Recognizing Our Strength in a Stranger’s Story...

Dearest Lamplight Community,

Not as long ago as you might think, a stranger’s story reached something inside you. Maybe it was a new song on the radio, a co-worker on a coffee break, someone on the rush-hour bus, a newspaper article, or something the cashier said in the grocery store…

I’ve been thinking about how we’re tethered to one another in seen and unseen ways—how our lives are always catalysts for others.’

With this in mind, I’m revisiting Liv Miller’s story from Issue 2.

In it, they write:

Read Liv’s Story 🤍 (page 14)

Alongside her story and a series of beautiful printable messages, Liv shares with us a personal message for the Lamplight community:

Why is Liv’s story so important? Now?

Because our stories are everywhere we are. And it’s easy to dismiss them if we think that specific experiences—embedded within them—tarnish their impact and stain our ability to incite change or help someone. This keeps us from one another and from community. I wonder if lived experience is a bit like a fire: it can warm and burn. But tender thoughtfulness in caring for our fire, in a way that invites folks to sit around it, is incredibly powerful.

I so hope you’ll re-read Liv’s story and enjoy our new issue. More below.

With ever-expanding care & gratitude,

Mikaela

I’m deeply honoured & excited to share with you our newest issue of Lamplight. 🤍

So much care was poured into each contribution & I couldn’t be more grateful for the time, vulnerability, and thoughtfulness woven throughout.

This issue is rooted in reflection. One might think that a contradictory juxtaposition, but it isn’t here. And that’s what makes these stories so resonant—individually & beside one another. I’m profoundly thankful.

After I lost my therapist to suicide in 2020, I wanted to do something as someone outside the mental health care field—without the associated ’titles’ & ‘letters’ at the end of my name. Lamplight is that something; a space for mental health care providers to redefine what it means to care for others & themselves. In this issue, they certainly have.

Across contributions spanning law, poetry, peer support, psychotherapy, coaching, and adjacent forms of caregiving, this issue looks into the past to expand our definition of mental health care. Hindsight is 20/20—we always look back with perspective, whether critical, compassionate, or both. But Lamplight’s third issue asks us to hold this relationship with tenderness. How do we revise and annotate our approaches to offering informed care, allowing this process to share space with our lived experience—without shame? How do we navigate and hold multiple truths: that 1) care and empathy are essential as everyone continues to meet fractured care systems, and 2) that care providers must be in relationship with their fluctuating capacity to give?

Read Issue 3 Here 🤍