Afternoon Pint
Afternoon Pint is a laid-back Canadian podcast hosted by Matt Conrad and Mike Tobin. Each week they meet at at a craft brewery, restaurant or pub with a surprise special guest.
They have been graced with appearances from some truly impressive entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, entertainers, politicians, professors, activists, paranormal investigators, journalists and more. Each week the show is a little different, kind of like meeting a new person at the pub for a first, second or third time.
Anything goes on the show but the aim of their program is to bring people together. Please join in for a fun and friendly pub based podcast that is all about a having a pint, making connections and sharing some good human spirit.
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Afternoon Pint
Leah Parsons - When Systems Fail Our Children - Remembering Rehtaeh Parsons
Twelve years after the tragic death of Rehtaeh Parsons, her mother Leah joins The Afternoon Pint for a conversation about trauma, institutional failure, and finding purpose after unimaginable loss.
Leah paints a vivid portrait of Rehtaeh—a compassionate teenager with dreams of becoming a marine biologist, whose life spiraled downward after a sexual assault was photographed and shared among her peers. What follows is a harrowing account of systematic failure across institutions meant to protect vulnerable youth.
The conversation shifts to crucial questions about our digital age. Should we restrict social media access by age, or should we hold platforms accountable for harmful content? Leah advocates strongly for the latter, noting these companies already have sophisticated filtering systems they could deploy to protect young users. Most striking is her call for empathy education, sparked by witnessing her younger daughter's stabbing while classmates merely recorded the attack rather than intervening—a chilling indicator of how digital exposure has desensitized youth to real suffering.
Through her grief journey, Leah has transformed tragedy into purpose by creating a 100-acre animal sanctuary in Rehtaeh's memory. This sanctuary embodies her belief that healing comes in many forms beyond traditional therapy—a philosophy shaped by her professional background as a therapist and her personal experience navigating profound loss. Her candid revelations about initially wanting to abandon parenting altogether, then choosing daily to move forward for her other children, offer insights into grief's complex reality. As Leah puts it, grief is "rolling"—not something you heal from once, but something you choose to navigate daily.
Share this episode with anyone concerned about youth mental health, digital citizenship, or finding purpose after loss.
On September 20th, the Rehteah Parsons Society will be hosting Rae's Awareness Suicide Prevention Walk. You can find the details for the walk on Facebook if you would like to participate and show your support.
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Okay, before we start this episode, I just want to give a little bit of a warning that, obviously, what is about to be spoken about is involving some bullying, it's involving some sexual violence and, obviously, suicide, and we just want to give a warning to anyone ahead who may be triggered or traumatized by these that this may be an episode that you may want to avoid, but we do think this is a very important one. So, thank you.
Speaker 2:Cheers, cheers and welcome to the Afternoon Pint. I'm Mike Tobin, I am Matt Conrad. And who do we have with us today? Leah Parsons, leah.
Speaker 1:Parsons, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We uh, as you may have heard in the start of the episode, we this is a bit of a uh one of our more serious topics to talk about but I think it's a very important one.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Thank you so much for joining us. Purpose of this show is to kind of is empathy, awareness and prevention, right? Those are the things that Matt and I care about a lot. I think Retea Parsons is a name that's known in Nova Scotia, right? Not for great reason, and is it correct to say it's been 12 years since she passed away?
Speaker 3:Yes, that's correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:I just kind of want to go back a bit and tell the story of who she was as a kid. There's a great documentary on Prime it's actually there right now on today that you can watch about this too, as a companion to this, if you like. But a bit about her as a kid growing up and stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Retea. Actually we spent a lot of time right in Clayton Park the first five years of her life. So Rutea was my firstborn child. I came up with her name when I was 14 years old Didn't have her at 14, obviously she had a big, big heart, loved animals, huge compassion. If she saw anyone like digging in a dumpster or anything like that, she would get very emotional. She would be upset. As she grew up we moved to Dartmouth, to Coal Harbor when she started school. That's where she was raised and she met friends there. She was very I'd say she was pretty quiet at first until you got to know her.
Speaker 3:But she had the same friend group. She just had a really huge heart. She was artistic, she was a bookworm, she loved to read.
Speaker 2:And I saw there was a lot of marine biology and biology. Do you think she might have been a marine biologist someday, or is that something she might have been aspiring to?
Speaker 3:She actually went in grade 9 to Dalhousie to speak to a professor to see what she'd need to do in order to get into the marine biology program.
