Sitting at the Fire: Remembering Who You Are

You arrive at the edge of the fire almost by accident.

Not a ceremony. Not a big life event. Just one of those evenings when your mind won’t shut up and your body feels tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. The day has left its fingerprints on you: a tight jaw, a buzzing chest, a familiar old sentence running in the background. If anyone asked how you are, you’d probably say “fine” and change the subject.

But here you are anyway, standing at the edge of a quiet circle.

The fire in the middle isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t roar or demand anything. It just burns, steady and ordinary, the way a good kettle simmers on the back burner. Around it, a ring of stones catches the light. There’s an empty place on one side of the circle, not marked with a name tag or a title. Just space. A place that seems to be waiting for whoever shows up next.

You.

Before you step in, you pause. You notice your feet. The pull of gravity. The simple fact that you’re still here. You take a breath that’s half sigh, half prayer, even if you don’t call it that. For a moment, the usual noise in your head loosens its grip. Things get strangely simple.

I’m alive. I’m here. This is happening.

You haven’t fixed anything. You haven’t forgiven everyone. You haven’t solved the puzzle of your life. But something in you has already moved, just by stopping long enough to arrive.

You’re here now. That’s enough to begin.

When Trickster Mind Grabs the Mic

If you’ve lived through a few storms, you probably know what it’s like to get trapped inside a story.

It sounds like:

I’m the problem.

This will never change.

Everyone else is handling life better than I am.

If they really knew me, they’d leave.

When a thought like that grabs the mic, it doesn’t feel like a thought. It feels like the news. Like the way things really are. Your body joins in without asking for proof: tight chest, shallow breath, shoulders up around your ears. You look at your inbox, your relationships, your bank account through that one sentence, as if the whole world has been dyed that colour.

That’s Trickster Mind at work.

Trickster Mind is the part of your thinking that’s fast, dramatic, and very sure of itself. It mixes old wounds with today’s weather, speaks in all‑or‑nothing words, and presents every first reaction as sacred truth. It’s not evil. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s a survival expert that just doesn’t know when to stand down.

For a long time, I took Trickster Mind as gospel. I thought the goal was to fix the story, beat it into something more positive, or outrun it with achievement, spirituality, or hustle. If I could just get my life cleaned up enough, maybe the thoughts would finally calm down and let me rest.

They didn’t.

What shifted things wasn’t a bolt of lightning or a perfect affirmation. It was something much smaller and stranger: the quiet discovery that I wasn’t the story running in my mind. I was the one noticing it.

You might have had a moment like that without calling it anything special.

Maybe you were washing dishes, walking the dog, or doom‑scrolling in bed. A harsh thought flashed through: I’ve ruined everything. For a split second, instead of obeying it, you saw it. You heard it the way you’d hear someone else talking. And in that tiny gap, the thought lost a bit of its power. It was still there, but it wasn’t the whole sky anymore.

That gap is what this work is really about.

Not becoming a perfect person with no trauma, no doubt, and no weird coping strategies. Not creating a new, shiny identity to hide behind. Just learning to rest a little more often as the one who’s watching, instead of being dragged across the gravel by every story Trickster Mind throws on the screen.

The Wild Pony Of Thought

Imagine your mind as a wild pony.

It sprints from the past to the future in two seconds flat. It kicks up old memories, bolts at the slightest sound, and occasionally decides that a shadow on the ground is the end of the world.

When Trickster Mind has the reins, it ties you to that pony with a short rope. Every movement becomes your emergency. When it bolts, you get dragged. When it panics, you panic. When it circles the same patch of ground for the fiftieth time, you call it “thinking it through.”

But you’re not the pony.

You’re the one holding the rope.

You don’t have to use big spiritual language for this. You can just notice, in very plain terms:

There’s the thought.

There’s the feeling.

And there’s the part of me that can see both.

That simple noticing is already a kind of freedom. You don’t have to kill the pony or turn it into a calm, well‑behaved therapy horse. You just start to loosen the rope.

