A Guide for Those Walking Toward Wellness Rooted in the Wisdom of Our Ancestors
If you picked this up in a waiting room: Read straight through once. Mark sections that speak to you. Take it home. Come back when ready to begin healing work with a guide.
If you are beginning healing sessions: Your healer will walk through this teaching with you, section by section. Between sessions, read ahead and reflect on the daily questions. This is your companion for the journey.
If you are in active recovery: Return to this teaching regularly. Different sections will speak to you at different stages. When struggling, open to any page and read. The teaching you need will find you.
If you are sharing this with someone you care about: Give it freely. Do not force them to read it. The teaching works when the person is ready, not when you decide they should be ready. Plant the seed. Walk away. Trust the process.
This teaching is not a rule book. It is a map. Your healer helps you read the map. You are the one who walks the terrain.
I offer these teachings with humility. I am not perfect. I am not forcing beliefs on you. I am sharing what the ancestors taught and what has helped others heal. You are safe here to speak without judgment. Take what helps. Leave what doesn't. This is your path. I only walk beside you.
Each teaching shows the path from suffering to strength. These are not rules to follow—they are practices to live every day.
Traditional meaning: Unconditional care for all our relations.
For you: Love yourself enough to stop harming yourself. Love your children enough to break the cycle that's been passed down. Love is not just feeling—love is action. Every time you choose life over destruction, that is love.
Application: Every time you see a trap and choose not to enter it, you are showing love for the next seven generations. Your choice today protects your grandchildren's grandchildren.
Traditional meaning: Honor all creation, treat others and yourself with dignity.
For you: Respect yourself by refusing to follow people whose lives are falling apart. Respect your ancestors by not wasting the life they fought to give you. Respect your healer by being honest about your struggles, even when shame whispers "don't tell."
Application: When choosing who to listen to, ask yourself: "Does this person respect themselves? Do their actions show respect?" If the answer is no, walk away. That person cannot guide you to a place they have never been.
Traditional meaning: Face your fears, do what is right even when it is hard.
For you: Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is seeing the trap pulling at you and choosing not to enter, even when everything in you wants to. Courage is getting back up after you fall. Courage is saying "I need help" when pride says "handle it alone."
Application: Every single day you stay sober when you want to use—that is courage. Every honest conversation with your healer when you want to hide—that is courage. Small acts of courage build the fortress.
Traditional meaning: Speak and live truth, keep integrity in all things.
For you: Be honest about what problems are REAL versus what you are imagining. Be honest when you fail. Be honest about who is actually helping you versus who is bringing traps to your door. The first lie you must stop telling is the lie you tell yourself. That is the first trap.
Application: Every day ask yourself: "What is the REAL problem today?" Not the story you tell yourself, not the worry about tomorrow—what is real, right now, that needs your attention? This is honest seeing.
Traditional meaning: Cherish knowledge and use it well for the good of all.
For you: Wisdom is learning from the crow. When the crow cannot crack the shell one way, it tries another way. Wisdom is seeing patterns in your life: "Every time I am around this person, I fall. Every time I go to this place, the trap catches me." Wisdom is knowing the difference between a real problem and a phantom worry.
Application: Trap recognition is wisdom growing in you. Each time you fail and get back up, you gain wisdom—but only if you are willing to learn from what the failure teaches.
Traditional meaning: Know your place in creation, neither above nor below others.
For you: Humility means accepting both truths: "I need my healer's guidance" AND "only I can walk my path." Humility admits failure without drowning in shame. Humility asks for help. Pride says "I will do this completely alone"—and pride is a trap that keeps you stuck.
Application: When you are struggling, humility says "I do not know the way, teach me." When you are succeeding, humility says "I am walking well today, but the path continues tomorrow. Keep walking."
Traditional meaning: Live authentically, align your actions with your deepest values.
For you: Here is truth, plain and clear: You have power in this moment, right now. Traps exist all around you. You will fail sometimes. But you control how you respond to everything. The past does not control the present unless you let it. Your children are watching you every day—what truth are you showing them with your life?
Application: Living truth means alignment between words and actions. If you say you are staying sober, then stay sober. If you say you are building a fortress for your children, then make daily choices that actually build it. Truth is not what you say. Truth is what you do.
- Love yourself enough to begin the path.
- Respect yourself enough to choose wise guides who live well.