Speaker 2:Oh, there you go Right on, so it's definitely a thing for a cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I mean love for animals, which does line in very nicely with what you're doing now, which makes a lot of sense. I guess we can give a, just I don't know if you want to do a quick.
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to kind of continue there. What do you miss most about her?
Speaker 3:I miss. Well, what do I miss most about her? Oh, that's a good question. Sorry, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, let me reframe that. What's one of the things you really miss about Retea?
Speaker 3:Just the day-to-day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah just seeing your child each day interacting. Yeah, she had big plans, big goals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and everything was kind of just taken away from her. And do you think it all happened so fast that you never would have seen it coming?
Speaker 3:No, I think everything changed for her pretty dramatically in one night, which shifted her whole mental health into a downward spiral. But she fought hard to stay here for 17 months. That's a long time to fight for your life really, because that's what she? Was doing and, uh, so 17 months she tried to get back up over and over and over again and, um, just, she couldn't wow yeah, yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1:I can uh, you know, I I have a four-year-old and I often take time to think about what he's going to be right as a teenager, as an adult, for sure. Yeah, I can, yeah, couldn't imagine. Yeah, you take for granted that your kid's just going to get old.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. And then?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 3:Your whole perspective on life changes in a good way, really. I mean nothing good about it, but after your child dies, all the little things, they just don't matter anymore, Ain't that the truth?
Speaker 2:Yeah Ain't that the truth Big picture.
Speaker 3:I'm always saying what's the big picture? This doesn't matter. Yeah, changes that whole perspective. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I know your occupation You're a therapist. Now I'm a therapist, yeah. Were you a therapist before Retea passed away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Retea was the reason I went to university.
Speaker 3:I promised her the day she was born, that I would go back to school and get an education. So I went back and she came with me. We went to the Mount. First she went to the daycare there. She was just a little girl and I did my undergrad in psychology and then I went on to do a master's degree and, yeah, she was there with me. I'd have my lunches with her. She'd come to the university every day. The Mount was great for that. But she's the reason I went and get my education.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like. So she went with you, so she was obviously in daycare, so she was young. Yeah, what drew you to that, like to go on to become a counselor or a therapist?
Speaker 3:I have been interested in human behavior my whole life. Okay, always trying to figure out myself, always reading books. I had my own traumas in my youth and when I moved to the States and became a bartender, I found people fascinating, how they came into the bar, how they acted after a few drinks.
Speaker 1:I just found people watching and studying human behavior fascinating yeah, we did kind of joke about that when we were setting up here that you know a bartender was kind of your introductory to, yeah, counseling yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And what kind of uh things do you help with today, with counseling?
Speaker 3:I well today. I usually help people um with different types of trauma grief trauma, um. I do a lot of spiritual counseling too not necessarily religious counseling, but I do do like whatever that means to the person. Um, whether that's your inner inner, knowing your higher self, whether that's something inner knowing your higher self, whether that's something outside yourself, I do focus a lot on that too, because I believe that the mind, the body and the spirit are Kind of just soul-searching yeah you have to kind of thread those in.
Speaker 2:So, allegedly, the sexual assault happened in November 2011,. Right, and then what happened for people that don't know? I'm sure so many people have heard this story, but you know a photo spread digitally on different social media platforms and she passed away in April 2013. Yeah, investigation. There were later charges dropped due to the disturbing images that were online and, um, yeah, just a just a terrible incident. It just seems like a society somewhere really failed her. Uh, a kid, probably with tremendous potential. Yeah, kid that could probably have just went on to, you know, maybe, maybe marine bi. You never know. Kids change their mind a lot, but there could have been a million different things if they were here today.
Speaker 1:So I guess like, maybe walk for anyone who hasn't heard this story, maybe walk us through some of the facts from your perspective of everything that kind of transpired in that timeline.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Retea went to high school, so she left junior high she was 15.
Speaker 3:Started at high school, so you know, meeting new friends, meeting new people that first year. And so this was September of 2011,. And she had met a new friend in the September and she started hanging around with her. She lived in just one community over I'd say not Far Eastern Passage, so she wanted to have a sleepover with her and I spoke to the mom and she said, yes, she could have a sleepover, no problem. And that night her and her friend went to a home. On that Saturday, her and her friend went to a home. On that Saturday, her and her friend went to a home where two brothers lived, and so they started drinking alcohol and then two other males showed up later. So there's four males, two females. She got so drunk she couldn't even stand up. Her friend that was there with her left, so she never made it to her friend's home for the sleepover. So there was four males, one Retea. So the two males upstairs first they raped her and one took a photo of her while she was throwing up out a window he was having. He was raping her from behind and the other the other male took a photo of that act and then they moved her from that room to the bedroom downstairs where the other two males then raped her.
