Three times I was rejected yesterday and I am thankful. Job interview didn’t feel right, yet because of needed money I would have accepted, and thankfully I was rejected. A while back I was invited to sit on two panels at a conference. After I said yes my heart began telling me no. Thankfully both session proposals submitted were rejected.
Rejection feels wonderful, like Ravens flying through my mind, a soothing feeling spread over me like sun-warmed rainwater floating down my neck and shoulders and glided over me like feather-down wings. Instead of feeling chained to the past, I am walking forward toward my future filled with gratitude.
We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.
With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something.
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“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.” —Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence
