Words Have Power. Water Heals.

Five Great Lakes in 18 days.

One day for every year of my childhood.

The wind moves me.

The water heals me.

The land holds me.

The sun gives me strength.

Over 18 days, I swam in all five Great Lakes.

What began as a cold-water plunge journey became something much bigger.

A journey through water, land, grief, memory, healing and names.

Because words have power.

And water heals.

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario at Woodbine Beach in Toronto was freezing today. It was also my late Green Grandma’s birthday.

So, Grandma, this plunge was for you. 🩷

But the company?

Just ducky! 🦆😂

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which means “the lake is beautiful.”

Indigenous peoples lived along these shores for thousands of years before Europeans invaded. The lake and surrounding lands have been home to many Indigenous peoples, including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe.

And at the end of the day, for this author anyway, it will always be Lake Ontario. No matter who rules the fucking world.

Lake Erie

The southernmost tip of mainland Canada, Point Pelee, on Lake Erie.

Canada’s name comes from the Haudenosaunee word Kanata, meaning “village.”

I played Sea Witch, swallowing my fear that a dead fish might be buried in the lake grass. I honoured the playfulness of my late brothers and nephew, scooped up a handful of lake grass and played along.

The Sea Witch of Lake Erie.

Lake Erie was named after the Erie Nation, the Indigenous people who lived along its shores.

The name Erie means “long tail,” referring to the cougar. Cougars once lived throughout the Great Lakes region, but they are rare to spot today.

The Erie were called Iroquois by Europeans.

Haudenosaunee is the proper name, meaning “People of the Longhouse.”

English and French invaders used the term “Iroquois,” instead of using the Haudenosaunee people’s own name for themselves.

Words have power.

The names we use for people matter.

The names we use for places matter.

And the names we use for violence matter.

Lake Huron

Today, Lake Huron at MacGregor Point was like taking a warm bath.

Karegnondi is the Wendat name for Lake Huron, translated as “Freshwater Sea.”

Lake Huron was named after the Wendat Nation, the Indigenous people who lived here.

The French called the Wendat people “Huron.” Huron was not their own name for themselves. Their name is Wendat, meaning “people of the island.”

The French began using the name “Lake Huron” in the 1600s.

Huron comes from the old French word hure, meaning “bristly head.” The French used it in reference to the Wendat’s hairstyle.

The next day, Karegnondi, aka Lake Huron, showed me another side of herself.

Inverhuron Beach.

Karegnondi can be sharp rocks, large rocks, slimy rocks.

Today, she is powder sand.

Lake Michigan

“Michigan” comes from the Anishinaabe word michigami, translated as “large lake.”

French invaders changed it to Michigan, the name we use today.

But this has been more than tourism for me.

That day, September 1st, I was honouring my late nephew.

He would’ve turned 38.

When he was little, I took him to Lake Ontario many times for a swim and a picnic. My young daughter’s main item on the agenda was always playing in the sand and swim races. My nephew came for the hugs.

So there I was, on the shore of Lake Michigan, with a sand castle village to build.

I couldn’t provide a brave and safe home or family for him when he was alive, so I’m making one for him now.

I’m not religious.

I’m spiritual.

I believe the souls of our dead live in the water for eternity.

I honour all belief systems, and I too get to believe whatever speaks to my mind, body and soul.

When I am in the woods, I can sense my late brothers and my nephew.

They may have died from drugs. But child sexual violence killed them years before they stopped walking this earth.

When I am in the water, I can feel them surrounding me with love.

They are always here, waiting for me.

I just have to show up.

It takes a village to love and protect a child.

I wish my family could live here.

Because child sexual violence is still trying to kill us.

How?

Silence.

Silence is violence.

You can’t quite see them, but the three little rocks in the middle are my two brothers and my nephew.

Yep, I tucked them into my pocket.

They probably wanted to stay on that beautiful beach, to return to Lake Michigan, but I brought them home.

I’m going to need bigger pockets with all these rocks I keep snatching.

Healing in the water.

Playing in the sand.

Grief is a strange thing. Sometimes the people we love are gone, and somehow they are still right there with us.

I can feel them laughing with me.

Maybe that’s my village.

Gichi-Gami

Gichi-Gami called.

I answered.

I stood on the shores of Gichi-Gami at Pancake Bay, more than three kilometres of sand stretching along Lake Superior.

Lake Superior’s original Ojibwe/Anishinaabe name is Gichi-Gami. It means “The Great Sea.”

And there it was.

Five Great Lakes in 18 days.

One day for every year of my childhood.

The wind moves me.

The water heals me.

The land holds me.

The sun gives me strength.

This cold-water plunge journey was the ideal way to celebrate the launch of my latest book, The Collage Collection.

Seventy-eight collages. One for every chapter of my memoir, Breathing the Night Out.

The memoir tells what happened.

The collages show what it felt like.

