"Letters I Never Sent" - To My Clients

A letter for the young people I walked beside—and for those still doing this work in quiet, sacred ways.

Some of you sat in silence, arms folded tight across your chest, eyes glancing toward the clock.

Some of you cracked jokes too quickly— the kind that let us know you were watching everything.

A few of you sat sideways in the chair, hood up, like you might disappear if no one looked too hard. I remember those group sessions in the common room. Buzzing lights. Creaky chairs.

Sometimes, someone would talk.

Sometimes not.

Sometimes the silence said more than words ever could.

You met with me in one-on-one sessions week after week. Some of you for months. Some for years.

You sat across from me with everything you were carrying— trauma, silence, grief, resistance, hope— and you placed it down between us, one thread at a time.

You didn’t always speak. Sometimes you stared straight through me, or counted the minutes until our session was over. But other times— you shared the real things. The heavy things. The things no one had ever asked you about before.

And when you did, you let me witness it.

That trust was sacred to me. It still is.

I remember the sound of your shoes on the floor, the way your voice wavered before you steadied it, how you sometimes started with, “Okay, this is dumb but…”

But it never was.

You spoke about nights without sleep. About foster homes and placements, and gaps in your life story that no one had ever helped you fill in. You talked about survival like it was routine. Because for you, it was.

I brought in smudge bowls and lit sage in the room where we met, soft smoke curling between us like a quiet ceremony. We talked about medicines, about energy, about what it means to cleanse not just our minds, but the hard feelings stuck in our hearts.

When we could, we left the city. We gathered with Elders under the stars, sat around the fire before entering the sweat lodge, offering tobacco, pouring water, singing low songs in the dark.

Some of you went in unsure. Some came out in silence. But something always shifted.

These moments, the ones rooted in our ways, our medicines, our remembering, they mattered too.

Healing doesn’t just happen on couches and charts.

Sometimes it comes through smoke and cedar and stars.

I sat beside you in emergency rooms at 2 a.m., the fluorescent lights buzzing like bees in a jar. You stared at the wall while nurses asked questions, and I sometimes answered for you when you were too sad to speak. And when they asked, “Are you the guardian?”

I said yes.

We were your guardians while you lived in our treatment center.

And that role, temporary as it was, was sacred to me.

Just someone who tried to stand between you and more harm.

It was my honour to try to protect you.

I sat in courtrooms and spoke your name. Tried to make your story real to people who only saw paper. Tried to explain that running away was sometimes the safest thing you could do. That anger was often grief in disguise. That you were trying.

I remember walking to my car after some of those sessions, keys already in my hand, but not turning the ignition.

Just sitting there. Breathing. Sometimes crying.

Not because I was sad for you. But because I had seen too much of your pain and not enough of your protection. Because you had let me in, and I was carrying some of it home with me, like a stone in my pocket.

Some of you wrote me notes. Folded pieces of paper slipped across my desk, or handed to me as I left at the end of the day. You listed what you’d lived through like it was just the facts— physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, family addiction, too many homes to count. You thanked me for being someone you could trust.

I kept those notes.

All of them.

I held them carefully. I still do.

If you’re out there now— older, softer maybe, or still finding your way—

I hope you know:

You were never just a case. You were never too much. You are a human being. And every human life deserves to be treated with dignity, love, and care.

Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for letting me walk with you. It was never something I took lightly.

I hold you close in my heart and mind.

Always.

—Julie

A Note for the Helpers

If you’ve ever worked in these spaces—

if you’ve sat across from someone holding more pain than they could name,

if you’ve waited quietly for the words to come,

if you’ve walked out of a session and wept in your car

because you saw too much, and not enough protection— I see you.

I know what it costs to care in places where systems are broken, where the work asks you to hold steady with nothing but your voice and your presence.

I know what it’s like to carry someone else’s story home in your body. To pray you said the right thing. To wonder if it was enough. This letter is for you, too.

You are doing sacred work.

Even when it’s messy.

Even when no one sees it.

Even when the outcomes are unclear.

Thank you for walking beside others in their darkest chapters.

Thank you for being someone they could trust, even briefly.

You may never know the full impact of your presence, but it mattered.

It always mattered.