Speaker 3:And so she woke up the next day I didn't know right away, probably a few days and then she, you know, kind of saying a few things but not really telling me much. And then I was, um, I was on a call for work and my sister said you got to get home right now. It was like 10 o'clock at night and she was there with her and she said, uh, ritea is not okay. And so I rushed home. I actually was. I was up in Bears Lake, rushed back to Coal Harbor, she was curled up in the ball on my kitchen floor rocking herself in a fetal position. And yeah, she just kept saying my life is over and they're not going to let me live this down, they're not going to leave me alone. And I was like what are you talking about? And then she told me what had happened and that there was a photo, and, um, and she didn't know what to do, and the photo showed up at school and people started saying things to her and so she laughed.
Speaker 3:We went to the place the next day and gave our statement, all of that, and I thought, you know, I went into like, okay, we need to do this, this and this. I know, you know, I know what we need to do to get you the help we're going to get. They're going to get arrested. The photo will be contained, don't worry, it's all going, it'll be okay. Contained, don't worry, it's all going, it'll be okay.
Speaker 3:So right from the get-go, the police, the police report they didn't do the police investigation properly. Apparently I wasn't supposed to be in the room. She wasn't supposed to to write it down. She's supposed to record it. She wrote it down handwriting and then she had to do another statement, another time with another unit. It was just she went from the RCMP, then it was the regional police and then so that was that, and then they were supposed to go to the school and then contain the photo.
Speaker 3:None of that happened. In the meantime I had to switch schools for her almost immediately to get her out of there, because she was just totally panic ridden, anxiety ridden. Of course, everywhere she went, people were talking and texting her, and once the police got involved, one of the males text her and said are you okay? I heard you're going to the police, are you okay with everything that happened? And and she said it's cool. So they used that against her. No way, yeah. So they said that she said it was cool. And so here I'm dealing with the police saying like you can't consent after the fact, like this isn't what are you saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is not and um. So the police investigation went on and on and I was calling often the school, and then the, and then the, the mental health iwk, she. She put herself in there probably six months later, I'd say, because she was terrified of her thoughts. She said I'm having these horrible thoughts, I'm having suicidal thoughts. I'm not going to act on them, but I'm terrified.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so she said I need help. So she went there and was traumatized there. She threatened to harm herself and they stripped her naked and put her in a room. Two men stripped her naked, Two guards, and put her in a room.
Speaker 1:Which was probably like a PTSD type of triggering type of thing, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so All of these things that this, so this is happening from, you know, the school, her peers and then the police and the mental health, like all of the systems that are set up to help her were not helping her. So this went on for 17 months with zero accountability, and then they closed the case and said it wasn't child pornography, because he couldn't see her face in the photo.
Speaker 1:Whoa no way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that she you know she is under the age, but you can't really tell in the photo. I'm like, but she is underage, yeah, and it is my child. And then he ended up saying to me this was the head of the investigation unit, because I went, kept going up higher, that it was a community issue and not a police issue and we're closing the file.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 1:A community issue. I mean, what does that even mean? It means they don't know what to do with the case and they're going to let I don't know what, just let vigilantism happen, I guess, like I don't even know, what that really fully means, right?
Speaker 2:like the independent seal, did a review on findings, right, yep, and they found a slow, fragmented response across police, school and health systems. They had made 17 recommendations through the government of nova scot. Mm-hmm, like unbelievable, like I mean. You just kind of really explained, you know what I was going to ask you next about systems and where they failed, looking at the way things were at that time and the way things are now. I know this is a big kind of shift here, but you know, has anything changed for the better? I know this is a big kind of shift here, but you know, has anything changed for the better? Have things you know. Has the attention from the media that this got helped at all, or is it pretty much just?
Speaker 3:I think it helped a lot at the grassroots level, at the community levels. Well, I should say that if a photo showed up in a school now, there'd be something done about it immediately. So in that way I would say, yes, Something would be done immediately if a photo showed up. They wouldn't allow that to happen. What happened to her Right?
Speaker 1:Just to touch on that before we move on from the photo stuff and the social media, though this is, you know we're talking 14 years, 13 years ago. Technology has changed so much where, like, they didn't have Snapchat back then, when things disappeared, like they do Like, is that anything that you guys are like attacking when it comes to that type of stuff, like trying to address those types of things?
