Reconciliation

This week I read a post about reconciliation.

It was a lovely post. It honoured Indigenous peoples. It said our Acadian peoples would not be here without them.

Yes. That is true. Our culture is alive today because of our allyship.

Let me say this before I go any further. That work is real, and it isn't mine to claim. It belongs to the Mi'kmaq, and to every nation still waiting on more than a post once a year. What I'm about to say sits beside it. It doesn't replace it.

…the word stayed with me after I closed the screen.

Reconciliation.

Because I know the person who wrote that post. And there is a conversation between us that has never happened.

So I sat with the questions that rose up.

What about reconciliation with our cultural mentors? The folks who guided us deeper into our ancestral knowing. Who gave us support and love as we claimed space, during a time we did not feel good enough to claim it.

What about the harm caused?

What about reconciliation within our friendships?

And here's the part I didn't want to look at. If I'm going to ask that of someone else, I have to ask it of myself.

Where have I done the same?

I have. We all have. There is someone each of us crosses the street to avoid. A message we never answered. An apology we rehearsed in the shower and never said out loud.

It is easy to honour reconciliation as an idea. It is much harder at a kitchen table, across from one person, with your voice shaking.

How can we speak to reconciliation when we do not have the maturity to engage in the difficult conversations that would lead to our own? With the people hurt by our actions?

I am asking myself that too.

We need to be brave enough to have honest, tough conversations within our own personal lives.

The reconciliation comes from within.

What does this look like?

It looks smaller than we want it to. Less like a statement. More like a phone call.

It looks like naming the harm plainly. Skipping "I'm sorry if you were hurt." Saying what I did, and what it cost you.

It looks like listening without building a defence while the other person is still speaking. Feeling the heat rise in your chest and staying in the chair anyway.

It looks like remembering what was given. Naming the people who held us when we were small and unsure. Saying thank you where they can hear it.

It looks like letting go of the outcome. Repair is a relationship, and the other person gets a say. They may not be ready. They may never be. Showing up honestly is still the work.

…And sometimes it looks like making peace alone. When the conversation never comes, reconciliation becomes something you do with the truth of what happened. You stop rewriting it. You stop waiting at the door. You let it be what it was, and you tend your own side of it.

It's messy. It doesn't photograph well. Nobody claps.

So the next time I go to write something beautiful about reconciliation, I'm going to ask myself this first. Maybe you will too.

Who is the one person you would need to sit down with?

You already know their name.

trust yourself, Nathalie

If this felt like a conversation you wanted to stay in...

There are conversations happening in Mystic Marrow (in Patreon) that won't make it here. Not because they're secret, well maybe a little — because they need a sacred container. If what you read today stirred something in you, that's where we keep going.

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