Support and recovery

Full mental and physical health support, with access to psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, medical doctors, nurse practitioners, and physical and occupational therapists are vital to recovery.

A first step is often knowing and admitting to yourself that you need more help and support. Whether within or outside the CAF, RCMP, and VAC, accessing the right service can sometimes be trial and error. If the first (or second, or third) therapist or counsellor you connect with is not the right fit it’s critical to find someone you can trust who has experience working with sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors.

You may feel you don’t need outside help, but friends and family have been suggesting this to you. It can be hard to admit you could benefit from professional help because it can make what happened even more real. We encourage you to listen to those around you who love and care about you and have your best interest at heart.

I found my best success was when I had the right support team, the mental health, the right doctor, nurse practitioner, somebody who was unbiased to my work. How I’ve been able to process it is finding people outside the military to lean on and find out that it’s okay to take pride in what we do and still… and still feel these things that are hurtful. I finally had it normalized by someone who wasn’t in uniform. - Military Veteran

The pressure on women in the military to be strong and self-reliant ()

I took a pause and found my strength ()

The effects of isolation ()

If you are a woman in the military or RCMP, you may still tend to have a larger role in the home. You may find seeking help difficult because you can’t get relief from domestic responsibilities. If this is your situation, sometimes you may need to ask for help from friends and other family members whether it is to help care for children or make phone calls on your behalf.

The outcome of the Apiary Program [peer support] has been everything that we'd hoped. It's demonstrated the importance of women being able to come together, offer support, talk about their experiences and share their traumatic histories, in a way that they control, in the presence of others who’ve had the same experiences. And in that way, the support that they're receiving is, I think so needed and so powerful. - Military Therapist

There is nothing quite like connecting with someone who has “been there”. While no one’s experience is exactly the same, it can be helpful and healing to know you are not the only one who has experienced something similar.

It’s also helpful to know what other resources and strategies they have found helpful. A rarely discussed benefit of mutual support is how rewarding helping others can be.

The goal of peer support is to reach a place where people are well enough that they're able to say, “this horrible thing has happened to me, but because of it I have become who I am today. Now I have the skills, the resources and the confidence that I can share what I went through and hopefully help someone else on their healing journey.”

I told my social worker that I feel drawn to what I’m doing now because I wanna break down those barriers for people like myself. Like, how do I get help? How do I ask? And where do I engage with the right resources. Because I think if I’d known then what I know now, I might have saved a lot of years of pain and suffering. - Military Veteran