Speaker 3:Well, we are there. There is a group of us moms who are trying to advocate for laws for social media platforms to be accountable for what shows up. Whether it's Snap or Instagram, facebook Any of those platforms need to be held accountable for what goes on their platforms. So these like Fight Nova Scotia, where there's young kids fighting each other and it's an actual page on Instagram Is that still an active?
Speaker 2:page.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I think so. My youngest daughter was jumped and it was on there.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I've seen some videos like that of where they show it and it's like people get attacked and they just it's like their entertainment kind of thing, which is completely mind-boggling to me, because that was not the case growing up for me. Like people squared off, you got permission and you, you know, you sometimes walked 15 to 20 minutes away from the school to go duke it out like two individuals, right, yeah?
Speaker 3:And then they turn on the person that's the victim.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:They turn it on them like oh, is this you getting beat up by five people? You think that that's something to brag? About that five people jumped, one person Right, and that that person should be to brag about that. Five people jumped one person Right and that that person should be ashamed of themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:For being jumped by five people. Like it's very twisted what young people are finding entertaining and what they use it for, like what they use it to use against the victim To jump in to get some sort of ego boost that they're part of. I don't know, harming somebody, I don't. It's. It's a little still baffling to me.
Speaker 1:And I know just sticking to the social media thing just for a minute, just to stay on point, is like the we talked to earlier about some of the recommendations. I mentioned that there is something coming forward that's going to be put in the legislature this month in September, that is requiring people to be 16 years of age in order to even have social media, and I know you had some opinions on that, whether that would work or not.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's the answer at all. I mean, we're in a digital age, banning it from children 16 and under. I just don't think that's going to work. They just lie anyways about their age to get on. They'll find a way to get on. To me, the answer is holding these big social media platforms accountable. Because you know, 16, you can just you know, you can just pretend you're, you can put dates in there, like how are they going to know if you're of age? And I just don't think that's going to work. I don't see how that's going to work.
Speaker 1:How do we hold them accountable, like the metas of the world?
Speaker 3:Well, they know how to filter things. Obviously, they're really good at saying that you violated this or you violated that and you're not allowed, you know. So they obviously have a really good filtering system so they could filter out violence against children and filming these things and sexual content that's being shared online. And if they don't, then if they let that through, then they would have to pay a hefty fine. I mean, people would report it, so it'd be easy enough to say, oh look, they let it through. And yeah, like I said, they know how to filter things out, Because if you say the wrong thing, you're like you're banned for five days.
Speaker 2:Right, I just want to go back to some of the law and policy changes, right so? Some of the bills that were introduced after over the last 12 years. I really want to go back to some of the law and policy changes, right so? Some of the bills that were introduced after over the last 12 years. I really want to know if they have an impact and if they have, or what you might know about them. Like there's Bill C-13, which is like they created the offense of sharing images without consent. Do you think that law has really helped at all from where things were 12 years ago? It?
Speaker 3:could. It could, potentially, it could, potentially, but I know that there's a lot of. I used to. Before COVID, I did a lot of speaking across Canada and I know there's a lot of police officers that weren't even aware of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was brought to the attention of all the people. That needed to be in order to be enforced, right, because a lot of people just didn't know of it.
Speaker 2:And then another law that passed, or I mean was the Cyber Safety Act, and then in 2015 was replaced by the Intimate Images and Cyber Protection Act. This was in 2017, 2018. Now this is more of like a charter-proof framework. Like, are these? I have a feeling sometimes that as these laws passed, the technologies, as Matt was saying earlier, and everything else, we're almost moving too slowly on this stuff. Like, I mean, you know, you mentioned earlier about snapchat, and I think that's a great one to kind of mention, because now an image goes away there's no evidence of it.
Speaker 1:Almost right, yeah, I mean you know, so you could deny or you could, but that platform must have that data well yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm sure they probably keep that on a server or something like that Matt. I mean, you know so it's like this is an evolving thing. So how do we help today's teenagers and stuff what are like? I mean I know you've talked all across the country about this Like what do you see as like the absolute best things we can start doing for our own teenagers and our own kids growing up today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a big question. It's hard. It's hard to be a parent right now. It's hard to be a teenager right now. Things are moving very fast, so I don't really know the answer, but I know that we should be moving along with it. In the social media age, for protecting our children, we can only do so much to educate them and talk to them. I mean, it's our job as their parents, of course, but as community members we have to hold people accountable and I feel like there's a lot of. That's not my business, I'm not getting involved. Empathy seems to be lacking because of the exposure to social media, that young people have so much exposure to horrible, horrific images and things that it they're desensitized to this, to the the suffering of others. I find that empathy needs to come back somehow, and I don't know the answer to how, but I just know like two years ago my youngest daughter was stabbed uh, she's 14, she's 16 now from a classmate over what um.
