Terra Trevor: A new chapter begins

A new chapter begins

Yesterday was the day all of our belongings were loaded into the U Haul the truck and into our cars. I walked through the empty house thanking the space and saying goodbye to the home that sheltered our family for three decades.

Arrived at sunset, after a lovely long drive. The time alone driving settled my thoughts and I had a calm sense of knowing I was right where I was supposed to be.

Today I’m beginning to settle in, allowing the well of emotions to wash over me, with an equal amount of excitement for what might be ahead. A sense of release and trust, also somewhat overwhelmed, with a base of calm strength.

Home for a while will be a luxurious 26-foot travel trailer, parked by the barn. We have family nearby, and neighboring homes also nearby, so it's not as isolated as it appears in the photo.

First priority is to get the garden going again after the long winter break. I woke up to a fog softened morning and we went to the nursery “Mountain Feed & Farm Supply” located about 30 minutes away, and that’s when it hit me in a wildly wonderful way that I’m a very long way from city culture. I think I'm going to love living here in the mountains while we figure out where we want to live. If we decide to stay in the mountains, I have a good idea of what might be ahead. But if we choose nearby areas, where homes are less expensive, I will be dividing my life between the mountains and the ocean.

Deep breath. I pray for a peaceful transition. I wish only for peace, and I also pray to welcome what each day actually does bring.

Love to all of my friends. Deep bow. Big smile and blessings to all lifeforms.

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

"Terra Trevor’s Pushing up the Sky is a revelation of the struggles and triumphs packed into the hyphens between Korean and Native American and American. From her, we learn that adoption can best be mutual, that the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child’s ways. With unflinching honesty and unfailing love, Trevor details the risks and heartaches of taking in, the bittersweetness of letting go, and the everlasting bonds that grow between them all. With ‘Pushing up the Sky’, the ‘literature of adoption’ comes of age as literature, worthy of an honored place in the human story." —Robert Bensen, editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education

Pushing up the Sky: A Memoir