Julie Stewart

I am a queer white settler raised in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS), and living as a visitor in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary, AB) on the traditional and ancestral lands the Niitsitapi (the Siksika, Piikani and Kainai Nations), the Îethka Nakoda (the Chiniki, Bearspaw and Good Stoney First Nations), Tsuut’ina Nation, and the Métis Nation of Alberta (Districts 5 & 6).

In my spare time I'm usually birding, paddleboarding, reading, and making art or scheming up ways to be by the ocean.

My work is grounded in Narrative Therapy. This means I'm listening for the ways problems are supported by systems of power and looking for ways folks resist and subvert those problems. I work from the assumption that the people I meet have survived everything they’ve ever been through with a combination of skills, values, beliefs, and relationships. I also draw on training in Response-Based Practice, Accelerated Resolution Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Systemic Family Therapy. I strive to hold an anti-racist, decolonial, and anti-carceral stance to create a safe enough space for folks to get the support they deserve.

I tend to be informal and collaborative, and people I meet for counselling describe my style as warm, caring, and genuinely interested in the people I’m speaking with. I try to offer questions to help folks think and talk through their situations in ways they haven’t gotten to yet. I support partners and families in having needed conversations in dignifying, respectful, and generative ways. Conversations with me may include calm, quiet witnessing of big feelings and important stories. They may also include shared joking and belly laughs as appropriate.

Monday-Thursday, daytimes

Master of Social Work, Clinical Specialization (2019)

University of Calgary

Bachelor of Education, Secondary Education (2012)

St Francis Xavier University

Master of Arts, English (2008)

McMaster University

Bachelor of Arts, English (2006)

St Francis Xavier University

Training Highlights

Escaping Blame – Helping [Partners] Develop Account-Ability (2026)

Non-Carceral Harm Reduction Training Program: Ending Forced Hospitalization through Consensual Intervention (2025)

Grief Care Professional Certificate (2024)

Basic Accelerated Resolution Therapy Training (2024)

Sex Beyond Binaries: Revisioning Sex Therapy, for Every Body (2024)

Binge Eating & Chronic Dieting Certification (2024)

BIPoC Eating Disorders Conference (2024)

Every Body Counts: Culturally-Attuned Care for Marginalized Individuals Struggling with Disordered Eating and Body Image (2024)

Disability, Gender, and Sexuality (2024)

Reframing Autism Summit (2024)

Pregnancy and Infant Loss (2023)

Undoing Suicidism (2023)

Tools for Climate Grief and Anxiety (2023)

Definitional Ceremony with People who have Lost a Loved One to Violence (2022)

Non-Monogamous Families and Intimacies (2021)

Trauma & Resistance: Innovative Responses to Oppression (2021)

Advanced Narrative Practice for Advanced Narrative practitioners (2021)

Rethinking the Erotic: Creating Therapeutic Environments that center Asexual and Aromantic Experiences (2021)

Narrative Couples Therapy (2020)

Reclaiming Lives from the Effects of Trauma (2020)

Response-Based Practice: A Dignity-Driven Approach to Family Violence & Abuse (2020)

Solution Focused Brief Therapy Intensive (2019)

Advanced Gender Affirming Practice Training, WPATH, (2020)

Indigenous Counselling and Trauma Work (2020)

Systemic Approaches to Family Therapy (2018)

Gender Affirming Practice, CPATH (2017)