ReThreading Madness cover art

ReThreading Madness

ReThreading Madness

By: Bernadine Fox
Listen for free

About this listen

 Bernadine Fox brings a rare and powerful combination of lived experience, long-term disability rights advocacy, and creative insight to her role as host and producer of ReThreading Madness, the award-winning radio show and podcast that dares to shift how we think about mental health.

A recipient of the 2022 Courage to Come Back Award, Bernadine is a white settler of Scottish, Irish, and French heritage with a familial connection to the Tsuut'ina nation. She has spent over 30 years advocating for those with lived experience of mental health challenges including survivors of trauma and therapy harm. She is an intersectional feminist, artist, and author of Coming to Voice: Surviving an Abusive Therapist—a memoir that confronts the devastating misuse of power in therapeutic relationships.

Bernadine is not a clinician, but she is a deeply informed mental health advocate with firsthand knowledge of trauma, CPTSD, and disability. Her background includes decades of work as a support worker for survivors of severe childhood trauma, a trauma consultant, and public speaker. She has led expressive arts groups in collaboration with Richmond Mental Health and Gallery Gachet, where she also served on the board and helped publish The Ear magazine. She has served on the board of such organizations as Kickstart (Disability Arts and Culture) which focused on breaking down barriers to creative access for people with disabilities.

What sets Bernadine apart as a radio host is her unwavering commitment to telling the truth—even when it's uncomfortable. She doesn't shy away from difficult conversations; she invites them. With compassion and clarity, she brings forward voices that are often silenced, challenges harmful narratives, and explores the messy realities of mental health, trauma, and recovery.

ReThreading Madness is more than a show. Under Bernadine's guidance, it's a platform for unfiltered, survivor-centered dialogue—one that refuses to pathologize trauma and instead builds community through shared truth. RTM won the Breaking Barriers CRABO award through the NCRA.

Bernadine currently lives in the forest with two cats, raises her grandchild, and continues to create, speak, and advocate for a world where mental health care is ethical, accessible, and just.
​
ReThreading Madness is produced and aired on the ancestral and unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We extend our gratitude and appreciation to the Indigenous people who have been living and working on this land from time immemorial.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.Bernadine Fox Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael Rembis

    Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael Rembis
    Feb 25 2026
    Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael Rembis

    What happens when we stop telling the history of psychiatry from the doctor’s perspective and start listening to the people who lived it? In this powerful and wide-ranging conversation, historian Michael Rembis, author of Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum, joins Bernadine Fox to explore what changes when Historical Mad Voices from Inside the Asylum with Michael Rembis we center the voices of those labeled “mad.” Drawing from firsthand accounts of institutionalization between 1830 and 1950, Rembis reveals a long and often hidden history of resistance, reform, abuse, survival, and self-advocacy. The asylum was never a neutral or purely benevolent space. It was contested from the very beginning. Together, they examine psychiatric power, forced treatment, gendered confinement, trauma pathologization, violence narratives in the media, and the enduring struggle to be heard within systems that claim to help. This episode moves beyond simplistic binaries of “care” versus “control” and instead asks deeper questions: Who gets to define madness? Who holds authority? And what happens when we reclaim our own stories? This is a conversation about history, yes—but also about the present moment, and the ongoing fight for dignity, agency, and community care.

    Music by Shari Ulrich and Sia


    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr
  • Red-Thunderwoman-MichelleRobinson-re-reconciliation-final

    Red-Thunderwoman-MichelleRobinson-re-reconciliation-final
    Feb 18 2026
    Racial Battle Fatigue: Truth, Treaties, and Mental Health with Red Thunderwoman

    Write Up: In this powerful episode of ReThreading Madness, Bernadine Fox sits down with Michelle Robinson, also known as Red Thunderwoman — a Sahtu Dene activist, political organizer, and host of the Native Calgarian Podcast. Together they explore the deep and ongoing intersections between racism, media, mental health, colonial policy, and what Michelle calls “racial battle fatigue.” From land acknowledgments to treaties, from internalized racism to systemic healthcare discrimination, Michelle speaks candidly about the emotional toll of living in a country that still resists truth while claiming reconciliation. The conversation moves beyond surface-level allyship into harder territory: how Indigenous erasure was built into Canadian education, media, and law; how racism shapes mental health outcomes; and how colonial systems continue to police, dismiss, and pathologize Indigenous voices. Michelle reflects on growing up navigating internalized racism, raising a proud Dene daughter in a climate of rising hate, and why mental health conversations cannot be separated from oppression dynamics. This is not an abstract discussion — it is lived reality. But this episode is also about solutions. Michelle outlines concrete pathways forward through meaningful listening, engaging Indigenous voices in good faith, amplifying media accountability, and acting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the National Inquiry’s Calls to Justice. This conversation invites listeners to move past fear-based narratives and into relationship — to see Indigenous people not as caricatures or symbols, but as neighbors, leaders, and full human beings. Honest, challenging, and urgent, this is an episode about what it takes to heal in a system not designed for everyone.

    Music Shari Ulrich
    Photo Michelle Robinson


    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr
  • After My Mother Died: In Conversation with Christa Ovenell, Funeral Director and End-of-Life Doula

    After My Mother Died: In Conversation with Christa Ovenell, Funeral Director and End-of-Life Doula
    Feb 4 2026
    After My Mother Died: In Conversation with Christa Ovenell, Funeral Director and End-of-Life Doula

    In this episode of ReThreading Madness, Berni Fox is joined by Christa Ovenell, funeral director, end-of-life doula, and founder of Death’s Apprentice, for a deeply honest conversation about death, grief, and what it means to live alongside loss. Speaking shortly after the death of her own mother, Christa reflects on the strange dissonance of grieving personally while holding professional knowledge about dying, funerals, and end-of-life care. Together, they explore what death really looks like beyond movies and platitudes, and why avoiding conversations about mortality often leaves the living more vulnerable. Christa shares how her mother’s final weeks unfolded, how grief collided with the holiday season, and what helped her survive that first raw stretch after loss. The conversation gently challenges cultural habits that rush, sanitize, or silence grief, and instead invites curiosity, ritual, and community. From what not to say to someone who is grieving, to why funerals and gatherings still matter, Christa offers practical, compassionate insights rooted in both lived experience and decades of deathcare work. This episode is for anyone who has lost someone, fears losing someone, or knows they will someday. It’s about making space for complexity, letting grief be what it is, and learning how to show up for ourselves and others when death enters the room. Honest, humane, and quietly radical, this conversation reminds us that facing death more openly can deepen how we live.

    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/rethreading-madness--5675300/support.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.