Welcome to Gentle Holistic Wellness with Erika Burton, BSW
About Me
There’s a reason I care so much about what’s underneath.
I didn’t choose this work because healing sounded interesting.
I came to it because I know what it’s like when things that happened a long time ago don’t stay in the past.
My childhood included severe emotional, psychological and sexual abuse.
Growing older didn’t simply erase what happened.
Its effects showed up in different parts of my life — including fear, nightmares, anxiety, an eating disorder, people-pleasing, difficulty with boundaries and the ways my experiences eventually intersected with parenting and everyday life.
For a long time, those could look like completely separate problems.
Eventually, I began seeing the connections.
Then:
I stopped asking only, “How do I make this go away?”
And started asking:
What happened?
What did I learn to do to get through it?
Why does this keep showing up?
What does this reaction need me to understand?
What do I need now?
Those questions changed the way I understood myself.
They also changed the way I understood other people.
Where my personal and professional paths met
I earned my Bachelor of Social Work degree in 2013 and have spent years supporting children, parents and adults.
I also developed a deep interest in the ways our everyday wellbeing can influence how we experience life and spent years studying areas including nutrition, herbs and holistic approaches.
I hold a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and I offer coaching, education and practical support.
And I bring to that work a simple belief:
People make more sense when we understand more of their story.
The book that came from that journey
My search for understanding eventually became The Unrelenting Call of the Unseen Child: Holistic Trauma Healing for the Inner Child.
The book explores childhood trauma, survival, shame, self-forgiveness, personal power and the ways experiences from childhood can continue to influence adult life.
At its heart is the “unrelenting call” — the idea that what we have been forced to silence, bury or survive may continue asking for our attention through the things we experience later.
Writing it helped give language to something that now sits at the heart of Gentle Holistic Wellness:
What keeps showing up may deserve curiosity before judgment.
Outside of this work, my family also runs Perspective Detective Studios — and the spirit behind it isn't far from my own. Our guiding idea is "Observe. Investigate. Discover.": nobody hands you the answer, and there's no villain and no hero, just understanding. That's close to how I try to work too — we aren't looking for someone to blame, just trying to see the fuller picture.
My husband Daniel offers Letting Go with Daniel — direct, one-on-one talks for people ready to look at their own part in something they're carrying: guilt, discipline struggles, hard parenting patterns. It's not therapy or counselling, and Daniel isn't a licensed professional, but for the right person, it's a useful conversation.
We also publish children's books starring two young investigators, DET and CW — early readers through middle grade — plus printable workbooks ($3.99 -$5.99 CAD each) spanning Pre-K through grade 6 which are great for both homeschool and the classroom. For adults, a our short books use fiction to sit with the same kind of question: what we assume, and what we can actually see from outside.
Learn more at perspectivedetectivestudios.com (https://perspectivedetectivestudios.com)
Connect
Reach out anytime for support or questions.
Email:
erika@gentleholisticwellness.com
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