Harbour Grace connects people who have experienced intimate partner violence with therapists in advanced training who need supervised clinical hours. Sessions are by Zoom, anywhere in the United States where licensing allows, and are always free or low-cost.
Therapists training as psychoanalysts must complete several supervised, long-term treatments before they can qualify. Many people who would benefit most from that depth of work cannot pay for it. Harbour Grace sits in between, so that a relationship which is formative for the candidate can also be reparative for the person who has been harmed.
You write to us. A member of our team calls or video-calls you to talk about what you are looking for, answer questions, and make sure Harbour Grace is a good fit right now.
We introduce you to a therapist at a partner institute who is permitted to work with you in your state and whose availability, language, and approach suit you. You meet once or twice before deciding together to begin.
Sessions happen by Zoom, usually three or more times a week, for as long as the work needs. The relationship itself is the work: two people, over time, coming to recognize what happened and what it made. Your therapist is supervised weekly by a senior clinician at their institute.
Harbour Grace is for adults who have experienced intimate partner violence — physical, sexual, emotional, or economic — whether the relationship ended last month or twenty years ago. You do not need a diagnosis, a referral, or a police report. You do not need to have left.
You do not need to have decided anything, either. Some people write to us knowing exactly what happened and exactly what they want. Others are quietly working something out that they could not yet put into words, and are not certain they are even allowed to ask. Both are welcome here, and writing to us commits you to nothing — not to leaving, not to naming what has happened, not to going ahead.
This is a slower, deeper kind of therapy than most people are offered. It is for people who want to understand not only what happened to them but how it lives on in their choices, relationships, and sense of self. The relational tradition we draw on holds that a self shaped by a coercive relationship changes through a different kind of relationship: sustained, attuned, and worked out between two people, in which what was once done to you can be recognized and slowly become something shared rather than suffered. It is not crisis counselling, and it is not a substitute for a safety plan, legal advocacy, or a shelter.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24 hours a day at 1‑800‑799‑7233 (TTY 1‑800‑787‑3224, or text START to 88788). Call or text 9‑8‑8 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If your partner has ever put their hands on your throat, even once and even long ago, please call the helpline today rather than waiting for us; that particular thing carries more danger than it is usually given credit for. Harbour Grace is not an emergency service.
We are writing to psychoanalytic training institutes across the United States to ask for your partnership and your counsel as we form a US affiliate of Harbour Grace. We know that the analytic frame, supervision, and case selection belong to you. Our role is narrower: to find, screen, and prepare the people we refer, and to remove the barrier of cost.
Harbour Grace does not provide clinical services itself and does not supervise. It is a bridge.
Harbour Grace was founded in Niagara, Ontario by Heather Benson, RN, MScN — a nurse whose graduate research at Western University examined intimate partner violence, financial hardship, and the mental health outcomes of depression and PTSD. It grew out of a simple observation: the people who have experienced intimate partner violence and most need long-term, depth-oriented care are usually the people least able to pay for it, while the clinicians best placed to offer it are, for a few years of their training, looking for exactly this kind of work.
Our thinking is relational. Intimate partner violence is an injury done inside a relationship, to a person's capacity to be recognized as a separate self, and we believe it is most fully addressed inside another relationship that is safe, sustained, and mutual. Therapy of this depth and duration, at the frequency a training case requires, is one of the few settings where that kind of relationship can be offered.
Harbour Grace is an Ontario non-profit with a volunteer board drawn from nursing, lived experience, and mental health care. Its founder holds nursing licensure in both Ontario and New York State, and the need on both sides of the border is the same. Harbour Grace US is an affiliate now in formation, being established with the counsel of American psychoanalytic institutes; its board will be drawn from the same three sources. Our commitments to the people we serve are simple and non-negotiable.
Any fee is set by the person in treatment at a level they can comfortably afford, and it never drifts upward. If money is ever the reason someone stops, we have failed.
Every match begins with a conversation about present safety, and we will always point to crisis and legal resources first when they are needed.
People with lived experience shape our policies, sit on our board, and can leave a match at any time without explanation.
Whether you are looking for therapy in the United States, training as an analyst, or leading an institute, the first step is the same: an email. We reply within a few days, and we will never ask you for more than you want to share.
Niagara, Ontario & Buffalo, New York · serving the United States by Zoom, where licensing allows