West Door

Abstract

This is the third of four doorways encountered as Fyre Jean Graveline invites readers to journey together aRound Sacred Medicine Wheel. In the Western Doorway, through a deeper Connection with Water, We Accept with Loving Compassion what is in our Hearts. We give Attention to Flow of Emotions throughout our Bodies. We Share or reLease Feelings with a Water Blessing, or through watery heARTs: Clay or Paint, Movement or Sound, or Word Flow. The West Door opens Response.Abilities for Respectfully and Reciprocally Relating: (a) We Emphasize InterDependence, working and playing and praying Collectively and SustainAbly to reStory Relationality through heARTs; (b) We Remember Ancestral Wisdom of SelfDetermination: no Being is Expert in Life Journeys of our Relatives; (c) We Embrace Resistance as a Sacred Ancestral Response.Ability and an Expression of TransFormational Resiliency; (d) We Avoid Interruptions, Questions and Interpretations and continuously reAssess Assessment and DiagNosis; (e) We Respect MultiLayered Gifts of Silence: Words on No Words; (f) We Work and Play and Pray to continuously Become more TrustWorthy Relatives; (g) We are Committed to enActing Politics of InterSectionality and Inclusion; and (h) We AcKnowledge and Appreciate All Genders and Gender Fluidity as having Worth and Integrity.

Author

Fyre Jean Graveline (she/her; they/them), PhD, RSW, RCAT, is a two-spirit resilient survivor and a Métis Grandmother, educator, author, healer, artist, and activist or heARTiviist. She/they work, play, and pray to create sustainable expressive arts healing practices through an Indigenous, feminist, ecoarts-based lens, emphasizing walking lightly and lovingly on Mother Earth. She taught and practiced in education and social work for over forty years. She is the author of Circle Works: Transforming Eurocentric Consciousness (Fernwood, 1998) and Healing Wounded Hearts (Fernwood, 2005). Still emerging is her newest book LIFE as Medicine: All Healing Heals All.

Citation

Graveline, F. J. (2025). West door response.Abilities: Respectfully and reciprocally relating. In S. Collins and M. Jay (Eds.), Decolonizing health, healing, and care: Embodying culturally responsive and socially just counselling (Chapter 5.6). Counselling Concepts. https://doi.org/10.71446/lk85375993