Speaker 3:They had an argument over cheap perfume oh my um, she, yeah, she accused my daughter that she's wearing cheap perfume. My daughter's very witty and quick and she came back with that's not my walmart perfume, that's yours. And she was so mad she started telling people she was going to kill her. Okay.
Speaker 1:That was the day.
Speaker 3:The next day she brought scissors to school and when my daughter stepped off the school ground, she stabbed her multiple times in the back. No way, oh my. God yeah, and there's people kids videoing it. And this comes back to the empathy piece. When I got there and the ambulance was coming and my daughter's covered in blood, the young boy who was there said um, well, I would have got involved, but I don't do girl fights, um. So it wasn't a fight. No, it was an attack, an assault.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And thankfully, one of the kids stepped on the girl who was stabbing her, stepped on her wrist to stop her, and that's the only way. It wouldn't have been worse.
Speaker 2:Did this happen on school grounds or outside of school?
Speaker 3:grounds as soon as she stepped off the school ground Right they just waited yeah.
Speaker 3:So the empathy piece, the way the kids were just nonchalant about it, like it was almost like they were getting a little dopamine hit from videoing it and like oh my gosh, look at the blood and it's a girl fight, and I just I was dumbfounded. I didn't even know what to say to him when he said that to me it's not a yeah, so there was this disconnect, yeah, it's very disheartening. So to me I don't know Empathy and we can educate them all we want, but again it comes back to these social media platforms.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're on to something. Maybe we need to teach empathy in schools. Maybe we need to have some sort of program where we focus a little bit harder on just treating people good and understanding other people's circumstance, because I do feel like that's something that's lacking today. Right, we're further and further removed from each other because we're just looking at each other through a window now on our phones almost right so uh, maybe empathy is is something we should be teaching.
Speaker 1:That's a cool idea I think that is a big factor. Is kids today that you know they're strapped to ipads and digital things and you know they're not? I don't, I don't know, I don't think they're necessarily making real human connections and it allows, and adults can be the same, but it's just. That's all they know. Their brains are still developing. They just simply don't connect them on a human level. And when you don't connect to people on a human level, it's easier to say things and do things that aren't great right, that are just.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, mike and I are sitting here and I think we can I can speak for the both of us on here. This is not an easy topic to talk about and I think we're both kind of like right, this is. This is a. It's hard to sit and look at someone, uh, a person who has had, uh, who has lost child, and then also we now just recently discovered that you had a child who was seriously assaulted.
Speaker 2:That could have been another loss. Yeah, it could have been another loss.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's not easy to sit here and talk to somebody and ask these questions and talk about that. Equally, I'm sure it's not easy to talk about it.
Speaker 3:No, it's not easy to talk about, but related to that, it just popped in those males that were there that night with Retea. If they didn't see her as an object to conquer instead of a human being, and know who she was as a person, that wouldn't have happened. So, somewhere along the line. They weren't taught about how to treat females, and even if the school would have taught them something, I know for sure that their parents didn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because I know how we were treated by the parents afterwards that kind of said like oh wow, like no wonder, this is the way this male is. Look at the parents.
Speaker 1:So yeah, they just saw her as an object how do you feel schools can do a better job of protecting kids?
Speaker 3:oh, they absolutely have to hold those, those bullies, accountable, and they're not yeah, they're not, they're not holding, and that's still very prevalent.
Speaker 3:I hear that from people all the time. People reach out to me. I mean I don't have the answers, but I know that if you go to a school, they're afraid to discipline a child, they're afraid to put them out of school for a few days, and the message is over and over and over again is that the bullies can bully. They can come on pink shirt day and wear their pink shirt and they're the ones that are wearing the pink shirt and then the next day they go back to being horrible people.
Speaker 1:It's, it's, um, my wife's a teacher, so I've I've often had these conversations about like, uh, you know how, how do you discipline kids? And uh, uh, you know, in our day we would. Suspension was a real suspension. You'd have to go home. The problem with it, though and this is a perspective I just didn't see right, and it had. It took my wife as a teacher to explain to me suspending a kid and sending them home for a week is a vacation. So it's like that's not even really working, because it's like now, it's like, you know, yeah, maybe the parent has to stay home or whatever, but what if the kid's 15, the kid can just stay home by themselves. You just said you don't have to go to school for a week. That's true, and that's a reward basically for these types of kids.
