When Carrie Armstrong was a young girl, she was taught the teachings of plants by her Metis grandmother. She remembers her grandmother being very guarded and nervous, she was fearful and ashamed. Her grandmother had two sides to her – one where she shared her knowledge about plants and medicines, and the other where she was afraid her grandchildren would be taken away from her – a too familiar feeling from when her own children were taken away to an Indian Residential School. The heart of the nîpisîy mistik provides us with medicine, and each one of us is the medicine in the centre of our own medicine wheel. If our spirit has been hurt, then our nervous system will be dysregulated, and our connection to okâwîmâwaskiy becomes lost.