I Was Given Six Months to Live. This Is How It Feels to Heal.

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I Was Given Six Months to Live. This Is How It Feels to Heal.

Why this Wind and Raven video belongs in the Steve Patterson archive.

This post is being published here on StevePatterson.online because this site is the central hub for my books, podcasts, essays, media projects, recovery frameworks, digital legacy, and public work.

The video itself lives on the Wind and Raven YouTube channel, where I am beginning a new chapter of public work around Healing Pathways, recovery, illness, survival, identity, and transformation. But the story behind the video reaches across everything I have built since I survived liver failure, cancer, transplant, and the long process of rebuilding my life.

This is not just another video link. It is part of the record.

In this one-hour opening chapter of the renewed Wind and Raven project, I return to the story behind my book This Is How It Feels to Heal: terminal liver failure, cancer, hepatic encephalopathy, transplant, recovery, shamanic practice, and the search for meaning when everything familiar falls apart.

The video begins with a blunt fact: I was told I had six months to live. What happened after that became the foundation for much of my later work, including Wind and Raven, This Is How It Feels to Heal, Healing Pathways, and the recovery frameworks now connected through Valkyrie Counseling Group.

What This Video Is About

This video begins a deeper conversation about illness, identity, survival, healing, and what it means to rebuild your life after being told it may be over.

I talk about pieces of the story from my diagnosis in 2010, the years of hepatic encephalopathy, the “ceremony of the body,” my connection to shamanic healing, and the mindset that helped me keep going when the medical story around me seemed to be closing in.

It is also the beginning of a new era for Wind and Raven. The older Wind and Raven site began during the years when I was sick, searching, and trying to understand what had happened to my life. Some of that archive still exists. Some of it has been removed. The current version is clearer: Wind and Raven is now the public home for the reflective and personal side of Healing Pathways.

Why I Am Posting It Here

StevePatterson.online is not just a promotional site. It is the map of my work.

That work includes UGASports and the early internet. It includes Free Will Burning. It includes my books. It includes Recovery Café, Valkyrie Counseling Group, Wind and Raven, Healing Pathways, transplant survival, addiction recovery, digital publishing, cultural analysis, and the long process of building a life outside the usual script.

This video belongs here because it connects several of those threads:

  • the illness and transplant story behind This Is How It Feels to Heal;
  • the early Wind and Raven archive;
  • the spiritual and shamanic inquiry that shaped my recovery period;
  • the Healing Pathways framework that grew out of that experience;
  • and the larger question that continues to run through my work: what happens when everything you thought you were falls away?

That question is not theoretical for me. It is the question I had to live.

Chapter Markers from the Video

  • 00:00 — Introduction to the new era of Wind and Raven
  • 00:45 — Why this story begins with This Is How It Feels to Heal
  • 02:00 — Terminal liver failure and the diagnosis
  • 04:00 — “I don’t buy your myth of death”
  • 06:00 — Life before illness: Grateful Dead, online business, and isolation
  • 09:00 — Hepatic encephalopathy and losing mental clarity
  • 13:00 — Walking out of AA and choosing a new path
  • 17:00 — Becoming vegan and rebuilding the body
  • 20:00 — “Who speaks for the liver?”
  • 23:00 — The ceremony of the body
  • 27:00 — Shamanism, rune work, and spiritual healing
  • 31:00 — Why Wind and Raven begins again now

Where This Fits Now

Wind and Raven is where I will continue the public-facing Healing Pathways videos and reflections.

Valkyrie Counseling Group is where the professional and facilitator-facing work lives, including the ASAM Level 1 Facilitator’s Guide and group facilitation material.

StevePatterson.online is where the whole map comes together.

This video is one piece of that map. It is personal history, but it is also origin material. It shows where the later books, frameworks, and conversations came from.

Related Links

Important Note

This video is a personal narrative and reflection. It is not medical advice, clinical treatment, counseling, diagnosis, crisis support, or a substitute for professional care.

If you are facing a medical, mental health, or addiction-related crisis, contact a qualified professional, emergency service, or crisis resource in your area.

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