Lexie Morgan is a registered clinical counsellor. She does work with the Sea to Sky chapter of a group called Mountain Muscox, which offers support to people who have experienced trauma or loss in the mountains. She spoke with People First Radio about the group and her work.
When someone had experienced a traumatic event, a near miss a loss…it’s challenging to get back out there and to spend time with others because of what happened to you, there can just be an immense amount of loneliness, it can impact your mental health. So the idea was really to just get folks together so that they could talk about what their experiences were like, understand, and make sense of what had happened. There was no emphasis on like, returning folks to their sport or to their work, but more just kind of understanding that trauma, healing, mental health, all the associated aspects of that can really, look different for everyone… So the idea was fairly simple. It was just bring people together, have it professionally facilitated by counselors and mental health professionals so that, you know, kind of understanding the like, sensitive nature of a topic like trauma, really wanting to make sure there was like some containment around that work, and spend time together.
The group’s name takes inspiration from the muskox, which come together to form circles when threatened. Similarly, the Mountain Muscox groups meet in circles to provide support to each other. Morgan says she’s seen some amazing things happen in circle.
To see the gentleness, the compassion, the hope holding that happens with our group, is pretty transformative. I don’t know a lot of spaces like this and a lot of groups that are modeled like this, a lot of times you’re gonna see groups that are kind of closed, meaning it’s the same group of people week after week or month after month. But because of that kind of open door evolution of involvement you get to see the kind of trajectory of healing. It’s a place where people report feeling really understood, really, the only place where they feel like they can talk openly, the only place where they feel like they have any sense of feeling better or feeling differently. I think it compliments really nicely with kind of maybe one-on-one therapy or sort of healing processes because it is that community kind of co-regulation and support.
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube