The leaves on the trees toss in the wind. Already they have turned a brilliant orange, bleeding red. It’s autumn in Dixon, New Mexico, my heart's home.
In the fireplace, flames leap up and shadows began to slope across the wall. A lone coyote yips, sharp and high. An answer comes, closer this time and then a wild chorus of wavering howls. The dog settles on her haunches, her ears shift like antennae, then she lowers herself on the floor, still listening.
I look into the flames for a long time. Following Hurricane Maria weeks later still Puerto Rico is without power. Sunday night. Another mass shooting in America, this time in Las Vegas. And my health insurance premium was raised, again, now it's well over a thousand dollars a month. Maybe I can trim down my grocery budget, use less electricity and make a tank of gas last longer, to make things come out even.
The light from the opening in the skylight window is becoming diffuse and gray. I sit by the fire until the last log of the night burns down, and the fire falls to pieces, thinking about the night I was on my way home, driving through peaceful streets filled with people on bicycles, walking along the sidewalk, meeting up with friends at outdoor cafes. The atmosphere was relaxed, carefree. And I was unaware the route I had chosen to drive to get home would 4 hours later become a national crime scene, and that a heavily armed shooter would drive through these same streets and would open fire in 9 locations, killing 6 people and wounding 13 others. And about the HuffPost editorial I published, and the hundreds of repulsive comments that poured in from NRA supporters.
I want gun control. I want Puerto Rico to have what it needs. I want children and old people and poor people to have health insurance. I want something better than this.
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
