The Legacy of Hope Foundation Presents – Roots & Hoots Episode 35: Featuring Brenda MacIntyre

(Ottawa, ON) October 18, 2022 – On this week’s episode of Roots and Hoots, host Gordon Spence is pleased to be joined by Medicine Song Woman, Brenda MacIntyre . Brenda is a Juno winning artist and keynote speaker. She is also a mother, a friend, and a grief worker. Through her signature Medicine Song healing work and Picking up the Pieces: 13 Moon Resilience and Reawakening Program, she helps women manage grief, trauma and chronic pain.?

In this episode, Brenda talks with Gordon about her journey to understand and connect with her identity and also about her journey of learning how to walk with grief. Having been adopted at a young age, Brenda did not know the origins of her story for many years. Having lost her adopted parents as a teenager, she has known and felt grief in her own life, and it is from this place of learning to process it, that she has been able to grow the skills to help herself and help others.?

Brenda shares so generously about her artist’s journey. As a shy child, she talks about overcoming this to pursue her dream of becoming a singer and she and Gordon discuss the undeniable healing powers of music. Since 2011, she has been doing the work of what she calls spiritual mentoring. She speaks of the murder of her son in 2016, and how her pain gave birth to the album Picking Up the Pieces, because she needed something to keep her on the healing path. She shares how the feelings of grief and anger when they are put into the music, become a part of the healing medicine. Her album Picking Up the Pieces has 13 songs for each of Grandmother Moon’s cycles in a year. Brenda shares how the creation of this album came as a spiritual download, and is what led to the 13-Moon Resilience and Reawakening Program. She describes the program which centres around the music as well as embodiment activities.

Brenda and Gordon discuss the grief that is so prevalent within Indigenous communities, with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S). Brenda shares her experience with grief saying: “You just walk with it and find ways to do that…That’s why I created the program because I realized, there are some pain and grief that you can’t, it’s just not going to go away. It will shift and move over time, but something like that is too deep…it is very different.” Brenda is able to help others because she understands the pain and it is through this understanding, that she has developed tools to heal. The episode concludes on the topic of Reconciliation, or as Brenda puts it ReconciliAction. There is a need, she says, to sit with the discomfort and letting it be a guide through difficult conversations with loved ones who may not understand the history and lived realities of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Brenda ends the episode with the title track off her album Picking Up the Pieces and we are so grateful for the gift of her music, and her life story.??

The LHF is a national, Indigenous-led, charitable organization that has been working to promote healing and Reconciliation in Canada for over 22 years. The LHF’s goal is to educate and raise awareness about the history and impacts on 7 generations of Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) children, their families and communities from attending Residential and/or Day School. By fostering empathy and understanding, LHF encourages people to address discrimination and injustice and contributes to the equity, dignity, and respectful treatment of Indigenous Peoples.?

The LHF has more than 30 educational exhibitions that promote awareness of Indigenous history that are free to borrow and is working on making exhibitions available online. LHF also has curricula for K-12 and for adults, along with Activity Guides, Workshops and Training, and Podcasts all aimed at educating Canadians about Indigenous history and the shared history of Residential and Day Schools, the Sixties Scoop, etc. In order to offer solutions on how to be an ally. The LHF works to develop empathy and understanding so as to eliminate racism against Indigenous Peoples.

For Media Inquiries, please contact:?

Teresa Edwards, B.A., LL.B./J.D., Executive Director & In-House Legal Counsel, LHF Email:[email protected] Tel: 613-237-4806 ext. 303?

To learn about Brenda MacIntyre’s work, please visit:? ? www.medicinesongwoman.com