SPACE TO
BREATHE

BY SIMONE HARRINGTON

Trillium Health Partners

SEPTEMBER 7, 2026

Winning WXN’s Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 created a natural pause for me.

A moment to reflect on what brought me here. The people who supported me along the way. And how I might pay that forward in supporting others as they pursue their own ambitions.

In that reflection, I found myself drawn to something familiar.

Nature.

Not because I consider myself particularly outdoorsy. I don’t. I would choose a warm, comfortable cabin over a tent every time. But there is something about being outside, walking through the woods, along the water, moving without urgency, that brings a kind of stillness I don’t find anywhere else.

It’s where my thinking clears.

Where I can hear myself.

The Place That Asks for Nothing

I recently came across a poem by Becky Hemsley called Breathe.

It tells the story of a young woman trying to navigate all the expectations placed upon her—how to be, how to show up, how to strike the impossible balance between too much and not enough.

Too loud or too quiet.
Too strong or too soft.
Too wise or too uncertain.

By the end, she is exhausted.

She leaves it all behind and goes to the forest, where she sits among the trees in silence. And there, something shifts.

The forest asks for nothing.

It simply lets her breathe.

That idea stayed with me.

Because I realized that what I seek in nature isn’t just quiet; it’s the absence of expectation. It’s a place where my voice doesn’t have to compete. Where I’m not measuring myself against anything. Where I can sit with my own thoughts, my own ambitions, my own desires—without interference.

A place where I can just be.

A Different Kind of Room

At the WXN Top 100 Gala, I felt something unexpected.

I recognized that same feeling.

Sitting in a room full of women - brilliant, accomplished, each on her own path - I felt a kind of familiarity I hadn’t anticipated. It reminded me of the forest.

A space I didn’t want to leave.

A space where, instead of trees, there were women creating room for one another to exist fully. To show up as they are. To define success and ambition on their own terms.

In that room, the same rules didn’t apply.

There was no “too much” or “not enough.”
No pressure to adjust or contain.
No expectation to fit into something predefined.

There was just space.

Space to sit in your own power.
Space to connect.
Space to be seen without explanation.

Space to breathe.

What We Create for Each Other

That experience stayed with me.

Because it made me think about what it means to create that kind of space—not just in a moment, but in how we show up for others.

What would it look like if we each chose to be that for someone else?

To create environments where nothing is asked of them except to be who they are. To offer support without expectation. To make room for someone to hear their own voice more clearly.

To be a place where someone else can just breathe.

Because the impact of that is not always immediate or visible.

But it stays with people.

It gives them the space to reconnect with themselves. To move forward with more clarity. To believe, even quietly, that who they are is enough.