- Courage to face the traps and get back up when you fall.
- Honesty to see real problems instead of phantom worries.
- Wisdom to learn from your failures and recognize patterns.
- Humility to accept help and admit you do not have all answers.
- Truth in your daily actions, building the life you speak about.
These teachings are not a checklist to complete. They are practices you return to every single day. Your healer will help you understand them deeper as you walk. Now we begin.
There is a teaching our ancestors knew: Do not preoccupy yourself with problems that don't exist in the real.
What does this mean? It means this: Real problems exist. Hard problems. Your past trauma is real. The hurt done to you is real. The challenges you face today are real. But many people add more suffering by spending their energy worrying about problems that haven't happened yet, problems that might never happen, phantom problems that only exist in the mind.
A person can be sober today, fed today, safe today—but torture themselves with "what if I fail tomorrow? What if people judge me? What if I cannot do this? What is everyone going to say about me when I get better?" These are phantom problems. They steal your power from the real work that needs doing today.
This teaching helps you see the difference. Your healer walks beside you to help you recognize what is real and what is phantom. But you are the one who must walk the path. No one can walk it for you.
The past is real. Residential schools happened. The Sixties Scoop happened. Children stolen. Families broken. Languages taken. Communities destroyed. Trauma passed down like a poison in the blood. This is all true. This shaped you, shaped your parents, shaped your grandparents.
But here is what is also true: That past does not control this moment unless you give it that power.
You control what you do RIGHT NOW. In this breath. In this choice. The past influenced you, yes. But it does not own your next decision. You own that.
The trap our people fall into is this: carrying the wound instead of carrying the strength. Our ancestors survived horrors we can barely imagine. They survived residential schools, starvation, intentionally given diseases, violence, alcohol to get them to sign their rights and lands away, atrocities against women and children, genocide, theft of everything they had. And they survived. You are here because they refused to quit. They were warriors.
You dishonor them when you use their suffering as an excuse to quit. You honor them when you say: "They survived that. I will survive this. I will be strong like they were strong."
Your children are watching you right now. Your grandchildren will hear stories about you. What will those stories say? "They gave up because life was hard"? Or "They got knocked down and got back up. They broke the cycle. They built a fortress of strength around us"?
This is your power: You choose which story you are living. Not tomorrow. Today. Right now.
- This is LOVE in action—loving your children enough to break the cycle.
- This is COURAGE—facing the present instead of hiding in the past.
- This is TRUTH—you have power, whether you admit it or not.
Traps are everywhere. They have always existed. They exist today. They will exist tomorrow. Traps do not care about your feelings. Traps do not care about your excuses. Traps do not care about the families who lose you. Traps exist to catch you.
But here is the teaching: Once you SEE a trap, you can CHOOSE whether to walk into it.
Alcohol and drugs promise relief from pain. They deliver chains instead. The first time, they might help you forget. The hundredth time, they own you. That is the trap.
Toxic relationships feel like connection, like someone finally understands you. But they drain your life force, pull you back into chaos, keep you stuck. That is the trap.
Reliance on Social Assistance without growth is a very hard one we all know. But it gives you survival but not living. It can become comfortable to just exist, just get by, never build anything. That comfort is the trap.
Bad guidance from chaotic people who want company in their misery. Misery loves company. People who are drowning will grab you and pull you under with them, not because they are evil, but because they are desperate. That is the trap.
Not everyone will celebrate your healing. Some people are threatened when you get stronger. Your sobriety makes them uncomfortable about their addiction. Your growth makes them feel ashamed of their stagnation. Your success reminds them of their failure.
These people will:
- Tell you "you're not really changing, you'll fail like always"
- Bring up your past mistakes to keep you stuck there
- Offer you traps disguised as friendship ("just one drink won't hurt")
- Find ways to sabotage your progress
- Celebrate and feel a sense of power over you when you stumble
Learn to recognize them. They are not your problem. Their insecurity is not your responsibility. Their failure is not your burden to carry.
You do not need to be angry at them. You do not need to explain yourself to them. You simply need to recognize the trap and walk away. Remove them from your circle just like you remove the bottle, the needle, the chaos.
Sometimes these people are family. That makes it harder, but the teaching remains the same: Your healing and your children's safety come first. You can love someone from a distance. You can pray to Creator for them without letting them pull you back into the trap.
