Helen J Butlin, PhD
Ontario, Canada | Fibre-Art | Resident in 2025
Helen is a licensed Psychotherapist (Ontario), fibre artist, writer, and researcher whose work explores the human psyche’s innate wisdom-making capacity. Helen is the co-author of Just Stay: A Couple’s Last Journey Together and has presented internationally on the role of psyche and meaning-making in health and healing.
Her doctoral research (Butlin, 2018) used poetic inquiry and phenomenology to study how women living with ovarian cancer accessed deep inner guidance and resilience through creative practices, mindful self-compassion, art and nature based meditations, creative collaging and discovering their own forms of “soul-medicines” providing glimmers and anchoring in daily life with cancer. Her findings were presented through poetry to show the rich imagery of participants’ lived experience that conveyed their hard won, personal and life wisdom for navigating daily life and facing mortality. Poetry created during her doctoral research and the findings represented in poetic form has been performed as part of her doctoral defense as well public gatherings in London, Ontario.
SoulThread Art (www.soulthreadart.ca) is Helen's fibre-art crafted through dyed wool and needle felting. Her pieces express the archetypal healing imagery that came through dreams, stories, poems, in the healing journey of her own life. Her art is sold across Ontario, Canada, has been featured in local exhibitions and was in the 2024 Bruce Peninsula Studio Tour, Ontario. In her life and therapy practice she has a deep anchoring in Jung’s research, depth psychology and her own apprenticeship with a Jungian expert for 25 years. She works with artists, healers, and seekers to support deep inner listening, healing from trauma, and reconnecting with creative flow—especially in times of uncertainty.
