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Loose Threads
Essays, musings and questions from the edges of culture, care and the body.
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Hi, I’m Claire.
I support people riding the complex waves of trauma, chronic pain, illness and neurodivergence to feel more alive and connected.
For over 18 years, I've been working as a Registered Music Therapist in the realms of trauma, mental health, chronic pain and attachment.
It was my own unravelling a decade ago that grew me up as a therapist. Multiple traumas and crises converging at once until I became completely immobilised.
More knowledge didn’t help me. What did was knowing that I wasn't broken – the culture was.
This took me deeper into somatics and embodiment, and into critically examining the cultural soup we're swimming in – because we can't separate our health from the culture we live in.
Why are people so shit? Part 2.
The cumulative effect brought something much less talked about. A culture that is genuinely confused about care. We sense that we need it desperately. We just can’t quite find our way back to it because we don’t know where or how to find it.
What I notice, in myself and in the people I work with, is that individuals end up carrying the load of what was once a community effort. The depletion isn’t just personal. It’s inherited. Carried in nervous systems that have been trying to do too much, with too little support, for too long.
This isn’t a failure. It’s the predictable result of systems that stripped care of its value and then asked each of us to make up the difference without complaint.
We’ve landed with skills of competing, transaction and extraction. A type of care that touches you (or teases you rather) – but not enough to be deeply felt.
Why are people so shit? Part 1.
Once or twice a week after I’ve picked my kids up from school I hang out with a bunch of parents while the kids play in the bush.
One afternoon while chatting about ideas to support a family in the community, I went off on my soap box about how I want things to be in the world.
How I want to live in a world where everybody has enough.
One of the parents is less vocal. But he has a presence that when he speaks, I’m drawn to listen.
He seems like someone who knows a lot – not just intellectually, but with his full self – knowledge that is lived.
And he said ‘it won’t work because people are shit.’
Why It's Hard to Receive Care – And How to Change That
There’s a heavy grief that sits at the bottom of many hearts.
Buried deep beneath hands that can’t quite reach for care because they’re not quite sure they deserve it.
Or if they’ll even receive it.
Or worse. They’ll be rejected or wronged.
Because history has told them time and time again the same story.
That care isn’t available.
When You Have All the Tools But Still Can't Heal
Something shifted in a session today that I wasn't prepared for. My client came in carrying a long history – chronic pain, complex family dynamics, layers of oppression that had settled deep into her body. She'd done the programs. The nervous system resets. The somatic education. And she kept returning to the same place: pain flares, symptoms calling the shots, her life organised around managing them. It was clear she was filled to the brim with useful tools, but accessing them felt impossible because she didn’t know where to begin when overwhelmed by choice.
There’s a heavy grief that sits at the bottom of many hearts.
Buried deep beneath hands that can’t quite reach for care because they’re not quite sure they deserve it.
Or if they’ll even receive it.
Or worse. They’ll be rejected or wronged.
Because history has told them time and time again the same story.
That care isn’t available.