Speaker 3:So it's like what can we do?
Speaker 1:What can we do? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer to it.
Speaker 3:Right, I don't know either, but I have actually said that to teachers before You're sending my daughter home, because she spoke back to you. She doesn't want to be there anyway. Yeah, she doesn't want to be in school, yeah, so that means I have to go and sit with her all day, right? But yeah, I don't know what the answer is, but I know when I was in school I was afraid of the principal yeah.
Speaker 3:I was afraid to go to the principal's office. Yeah, because he, you know, he's a badass, so I, I didn't want to go there, right, yeah, so I don't know. I'm not saying they should bring back the straps and everything else, but doesn't, I don't know, there's just the bull. The bullies seem to get away with it.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think if we reframe how we teach kids, there's something good there. I saw there are some tools for families. One of them is needhelpnowca. Have you heard about that site?
Speaker 3:I know them very well yeah.
Speaker 2:And what could you tell us about them?
Speaker 3:So Lorene Harper was very much involved in Need. Very well, yeah, and uh, and what could you tell us about them?
Speaker 2:So Lorene.
Speaker 3:Harper was very much involved in uh Need Help Now. Uh, I met her a few times. She's a, she was a wonderful woman and they also, um, they have resources they have. If any school was to reach out to them, they would send them all the resources they need. They give little comic books and books relatable about content, about social media, about being bullied. They're a great organization.
Speaker 2:Awesome, they say now as I was looking at this topic. All preparation for you, matt and I, right and chat GTP full disclosure helps me out. Yeah, I got her like that's basically my new friend now I ask it everything, but like it was saying other things you could do to teach your kids is like encourage, evidence saving, reporting and not engaging with harassers or harassment.
Speaker 2:Like you know, really, you know, when you see this happening, make sure that those kids are talking about it, right. That negative behavior, right. When you see someone, even if you don't like you might not like a kid, but if they're still, if they're getting picked on, if they're all alone, right, you know the chances of something bad happening to that person is exponentially higher than it is to the kid that's not getting picked on and is not alone, right? I think that there's a lot of confusion sometimes when is it bullying or when is it teasing? You know, teaching your kids to respect people's boundaries, socially as well as every other way, probably really, really important, and trying to teach them that at a young age right, so it's really ingrained in them that they just don't disrespect people, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And also the bullies. I don't disrespect people, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also the the bullies. I I don't think we touched on this yet. Obviously the bullies need help yeah, because happy people that, like themselves, don't feel the need to to do that. So there's something going on there that needs to be addressed, more so than just the punitive level. There's more going on there.
Speaker 1:I can't remember what actor said it. I think it was like D'Angelo Washington or something like that, or George Clooney or something like that, but basically he talked about punching down versus punching up, and the people who are happy and satisfied and fulfilled in their life tend not to punch down. Yeah, that's right. So if someone's trying to do that, if someone's trying to punch you and kind of bring you down, they're probably trying to bring you down to their level because they feel miserable. Yep, exactly, there's something to be said about that. If you're happy, you don't try to make other people unhappy.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:I truly believe that. That's good. I like that. No, I truly believe that.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:I like that yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, yeah, so there's some work to be done, I guess, even on that side and we've talked about that, about how aggressors can also be victims yeah, and the best way to stop aggressors are maybe to help them heal somehow too. Yeah, I'm with that.
Speaker 2:Like Leia, sorry them heal somehow too.
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm with that uh, like leah, sorry, right, I almost said leah, because you know what I'm watching star wars here I do apologize, but but, uh, you know about advocacy and healing, right, you've done so many phenomenal things since you know, since you had to deal with this unfortunate circumstance and I don't know how you do it. I don't know how I would even leave the house if it happened to me. Yeah, right, I mean, I know that must have been challenging, but what I really want to talk to people about here now is share with people today is, um, you guys provide education, you guys provide awareness, prevention, wellness, focus, community work and, uh, you know, you read a person's dot ca you're saying that because the way it's spelled, yeah, I can't read, that's all right ReteaParrisonsca.
Speaker 3:So tell us a little bit about that organization, what you guys have done to help others. So we're changing our focus on the society right now.
Speaker 3:Okay, before we started training before COVID, I did a lot of speaking engagements across Canada communities and schools and police departments, all over the victim services, and I did a lot of that and then that kind of came to a stop, but I did run grief retreats. So I started focusing on how can I help people heal and I connected with a lot of parents. But these days I've changed the focus that we're now helping people heal through animals and nature. So we bought 100 acres what, yeah, that's so cool. So I sold the house in Coal Harbor, bought 100 acres.
