one year ago, i attended a sweatlodge ceremony. it was a deeply transformative, deeply spiritual experience that served as a bookend to many years of trauma. this is not to say that i consider trauma and stress to be over for me, rather, that this ceremony marked a transition place, a liminal space of changing and becoming, of being born anew.
there’s still things that i cannot accurately describe about my experience in the lodge. words escape me when i try to articulate my experience.
one enters the lodge stripped bare. no jewelry. no performance. no makeup. no glasses. wearing only simple cotton clothing. i wore only a simple black cotton shift and my cotton panties.
laying amongst cedar boughs, blind, stripped down from the performance, holding a towel over my face, i felt my spirit speaking and finally, that voice cut through the noise and i was able to listen.
the rest is a blur that i cannot speak on, until i forced myself up and to my knees and to crawl my way out of that sacred hole, filthy and blind, half crazed, tears and snot streaming down my face and i crawled back into the world, with sage in my lungs and sweetgrass on my breath.
i cried hysterically until a mentor was able to guide me to the creek to lay down tobacco and pray and throw myself face down into the water with my braid floating on the surface behind me.
i became something else that day, someone else. i drove home exhausted and the next day everything was lighter, like someone had taken a sheet of gauze away from my vision.
i began the difficult work of apologizing to people for the times i had not walked with them and been present in the way i would have liked to be. i also began the difficult work of accepting not only my own forgiveness but the forgiveness of others.
i gained my voice back and began a slash burn of the toxicity that had pervaded my life like ivy crawling up old lattice work.
i came to know my responsibility to my ancestors and my people and this land, and the heart work that i am called to do.
i was able to let go.
i was able to realize that many of my own fetters, my shackles, were self made and with that knowledge, i put them down.
i have not worn makeup since sweatlodge.
i no longer shave my legs.
i no longer apologize for my body or my womanhood.
i might have entered that sacred hole as a maiden but i left as a matriarch.
and i will never stop.
i am filled with so much gratitude and love that my wild heart seems like it may burst.
and i will never go back.
you are all my relations.
and i am so privileged to know you and this world and to love and be loved inside of it.
grocery store friday afternoon dinner rush and i pull into the parking lot looking for a pizza and i hear this screaming when i get out of my car in the 40C heat. i can’t figure out if ive finally lost my mind until i see a crow chasing after what appears to be a large brown leaf until i realize its a mouse and a really big one and the crow is pecking at its tail and the mouse is screaming. i watch the crow impale the mouse on its beak and fly off into the sky with the screaming mouse and sit on top of the burger joint and start ripping it to pieces. i just stand in the laneway of the parking lot watching this shit go down and i probably look like a mental patient. i look around to see if anyone else is watching this animal kingdom realness take place before me and of course there’s no one around and even if there was people have kids and lives and shit to do and they don’t really like when you point out cool animals. i pointed out the cool black squirrel at the park to a lady who stopped to watch and she called me a retard so that’s neat. i don’t really point stuff out to people anymore.
i go inside the store and try to grab ahold of myself because surely that’s a bad omen and i should just go home right? and then i hear some old guy lose his shit at a cashier because he demands to know what kind of salad dressing goes with the deli salad he is holding – strawberries and chicken and feta. the guy is red faced and bellowing, his face a mask of rage. imagine coming unglued over salad dressing.
also its vinaigrette, numb nuts.
the cashier tries to explain you can pick the dressing and the dude gets angrier and angrier.
maybe the mouse outside asked the crow what went best with dirty parking lot French fries and the heat was just too crazy and the crow had had enough and just started pecking.
the crow is still flinging mouse guts off the side of the burger place when i go back to my car.
i guess dying in a hospital bed surrounded by your family isn’t so bad, all things considered.
but i get home from the grocery store and i think about the mouse who died screaming and the crow who ate him and i worry about the crow like i hope that mouse wasn’t poisoned and the crow doesn’t die but like wtf that was a huge mouse and also what the hell was it doing on a parking lot during 40C weather. do crows eat live prey? never seen that shit before. that seems like a bad omen right. do crows get rabies? maybe i need a rabies shot just in case. that seems like a shitty way to die too.
