I’m glad you’re here
I’m a psychologist, author, researcher, and speaker. My life’s work is to reconnect people with their bodies, courage, and inner knowing so they can heal what has hurt, explore new ways of being, and live lives of meaning, authenticity, and vibrancy with their communities.
Where it started
I grew up in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada and before entering the field of mental health, engaging in undergraduate studies in psychology and performance violin. I was often playing music, or scheming up another adventure (like living at a birth house in the rural northern Phillipines). I struggled to find a home in my body after years of living with an eating disorder and related mental health concerns, and often felt the tension of living with an illness that seemed to be telling a story both about my pain and a larger cultural story I couldn’t quite name. I became devoted to my own healing, and exploring the pain I was living- even when it took me beyond the borders of what I was offered for treatments, therapies, and explanations for why it hurts so much. Instead of continuing to pursue violin, it was when I did not get into midwifery school as I had hoped that I decided to pursue psychology more seriously.
While I was beginning to work with clients in graduate school, I worked in residential care for adults with developmental disabilities, and continued to be struck with the beauty in the places inside myself and others that often seem to be portrayed by our culture as problems: the pain, the illness, the disability, misunderstood.
Early in my training I began to develop clinical specialties in trauma, perinatal mental health, developmental psychology, eating disorders and embodiment. I wanted to learn, and never stop learning, about what it means to be human, why it hurts so much, and how we need each other to heal. I was drawn to therapeutic approaches centered on innate goodness, the centrality of our connection with each other, the often misunderstood role of bodily intelligence, and the hope that there are treasures in the darkest places inside of us.
The more I listened and learned, the more I heard people say: the stories of who they were supposed to be left them feeling constrained, and did not reflect the complexity, beauty, and pain they felt inside. These stories showed up in cultural scripts, but also in their communities and families growing up, and in spite of promising a pathway to be good or belong, only left them feeling far from themselves and a life of meaning and vibrancy. I saw the pain that this was causing as I walked with my clients through their most difficult places as we crafted new stories together which allowed for embodied presence, connection and meaning.
I’m on my way
Over the next few years, I wrote my first book, Mothers, Daughters and Body Image, and I joined the Liturgists podcast. I kept writing, podcasting, researching, speaking and doing clinical work — all of it continuing to expand my understanding of individual and collective pain and power.
Then, I had a daughter — who like her mother loves a good prank and deep existential statement — and felt initiated into the wild and expansive territory of mothering. So the need for embodied intimacy and expansion felt even more urgent.
I’ve always assumed that everything is changing, all the time, and that growing is always a possibility right up until our last breath. I believe that we get to participate in how we grow and in what direction. That we are fundamentally good and trustworthy. And when we are supported by people who are not afraid of us growing and changing, who can stay with us in the unknown and terrible, we can be even braver to become more of who we are.
An open invitation
I've never felt more connected to the power of curiosity, liberation, and courage as I do now, a long with a deep desire for each of us to experience healing, connection, and expansion in a way that helps us change the very systems that constricted us in the first place. The words of Camus often echo in my chest, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
I want to offer you a standing and open invitation into a shift, because you’ve tapped into something inside of yourself that knows there is more for you, and for us all. You can't get to that when you're living life inside of what's been prescribed to you. That shift might be small to start, as we walk towards that shift together, little by little, I know it will become an expansion for us all, taking us into something that can not allow what constraint us to stand anymore.
It starts with the body, it starts with connection to yourself and others, it starts with the desire for more, it starts with one small movement.
Behind the work
Dr. Hillary L. McBride’s credentials
Canadian Psychological Association, American Psychological Association and others
Doctoral Scholar
Registered Psychologist (R.Psych.),
PhD in Counselling Psychology
University of British Columbia
College of Health and Care Professionals of BC
SSHRC
Research recognized by the