When Ben and Jock started Haven, it grew out of something they had discovered in their medical practices:

Healing was often happening more in the waiting room than in their offices.

Their patients were very different—elderly people and teenagers—and their backgrounds included acupuncture, emergency medicine and psychiatry. Yet it wasn’t necessarily their medical expertise that was making the most transformative difference in people’s lives.

It was what was happening relationally.

People were talking. Sharing stories. Seeing themselves in one another. Feeling less alone.

Ben and Jock wanted to take that further. Eventually, they let go of their medical licences to focus on group dynamics, relationships and embodiment.

By the time I arrived, relational programs had been happening for years, and the work had found a home on Gabriola Island at a place called The Haven.

Some of the core programs from those early years are still offered today—from Come Alive and Couples Alive to month-long programs devoted to personal development, relationships and leadership training.

The leadership month was called New Horizons. The name reflected its exploration of new and cutting-edge ideas in psychology, science, philosophy and medicine, alongside both Eastern and Western ways of understanding human experience.

What I remember most was the spirit of the program:

Touch on everything. Then blow up every theory and structure.

Not to dismiss what could be learned, but to crack the structure open. To help the mind grasp that there isn’t one right way.

There are pieces—fractals of truth—in all systems and theories. What makes them living is how they respond to the actual human being who walks, talks, breathes and relates out in the world.

What we believe matters. But it doesn’t have to become permanent. It doesn’t have to become “right.”

Of course, Ben and Jock had strong opinions, as did the many people who led and worked alongside them. But the highlight of New Horizons was when each participant pulled together and shared their own living model.

In some ways, each of us was being asked to create our own waiting room—a place where people could gather, experiment, discover and meet one another more honestly.

Then people would go back into their lives. Some returned to intern, assist, lead and contribute to the ongoing educational process. They brought what they were learning from their own lives back into the room.

Not every way of relating or working was agreeable to Ben and Jock. Some people found their feedback confronting. At times, I did too.

But there was also something deeply enlivening about it—and, for me, incredibly valuable.

No matter how often I got knocked for being a victim or acting entitled, I still wanted to come back.

I wanted to understand.

I wanted to throw my opinions into the room and hear what came back. I wanted to encounter different experiences and different ways of coping, loving and living in what often seemed to me to be a very harsh world.

Over time, I became less afraid of the bumps, the bullies, the righteous certainty and even the hate.

I began to recognize that much of what frightened or angered me was another person’s attempt—sometimes clumsy, defended or harmful—to be loved, accepted and to belong.

That didn’t make every behaviour okay. It didn’t mean there was no need for accountability, boundaries or repair.

It meant I became more interested in what was happening between us than in proving who was right.

I am so grateful I kept coming back, even when it seemed I wasn’t very good at empathy or at getting beyond my own pain and blame.

I kept coming back.

And slowly, I learned to lead more with my heart and with my best human self.

I made mistakes.

I learned.

I repaired.

And I kept weaving those experiences into becoming more human, more real and, actually, more loving.

Along the way, I gathered all sorts of skills and training—from family systems, somatics and emotional release work to psychotherapy, Satir Family Reconstructions, addiction work, business consulting, coaching and equus work.

There was mystical and spiritual work, too. So many programs, theories, books, teachers and resources.

I value all of it.

But for me, it still comes back to that waiting room and the relational tools.

Life isn’t fair. Horrible things happen. People hurt one another, sometimes knowingly and sometimes while believing they are doing the right thing. No amount of training can promise that we will never cause harm—or create a space in which nobody will ever feel hurt, unseen or misunderstood.

What we can learn is how to stay present.

How to listen.

How to speak honestly.

How to notice when certainty has closed our minds and hardened our hearts.

How to take responsibility for our impact, repair what we can and remain in relationship long enough for something new to become possible.

Expertise can inform us. Knowledge can expand us. Training can help us recognize what we have not yet learned to see.

But no amount of expertise or knowledge means much without heart and connection.

That is what I believe Ben and Jock discovered in the waiting room.

And after all these years, it is still what I believe makes transformation and yes maybe healing possible.