Every single part of your existence comes down to: RELATIONSHIP. This is the indigenous way and this is how our earth and my elders have shown me. What is your relationship with your breath? What is your relationship with your food? What is your relationship with the sun? What is your relationship with the water? Every single moment we are in relation- whether we acknowledge it or not– so how do you want to greet the day?– with a good morning, thank you, hello. Even your heartache asks to be acknowledged, bow for a moment to listen. This is called the relationship with the self. Relationship is how respect is earned and kept. This practice of deep respect is how our elders come to sensing in the ways where they can communicate with everything that is alive. They can hear the songs of the flowers, the icaros. They can hear the future generations calling, our greatgrandmothers come around the timeline. They remember. I RE-MEMBER. And this is the respect I strive to earn from my elders, from the children, from all relations. (Not as an external validity but as a reciprocity of the balance we walk.) So I walk. I show up. And when my path is burdened, I show up at least for myself– because I know I am connected to the water… because every time I cry I am reminded I am the ocean and every time I bleed I am reminded I am the river. And this relationship will always remind me there is no difference between me as water, me as the earth and the earth as me– as I am the cosmos as I am my ancestors’ ancestor.