- Trauma Part 2 Uncovering My original wound.
It was in December 1968. I had just returned from Charles Camsell Hospital. I had missed the first part of the school year. My older sister Dora was a cook at the Holy Angels, and she walked me to Holy Angeles. – I was excited!
I took quickly to learning and only spent one week in grade one. My Teacher was Mrs. Blood. before I was moved into grade two. - Since the interview on my podcast Empathetic Witness with Angelina, I have been on a journey. Through several conversations with the therapists I interviewed, I sought to answer why I had gaps in my memory. I was also looking to discover my original trauma. I found it. My original trauma became clear to me. It happened when I was stricken with a horrible disease at about three years old. One day I was walking the next day I barely move. Now imagine as a three-year old I had no comprehension what was happening to me. Suddenly, I found myself in a foreign place far from home. People there loved and took care of me. There was so much love at home. Then, I was in a hospital with unfamiliar surroundings. People who spoke a different language. It must have been difficult for me to comprehend as a 3-year-old what was happening. I must have wondered if I was ever going to be back home to my family.
Holy Angeles Residence, Fort Chipewyan, Alberta
I particularly loved reading and spent many hours in the study hall.
I divided my time between Holy Angels and Charles Camsell Hospital.
Even with the extended times away from my family, I never forgot who I was. I never forgot my first language, Denesuline. And I never forgot the smell of drying pelts. and the taste of iron rich caribou blood.
That was when the second traumatic wound occurred. As a precocious and curious little girl not sure how but I ended up in the study hall. I began reading books on martyrs. I was not supervised. Now, I know that at my age I should not have been reading this type of books. No one help me understand what I was reading because they didn’t know I was reading them. I eventually found Nancy Drew books. I started reading those instead. Still, this was not before being traumatized by the martyrs in the first few books that I read. I was preoccupied with it. Not realizing that the stories I was reading were fiction.
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From the Shores of the Ottawa River 
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