- This is RESPECT for yourself—refusing to let others define your worth.
- This is WISDOM—recognizing the pattern of sabotage.
- This is COURAGE—walking away even when it hurts to do so.
Dwelling on "what if" instead of "what is." Spending your energy on phantom problems—things that haven't happened, might never happen—instead of facing the real problem in front of you today. That trap steals your power faster than anything.
Your healer will help you learn to see traps. But you must be the one who chooses. Every day you will face a choice: enter the trap or walk past it. See it clearly and choose.
- This is HONESTY—seeing the real problem, not the story you tell yourself.
- This is WISDOM—recognizing the pattern: "This always leads to falling."
You are going to fail. Accept this now.
You will make mistakes. You will fall down. You will choose wrong sometimes. You will walk into a trap even though you saw it coming. This is part of being human. This is part of learning.
The teaching comes from the crow. Watch a crow trying to crack open a nut or a shell to get at the food inside. The crow tries one way—pecking. If that does not work, the crow does not sit there and starve. The crow does not shame itself. The crow does not say "I am a terrible crow, I should just give up."
The crow tries a different way. Drops it from a height. Puts it on a road for a car to run over. Finds a rock to crack it against. The crow adapts. The crow learns. The crow persists.
You are the crow.
When you fail, that is information. That is teaching. The failure says: "That way did not work. Try a different way." The failure does not say: "You are worthless. Quit. You will never succeed."
Failure is acceptable. Failure is how you learn. But accepting failure—deciding failure is your identity, deciding you are a failure and always will be—that is the trap.
"I failed" is truth. "I failed so I quit trying" is excuse.
Get back up. Try a different approach. Ask your healer: "What can I learn from this? What should I do differently?" Then get back up and walk.
- This is HUMILITY—admitting you failed without drowning in shame.
- This is WISDOM—learning what the failure teaches.
- This is COURAGE—trying again after falling.
This teaching is blunt because it must be: Do not take life advice from people whose lives are falling apart.
- Do not take sobriety advice from someone who is drunk.
- This is a tough statement because it's the most traumatic, but do not take parenting advice from someone who lost their children.
- Do not take guidance about living well from someone living in chaos.
This sounds harsh. But it is RESPECT for yourself. If you want to learn to build a house, you learn from someone who has built houses, not from someone whose house is collapsing.
Wisdom lives in people who have walked the path successfully. Not perfect people—no one is perfect. But people who are walking in balance. People whose actions match their words. People who have faced their own demons and learned to walk past the traps.
- Are they sober if they are teaching sobriety?
- Are their children safe if they are teaching about family?
- Are they living in peace if they are teaching about balance?
- Are their words and their actions aligned?
If yes, listen. If no, walk away. It does not matter if they are blood relatives. It does not matter if they are elders in age. Chaos cannot teach order. Trapped people cannot teach freedom.
Most importantly, do not resent them. Strive to be unlike them for the sake of those you love and those who love you.
Your healer is one person in your circle, but not the only one.
- Family members who are walking well (not all family—only those who are healthy)
- Elders who have wisdom and show it in how they live
- Friends who are also choosing the healing path
- Community members who build up instead of tear down
Protect your circle. If someone keeps bringing traps to you—bringing alcohol or drugs, bringing drama, bringing chaos—remove them from your circle. This is not cruelty. This is protecting your life and your children's lives.
Your previous circle—the enablers, the drinking buddies, the addicts who only wanted to be friends when you had money or drugs, those who relied on you for addiction company—they will notice you are different. They will feel threatened by your change. They will test you.
They will say:
- "You've changed. You're not fun anymore."
- "Come on, just one time for old times' sake. It won't hurt."
- "You think you're better than us now?"
- "Remember the good times we had? Let's do it again."
- "You're being dramatic. You didn't have a real problem."
- "What? You think your shit don't stink?"
Your response should be truth, spoken once, with no debate:
"I'm walking a different path now. I care about you, but I can't walk with you anymore. I wish you well."
Then walk away. Do not argue. Do not explain. Do not defend your choice. Do not try to convince them to change.
Why no debate?
Because they are not asking a question—they are testing your resolve. They want company in their misery. Your sobriety makes them uncomfortable about their own choices. Your strength reminds them of their weakness. They will keep testing until you prove the boundary is real.
