Business Echo - Dhorea Ramanula

Business Echo is an interview series celebrating the incredible individuals shaping the Okanagan business landscape. Through candid conversations, we’ll dive into their journeys, challenges, and triumphs, offering inspiration and insights along the way.

For Dhorea Ramanula, the work has never been about titles or recognition. It has been about standing in the spaces many people avoid. Grief, addiction, trauma, homelessness, and mental health - and helping others find their way through.

Over the past 15 years, Dhorea has become one of the Okanagan's most recognizable community advocates, known for her unwavering commitment to creating safer, more compassionate pathways for those facing life's hardest challenges. A suicide prevention advocate, best-selling author, researcher, facilitator, and founder of Hemi's Holistic Healing Centre Society, she has dedicated her life to ensuring that people who are struggling are met with dignity rather than judgment.

Her work is deeply personal, inspired by the life and recovery journey of her late mother. Dhorea is now working to establish Hemi's Healing Centre, a trauma-informed recovery home for women, that seeks to bridge the gap between crisis and care. It is a vision born from lived experience, loss, and an unwavering belief that healing should be accessible to everyone.

That commitment to creating change recently earned Dhorea the PathMaker Award at Kelowna's first International Women's Day Gala - in recognition of a lifetime spent opening doors, challenging systems, and creating spaces where people feel seen, supported, and valued.

In this Business Echo feature, Dhorea reflects on her journey, the inspiration behind Hemi's Healing Centre, and why she believes the first step toward healing should never be the hardest one.

OE: Please tell us a little about yourself

DR: My name is Dhorea Ramanula, and I am a mother, a community builder, a facilitator, a change agent, a suicide prevention advocate,  a best-selling author, an award-winning documentary producer for healthy living on Suicide Prevention. I am published in the Journal of Dental Education 2014, an addiction recovery specialist and a woman who is Metis, Black and White who has spent much of her life standing close to people in pain - my own and others. 

OE: You founded Hemi’s Healing Centre in honour of your late mother - can you share the vision behind it and what you are building?

DR: I founded Hemi’s Holistic Healing Centre Society in honour of my late mother who battled addiction and alcoholism and went on to have decades of sobriety, speak in prisons, create an addiction video and work with Dr. Gabor Mate. Her life, her strength, her love, and the lessons she left behind live within this work. Hemi’s is not just a recovery home, it is a love letter. It is a response to grief. It is a promise that women who are struggling with addiction, trauma, mental health, and disconnection deserve more than a system that asks them to be well before they can be helped.

The vision is to open a first-stage, trauma-informed recovery home for women in Kelowna. A place where women can come as they are, not as the system wishes they were. A place where healing is holistic, human, and rooted in dignity.

We are building a home where women are surrounded by safety, structure, nourishment, accountability, peer support, somatic healing, community, and care and most importantly, a continuum of care that is trauma-informed and individually designed with wrap-around 24/7 support by and for the women and those who self-identify. A place where we ask, “What happened to you?” before we ask, “Not what is wrong with you?” We are the only ones to do a 3-day intake in Canada. We need to know where the pain began so we can start to heal, then we support the addiction and then bring you back to wellness.

At its heart, Hemi’s is about helping women come back to themselves.

OE: What gaps did you see in existing systems that made you feel this work was necessary?DR: The biggest gap is the gap before treatment.

So many women are told they need to be sober, stable, housed, emotionally regulated, or “ready” before they can access support. But for many women, that is exactly where they need the most help.

I have seen women fall through the cracks not because they didn’t want recovery, but because the doorway was too far away. The waitlists were too long. The requirements were too rigid. The shame was too heavy. The system was asking them to climb a mountain before offering them a hand.

That is the gap Hemi’s is being built to fill.

We need a place that meets women at the beginning. A place that understands addiction is often connected to trauma, grief, violence, poverty, isolation, untreated pain, and nervous system survival. A place that does not punish women for being in crisis.

Women need safety before strategy. They need stabilization before transformation. They need to be seen before they can begin to heal.

Hemi’s exists because the first step should not be the hardest step.

OE: What has been one of the most challenging moments in your journey, and what did it teach you?

DR: One of the most challenging moments has been carrying a vision that is so clear in my heart, while still trying to find the resources to make it real.

That space between knowing what is needed and not yet having the funding to open the doors has been incredibly hard. There are moments where you feel the urgency of the women who need the space, and at the same time, you are navigating systems, applications, meetings, budgets, and barriers that move slowly. In BC alone, 9-11 humans are dying every day from addiction and toxic drug supply... It's been 10 years since we called it an epidemic...why are there not 100 Hemis with beds waiting with open arms to support our humans?

It has taught me that vision is not enough. Love is not enough. You also need strategy, sustainability, partnerships, and courage.

It has also taught me that when something is deeply needed, you cannot abandon it just because it is hard. You may have to change the model. You may have to speak a different language. You may have to ask differently. But you do not walk away from the work when lives are attached to it.

