Connection to Community

Connection

By: Christine McFarlane

I have learned that connection to community is integral to helping you in your healing. The notion that “if you are connected to community, you will be okay in the end” is comforting to me because it is within that I know being involved with community has been what has saved me from a path of self-destruction.

My connection to community began when I first walked into the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto almost six years ago, and offered to volunteer. At that time I was like a lost soul, searching for anything to fill the emptiness I felt inside. At the Native Centre, I learned to connect with others. Those I interacted with encouraged me. I was taught my culture, the traditions and the language of my people and this enabled me to come out of the shell that I had previously been in.

Connecting to community has also helped me in my journey through my studies at the University of Toronto. Without community, I do not know where I would be. In connecting to community I have learned so much and it is in that knowledge that I carry with me, that I have been discovering who I am as a First Nations woman and as a writer.

Lately, people have been telling me that I have really learned to ‘find my voice’. I do not think that I could have found my voice without my friends and the people in the community.  With encouragement and support, I have been able to find my wings and soar.  Community has been everything in my healing journey and it is here that I say chi miigwetch to those who have helped me along the way. I could not have done it without you. You know who you are.