Liz, age 57 / West Coast First Nations, Canada

http://agrayingpandemic.tumblr.com

I’ve been doing a lot of healing through my culture and traditions…It actually came by accident, when I started attending the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network at the national level, and they did these short little versions of the smudging ceremonies. Then it got to having the traditional healers come in and do the cleansing with the feathers, and other ceremonies and I just started adopting – because it wasn’t part of my culture, our culture is different – but it helped me to feel that my energy was being cleansed all the time of any kind of negative things that are outside of me. I found it was very helpful to keep myself balanced. It helped me stay well…