Ellen's Biography
Your choice of Short, Medium, Long!
Why the short bio?
Just want a quick taste of who I am and why I do what I do? Here’s the spark—short, sweet, and straight to the heart.
Why the medium bio?
Want the story in a nutshell—who I am, what I do, and why it matters? This one’s for you. Perfect if you’re thinking about a free strategy session, or just want to feel the heart behind my work without reading the whole novel.
Why the long bio?
Curious about the winding path that brought me here? If you want to peek behind the curtain—through counselling rooms, classrooms, writing desks, and spiritual circles—this is for you. A full story of lessons, laughter, challenges, and joy, showing how it all led me to the work I love today.
Short
Ellen Arrand is a counsellor, coach, teacher, and writer who helps women reclaim their power and create healthy, joyful relationships. With over twenty years of experience in counselling, teaching, and group facilitation, she blends emotional insight, practical guidance, and creative tools to help women break old patterns and step into love and self-confidence. A published author, Reiki Master, and advocate for heart-centered living, Ellen guides women to connect with themselves, trust their instincts, and embrace the lives they truly desire.
Medium
Ellen Arrand is a counsellor, coach, teacher, and writer who helps women reclaim their power, find their voice, and create healthy, joyful relationships. Her journey began at twenty-three, fresh out of an emotionally abusive relationship with a newborn in tow, when she discovered a grassroots counselling community that changed her life. From those early experiences, she grew into a leader and teacher, learning to guide people past old patterns and toward emotional freedom.Ellen’s work deepened at a women’s sexual assault centre, where she co-led crisis line training, facilitated support groups, and accompanied survivors to court. These experiences shaped her understanding of resilience, feminism, and the transformative power of presence and compassion.
She later established her private practice, working with women on trauma, transitions, confidence, and relationships. Over the years, her focus has become helping women who want love but feel stuck or uncertain how to break old patterns, while always meeting them where they are.
Ellen’s academic journey complements her counselling work. She earned an honours double major in English Literature and Creative Writing, and a Professional Year in Education with a focus on Theatre in Education, drama, and transformational learning—skills she now integrates into her group programs. She also taught Creative Writing and Life Writing, nurturing connection and creativity in her students.
A writer at heart, Ellen has published novels, received multiple Canada Council grants, and been recognized nationally for her playwriting. Her spiritual practices—including Reiki, meditation, clairvoyance, Authentic Movement, and Sacred Dance—inform her work, helping her guide women to reconnect with themselves in deeply meaningful ways.
For over twenty years, Ellen has blended counselling, teaching, writing, and spirituality into a life’s work: helping women step into their potential, cultivate authentic love, and live with courage, clarity, and joy.
Long
Counselling / Coaching / Mentoring – Part 1: Where It All Began
My work as a counsellor and mentor began long before I ever thought of it as a profession—it started when I was twenty-three, newly out of a four-year emotionally abusive relationship, and holding a six-week-old baby in my arms. As a young single parent, I walked into a grass-roots, intentional counselling community that would change the course of my life. This group, made up mostly of other single parents, offered not only solidarity but a form of counselling that placed the person above their patterns and believed deeply in emotional healing and liberation of all oppressed groups (tackling such areas as Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Anti-Semitism and discrimination of all kinds) healing through the release of old hurts – both by personal hurts and universal ones. It spoke to me instantly. Within that community, I found safety, clarity, and a path back to myself.
As I healed, I grew. I quickly became a leader and teacher within this international counselling movement, which was built on the belief that every person deserves liberation—from internalized childhood wounds and from the larger web of societal oppressions. I attended every workshop I could, often held in camps to keep costs low, and soaked up wisdom from parenting experts like Patti Whipler, women’s-movement leaders like Diane Balsar, and some of the most influential voices in gay liberation and a voice also for men. Those years formed the backbone of how I work today: with deep respect for each person’s innate goodness, with an unwavering commitment to emotional truth, and with the belief that when we heal, we free not only ourselves but the world around us.
Counselling / Coaching / Mentoring – Part 2: Working at a Women’s Sexual Assault Centre
My next chapter in counselling unfolded at a women’s sexual assault centre—an experience that shaped me as profoundly as anything in my life. I arrived knowing very little about the field formally, but I carried with me the deep listening skills, emotional presence, skills and respect for human resilience I had developed in my ten years as a leader in the counselling community. Somehow, that was exactly what they were looking for; I was hired over many candidates, and I stepped into the work with equal parts humility and determination.
