About
SOULCHANGE
Caring. Creating. Connecting. Committed. Contributing.
Encouraging Quiet (or not so quiet) Rebellion. (hopefully)
Purpose
We’re about engaging with and supporting change and transformation that translates into becoming Better Selves, creating Better Lives, and contributing to a Better World.
Because, let’s face it. Most of us are SEARCHING for these things and we’re interconnected while doing so. Our changes ripple out.
We aim to inspire, inform, and guide with a blog and various self-serve soulutions (downloadables and future- digital courses).
Check out the giveaways.
They may be just the right thing at the right time in your SEARCHING.
We’re a small, Alberta (Edmonton), socially based business.
We rely on a handful of VALUES for guidance (okay, a little more than a handful).
Be and Become means starting with and working on myself continually while supporting others.
Care and Connect is about recognizing dignity and bringing forth care for every single journey.
Encourage and Empower focuses on cultivating potential, possibilities, power, and progress.
Validity and Value commits to an intentional, informed and influenced approach. (more below)
Think Big and Small recognizes the larger impacts of families, communities, systems, and society.
Live and Give reflects staying in balance, serving others, and giving forward. 
A portion of sales is donated to the SOULCHANGE fund, which is housed within the Edmonton Community Foundation.
The Fund is growing and provides an annual grant to nonprofit organization(s) focused on supporting trauma recovery within vulnerable populations.
Approach
An approach is how we think about, engage with and deal with something.
It guides pretty much everything.
From our perspective, at least six things are important in supporting slow and steady change (and occasional leaps forward) toward becoming a Better Self, creating a Better Life and contributing to a Better World.
Accessible
Ensuring that there is relatively easy access and limited barriers to information, supports, or change. This might look like simplifying the complex, staging and scaffolding, using lots of psychoeducation to support people in understanding things for themselves, making sure things are organized and easy to use, and maintaining reasonable costs.
Relational
Being relational is much more than how we interact in the moment. It is being both aware and deliberate about our placement (including role, if any) in the interaction, the relationship, the intervention, or the social location because this affects position; privilege, power; perception; patterns; purpose; process; and possibilities as well as how we show up.
My placement includes:
- before- preparing and showing up helpful and appropriate with competence, credibility, ethics, and skillful means to provide safe and solid structure.
- being- cultivating and offering presence, self-awareness, authenticity, and integrity.
- beside- practicing humility and recognizing that no matter our role, on some level, we are always walking beside others with our own struggles, successes, shadows, and light.
- between- regard and deliberateness for what happens in the third space between oneself and others such as power differentials, silence, sensitivity, invitations, curiosity, listening, loving speech, witnessing, nourishment, playfulness, compassion, and connection.
- behold- offering respect and reverence, inviting grace, engaging wonder, and embracing sanctuary.
- behind- recognizing the right, responsibility, and empowerment of others to self-support and lead themselves.
Multi-Angled
Recognizing complexity and being sure to engage with it in many different ways. This means steering clear of easy answers and quick fixes. It means to hold the “both/and/also” and engage with the symptoms and the underlying causes, the context and contributing factors, research and evidence from different disciplines.
Growth-Supporting
Change and transformation are fueled by growth. While some growth is naturally unfolding, much of it requires deliberate intention and supports. This means holding a seemingly contrary stance such as idealistic and realistic; relaxed and hardworking; planned and organic. It means drawing from different fields such as social work, psychology, health promotion, coaching, neurolinguistic programming, spirituality, the science of learning, neuroscience, etc. It means understanding and working with the process of growth while also surrendering to the unknown that is unfolding and inherently messy because that is often where the magic happens.
Integral
Being essential and contributing to the whole by focusing on content that supports deep and multiplying change. The kind of change that focuses on core and even rebellious things that have the kind of impact that changes the trajectory of things. When people grow, recover, learn, change, and transform, it ripples out in every direction. It changes who they are, their relationships, their parenting, their health, and their impact in the world. (Better Selves, Better Lives, Better World).
Impactful
Outcomes are not always known or as intended. They can only be known through measurement of effect anecdotally or otherwise. They can be encouraged by using an intentional approach that matches the situation and state of need, uses different modalities, and considers the right response for what a client wants for themselves within a continuum of support.
Matt
My experience with Carole was the most non-threatening and productive experience for sessions related to bettering my life and outlook. They provided me with direction and meaningful purpose in my life that I wasn’t sure was available to me prior to taking the sessions.
About Carole
Hey there. I’m Carole Marriott.
It can be an awkward to write about oneself, but I know for me, it is much easier to journey with someone when I know more about them. In fact, it’s a prerequisite.
So, here’s ten things to know about me as I fumble my way forward just like everyone else.
