I'm blessed to be living this dream of writing and singing, but that's not the real dream I had. The real dream was to make enough money to take care of all the pain and suffering that my mother has been through.
By healing the internal issues that we can heal as a people, our children don't have to suffer the same agony and pain that we put each other through.
One way of paying tribute to my parents was 'bearing witness' as the Quakers do - writing down everything that was happening instead of turning my back on it and pretending that it was all great.
Now that I'm a father, I've forgiven my parents.
I went through pain as a child so my children wouldn't have to.
Whatever I have not yet learned to tolerate in myself inevitably will appear in my children. In this way, they, like Julia, guide me to a new level of self-awareness and everyone benefits.
There's a line that runs between everyone and their ancestors, and you cannot sever that. Maybe disassociate from those ideas but not how you are connected to them. But, you can realise how you've benefited and change how you raise your kids.
Our post-war generation were struggling to escape the past and the burden of guilt we carried and to find a new way.
I will not let my family's problems become my country's problems.
It takes 4 generations to heal one act of violence
It will take 150 years or seven generations to heal the wound of the residential school.
I know that life is full of lessons to be learned, and my children will have to learn their own, but I hope I have broken the cycle of shame and fear that plagued my childhood.
I have tried to bring the family together. My father should have done it, and to some extent, I have succeeded.