My role was wide-ranging. I co-led the Crisis Line Training program, supported and counselled survivors one-on-one, and facilitated a long-running group for adult survivors of child sexual abuse. I also received training through the Justice Institute and learned directly from police officers who were committed to improving sensitivity and response. I accompanied survivors to court, sat beside them in some of the hardest moments of their lives, and witnessed their extraordinary courage again and again.
Working there deepened my admiration for women in ways I’ve carried ever since. It strengthened my understanding of Feminism—not as a theory but as a lived, urgent, everyday necessity. And while the work was meaningful, it was also emotional, often overwhelming in its intensity. My fellow counsellors supported each other the best way we knew how. Sometimes, after an especially difficult day, we would put on the soundtrack from The Mission, sit together, and let ourselves cry and hug each other. There was beauty in that—being held by colleagues who understood, who felt it all too.
Those years taught me about strength, solidarity, and the deep healing that can happen when someone finally feels heard and believed. They also taught me how essential it is to show up with both skill and humanity—something that continues to guide everything I do.
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Counselling / Coaching / Mentoring – Part 3: Starting My Private Practice
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Eventually, it was time to take everything I had learned—every skill, every insight, every ounce of leadership I’d developed—and hang up my own shingle. Starting a private practice felt both natural and brave, like the next right step after years of witnessing the resilience of women in so many different circumstances. I drew on all of it: the emotional-release work from my early counselling days, the grounded presence I’d honed at the sexual assault centre, and the leadership skills that had woven themselves into my bones.
In my private practice, I worked with women on just about everything life could throw at them: healing from trauma, navigating motherhood, building confidence, managing transitions, finding their voice, and learning how to walk forward from the past with dignity and hope. I loved that work—and still do. There is something sacred about sitting with a woman as she reclaims her power, piece by piece.
In the past five years, my focus has become more defined. I realized that the thread connecting so many women’s struggles was their longing for healthy, nourishing relationships—and the deep frustration and confusion they felt when they kept getting stuck. I began to specialize in helping women who want real love but feel blocked, discouraged, or unsure how to shift the patterns that keep repeating.
Even with this focus, I remain committed to supporting women in whatever they need. Life doesn’t come in neat categories, and neither does healing. Whether a woman comes to me for relationship transformation or for any other part of her emotional life, I meet her where she is—with respect, clarity, and an unwavering belief in what’s possible.
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Education: Returning to Possibility
My education didn’t begin in a straight line; it began in a moment of reclaiming possibility. After leaving a four year emotionally abusive relationship, and as a young single parent, with the unwavering support of the intentional community that had helped me rebuild my life, I finally felt strong enough to imagine more for myself and my daughter. At twenty-seven, with my child old enough for daycare and me finally able to dream again, I stepped onto a university campus for the first time.
I didn’t choose my program with practicality in mind—I chose it with joy. I studied English Literature and Creative Writing because they had always been my first loves, and after everything I’d been through, I wanted to fill my mind and my life with what made me feel alive. I never quite saw myself as a “mature student,” but I think my professors did; they noticed how grateful I was simply to be there. I soaked up every lecture, every book, every experience with an almost ferocious hunger for knowledge.
Those years weren’t just about earning a degree. They were about reclaiming the part of myself that had been silenced. Studying literature taught me how stories shape us—and how reframing a story can change a life. Creative writing taught me how to listen deeply, how to understand nuance, and how to find meaning in the spaces between words. All of it became essential to my counselling work: the compassion, the insight, the love of narrative, the ability to help someone re-author their own life.
I graduated with honours and a double major, but more importantly, I graduated with a renewed sense of possibility—one I carried directly into my work with women, helping them rediscover their own.
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Further Education: Finding the Practical Path (and the Joy Hidden Inside It)
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After finishing my degree—and after my years at the sexual assault centre and publishing my first novel—I realized that, much as I loved literature and writing, I needed something more practical to support myself and my daughter. Teaching seemed like a natural fit. So, I decided to complete the Professional Year in Education and earn my teaching certificate.