Say it once. Walk away. If they contact you again with the same invitation, you do not need to respond. Silence is also an answer.
If they are family and complete separation is not possible:
- "I love you, but I cannot be around drinking/drugs. When you're ready to talk about something else, I'm here."
- Then leave or end the conversation the moment substances appear.
This is not cruelty. This is protection. You are building a fortress. They are trying to open the gate. Your job is to keep it closed.
You love someone who is trapped in deep addiction. You want to heal, but they are not ready. You feel you cannot leave them.
But ask yourself honestly: Is this love, or is this addiction?
You may be addicted to the person when:
- You believe your staying will save them (it will not—only their choice can)
- You feel responsible for their survival (you are not—you can barely save yourself)
- Your identity has become "the one who helps them" (you have lost yourself)
- You mistake chaos for connection (intensity is not intimacy)
- Leaving feels impossible, even when staying means mutual destruction
This addiction is as real as substance addiction. Same patterns: obsessive thinking about them, loss of boundaries, continuing despite harm, failed attempts to leave, returning despite knowing the damage.
The truth: You cannot save someone who is drowning while they pull you under. You will both drown.
Two scenarios:
If you have somewhere to go but cannot bring yourself to leave:
This is addiction to the addict. Treat it like substance addiction: recognize the trap, seek help, walk away. Tell them once: "I love you. When you are ready to walk the healing path, I will walk beside you. But I cannot stay in the trap with you." Then go. Guilt will pull at you. Violence may escalate. You could end up in jail (again). Promises will be made. Do not return.
If you literally have nowhere to go:
This is survival dependency. Contact: women's shelter, men's crisis line, Indigenous friendship centre, provincial social services, your healer. While trapped: make safety plan, save money if possible, document violence if safe, maintain whatever sobriety you can, keep planning escape. The moment a path opens, take it.
If it's a family member or friend who takes you in, DO NOT burn that bridge.
The teaching applies to both:
Love does not require you to drown. Love does not require you to sacrifice your children. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is refuse to participate in someone else's destruction. Your sobriety might eventually show them the path is possible—but only if you survive.
You cannot set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
- This is LOVE—for yourself and your children, even when it hurts
- This is COURAGE—making the hardest choice to save your life
- This is WISDOM—knowing you cannot save someone by drowning with them
- Teaching to recognize traps
- Witnessing your journey without judgment
- Advocacy when you need resources or support
- Referrals to other helpers when specialized support is needed
- Access to cultural practices, ceremonies, and traditional ways
- Accountability partnership—someone who will be honest with you
- Walk the path for you
- Make your choices for you
- Remove consequences of your actions
- Fix you (you are not broken—you are learning and healing)
- Want sobriety for you more than you want it for yourself
- Willingness to see traps honestly
- Choice to avoid traps even when they pull at you
- Getting back up every time you fall
- Honesty about your struggles
- Daily practice (different for each person)
- Commitment to your children and grandchildren
This relationship is partnership. The healer guides. You walk. Both are necessary. Neither is enough alone.
- This is HUMILITY—accepting you need guidance.
- This is TRUTH—only you can walk your path.
- This is RESPECT—for yourself and for your healer's role.
The work of healing is different for each person. Your healer will help you find what fits your life, your struggles, your strengths. There is no single path that works for everyone.
Daily connection to Spirit and Creator through whatever practice fits you: prayer, meditation, smudging, time in nature, talking to your ancestors. This is not magic. This is grounding. This is remembering you are not alone.
Face the REAL problems, not the phantom ones. Every day, ask yourself: "What is the real problem today that needs my attention?" Not "what if" worries about the future. Not dwelling on the unchangeable past. What is real, today, that you can actually do something about?
Learn to recognize traps before you walk into them. This takes time. Be patient with yourself. Each trap you avoid makes you stronger at seeing the next one.
Build a circle of people who are living well and remove people who bring chaos. This might mean painful choices about family or old friends. But your healing and your children's safety come first.
Serve others. When you are strong enough, help someone else who is struggling. This breaks the trap of self-focus. This reminds you that your healing is not just for you—it is for the people you can help later.
Participate in cultural practices and ceremonies when they are available to you. Smudging for clarity. Sweat lodge for purification. Pipe ceremony for connection to Spirit. Drumming for grounding. These are tools the ancestors gave us. They are not magic fixes—you still must choose and act—but they provide strength.
