonomy, wisdom, and pace.
I hold a Bachelor and Master of Social Work (Indigenous Specialization) from the University of Victoria and am a Registered Social Worker in good standing with the BC College of Social Workers. I have worked in the helping professions since 2004 and in counselling since 2011, across communities, systems, and stories that have deeply shaped my practice.
Being in nature reminds me of what it means to return to ourselves. I believe that when our relationships, connection, and sense of self are nurtured, we can meet life’s challenges with greater steadiness, compassion, and care. This is the kind of space I hope to offer through Brushed by Cedar: a place where you can come as you are, be witnessed with care, and take the time you need to tend to your own healing.
At this time, MY WAITLIST IS FULL. I will update this page first when my waitlist opens. I would be honoured to connect with you when space becomes available.
In warmth and respect,
Tasha Chamberlin
Professional Counselling Services
At Brushed by Cedar Counselling, I offer professional, confidential, and culturally responsive counselling to adults, including couples.
My practice takes a whole-person approach, recognizing that our wellbeing is shaped by our bodies, minds, relationships, culture, spirituality, and the environments and systems in which we live. I draw from healing-centred approaches that honour the complexity of lived experience and recognize that healing is deeply personal and relational. My work is guided by self-agency, relational accountability, and a commitment to both personal and collective healing.
My work centres connection - to self, culture, community, land, and the natural world. I hold deep respect for the wisdom, resourcefulness, and protective ways of being that people carry, and I walk alongside each person with openness, accountability, and care.
Whether you are navigating relationships, grief, trauma, identity, life transitions, or women’s health, you are welcome here as you are.
Brushed by Cedar creates space for reclaiming voice, dignity, and connection. Here, healing is understood not as fixing what is broken, but as a natural and courageous response to relationships, systems, and histories that have caused harm.
Together, we tend to the roots.
How We Work Together
Every person brings their own history, relationships, culture, values, and ways of making sense of the world. Our work together is responsive to who you are and what you need, with space to adapt as your needs and goals change.
This may include:
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Choosing Approaches That Fit You – Drawing from different therapeutic approaches and practices based on your needs, preferences, and comfort level rather than expecting one approach to fit everyone.
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Honouring Your Pace – Making space for readiness, choice, and safety as we explore what feels important. There is no expectation to go deeper or move faster than feels right for you.
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Making Space for Culture, Spirituality & Worldview – Recognizing that culture, identity, spirituality, ancestry, community, and relationship to land can all be meaningful parts of how we understand ourselves and our healing.
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Connecting Insight With Practice – Exploring practical ways to support you between sessions, which may include mindfulness, nervous system awareness, communication practices, self-compassion, boundaries, or other approaches that fit your life.
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Working Collaboratively – Identifying what matters to you, creating goals together, and returning to them as your needs, circumstances, and understanding evolve. You remain the expert in your own life, and our work is a collaborative process.
Healing does not happen in isolation. It is shaped by our relationships, communities, cultures, histories, and the systems we move through. I hold space for both the experiences that have caused harm and the wisdom, resourcefulness, and protective ways of being that have helped you navigate them.
Together, we can make space for greater self-understanding, self-trust, choice, and connection - not by fixing what is broken, but by tending to what needs care and creating room for what is possible.
Areas of Focus
Relationships & Couples Work - Relationships - with ourselves, our partners, family, and community - are where we seek safety, belonging, connection, and care. I work with individuals and couples to explore the patterns that shape connection and disconnection, and to understand how our relationships evolve over time.
Together, we can deepen connection, navigate major life transitions, and work through conflict with curiosity and compassion. Relationship work may include exploring the relationship we have with ourselves, caregiving roles, family dynamics, healing intergenerational patterns, inner-child exploration, boundary setting, and cultivating self-worth and self-trust.
I support individuals in reconnecting with their own needs, values, boundaries, and inner knowing, while exploring how their relationship with themselves influences the way they show up in relationship with others. For couples, our work can create space to better understand each other, shift patterns of disconnection, and build a relationship that feels more safe, connected, and intentional.
Grief and Loss - Grief is not something to “get over,” fix, or move past. It is an experience to be witnessed, honoured, and held with care. Whether grieving the loss of a loved one, a relationship, an identity, a role, a dream, or a sense of belonging, grief asks something of us - to slow down, to listen, and to make room for what has changed.
I approach grief with a somatic, compassionate, and relational lens, recognizing that loss is carried not only in our thoughts and emotions, but in the body, the nervous system, our relationships, and the ways we move through the world.
Together, we can lean into grief rather than rush away from it. We create space to sit alongside what hurts, to honour what mattered, and to gently listen to what grief is asking of you. Grief has its own rhythm, and our work can offer a place where it does not need to be hurried, minimized, or carried alone.
Grief can hold many things at once - love and longing, anger and tenderness, relief and sorrow, connection and absence. We make room for all of it, while staying connected to the person you are and the relationship, love, or experience that continues to matter.
Trauma - Trauma is not simply an individual experience. It can be shaped by relationships, systems, colonialism, systemic violence, and intergenerational harm. Whether you are navigating developmental trauma, relational trauma, chronic distress, or the weight of inherited pain, our work together centres safety, connection, self-determination, and the ways you have learned to survive and make sense of what you have experienced.