And The Collage Collection is free.

My gift to you.

Healing through expressive therapy is my medicine.

Writing, yoga, cold-water plunging, hiking, collaging, dancing, biking, cleaning houses and cooking healthy food are all forms of expression for me.

They get me out of my head and back into my body, into the world, into life.

Cold plunging has science behind it. Dr. Andrew Huberman of Stanford Medicine advises us to get uncomfortably cold for about 11 minutes each week, spread out in short sessions. Cold-water plunging can help with energy, focus and alertness. The benefits go deeper than how we feel. Cold also creates changes in our cells that help our bodies repair and adapt. For those who need some more science, here’s another short clip about the benefits.

But for me, the science is only part of it.

I enter the discomfort.

I trust the water to touch the parts of my body that were attacked when I was a child.

The water heals me.

I stay calm.

I let my body do the work.

Because my body remembers.

It remembers everything.

And somewhere along this journey, I kept coming back to names.

Gichi-Gami.

Michigan.

Erie.

Haudenosaunee.

Wendat.

Ontario.

Words have power.

For generations, people have had the power to decide what lands would be called, what bodies of water would be called and what entire peoples would be called.

The people who already lived here had their own names.

Some of those names survived.

Some didn’t.

Others were replaced by names imposed by Europeans and repeated for so long that eventually most of us stopped asking where they came from.

And while we’re talking about names, I am pissed off at U.S. President Donald Trump for renaming our shared Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

But Trump is pulling from an old playbook.

Claim the land.

Change the name.

Plant your name on everything you can.

Declare yourself King of the Fucking Castle.

Because naming has never been just about words.

It is about power.

Who gets to name the land?

Who gets to name the water?

Who gets to name the people?

And who gets to decide that the name already there no longer matters?

That is exactly why names matter to me.

I have spent years thinking about the power of words in my own work.

Especially three of them.

Child Sexual Violence.

Not child abuse.

Not sexual assault.

Not language that makes what happened sound smaller or easier for the rest of us to stomach.

Child sexual violence.

Because that is what it is.

Violence.

Until we name it and confront it, the violence keeps winning.

The Name I Chose

Ghrian Shine.

Standing in a field of sunflowers on my mother’s birthday.

Trying to honour her the only way I know how: by staying as far away as I possibly can.

She cannot bear to talk about the truth. She cannot bear one more mention of child sexual violence.

But silence doesn’t make the violence disappear.

You can refuse to name it.

You cannot ignore the dead bodies.

The incarcerated family members.

The grandchildren living in fear of another beating from their partner.

The ER stretchers holding your own children after yet another failed suicide attempt.

That is what silence looks like.

Can you hear the silence?

My name means Sunshine. I am named after my Celtic ancestors. It is my legal name.

I chose it.

I will no longer be called the name given to me by those who hurt me the most.

Sunshine seems about right. 🌻☀️

Then I saw the photo of me standing in the sunflower field and thought, Holy shit. Look at those wrinkles. When the hell did THAT happen?

Delete. Delete. Delete.

Then I looked again.

I thought about every hurdle I jumped. Every barrier I crawled under. Every naysayer I ignored. Every damn thing I survived.

And suddenly I wasn’t looking at wrinkles.

I was looking at evidence.

Evidence that I made it from surviving to thriving.

Actually, after the life I’ve lived, I should have WAY more wrinkles.

Holy fuck.

I am awesome.

Storms, Sunflowers, Sunshine and every beautiful fucking wrinkle.

Words have power.

Water heals.

And healing also means knowing when to stop.

Not stopping the work.

I have researched the economic impact of child sexual violence in Canada. You can read my article, $4.7 Trillion: The Lifetime Cost and Loss of Child Sexual Violence in Canada.

I have begged politicians to care.

I have been ignored.

I won’t stop.

I am a Beloved Warrior, fighting to end child sexual violence through education, justice and a whole lot of love.

And this healing journey is teaching me something else too.

How to find the beauty in the pain.

Not because the pain is beautiful.

It isn’t.

Because when I stop running from it, when I let myself feel it, something else makes its way in.

Beauty.

The sunflowers.

The sand castles.

The rocks in my pockets.

My brothers and my nephew waiting for me in the water.

Five Great Lakes holding my body.

My own name.

My own voice.

Finding the beauty in the pain doesn’t erase what happened.

It makes room for what comes next.

I spent so much of my life surviving the storm.

Now I am becoming one.

Finding my voice.

A storm learning to speak.

And I am finally learning to listen.

And I can rest.

I have travelled far.

I have written my truth.

I have cried every damn tear I had in me.

I have moved through my body.

I have played in the sand like a child.

I have surrendered my body to five Great Lakes.

I need to rest from all the feels and all the thinks.

I need quiet.

Time to be still in the silence.

May the long time sun shine upon you ☀️

~ Ghrian