Speaker 1:What? Yeah, that's so cool so.
Speaker 3:I sold the house in Coal Harbor, bought 100 acres just almost a year ago now. Oh, my gosh we just hit the road running so like an animal farm man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what we're looking at right here, which is cool. So just a quick little blurb here. It says our barnyard was created in loving memory of Retea Parsons and her deep love of animals. Barnyard was created in loving memory of Retea Parsons and her deep love of animals. Retea found comfort and healing in the presence of animals and this farm is our way of sharing that gift with others. I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Really cool, yeah. I mean you know, obviously you work in therapy and you're trying to help people. I mean animals obviously can be a huge part of that and you know, in a huge way you're really living her kind of memory because of her love for animals. So you're really putting everything together.
Speaker 3:I think that can really help some people, yeah because I I just believe that, um, especially for teens, like talk, therapy isn't always the best thing to do, because they don't. First of all, they don't feel comfortable talking and even if they do like, but I didn't understand that it's a process.
Speaker 3:She's like I just keep having to tell my story over and over again, to this therapist and that therapist and I don't get it like she didn't understand that therapy's a process, it takes time and it's it's layered. But if you put her with a horse or you put her in another setting, she would be feeling better and not even have to talk about anything and whether she, you know, she could just connect with the horse and she would even say, like there's horses, she connected to that. You don't know what it felt like to have the horse's head on my shoulder and just breathing with me, like our breath was the same and that felt so good. So I just feel like, even though I am a therapist, that talk therapy isn't necessarily the only way that people are going to heal. There's just so many ways to heal and so I just feel like put someone in nature on a nature trail that we've created, nature trails, put them in animals and let the animals in them kind of do their thing and see what happens.
Speaker 2:You ever hear that thing getting up in the morning and walking around on the grass. Well, it's been great for you oh.
Speaker 3:I do it all the time and looking towards the sun and stuff. Yeah, I've been trying to get over the sun, one that's totally me. Yeah, I've been trying to make sure you get out in the well just make sure you wake up and just stare directly at the sun, Matt. That's what you do.
Speaker 2:No, you just kind of look up towards kind of wherever the sun is even on a cloudy day, and just kind of it helps your kind of whole regulatory system and stuff. Yes, it soaks into you. Actually, Andrew Huberman said that on his podcast recently.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty cool stuff that guy talks about sometimes. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. The neuroscience yeah, yeah yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So is there anything you would like to say to the parents out there that might be listening? I'm sure there's a lot of parents that listen to our show.
Speaker 3:I think that parenting in this day and age is very difficult. I'm still in it. I'm still in it and I just feel, like for any type of stress, trauma we all have it, we've all had traumas or just different degrees of traumas, but we all have it that it's so easy to just get caught up in the go, go, go and then you just burn out. And that, taking care of yourself first.
Speaker 3:I feel that because I went inward and did that and went on a healing journey, that I was able to be there for my children because I took care of my emotional needs. I took care of my emotional needs, I took care of my PTSD episodes and I had to really tune in to what was happening inside of me in order for me to show up the way I wanted to for my kids as they grew up in the shadow of the pain of Ritea. I knew that they were going to have their own. I mean, one was nine and one was four. I knew that they were going to have their own struggles. So to be able to parent them, I really had to take care of myself. So I feel like we can't just go on autopilot. You're just going to burn out like trying to help your children and trying to find the answers and what's going to help them, but allowing them to be on their journey while you're supporting them by supporting yourself first. I feel like that's the.
Speaker 1:That's the key other kids help kind of ground you and kind of because and keep you in it, because I can only, just from my perspective, put, trying to put myself in your situation, um, it would be like just I don't know, I don't, I don't know how I'd react, um, and I would think that it's like having other children, knowing that you have to be there for them, help ground you and help you realize like I need to get through this.
Speaker 3:No, it was the opposite at first. The opposite, okay, I didn't want to be a parent anymore.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay.
Speaker 3:It was like. That's it. I give up. I don't want to parent. She was my world, she was my everything. She changed my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I dove in. I did everything to be a really good mom to her. It didn't work out Right, so she's not here Like I quit. I don't want to parent. I don't want to go to another school meeting. I don't want to get up. I make another lunch. I didn't want to do it. Yeah, that was really hard for me to navigate that. Just to go to another concert it just everything would remind me of. So I just wanted to just put the whole parenting thing away like that chapter is over.
