Wind and Raven
Healing Pathways, recovery, story, and the long work of becoming whole.
Wind and Raven is the public home of Steve R. Patterson’s Healing Pathways work: videos, reflections, books, older writings, and future conversations about recovery, illness, survival, dependency, identity, meaning, and transformation.
This site began during a very different season of life. Some of the writing here goes back to the years when Steve was living with end-stage liver disease, liver cancer, and the uncertainty of whether he would survive long enough to receive a liver transplant. Those older writings remain part of the archive. They are not polished branding pieces. They are part of the record.
What began as a search for meaning during illness eventually became the foundation for This Is How It Feels to Heal, and later helped shape the Healing Pathways body of work. Wind and Raven now carries that work forward in a more public, reflective, and conversational form.
Wind and Raven on YouTube | Valkyrie Counseling Group | StevePatterson.online
Healing Pathways
Healing Pathways is a narrative-based, integrative body of work for people who are trying to make sense of what they have survived and decide who they are becoming now.
It works with story, body, memory, meaning, relationship, intention, and the deeper process of rebuilding a life after collapse. It does not separate the mind, body, and spirit into disconnected parts. It treats them as one living system.
The Healing Pathways work grew out of illness, recovery, clinical practice, group facilitation, spiritual inquiry, and lived experience. It is not a formula and not a promise. It is a set of paths, questions, practices, and reflections for people doing serious inner work.
On the Wind and Raven YouTube channel, Steve will walk through the Healing Pathways material chapter by chapter. These videos will explore recovery, dependency, identity, story, grief, illness, survival, meaning, embodiment, and the slow work of becoming whole.
Watch the Healing Pathways videos on YouTube
The Archive
Wind and Raven is also an archive of the period when Steve was sick, searching, recovering, and trying to understand what had happened to his life.
Some of the older blog posts and reflections were written during or near the years of liver failure, liver cancer, transplant, and recovery. Some came later, as the questions changed from survival to meaning, identity, and rebuilding.
That archive remains here because it matters. It shows the roots of the work before it became a book, a framework, or a program. It is the record of a person trying to stay alive, tell the truth, and find language for an experience that did not fit neatly inside medical, religious, or clinical categories.
The older material may not always match the current direction of Wind and Raven. That is part of the point. It shows the evolution.
This Is How It Feels to Heal
This Is How It Feels to Heal is the book that came out of the illness, transplant, recovery, and spiritual inquiry period that originally shaped Wind and Raven.
It is a lived account of illness, identity, death, survival, recovery, and the work of rebuilding a life after everything familiar had fallen away.
The book is not a medical guide. It is not a clinical manual. It is a personal record of collapse, survival, and transformation.
View This Is How It Feels to Heal on Amazon
The Healing Pathways Books
The Healing Pathways body of work includes two companion books:
- The Healing Pathways Companion
- The Healing Pathways Facilitator’s Guide
The Healing Pathways Companion is written for the individual reader. It invites reflection, journaling, narrative practice, and personal exploration. It is for people working through recovery, identity, meaning, grief, dependency, illness, transition, or the deeper question of what comes next.
The Healing Pathways Facilitator’s Guide is written for group leaders, counselors, recovery coaches, and facilitators who want to bring the Healing Pathways framework into group or community settings.
Wind and Raven is where the public-facing, reflective, and personal side of Healing Pathways will continue to grow. Valkyrie Counseling Group remains the professional and publishing home for the books and facilitator resources.
View The Healing Pathways Program on Amazon |
Visit Valkyrie Counseling Group
Future Conversations
Wind and Raven will also become the home for future public conversations about recovery, healing, dependency, survival, identity, story, meaning, and change.
These conversations will be free, reflective, and open-ended. They are not counseling sessions and not treatment groups. They are a place to talk honestly about the kind of questions that often come after collapse, illness, addiction, grief, transition, or reinvention.
The central question remains simple:
What happens when everything you thought you were falls away, and you have to decide who you are going to become?
What Wind and Raven Is — and Is Not
Wind and Raven is a place for reflection, education, story, spiritual inquiry, and public conversation.
It is not a medical site, not a counseling platform, not a treatment program, and not a place for clinical diagnosis, crisis support, or professional therapy.
Older versions of Wind and Raven included more direct shamanic language and various offerings connected to spiritual work. That material has been removed or reduced. The current direction is simpler: preserve the archive, continue the Healing Pathways work, and create a public space for serious conversations about healing, survival, recovery, and transformation.
If you are in crisis or need clinical, medical, or mental health support, contact a licensed professional, emergency service, or crisis resource in your area.