i text pictures of my ass but id rather talk about the crow but I really want to know does my ass look fat inside this ocean of grief? like plow me through the fucking mattress and all but can i call you when im weepy and the songs on the radio start looking like old polaroids? hold me down and fuck the light back into my eyes or something.
have you ever tried to fuck your way through a period of deep sadness? but then have you ever felt like you should block all the gooner poets on your insta feed who type shitty poetry with one hand and the other firmly jammed down their pants?
have you ever lost your shit so bad you fell in love with someone six thousand kilometres away as the crow flies, across an ocean, and you let that love transform you into a shape you can tolerate seeing in the mirror in the morning? you know, at least in small doses.
god, i feel alive, stripped bare and wild, tits out in my bathroom still wearing my cowboy hat. i feel like the sadness and rage and paperwork inside my belly could give birth to a hideous new version of myself and maybe i will because 2026 is the year of no. 2025 was the year of probably not but also fuck yes and 2026 is a firm no, you know the ones where the air gets cold and you wonder if it’s just you feeling it but it isn’t and suddenly you get accused of being mean because saying no to people you’ve only ever bent over backwards for makes them all upset. oh how the turn tables.
no. i am not gonna be nice anymore.
no. i am not that girl anymore.
no. i don’t care what you think.
you talk mad shit about me behind my back anyways. you hated me anyways so what’s the difference now or does it just make you uncomfortable when i treat you like you treated me.
no. im not gonna stop talking about it.
no. im not gonna apologize to your fucking weird girlfriend. she fucking sucks dude and you suck in proximity to her. talk about total aura loss.
no. im not gonna set foot in that place because i have integrity and ethics. you might not so maybe work on that or go fuck yourself or something.
my momma raised a people pleaser and im sorry to tell you but my momma don’t pay the bills no more.
you don’t get to play the victim when i speak the truth about what you did because if you wanna play dirty then let’s take our clothes off and get into the mud together because im not above it.
hear you talk a big game to the morons who follow you online but i know who you really are underneath all that. i know it. i know you know it. i have seen who you are when the camera is asleep and ive heard what you say too. about fat girls and their bodies. that whole happy horseshit wholesome thing you sell probably wouldn’t be so shiny if people knew about what you think of women and their bodies and their worth.
same with the scene kids and their zines and deaths from drug overdoses and liver failure. you never accepted me – too weird too fat too native too white too queer too straight too everything. and now look at you. can’t believe i ever saw anything in any of you. i should pity you truly and i guess i do. you hurt me you know. all that bullshit about punk being a family and the metal brotherhood well sweetheart community is everything until it isn’t.
and most people are out for their own ends and take it from me you will outlive your usefulness to most people in your life eventually.
the metal brotherhood what a fucking joke.
this weird illusion that all these scenes aren’t just vehicles to enable narcissists to get supply, and act as hunting grounds for predators and drivers of oblivion and self destruction. hate to be the one to break it to you but you’re not fucking the system if you’re dying because of alcohol you got from the system. you aren’t sticking it to the man by dying young. the system wants you dead already.
and the system? don’t get me started on that crock of shit. it’s all bullshit and we know it deep down but we can’t stop sucking on that sweet dirty ol tit can we? but what’s the alternative? i don’t know too many people who would trade their tiktok dopamine machine for simplicity and being kinder to each other. and don’t get it twisted because im suckin the tit right along with you.
but but but we have to walk tall walk in a good way and with good intentions and that’s great but im menstruating and i wanted to fight a man today on the street just for fun like take my big beaded earrings out real deadly and just scrap it out because he was eye fucking me and licking his lips like a pervert and i hate that shit. fuckboys fall back and all that stupid shit. what the fuck is it? 2016?
don’t you just wanna rip it all down like a werewolf and howl at the moon? is it my menstrual cycle or is it hot in here?
and be honest, does my ass look fat inside this ocean of grief?
maybe it’s the smoke in the air and how it makes me dizzy and irritable, but im really over you and i wish you could get over me too.
things ended. that’s what you wanted deep down anyways and it happened. it happened without fanfare or arguments or angry emails. it was a drift, like a river changing course and im not angry at you for it. it had to end. it was painful yeah, but i would not have been able to become the person i am now if i had sat around waiting for you to love me like i loved you, to want me like i wanted you. so, i let the drift happen like a river washing over the banks of my broken open heart and i let myself be pushed by the current to somewhere else to become someone else.