Instead of “I’m a failure,” it becomes “I’m having the thought that I’m a failure.”Instead of “This will destroy me,” it becomes “Trickster Mind is telling a disaster story right now.”

Same circumstances. Same nervous system. Different relationship.

The story still hurts, because you’re human. But it no longer gets to pretend it’s the whole truth.

A Small Practice: Sitting At The Fire With Trickster Mind

You don’t need a forest clearing to try this. A bus stop, a staff bathroom, a parked car, or the edge of your bed will do.

1. Arrive on purpose

Pause wherever you are. Let your feet feel the floor or the ground. Take three easy breaths. You’re not trying to breathe “right.” You’re just noticing that breath is happening.

2. Catch Trickster Mind’s headline

Ask yourself, very simply: “What’s the main story in my head right now?”Don’t overthink it. Pick one sentence. Maybe it’s “I can’t handle this,” or “I always mess things up,” or “No one really sees me.”

3. Name it as Trickster Mind

Quietly add a few words in front of it: “Trickster Mind is telling me that…”So “I can’t handle this” becomes “Trickster Mind is telling me that I can’t handle this.”

Say the old version once in your mind. Then say the new version. Feel the difference in your body, even if it’s only a two percent shift.

4. Feel your body again

Bring your attention to one physical anchor: the weight of your hands, the contact of your back against the chair, the feeling of your feet. Let your shoulders drop a fraction. You’re not fixing your life here. You’re just remembering there’s more to this moment than the story in your head.

5. Choose one gentle next step

Ask: “If this is Trickster Mind talking, not the voice of truth, what’s one small thing I can do in the next ten minutes?”Drink water. Step outside. Text someone. Write the thought down instead of obeying it. Nothing heroic. Just one human‑sized move that honours the part of you that’s watching.

That’s it. That’s the whole practice.

No incense required. No special beliefs. Just enough awareness to see when Trickster Mind has grabbed the mic, and enough kindness not to yell at yourself when it does it again five minutes later.

You Don’t Have To Clean Yourself Up First

A lot of people quietly believe they have to get better before they’re allowed to do this kind of work.

Once I’m less angry.

Once I’m more grateful.

Once I’ve gotten over what happened.

Once I’m more “spiritual.”

Then I’ll sit at the fire. Then I’ll look at my thoughts. Then I’ll be ready.

But the fire doesn’t need you tidy.

You’re not a renovation project that has to be finished before you’re welcome. You don’t need the right words for Spirit, a perfect relationship with the land, or a flawless track record of good choices. You don’t even need to be sure you believe in any of this.

What you need, mostly, is honesty.

Honesty that says: “This is where I actually am today. This is the story Trickster Mind is shouting. This is how my body feels. This is the part of me that’s tired of being dragged.”

If you bring that much, you’ve already stepped into the circle. You’ve already begun the real work, which isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about seeing through the costume you’ve been wearing long enough to remember that there’s more to you than any single story, any single mistake, any single moment.

That doesn’t erase trauma. It doesn’t replace therapy, medicine, Elders, or community. It just gives you one more place to stand when the wind picks up: not as the story, but as the one who’s seeing it, feeling it, and still here.

An Invitation To Sit A While

If any part of this lands with you, consider this website a kind of ongoing fire.

Some days, you might come for a story that sounds a bit like your own. Other days, you might come for a small practice, a question, or just a reminder that you’re not the only one whose mind can turn a Tuesday into the end of the world.

You won’t find a new identity here to replace the old one, or a single “right way” to be Métis, Indigenous, or human. You’ll find field notes from someone whose own thoughts almost burned him down, and who’s still learning, one breath at a time, to walk through the fire without letting Trickster Mind decide what every spark means.

You’re welcome to come as you are: hopeful, skeptical, exhausted, curious, or all of the above. Pull a chair up to the flames. Let your nervous system catch its breath. Notice the stories that are loud today, and the quieter presence that’s been here the whole time, watching.

We can sit for a while and remember, together, that you are not the voice of Trickster Mind. You are not your worst moment. You are not even the person you’ve worked so hard to be.

You’re the one who’s here, noticing.

And that is already enough to begin.