We recently connected with Tanasha Wilkinson and have shared our conversation below.

Tanasha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you have a hero? What have you learned from them?

My hero is myself. The reason why I selected myself is because every person I trusted failed me. My adversity has been a journey of many different levels of abuse. Grew up in an a home with domestic violence. I am the eldest child of nine girls. I’ve only ever know to be responsible. I was sexually abused from the age of five and at age 11 for 6 years of my life. Raped more than once. I got pregnant at 17 and stayed with that person and got married at 25. That relationship was an abusive one for 26 years. What I learned about myself was that I was determined to make my dream a reality and I never gave up even though at times considered suicide. My journey was influenced by others who overcame their adversity but they forgotten about themselves during the process. I become a mother of two a boy and a girl and completed my degrees for social work while working full time and running my business part time as a therapist. Today I am a full time sexual trauma therapist .

Tanasha, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My desire to become a social work was from my dream at the age of 12. I was sitting in a room with beautiful furniture and a male was sitting in front of me crying and thanking me for helping him. After having the dream I went to school and did some research on different careers and Social worker stood out for me. As a sexual trauma therapist I have helped my clients to understand their behaviour and learnto trust themselves. My practice has a wholistic approach to helping clients understand their emotions and behaviours. The different modalities I use are CBT. EFT and EMDR to help process trauma, work relationships, self esteem and emotional regulation etc. I support ages 13 and up.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

My best referral source is from other businesses for example doctor offices. Anther great source is word of mouth referral from clients who receive my services.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I was renting an office in a building during Covid and the person who I was renting from gave me and two other renters less than 30 days to move out and find a new place. I wasn’t able to find a suitable place for my business that was save and affordable. I decided to offer my services only online line it was challenging for me and I accepted my new way of doing services for my clients. But I learned a valuable lesson of how life can take turns but as long as your dream lives inside of you nothing is impossible. I forums a new office within the year and started offering impersonated online services.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.masteryofselfinc.ca
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mastery_ofself
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/selfirst1/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanashasmith-7070b455

Image Credits

Thank you-Alethia Cadore for the opportunity to share my story