Taking Care of Ourselves, Each Other, and the Planet

By Vanessa Prescott, CHT, RHT

There is an old Cherokee proverb that talks about feeding your good wolf. 
Inside  each of us there is a good wolf and a bad wolf — the good wolf is essentially joy, courage, and love.
The bad wolf is fear, ego and resentment. 
In each moment, we have a decision of which wolf we will feed.
When taking care of ourselves we must listen to the intuition of the good wolf. 
This is good medicine from the ancestors.

Resilience makes it easier to feed the good wolves but sometimes harder to know when to stop feeding them — this is where discernment, temperance, and community council comes in.

When reaching out and connecting with others, we must feed this good wolf too — we must silence the deprecating doubts of the bad wolves.

When taking care of the planet we must band together as packs of good wolves.
We cannot fear corporate colonial oppression to the point of apathy. 
Often, time itself is not on our side and the only thing to do is to show up.
This can be physically, feet on the street in solidarity actions; mentally, for ourselves and others; or spiritually, in honouring the traditional ways that our ancestors cared for the land.
The elders have shown us that healing is a collaborative process.
This year, the words,
“together is how we heal.” 
came to me during ceremony with my community. 

Our youth community of land and water protectors are un-paving the way to the future. We are decolonizing our environment one step at a time, returning to the ways of reciprocity and living in harmony with nature and the seasons. When we heal ourselves, each other, and the land, we heal for seven generations forward and seven generations back. 

By Vanessa Prescott, CHT, RHT
(pronouns: she/her)
Métis Clinical Herbal Therapist and Co-founder of Wild Greens Sovereignty
Lekwungen Territory
Instagram: @vanessaprescott @wildgreenssovereignty
www.vanessaprescott.com
www.wildgreenssov.com