There was one small problem: in my town, you needed two teachable subjects, and Creative Writing didn’t count as one. If I moved to Vancouver, I could qualify with just English Literature, but my daughter had finally found stability—friends she adored, a school she loved—and I wasn’t willing to uproot her. I made a different choice to take longer getting my teaching certificate: I went back to school part-time (while working part-time) and chose Theatre in Education as my second teaching area.
What began as a practical workaround turned out to be a genuine gift. The Theatre in Education department was vibrant, experimental, and full of extraordinary instructors. Many of the students were women my age, also reinventing themselves and choosing new life paths. I learned how to teach history, literature, and even politics through embodied experience—through drama, storytelling, and lived exploration. It opened a whole new world to me.
This path also sparked my interest in Drama Therapy, Transformational Theatre, and the work of Augusto Boal. I took additional classes outside my program, fascinated by how theatre could unlock emotional truth, connection, and healing. Over time, I wove what I learned—carefully, safely, and in ways appropriate for personal-growth work—into my groups and programs. That blend of creative expression, emotional exploration, and experiential learning still shapes how I guide women today.
What originally felt like an obstacle proved to be one of the most enriching chapters of my education and my life. It offered new tools for teaching, counselling, and leading groups… and showed me yet again how life’s detours often carry the deepest meaning.
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Teaching: The Flexible Years, the Wild Years, and the Lessons That Stayed with Me
Teaching found its way into my life in a way that felt both practical and deeply aligned with who I was becoming. As much as I loved writing and my part-time counselling work, full-time high school teaching positions were rare where I lived—and once again, I wasn’t willing to uproot my daughter just to chase a job. So, I carved my own path. For twenty years, I worked as a substitute teacher and contract instructor, which allowed me the rare freedom to choose when I worked and which schools I stepped into. It gave me flexibility, variety, and a way to blend all the parts of myself—teacher, counsellor, writer, and mother.
Those years were full of life and learning, and not just inside the classroom. For three consecutive winters, after my daughter left the nest, I took three, three-month, whirlwind trips to Mexico—believing at the time that I had met the love of my life. I even passed up a full-time teaching position I would have adored because I was so certain this relationship was it. Looking back, I can smile at the madcap hopefulness of it all, even though it didn’t turn out the way I imagined. (I tell the fuller version of that story in my writing, especially in the novel that grew from those adventures – see CREDITS, and NOVEL.)
What matters most is what that period taught me. Those choices, that intensity, that chasing—they revealed the places where I still hadn’t healed. They showed me the patterns I was still replaying, the parts of myself that were still hungry for validation, love, and belonging. Painful as some of it was, it became invaluable in both my personal evolution and my professional work. Today, when I help women understand why they keep choosing the wrong partners—or why they chase love that doesn’t love them back—I’m drawing directly from the wisdom I earned in those years.
Teaching, in all its forms—whether in classrooms, in counselling rooms, or in the mistakes and detours of my own life—became one of my greatest educators.
Before I even earned my formal teaching certificate, I was already teaching what I loved. If I wasn’t teaching 16-week counselling classes, I was teaching — Creative Writing and Life Writing—at the MONTEREY SENIORS RECREATION CENTRE, at the YM–YWCA, and privately in my own apartment. Those classes taught me something essential: when people feel safe, seen, and encouraged, they bloom. My groups bonded so deeply that many of them continued meeting long after the classes ended, creating their own lasting writing circles. Those early years showed me that teaching is never just about content—it’s about creating connection, belonging, and space for people to find their voice. It’s the same atmosphere I cultivate today in my work with women, just expressed in new ways.
and I worried constantly about how I would support my daughter and keep writing. I had applied for a Canada Council Explorations Grant, but weeks had passed with no word, so I assumed my application had been rejected. Then, on the very last mailing day before Christmas, a letter arrived in our little apartment. When I opened it and realized I’d been funded, my daughter and I literally jumped up and down shouting, “Holy cow!” It felt like a door swinging open—one I hadn’t dared to hope for.
That first grant kept me writing during a very fragile time, and I went on to receive two more Canada Council grants in the years that followed. They were subsistence grants, but prestigious ones, and they gave me the breathing room I needed to create through some very challenging chapters of my life. Much later, when I was caring full-time for my mother, who had MS, I received another short-term writing grant that allowed me to hire a bit of help so I could finish the novel I was working on then. Those moments of support were lifelines.
