We are free to be who we are

“The past is not a burden; it is a scaffold, which brought us to this day. We are free to be whom we are—to create our own life out of our past and out of the present. We are our ancestors. When we can heal ourselves, we also heal our ancestors, our grandmothers, our grandfathers and our children. When we heal ourselves, we heal Mother Earth." -Grandmother Rita Pitka Blumenstein, The 13 Indigenous Grandmothers