THE LIVING LENS

A Framework for Putting Mission, Vision, and Values Into Practice

Tracy Windsor | June 13, 2026

Publication note: This article was originally published to Substack under Tracy Talks to the Machine and can be found at https://substack.com/@tracywindsor/note/c-275805818?r=4p63yw.

Content note: This article discusses psychiatric hospitalization, psychosis, mental health crisis, isolation, and hopelessness. This article is about how my experiences with peer support, nonprofit leadership, and lived experience of a serious mental illness led me toward developing The Living Lens: a values based framework for putting mission, vision, and values into practice.

I begin by reflecting on my early involvement with The Kaleidoscope Mental Health Support Society, a peer-led organization that helped me find community after my diagnosis of bipolar I disorder disrupted my life trajectory and sense of identity. From there, I trace how Kaleidoscope became not only a place of support, but also a community where I was invited into leadership, governance, and meaningful contribution.

Alongside what I learned through nonprofit management courses at SFU, these experiences helped me see that values do not live in strategic plans, policies, or mission statements alone. They have to be practiced, tested, reflected on, and brought into relationship. The Living Lens is my attempt to create a framework for doing exactly that. Before I was the Executive Director of The Kaleidoscope Mental Health Support Society, I was the President of Kaleidoscope’s Board of Directors, and before that I think I was the Vice President, and before that I was a board member at large, and before that, way back in 2010, I was one of the first peer support group participants at Kaleidoscope’s nascent peer support group at UBC.

Kaleidoscope started as a UBC-affiliated organization, with groups taking place in person at UBC. They got a Coast Capital Savings grant to be able to offer pizza from UBC’s now-closed Pie R Squared and also pay our support group facilitators an honorarium. The space we had access to at UBC also had a kettle, and there was really nice Murchie’s tea to sip on throughout the group session.I first got involved with Kaleidoscope because, after being diagnosed with bipolar I disorder with psychotic features, my life had been completely derailed from the admittedly tenuous tracks it had been

on.

My experience of having spent the majority of the previous two years in a psychiatric ward was still incredibly fresh. I was still very much reckoning with the stigma I had internalized about people with a diagnosis of a serious mental illness. I will not go into detail, but I experienced a serious mental health crisis in January 2009. I felt incredibly alone and isolated in my experience, despite being connected to a mental health team.

What I needed was to meet my peers.

At Kaleidoscope, I met others who had had experiences similar to mine - and they were thriving! I felt a sense of community develop through hearing how everyone was doing on a weekly basis, seeing new people join periodically, and having a place outside of my mental health team to meet with people.

I soon became a board member with Kaleidoscope, where I had the opportunity to see what it was like to be a self-governing, peer-led organization. By 2016, I was eager to step into a leadership role, and I was voted in as President of Kaleidoscope. It was the first time I was ever really in a leadership role in any formal way. I loved it.

I have since stepped into other leadership roles, including, but not limited to, public speaker, indoor cycling instructor, yoga teacher, peer support coordinator (“consumer initiatives support worker”), and chair of the Early Psychosis Peer Recovery Network. As a young person diagnosed with a serious mental illness, if I had not been provided with opportunities to lead, I fear I may have succumbed to a chronic state of complacency, learned helplessness, or even insurmountable hopelessness. Thankfully, so far, all of my periods of hopelessness have been surmountable.

Last year, I took some nonprofit management courses with SFU. I used up my Stronger Futures BC grant, which is a $3,500 grant that anyone in BC can access to take short-term skills training.

During those courses, I was introduced to all kinds of concepts related to running a nonprofit organization, like governance, volunteer management, strategic planning, fundraising, and what it means to be an executive director of a nonprofit organization. At the next board meeting, we voted me in as Executive Director, and I have been thinking about Kaleidoscope’s potential as an organization ever since.

Bringing The Living Lens Into Focus

With the relaunch of Tracy Talks to the Machine, I will be introducing and exploring what I am calling The Living Lens: a values-based framework for putting mission, vision, and values into practice, whether as an individual, a group, or an organization. The framework grows out of my experiences with peer support, lived experience, nonprofit leadership, community-building, social work education, and the ongoing challenge of making sure that our stated values are actually reflected in how we make decisions, share power, respond to conflict, care for people, and sustain the work over time.

For Kaleidoscope, this work is already beginning through Kaleidoscope in Focus: a collaborative process for living, testing, and co-producing Kaleidoscope’s mission, vision, and values with members of the community. Kaleidoscope in Focus helps us ask what we need to keep in view as the organization grows into new and expanded areas, so that growth does not pull us away from who we are, but brings our values into sharper focus.

My hope is that The Living Lens will equip people who want to make meaningful change to do so in ways that are not only creative and ambitious, but also grounded, relational, reflective, and aligned with their mission, vision, and values. The first organization I hope to pilot this framework with is Kaleidoscope, the peer-led community that first helped me find my way back into connection.

I hope you will join me as I bring the various components of The Living Lens into focus.

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Read the original on Substack: https://substack.com/@tracywindsor/note/c-275805818?r=4p63yw