This journey has stretched me, it has humbled me and it has made me even more committed.  

OE: Being recognized with the Pathmaker Award at Kelowna’s first International Women’s Day Gala - what did that moment mean to you?

DR: Receiving the Pathmaker Award was deeply emotional. For me, it was not just an award. It was a full-circle moment. So much of my work has come from grief, lived experience, love, and a refusal to stay silent about the things that are hurting our communities. Suicide, addiction, mental health, and trauma. These are not easy conversations, but they are necessary ones.

To be recognized for helping create space for those conversations meant more than I can put into words. It felt like the community was saying, “We see the work. We see courage. We see why this matters.”

And honestly, it was not just about me. It was about every person who has ever felt alone in their pain. Every family who has lost someone. Every woman that is trying to rebuild. Every person who chose life one more day.

That award reminded me that pathmaking is not glamorous. Sometimes it is lonely. Sometimes it is exhausting. But when the path begins to open for others, it is worth everything.

OE:Can you share a moment in your career that you’re particularly proud of?

DR: One of the moments I am most proud of is co-founding National Suicide Awareness Day.

That work was born from unimaginable loss, mine and two of my partners, but it became a way to bring light into a conversation that had been hidden for too long. I am proud that we helped create space for people to speak, remember, grieve, educate, and choose life.

I am also deeply proud of my work in community research, homelessness, and housing. Through my role at UBC Okanagan with the Kelowna Homelessness Research Centre, I have had the privilege of listening to people with lived and living experience, service providers, and community leaders. That work has reinforced what I already knew: people do not heal in isolation. They heal when systems become more human. Also when I was the ED for PEOPLE - Paid Employment for People With Lived Experience and I vetted, trained and retained 31 staff during Covid and had 6 projects throughout the Okanagan and I built systems and hubs for folks to gather and get needs met. Food, washrooms, hotel rooms all in the name of saving and changing lives...out of my bedroom, 18 hours a day and it was so worth it.

But if I am honest, the moments I am most proud of are often the quiet ones. The conversations where someone says, “I have never told anyone this before.” The moment someone feels safe enough to breathe. The moment a person realizes they are not alone. Those are the moments that stay with me.

OE: What’s a piece of advice you’d give to women looking to start their own venture?

DR: Start with the truth. Not the polished version. Not the version you think people want to hear. Start with the truth of why this matters to you.

Your venture has to be rooted in something deeper than excitement, because there will be days when excitement is not enough. There will be rejection.  Trust me I have had a lot of rejection especially around Suicide Prevention and Hemi's House...There will be uncertainty. There will be people who do not understand the vision yet.

Build anyway. Do not wait until you feel completely ready. Readiness often comes after movement, not before it.

And surround yourself with people who do not just clap for you in public, but help you think clearly in private. Women carry so much wisdom, lived experience, intuition, and leadership. Do not underestimate what you know because it did not come through a traditional doorway. Sometimes your life is the credential. I know mine is! And is worth more than the many credentials I hold currently.

OE: If you had unlimited funds for one day, what’s the first thing you would do for Hemi's Healing Centre?

DR: I would secure the home. Immediately.

I would open the doors to a beautiful, safe, dignified space where women could walk in and feel, maybe for the first time in a long time, “I matter here.”

I would make sure it had warmth, bedrooms, healthy food, gardens, places to rest, places to cry, places to breathe, places to begin again.

Then I would hire the right team and pay them well. Because this work requires skilled, grounded, compassionate people who understand trauma, addiction, boundaries, nervous system care, and dignity.

Unlimited funds would not change the heart of Hemi’s. It would simply remove the delay between the vision and the women waiting for it. Then I would offer the first 5 beds for a month free, because a sign of a healthy and strong community is we take care of each other.

OE: What’s your favorite Okanagan spot to relax or find inspiration?

DR: Knox Mountain. Walking there helps me come back to myself. It is where I breathe, think, pray, process, and reconnect. I love the land, the lake, the movement, and the community that often gathers there.

For me, Knox Mountain reminds me that healing is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is one step, one breath, one walk, one conversation at a time.

OE: What’s one thing about you that people might not know?

DR: People might not know that underneath the public speaking, the community work, and the visibility, I am actually very tender. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I am always tuned into how others are feeling.

I feel things deeply. I carry people in my heart. I think about the women who are not yet safe. I think about the families who are grieving. I think about the people who are trying so hard to survive quietly. I often weep for them and with them.

That tenderness is not separate from my leadership. It is the reason for it. 

Thank you for this beautiful and curated conversation, with deep gratitude! Dhorea

OE: How can we reach you?

DR: Website: www.hemishealingcentre.com

• Email: info@hemishealingcentre.com

• Phone: 250-718-4329

• Instagram: @hemiholistichealing

• Facebook/LinkedIn: Dhorea Ramanula

All photos by Wax Pencil Imagery