The Everyday Practice of Right Relationship

Weytk. Welcome.

I am Cheryl Matthew, a Secwépemc author-educator-storyteller-land steward whose work moves between research and ceremony, policy and healing, ancestral teachings and everyday action.

Some teachings arrive in a circle of people gathered around a fire.

Others meet us beside the kitchen sink, in the car before work, or during a difficult conversation with someone we love.

Right relationship lives in both places.

It is not reserved for formal ceremony, spiritual retreat, or moments of profound insight.

It is practiced in the ordinary.

A kettle whistles.

A phone lights up.

A family member needs support.

The land waits beneath our feet.

And in each moment, we are invited to consider how we will move through the world.

With care.

With responsibility.

With awareness.

Right relationship is a daily practice

Right relationship means tending to the connections that shape our lives.

That includes our relationship with ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, the Earth, spirit, and the generations who will come after us.

These relationships are not separate.

A choice made within one relationship often reaches into the others.

When we ignore our own exhaustion, it can affect how we speak to our family.

When we repair harm in our home, we strengthen the conditions for trust in our community.

When we care for the land, we participate in a responsibility that extends beyond our own lifetime.

The work is connected.

So are we.

Right relationship does not ask us to become perfect.

It asks us to become present.

Begin with awareness

Awareness is the first movement toward change.

Before we can shift a pattern, we need to notice it.

Before we can respond differently, we need to recognize what is happening within us.

What am I feeling?

What story am I carrying?

What response is forming in my body?

What might this moment be asking me to understand?

Awareness is not self-criticism.

It is a way of turning toward ourselves with honesty and compassion.

A rushed morning may reveal that we are living beyond our capacity.

A sharp response may point toward fear, grief, or an old wound.

A desire to withdraw may tell us that a boundary needs attention.

The purpose is not to judge the information.

The purpose is to listen.

Awareness gives us a moment of choice.

That moment can change a conversation, a relationship, or the direction of a day.

Let reflection become responsibility

Reflection takes awareness one step further.

It asks us to consider the effects of our choices.

Not only what we intended.

What actually happened.

This is especially important in relationships, where good intentions do not always prevent harm.

We can pause and ask:

• Did my words create understanding or defensiveness?
• Did I make space for another person’s experience?
• Was I listening, or was I preparing my response?
• Did I honour the needs of my body and spirit?
• What responsibility belongs to me now?

Reflection is a practice of accountability.

It helps us see where we have contributed to disconnection without becoming trapped in shame.

Shame tells us that we are beyond repair.

Reflection reminds us that we can learn, respond, and choose again.

Honour yourself through boundaries

Right relationship includes the relationship we have with ourselves.

That relationship requires care.

It also requires boundaries.

A boundary is not a rejection of relationship.

A healthy boundary can make relationship more honest, sustainable, and respectful.

It may sound like saying no to a request we cannot carry.

It may mean asking for time before responding.

It may involve leaving a conversation that has become harmful.

It may mean choosing rest instead of continuing to prove our worth through exhaustion.

Boundaries help us recognize that care is not the same as constant availability.

They allow us to serve without disappearing.

They help us remain connected without abandoning our own wellbeing.

An affirmative inquiry might be:

What would make this relationship more respectful for everyone involved?

Sometimes the answer is a conversation.

Sometimes it is distance.

Sometimes it is a clear limit held with kindness.

Bring reflection into family and community

Our closest relationships often reveal the places where healing is most needed.

Family can hold love, history, grief, belonging, and unresolved patterns at the same time.

Community can offer strength and connection while also requiring patience, accountability, and repair.

Right relationship does not mean avoiding disagreement.

It means learning how to remain human within disagreement.

We can listen before defending ourselves.

We can ask what we may not yet understand.

We can make room for perspectives that have not always been centered.

We can distinguish between a person’s worth and the impact of their actions.

We can apologize without turning the conversation toward our own discomfort.

We can forgive without pretending that harm did not occur.

Forgiveness is not permission for continued harm.

It is not the removal of boundaries.

It is not a demand that healing happen on someone else’s schedule.