I approach trauma work with curiosity, compassion, and an understanding of the ways trauma can live in the body, nervous system, relationships, identity, and sense of self. Together, we can gently explore the impact of trauma, oppression, and personal history without reducing you to what has happened to you.
Our work may include developing greater awareness of protective patterns, reconnecting with your own voice and agency, strengthening boundaries, and finding ways of being that feel more supportive and sustainable. I hold space for both personal and collective healing, while honouring the wisdom, resourcefulness, and protective ways of being that have helped you navigate what you have carried.
Women’s Health – The emotional labor placed on women - whether through caregiving, reproductive health, or societal expectations - is not just a personal burden but a systemic one. Much of what women carry is unseen, dismissed, or normalized.
Our work together is about naming these realities, challenging harmful narratives, and creating space for harmony, self-determination, and care that is sustainable and nourishing.
This may include navigating matrescence - the profound transition into motherhood and the ways becoming a mother can reshape identity, relationships, values, body, and sense of self. There can be grief for who we were, uncertainty about who we are becoming, and the challenge of finding ourselves within a role that can so easily ask us to put ourselves last. Together, we can explore the many layers of motherhood while making space for the person who exists alongside the role.
It may also include navigating the physical and emotional changes of perimenopause and menopause, the impact of shifting hormones, and the ways these transitions can affect relationships, identity, energy, and our sense of self.
Across these seasons of change, we can explore who we have been, who we are becoming, and what we are no longer willing to carry. As roles evolve and old identities shift, there can be space to reconnect with our own knowing, wisdom, agency, and power - not as a return to who we once were, but as an unfolding into who we are becoming.
Healing is not about fixing what is broken - it is about reclaiming what has been taken, remembering what has always been within us, and reimagining new ways of being. If this resonates with you, I would be honoured to walk alongside you in this work.
My Approach
My therapeutic approach is integrative, recognizing that healing is deeply personal and shaped by culture, identity, relationships, and lived experience. I draw from evidence-informed, trauma-attuned, strengths-based, and culturally responsive approaches, integrating different modalities according to the person and the relationship we build together.
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Family Systems, Attachment, Lifespan Development & Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) - Exploring the relational patterns, attachment experiences, and intergenerational dynamics that shape how we understand ourselves and connect with others. Together, we can develop greater awareness of emotional needs, explore core beliefs rooted in early experiences, and create new possibilities for connection, self-understanding, and relational security.
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Response-Based Practice & Therapeutic Activism – Recognizing the ways people respond to adversity, including the acts of resistance, resourcefulness, and agency that can be overlooked when experiences are viewed only through a lens of harm. This approach honours the social and cultural contexts in which our lives unfold and recognizes that healing is connected to systems of power, oppression, identity, culture, and collective liberation.
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Polyvagal-Informed & Somatic Practices – Exploring the ways our nervous system responds to stress, safety, connection, and perceived threat, and how these responses can shape our emotions, bodies, relationships, and ways of moving through the world. Drawing from polyvagal-informed perspectives, mindfulness, breath, movement, and other body-based practices, we can develop greater awareness of nervous system patterns and protective responses while building capacity, choice, embodied presence, and connection. This work may include both top-down and bottom-up approaches, with an emphasis on curiosity and compassion rather than trying to force ourselves into a particular state of regulation.
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Self-Compassion, Parts Work & Inner Child Exploration – Creating space to understand the different parts of ourselves, the protective roles they have developed, and the needs that may have gone unmet. Inner child work can offer a way to compassionately reconnect with younger experiences and the beliefs or protective patterns that developed around them. Through curiosity rather than judgment, we can develop a kinder relationship with ourselves, honour what our different parts have been trying to protect, and create greater choice in how we respond in the present.
Together, these approaches support a therapeutic relationship grounded in curiosity, compassion, connection, and respect for each person's autonomy and lived experience. The goal is not to change who you are, but to create greater space for understanding, choice, self-trust, and the possibility of becoming more fully yourself.
Get In Touch
At this time, MY WAITLIST IS FULL. I will update here first when my waitlist is open. I'd be honoured to connect with you when space opens up.
240 - 1210 Cedar Street
Campbell River, BC
V9W 2W5
Telephone: 250-202-5675
Office Hours:
Wednesdays & Thursdays 10:30am - 4pm
Fridays 10:30am - 3pm
I raise my hands in gratitude to the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ families of the Wei Wai Kum, We Wai Kai, and Kwiakah Nations for allowing us to live, learn, and work on this beautiful unceded land.
I acknowledge the Tlowitsis and χʷɛmaɬkʷu people, whose enduring relationships with these lands and waters continue to shape this region. I recognize the many Indigenous people who call this place home, including members of neighbouring Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish Nations. Together, these communities enrich the cultural, spiritual, and social fabric of this region.
I see this acknowledgment as part of an ongoing journey of learning, listening, and building relationships grounded in respect for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. It is one small step in a broader commitment to justice, truth-telling, and meaningful relationship-building.
With deep respect, I recognize the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ Nations and honour their enduring relationship with and care for the living world around us. I offer gratitude for the earth beneath us, the waters that sustain us, the sky above us, and the four-legged, winged, and sea beings with whom we share this place.