About Us

 Creator & Facilitator of The Medicine Within
Healing • Recovery • Reconnection

I’m Patricia Sawan | addictions professional |  trauma-informed facilitator | life coach | program developer, and a woman who believes healing doesn’t mean becoming someone new. It means finding your way back to who you were before life convinced you otherwise.

For more than 27 years, I’ve walked alongside people navigating addiction, trauma, grief, anger, relationships, and those messy life moments nobody gave us an instruction manual for.

My approach combines professional training, lived experience, somatic awareness, emotional regulation, connection, culture, humour, and a whole lot of “Okay… but what is really going on here?”

I created The Medicine Within because I don't believe people are broken. I believe behaviours have stories, anger has something to say, grief is love that has changed form, and our bodies often know what is happening long before our mouths find the words.

My signature workshops include  When the Spirit Remembers - 90-Day Community Recovery & Wellness Program,  When the Storm Speaks - Understanding Anger & Emotional Regulation , and Walking With Our Ancestors: When Love Changes Form.

I won't tell you healing is always pretty. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it's powerful, and sometimes… Trish happens.

But underneath it all is the same message:

You carry the Medicine within
Let's find our way back to it.

 Addictions Counsellor | Land-Based Facilitator

Dwayne is a Cree man whose connection to the land, family, and traditional ways of living was shaped from a young age. Growing up close to both sides of his family, he spent much of his time with his grandparents, helping with chores, tending cattle, gardening, and learning the value of hard work, responsibility, and caring for the people around him. Although his grandparents have now journeyed to the Spirit World, the teachings they shared continue to guide the way he lives and works today.

An outdoorsman at heart, Dwayne has a lifelong connection to hunting, fishing, gardening, and being on the land. He is bilingual and speaks and understands Cree, with much of the language returning naturally when he is surrounded by Cree speakers.

As a Land-Based Facilitator, Dwayne brings more than outdoor skills, he brings lived teachings about connection, responsibility, providing for others, and learning through doing. His approach reflects the understanding that the land itself can be a teacher and a place where people can slow down, reconnect, build confidence, and remember strengths that have always been within them.

A hardworking provider and natural protector, Dwayne believes strongly in looking after family and community. Within The Medicine Within, he helps create a land-based space where participants can experience culture and connection through practical activities, traditional knowledge, conversation, and time on the land, reminding us that healing does not always happen sitting across from someone in a room. Sometimes, the medicine is found by returning to the land, our teachings, our people, and ourselves.