The Story Hour
The Story Hour: Voices Unscripted | Stories Re-Written
A space for raw, unfiltered conversations about life and the power of storytelling.
Where depth meets intimacy.
A place for everyone to show up perfectly imperfect.
No masks, no facades.
Authentic and heart-centered connections.
Rooted in the essence of Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG).
Behind every person is a story; of who they are, where they come from, and the trials and tribulations they’ve faced.
A story of hardship, heartache, healing, and the unexpected wisdom and resilience we find along the way.
Our stories do not define us.
It’s about what happens when life knocks us down, and how we find the strength to stand back up again.
Some stories will break your heart, some will make you laugh, and all of them, I hope, will remind you, you’re not alone.
More than just stories, The Story Hour is a space for community, connection and collective healing.
Where voices come together to remind us that our stories matter, that even in our darkest moments, there is hope and there is a light within each of us that is waiting to be turned on.
A place for you to feel inspired and empowered to take back control of your life.
Join your host, Sara Jaswal at The Story Hour, where we listen, learn and re-write the narratives that shape us.
The Story Hour
*18* Pathways to Personal Freedom: From Constraint to Liberation with MPCC-P, Sonia Dhillon
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Sara welcomes trauma-informed counsellor, coach, and writer Sonia Dhillon (MPCC-P), founder of Free Life Integrative Counseling, for a wide-ranging conversation.
Sonia shares how feeling like she didn’t belong as a second-born girl in the Punjabi community, being compared to her sister, and being bullied shaped her early self-worth, coping through dissociation and people-pleasing, and later post-traumatic growth.
They discuss mental health as whole-person wellness; mind, body, emotions, presence, and community and why people avoid turning inward.
Sonia outlines her self-care practices (movement, whole foods, nature, prayer, meditation, art, and asking for needs) and reframes meditation as presence.
She explores grief beyond death, including divorce-related losses, identity shifts, relationship and friendship grief, and healing through naming grief and being held in community.
Sonia describes her nomadic travels, misconceptions and challenges, and how travel and a pivotal self-mapping exercise in Bali led her into counselling, where she practices integrative, body-based, attachment-informed work and emphasizes therapy as support even when nothing is “wrong.”
Connect With Sonia:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freelifecounselling/
Psychology Today Profile: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists/sonia-dhillon-surrey-bc/1682875
Booking Link: https://freelifeintegrativecounselling.janeapp.com/
Connect With Sara:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestoryhourpodcast/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sara.s.jaswal/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheStoryHourPodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thestoryhourpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thestoryhour.podcast
Website: https://www.sarajaswal.com/