I have a mix of education (business, social work, health promotion, coaching, adult education, lifestyle medicine, mindfulness, counselling and spiritually informed psychotherapy, trauma recovery), and varied experience (social worker, therapist, manager, executive, and consultant in multiple not for profit, and government health, and mental health settings).
The consistent focus of my career has been on transformation: learning about it, coming to understand it, recognizing barriers, creating readiness, and supporting individuals, organizations, and systems to achieve and sustain it.
Even after decades of change-making efforts, it still lights me up.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen things in the big picture, so I naturally reflect on how things are interrelated, often trying to understand where the roots to any issue are and where energy is best spent to shift something.
This perspective helps me make change in my own life and support others to do the same.
It took me longer than I wish to realize that all transformation is interrelated. I finally figured out that even though it’s easier to focus on just one level e.g., individual, organizational, system, it’s all interconnected. Individual change affects other levels. And change at other levels can’t happen without change at the individual level. That’s why I always consider things beyond any one individual.
Many would say we can only support others to go where we have been.
So, in that vein, even though it was some time ago, know that I’ve been through several dark nights including as I moved through years of my own complex trauma recovery. I did my best to be broken open, stripped bare and reintegrated into a bigger, better version of myself- a work that is always in progress.
Even though I have learned and integrated a lot of things, every day I am in the process of being human and fumbling my way forward. There have been times of painful reconciling, radical change, and radiant bliss. I’ve fallen flat on my face. I’ve risen strong. I’ve gotten pretty good at leaning in, even when things are uncertain, awkward, painful, overwhelming, or scary (and helping others do the same).
I spent the COVID 19 pandemic working in a multi-site continuing care organization, supporting the hardworking frontline staff, managers, and executives in coping with and recovering from the unrelenting stress, moral injury, and hundreds of deaths.
This led to a reconsideration of many things, and a commitment to get on with things that had been calling me.
I love being a mom/stepmom in the and everything I am invited to humbly learn in the process!) Our feisty dog, Millie, is also teaching me some things. I enjoy hanging out in sacred space, spending time with family and friends, staying fit (mostly), enjoying nature in the ravine trails, getting messy in the dirt, spontaneous dance parties, being to the Canadian collection my mom passed down to me.
These days I am doing my best to create, connect, and contribute through SOULCHANGE (finally) and supporting recovery from toxic stress, trauma and complex trauma with TRAUMACHANGE.
I say finally because I bought the “soulchange.com” domain in 2014. To say there have been some sidetracks and detours is an understatement. (You probably know what I mean?)
I am still adjusting to the good and not so good of the digital-online world.
When it comes to this, I am a bit of a laggard. I value in person over texts. I love books that I can hold rather than scroll. I’m an introvert (who can flex to ambivert), so I felt a low pull to social platforms. But here I am!
Training and Background
In case you want more of the specifics on education and training. Here’s the highlights.
Education, Registrations, Certifications.
- Undergraduate degree in Social Work with five years counselling experience. Registered as a social worker (RSW) with the Alberta College of Social Workers.
- Graduate degree in Science– Health Promotion. Thesis research explored the relationship between spirituality and health.
- Certificate Business Administration.
- Certificate Solution Focused Coaching (ESFC).
- Certificate Adult Education.
- Graduate Certificate in Spiritually Informed Psychotherapy.
- Certified Trauma Recovery Counsellor. Registered trauma recovery counsellor (CTRC).
Health Promotion recognizes the complexity of health (including mental health) and “disease” and sees them as resulting from the interplay of multiple layers and factors. It is the process of empowering people to increase control over and improve their health using individual, social and environmental interventions)
Counselling Theories, Therapies including about 500 hours Specialized Training Specific to Trauma and Complex Trauma Recovery.
- Solution Focused Counselling, Clinical Applications of Polyvagal Theory. Internal Family Systems, Advanced Trauma Treatment for Complex Trauma, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Cognitive Processing Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Coherence Focused Therapy, Somatic Therapy for Trauma, Soul Based Complex Trauma Recovery, Fallout and Recovery from Narcissistic and Antagonistic Abuse.
Other Relevant Training.
- Mindfulness Practitioner and Facilitator. Mindfulness essentially means to be in the present moment, noticing and attending on purpose, without judgement. It is a valuable state and skill to cultivate and to weave into life. When practiced consistently it is linked to improved self-awareness, regulation, empathy, and response flexibility. It also supports resilience, helps to reduce the conditioned fear response and assists recovery from stress related conditions and trauma.
- Lifestyle Medicine. Lifestyle Medicine is an area of healthcare aimed at working with the whole person through lifestyle interventions in six evidence-based areas including: nutrition, physical activity, restorative sleep, stress management, avoidance of risky substances and positive social connections. These areas has been shown to have global impacts on an individual’s health and mental health.