Over time, my writing journey expanded into playwriting as well—thanks in part to my husband, an actor, who opened a new world to me. One of my plays became a finalist in a national theatre contest, which meant I was invited to Kamloops to work with a dramaturg and continue developing the script. Later, I won a national monologue contest—one of only four winners selected from hundreds of entries—adjudicated by the remarkable Canadian writer Isabel Leung. Those theatre experiences reminded me of the pure joy of creative collaboration.
With my first Canada Council grant, I began researching what would become my debut published novel—a book about my grandfather and a bridge, a story braided from history, imagination, and family legacy. That project marked the moment I truly began to see myself not just as someone who wanted to write, but as a writer.
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Writing: The Courage to Create, the Grace to Be Supported
Spirituality & Inner Work: The Practices That Shaped My Inner Life
My spiritual path grew alongside my counselling and creative work, each one feeding the other.
I’ve always been drawn to experiences that deepen presence, intuition, and connection—ways of
knowing that go beyond the intellect. Over the years, these teachings became a quiet backbone in
my life, helping me become a better guide, a better listener, and a more grounded version of
myself.
I became a Reiki Master early on, something that opened me to the subtler layers of healing and
human connection. Around the same time, I spent two years studying meditation with the brilliant
duo Richard and Heimke Webb. Their teachings were simple, profound, and often life-changing in
ways I didn’t even realize until much later. Meditation taught me how to soften, how to listen, and
how to trust what arises in stillness.
From there, I was drawn into a six-month program with the Webbs in Clairvoyance, where I learned
to read auras and understand energetic patterns—not as predictions, but as insights into a person’s
emotional, physical, and spiritual landscape. It was a fascinating, humbling study, and it helped me
develop a sensitivity I still use today: the sense of what’s unspoken, what’s underneath, what
someone is carrying even when they don’t have the words for it.
For eight years, I also immersed myself in Creative Dance and Authentic Movement—a deeply transformative practice where movement becomes a form of self-discovery. Those years were some of the most transformational of my life. Authentic Movement helped me access emotional
Writing was always one of my first loves, but it truly came alive for me after I graduated with honours and a double major in English Literature and Creative Writing. I began to receive grants, awards, and publication acceptances—each one a small miracle in those early years when I was still learning to believe in myself. During my undergraduate studies, I dared to send out five stories, more out of hope than expectation. To my astonishment, all five were accepted.
My very first acceptance letter arrived from a well-known Canadian radio personality who explained exactly why they had chosen my story. I remember standing there, letter in hand, stunned that someone out there—someone I respected—had not just read my work, but seen it. After completing my B.A., however, reality set in. Money was tight, ​
truths that had no language, and it taught me how to trust the wisdom held in the body. It remains one of the foundations of how I help women reconnect with themselves.
And then, there was the day I still pinch myself over: attending a workshop with Louise Hay—live, in person—long before she became internationally known. It was a small gathering, barely twenty of us, held in a beautiful carriage house by the sea. I can still remember the quiet electric feeling in the room, the sense that her teachings were going to ripple out into the world in ways none of us yet understood. To this day, I feel honoured to have been there.
One of the most significant spiritual communities in my life, though, was the Sacred/Spiritual Dance Circle I attended every weekend for years. It was there—long before we ever became a couple—that I met the man who would eventually become my husband. We only met that one time in the circle back then, but the dance itself, the collective movement, the spiritual energy of it all, shaped me in ways that carried forward into my relationships, my teaching, my counselling, and ultimately, the love story that came years later.
All these spiritual practices—Reiki, meditation, clairvoyance, Authentic Movement, dance—became more than trainings. They became a way of seeing people in their fullness. A way of honouring their inner landscape. A way of guiding women toward their most authentic selves.
And they continue to infuse everything I do today.
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Ethical Business Training: Selling with Heart
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During two of the ten years I cared for my mother full-time, I also dove into Ethical Business Training. The program taught me how to build a business with integrity—how to sell ethically, with honesty, and from the heart. What resonated most was the focus on helping women see the power of investing in themselves, of stepping forward into their own growth and possibility. That principle still guides everything I do today: creating programs, offering support, and helping women move forward in love, life, and self-discovery, always with integrity and compassion at the center.