Speaker 3:Except, I had two children looking at me for direction, so it was it was really hard because I didn't want to, but then I had.
Speaker 1:I had to figure it out yeah, you had to figure it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, yeah so um very challenging, because they were, you know, they were had grief well, obviously they would.
Speaker 1:They would have missed their sister, exactly yeah so that was uh. Yeah, it was a hard, hard time to get through that it's interesting to hear your perspective from that, because I only have one kid and, uh, jokingly slash, not jokingly.
Speaker 1:Um, I say to my wife it's like you know, I'm okay with having one because if anything ever happened to them I'd be okay going to prison kind of thing right, kind of thing right yeah um, but it's interesting to hear your perspective, that kind of I guess it kind of pulled you in a different direction kind of thing, because I would say if I had other kids I would have to be more logical.
Speaker 3:It's hard to be logical when your whole world just crashed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And my sister even said to me one day I didn't say anything to her. And she said to me one day you got to stop thinking like that. I didn't say anything. I said what do you mean? She goes, you are spiraling down and you got to stop. Because I was, I was suicidal, and she knew it and I didn't say it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And she said Leah, I know more than anyone what Retea meant to you and I totally get why you're thinking the way you're thinking, but you can't go down that road. Yeah you're thinking the way you're thinking, but you can't go down that road. Yeah, and I was just like I just lost. I couldn't believe that she could tune in. I should have known, but she could.
Speaker 1:She knew exactly what I was thinking and I guess that goes to a deeper topic of like mental health too. I mean, because you're you're a therapist, so like people think, okay, you're an expert in this field you should know how to expertly heal yourself and things like that. Yeah, but just you know.
Speaker 3:I think I'm a better therapist now because I actually did the work. I dove in the deepest places, the darkest places, to go in there and not just cover it over. To go in there and not just cover it over, anybody could have easily said well, no wonder she's. You know, I could have started drinking or taking sleeping pills or you know whatever, no wonder it would have been justified. Everyone would have said, like, of course she's a drunk now or whatever.
Speaker 3:But, I chose not to go that way, right, and also I could have closed my heart down and said that's it.
Speaker 3:I'm not like I'm not gonna yeah, yeah but I said I consciously made a choice to not go that way. Yeah, and I had to keep making the choice. But what a lot of people don't realize is that it's a rolling grief. It's not you don't just you don't. You don't just you don't heal. You don't just heal and now you're healed. It's just. Things still come up. You still get hit with images. You wake up and it's like, oh my gosh, I miss my child. And it's just. The rolling impact is something you have to choose, to navigate every single day, that you're choosing again Like I'm choosing this kind of life, I'm choosing to show up this way. This is what I chose, not that you can't feel what you feel, but this is what we're choosing.
Speaker 1:I guess that kind of also leads me like this this is a kind of a double-edged sword, then you know, obviously talking about it makes you think about it all the time, which is probably very, quite hurtful, but at the same time, talking about it and doing the work you're doing, potentially you don't know how many lives you're saving.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, yeah, people still message me today. The other day I got another message like Retea saved my life because you told her story, I was able to tell mine and I bottled this up for 30 something years of what happened to me and now I don't have shame around it. Now I've actually have, I have a therapist, or I went and got help, or I told somebody. Or like when people speak out against things that are not the easiest topics or you, you know, not comfortable topics, other people, it gives other people permission to speak out and tell their own story, to tell their own, that's shame.
Speaker 3:If you have shame, it just breeds in darkness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Isn't that the truth? Holy smokes yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah. So I mean just in closing, we're getting to our last call here now so I just wanted to say.
Speaker 2:I'll say a couple quick things for for crisis resources um, you know, there's canada's 988 helpline. I mean, I just want people to know that these do exist kids help phone. Um, the government of canada has a 1988 suicide crisis helpline. And I think over everything though I guess we ask everybody this question at the end of our episodes- what's one piece of advice you were given in your lifetime that you'd like to share with us today?
Speaker 3:Okay, whatever comes to mind. My mother's words are coming to mind right now, and it's this too shall pass. She used to say that all the time, and I didn't understand what she meant. But even if you're having a bad day, a bad moment, just knowing that that's a moment, that's a day, that this too shall pass, and to hold on to that.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Thank you so much for spending your time with us and sharing your story for many times over and all the years, many times you shared your story, probably helped way more people than you've ever realized.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. Cheers to you and cheers to Ritev. Yes, cheers.
