The Story Behind Blueberry Therapy: Why We Say the Actual Words
Kelsey Reidl co-leads the Wave Mastermind, a group of women business owners I have met with on a video call every week for almost two years. We talk marketing one week and hiring the next, with money and mindset in between, and that room has held me through more than one hard season. Kelsey recently featured me in her Canadian Business Owner Spotlight series, and her questions pulled out things I had never said in one place before. This is the longer version of that conversation, written for the people who walk through our door. You can read Kelsey's original interview here.
At 28, I became the patient
I was finishing my physiotherapy degree and working my first job at a children's treatment centre when my body stopped working the way it was supposed to. I was constipated, straining, and I could feel something dropping down. It was less scary than it was embarrassing, and I did not want to tell anybody.
A year of tests followed, every one of them mortifying, and I cried after many of them. The following year within a two week span I had an ACL repair (to repair my knee) and then surgery for a rectal prolapse, and I went into the second one still on crutches. My surgeon was kind. He said the word prolapse, and he fixed it.
What nobody said, through a physiotherapy degree and two surgeries, was the phrase pelvic floor. Nobody explained what had happened, why it happened to me, whether it would come back or what I could have done differently. Everyone was nice to me, and I still walked out with no idea what was going on inside my own body. What failed was the silence.
I have spent every year since making sure nobody else has to figure it out alone.
Why the name Blueberry
The name comes from the cue we use to teach a pelvic floor contraction: draw a blueberry up and in. It makes people pause, ask and usually smile, which is the whole point. Peeing, pooping, pain and pleasure are hard enough to talk about already. The clinic should never make it harder.
Why 31 people and more than one lens
Blueberry Therapy opened in Dundas in 2017 and turned nine on July 1 this year. We are now 31 people across pelvic health physiotherapy, naturopathic medicine, counselling, massage therapy, osteopathic manual therapy, lactation consulting and more, and that size is deliberate.
Pelvic floor problems rarely show up alone. Constipation and straining are pelvic floor problems, and almost nobody makes that connection for you. Bladder leaks travel with the anxiety of leaving the house. Painful sex travels with a relationship that has gone quiet. A child who will not poop travels with a parent who has not slept in a week. A body deserves more than one lens on it, so under one roof we can put a physiotherapist, a psychotherapist and a naturopathic doctor on the same problem without sending you across town with a referral letter.
Most people find their way here through someone who already knows us. A colleague, a family doctor, a friend who got tired of watching you cancel plans. The same is true of The Pleasure Principle, our annual conference for healthcare professionals, where colleague referral beats Instagram, email and the podcast combined. The Hole Shebang podcast and Instagram do real work too, but the trust gets built the old way first.
Always say the actual word
Vulva. Prolapse. Incontinence. Orgasm. Whatever is going on in your body, we will call it by its name, because the whispering keeps people stuck far longer than the condition does.
The best moment in my work is the moment someone says the actual word out loud for the first time. A patient finally naming what is wrong with her own body. A physiotherapist I am training asking the question she had been too embarrassed to ask. You can watch it land on someone's face, the exact second something they had been avoiding becomes something they can hold onto and do something about.
Nobody leaves smaller
I have one rule for every room I am in, whether the person across from me is a patient, a clinician I am training or a clinic owner I am coaching. Nobody leaves feeling smaller than when they walked in. If they did not understand something, that is on me and not on them. You will hear plain language here, you will get the exact picture of what is going on, and you will leave knowing what to do next.
What my week looks like now
I still see existing clients on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The rest of my week goes to the parts of the business only I can do: recording The Hole Shebang, which passed 100 episodes this summer, planning the next Pleasure Principle for May 14, 2027, coaching clinic owners through The Bottom Line and sitting with our team on a clinical case. Teaching one to many is where I can help the most people, so I am handing more of my clinical days to a team I trust completely.
The coaching taught me something about the clinic too. One of my coaching clients was certain most of her referrals came from Instagram. When we pulled her real numbers, web search sent 44 percent of them and Instagram sent under 1. Guessing is expensive, and the clinic runs on the same rule as your body does. Find out exactly what is going on, in plain language, and then decide what to do next.
Before any of that starts, I move. Coffee, a walk, weights, something that gets me out of my head before I open my laptop. If I skip it I can feel the difference in how I show up, less patient and less clear with the people who have trusted me with the hardest thing they own, so it does not get skipped. My last holiday was a week walking the Algarve coast in Portugal with my friend Louise, who I have known since 1999, five hours of hiking a day and evenings in small fishing villages you only find on foot. I came home knowing I want more days with a reason behind them, and that is as true of work as it is of travel.
If this sounds like you
If your bladder, bowel or sex life has stopped working the way it used to, you do not have to accept it and you do not have to whisper about it here. Book online at blueberrytherapy.janeapp.com or call us at 289-238-8383, and we will help you find out exactly what is going on.
And thank you to Kelsey Reidl and the women of the Wave Mastermind for asking the questions that made me say all of this out loud. Kelsey's full interview is here, and you can find Kelsey at kelseyreidl.com or on Instagram @waveforwomen.
Comments