For women's healing circles: Honor the sacred responsibility as life-givers and protectors of children. Your strength in nurturing is also strength in fierce protection of your family. Break cycles of violence and exploitation.
For men's healing circles: Honor the role as providers and protectors. Model strength for your sons. Warrior spirit means protecting, not destroying. Break cycles of absent fathers and violence.
- What is the REAL problem today? (Not imagined future problems)
- What trap am I seeing right now?
- Am I choosing to avoid it, or am I walking toward it?
- Did I fail today? What did the crow learn from this?
- Who am I listening to? Are they living well?
- What am I building today—strength or excuses?
Your healer will check in with you regularly about these questions. Be honest in your answers, even when the truth is "I walked into the trap today." That honesty is the beginning of getting back up.
The Creator and your ancestors provide strength, but they do not provide shortcuts. You still must walk. They walk with you, but they do not carry you.
- This is LOVE in daily action—choosing life every single day.
- This is TRUTH—aligning your words with your actions.
Imagine you are building a fortress to protect your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Every choice you make is either a stone in that wall or a crack in the foundation.
- Each day you stay sober—that is a stone in the wall.
- Each trap you see and avoid—that is the gate growing stronger.
- Each time you get back up after falling—that is the foundation going deeper.
- Each wise choice about who you listen to—that is a watchtower built so you can see danger coming.
Inside your fortress: your children safe. Your grandchildren growing strong. The next seven generations protected from the traps that caught you, that caught your parents, that caught your grandparents.
Outside the fortress: traps waiting. Chaos. Destruction. The same cycles that have crushed our people for generations.
Your ancestors began building this fortress for you. They survived residential schools. They survived the Sixties Scoop. They survived starvation and disease and violence and theft of everything they had. They built a foundation with their survival, with their refusal to completely break, with their determination to keep the people alive.
Now it is your turn. You build on what they started. You make the walls higher and stronger. You build so well that your great-great-grandchildren will live inside these walls and be safe from what tried to destroy you.
This is not about being perfect. You will place some stones badly. You will make mistakes in the building. But every day you are building something. The question is: What are you building?
Are you building a fortress of strength? Or are you building excuses for why you cannot build?
- Did you build, or did you make excuses?
- Did you protect the fortress, or did you open the gate to let traps in?
- Did you show your children a warrior, or did you show them a victim?
Tomorrow you will build again. And the day after. And the day after. This is the work that never ends, but this is also the work that sets you free.
- LOVE: You build because you love the children.
- RESPECT: You build with dignity and honor.
- COURAGE: You build even when you are afraid or tired.
- HONESTY: You build with truth, not pretending.
- WISDOM: You learn from mistakes and build smarter.
- HUMILITY: You accept help from your healer and guides.
- TRUTH: Your building matches your words—you do what you say.
This teaching does not end. You do not graduate from this path. Every single day, for the rest of your life, you will face traps. Every day you will need to choose.
Some days will be easy. The traps will be far away, and you will walk in balance without effort.
Some days will be hard. The traps will be right in front of you, pulling at you, and you will need every bit of strength to walk past them.
Some days you will fail. You will walk into a trap. And on those days, you will need to remember the crow: get back up, learn from it, try a different way.
The past will whisper to you sometimes. It will say: "You cannot change. You are damaged. You will always be broken. Why even try?"
That is a lie. That is the trap talking.
- You control this moment, right now
- You can see traps once you learn to look
- You choose your response to everything
- You build the fortress one stone at a time
- You protect the next seven generations with your choices today
Your healer will walk beside you, but your healer cannot walk for you. Your ancestors walk with you in spirit, but they cannot carry you. The Creator provides strength, but you must still take each step yourself.
This is your path. This is your power. This is your responsibility.
Keep walking, my relative. The people need you strong.
Your healer witnesses your journey and says:
"I see you trying. I see you falling and getting back up. I see you learning to spot the traps. I see the fortress growing. Keep walking. The path continues. Your children are watching. Your ancestors are with you. Walk in balance. Walk in strength. Walk toward the healing."
Return to this teaching whenever you forget. Read it again when you are struggling. Ask your healer to help you understand the parts that confuse you. Practice the teachings every day. Be patient with yourself. Be honest about your struggles. Keep walking.
The path is long, but you are not walking alone.