Forgiveness may begin with releasing the belief that the past must control every future choice.

Repair is often more practical.

It may include naming what happened, taking responsibility, changing a behaviour, returning to the conversation, or accepting that trust must be rebuilt slowly.

This is how relationship becomes lived practice.

Not through declarations.

Through consistent action.

Let ceremony enter ordinary life

Ceremony can help us remember that life is more than productivity.

It can return our attention to gratitude, responsibility, connection, and presence.

Ceremony may be formal and community-held.

It may also be a small practice that helps us enter the day with intention.

We might step outside before checking our messages.

We might offer thanks for the food before eating.

We might sit quietly with a cup of tea and remember the people, beings, and places that made that moment possible.

We might pause at the threshold of our home and choose how we want to enter.

The form matters less than the relationship being honoured.

A daily ritual becomes meaningful when it changes how we move.

Ceremony is not an escape from responsibility.

It prepares us to meet responsibility with greater clarity.

Practise gratitude as attention

Gratitude is more than a positive thought.

It is a way of noticing relationship.

When we give thanks for water, we remember dependence.

When we give thanks for food, we remember labour, land, weather, animals, plants, and the hands involved in bringing nourishment to us.

When we give thanks for family or community, we remember that our lives are shaped by others.

Gratitude can soften entitlement.

It can interrupt the assumption that everything exists for our use.

It can help us see the more-than-human world as a living field of relationship rather than a collection of resources.

Gratitude also makes service more sustainable.

We are not serving from superiority.

We are participating in reciprocity.

The question becomes:

What has been given to me, and how can I respond with care?

Extend responsibility to the Earth

The Earth is not a background to human life.

It is the living context that makes life possible.

Our relationship with land, water, air, plants, animals, and seasons is shaped by daily choices.

We can reduce waste.

We can learn where our food comes from.

We can care for the places where we live.

We can support Indigenous-led stewardship and land-based initiatives.

We can approach the land with humility rather than assuming access is the same as belonging.

We can ask what our responsibilities are before asking what we can take.

These choices may appear small.

They are not insignificant.

A single decision does not repair every broken system, but repeated decisions shape habits, households, organizations, and communities.

Care becomes culture through practice.

Remember spirit and future generations

Right relationship includes what we cannot always measure.

Spirit.

Ancestral presence.

The teachings carried through story, place, language, and memory.

It also includes those who have not yet arrived.

Future generations are part of the ethical horizon of our choices.

What are we passing forward through our words?

What patterns are we normalizing?

What knowledge are we protecting?

What kind of relationship with land, family, and community are we making possible?

Integration asks us to carry teachings into action.

It is where insight becomes behaviour.

Where ceremony meets the calendar.

Where healing becomes visible in how we speak, spend, work, rest, parent, lead, and participate.

This is the movement from understanding to responsibility.

From intention to embodiment.

From personal transformation to collective possibility.

A simple rhythm for right relationship

A daily practice can be simple enough to return to.

In the morning, notice.

What is your body telling you?

What intention will guide your choices today?

During the day, pause.

Before speaking or acting, ask what this moment requires.

More listening?

A boundary?

A repair?

A practical act of service?

At the end of the day, reflect.

Where did you move toward connection?

Where did you create harm or distance?

What can you acknowledge, repair, release, or carry forward?

This rhythm does not need to become another demand.

It is an invitation.

A way to keep returning.

An invitation to continue

Everyday Intentions: Indigenous Wisdom for Healing, Integration and Intentional Living brings together teachings, reflective practices, ceremony, and the Heart Resonance Framework as an invitation to live with greater awareness and connection.

The book is not a promise of instant transformation.

It is a companion for the ongoing work.

The work of noticing.

The work of healing.

The work of choosing.

The work of returning to right relationship, one intentional step at a time.

Everyday Intentions is Available Now.

You can learn more at cherylmatthew.ca, buy worldwide through Books2Read, or purchase on Amazon.

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May the teachings meet you in the ordinary places.

May your choices strengthen relationship.

May what you practise today become part of what future generations inherit.