and its been a couple years now and still you run from me whenever you see me and i guess thats okay if confronting my tired face makes you that uncomfortable.
i should say though, im actually the one that should be real pissed off at you. you’re the one who cut and ran the morning my father died, the morning i needed you the most, still stinking of that hospital room and death and morphine.
but i guess that’s life.
all those self help books say we need to stop expecting things of people and that’s true, we do, but at the same time, isn’t it normal to want our friends to be there for us? is it not natural to want to lean on community when your heart is broken?
the truth is that i loved you more than you could ever love me. maybe that wasn’t always true and maybe you tried to love me in your own way. but what became crystal clear to me at the end was that you loved alcohol and anger because they both covered up the sadness you carry inside and for that, i genuinely feel bad for you. truly, and i mean this completely, i wish the best for you. i hope you get the help you need and one day you can realize that you don’t have to live like you are. you deserve more. you deserve better.
you deserve better than after work liquor store runs. you deserve better than being alone all the time. you deserve better than the yearning that lives inside you. you deserve better than the anger that lives inside you that you direct to people you don’t even know. you deserve better than being stuck.
but, ive also realized that you, as you are, as you were at the end, is bad medicine. you used to stick to my clothes and my thoughts and just like when i leave somewhere and wipe my feet in order to not carry bad medicine home with me, i wipe my feet when i leave the grocery store, or the office, or anywhere i run into you. i dont want to take you home with me ever again.
i pray for you, god, creator, great coyote, i really do. i pray you’re doing fine out there but i don’t wonder if you are. you don’t keep me awake at night anymore.
ive got new friends now. ive got a new lover. they are everything you could not be. they are gentle with me. they don’t drink all the time. they don’t scream at the television. they care about the art i make. they hold space for the grief inside of me because grief lives inside them and i hold that grief too. maybe that was the difference between me and you. everything for you was all loving parents family dinners best friends trips i was never invited to. my life was harder. and i dont think you understood that and i forgive you for that, you know.
you’re bad medicine for me. you used to taste sweet.
maybe it happened when i was hanging off the back of a golf cart going too fast on the reservation on my way to the big pow wow with my sisters.
maybe it happened when i met her for the first time ten years ago. my mentor, my sister.
maybe it’s because she believed in me when i didn’t believe in myself yet.
maybe it was the first round dance she took me to and how she corrected me gently and taught me protocol.
maybe it was the office i cried in at work when things got out of control or the deerskin drum i donated so others could access culture and songs.
maybe it was realizing that i had been missing something, something i told myself that i didn’t deserve, something i told myself was reserved for other people. maybe it was the jealousy in my throat when the beautiful girls at work would talk about weekend adventures with girlfriends and girl gangs.
maybe it was that i didnt know what to ask for because i didn’t have the name for what i was missing, what i needed.
maybe i just needed the land and the sagebrush and my sisters and a free pancake breakfast and screeching through a pow wow and taking phone calls on a broken pay phone. maybe i just needed them. maybe they need me too.
and what a privilege to be in community to bear witness and to laugh and eat and connect and have a grizzly bear summer.
and i feel it alongside my sun pink skin looking out into the valley of coyotes and medicine – maybe this is what home is.
maybe this is what connection is.
maybe this is what joy is.
i look back, as i often do, to the girl on the kitchen floor with hands twisted into claws, full of grief. she could not have ever imagined the woman i am now, this all would have been a distant and impossible dream.
maybe that’s what resilience is, but fuck it, i don’t know if all i want is resilience anymore. i want sweetness in my mouth and my heart – the taste of haskap berry ice cream and warmed cherry flesh between my teeth and i want the drum to guide my heart.
i want weekends that reek of sunscreen and a bag full of cedar and smokes and roadside snacks and the eagle overhead and the creek water on my feet and lemonade and new jewelry and songs and stories and jokes told over malt vinegar and french fries.
and i would go through all that grief again to feel this alive and this wild and this young and to feel this grateful to god and creator and my sisters and the land and my mother and my lovers and this time and this space and the woodland in my blood and the desert in my heartbeat.
