You Who Are In My Stories

Sage down, and prayer up. The sunrise singers have come for you.

You Who Are In My Stories Words Facing West

Growing Up Native American and Dancing to Remember

It’s powwow weekend in my community, in our corner of Native America. Now I'm a grandmother, and we gather strength from our toes, rooted in soil memories, with our strong arms carrying baskets of culture. 

A few years ago I moved away from the land and people who raised and shaped me. Now I’m living near my grandkids on the Northern California Coast. A guest on this good Native land, walking gently, beginning my passage into elderhood, while this Indigenous landscape teaches me who I am. 

This morning while mending the fringe on my dance shall, the shall that Auntie helped me make so many years ago, I’m falling back in time. Going home in my mind. Remembering, my youth, teen years, the twenty something trying years, motherhood and middle age, when I gathered with friends and family under a bead blue sky... read more

Growing Up Native American and Dancing to Remember Words Facing West

I've Kind of Found My Rhythm

For the longest time I felt an ending calling me. This past year I knew for sure it was time to stop publishing essays at Writing, Reading and Living. I began writing the blog in 2009 and feel deep roots. I plan to leave the site up for as long as free blogger exists, but the winds of change are sending me in new directions. I took a long break because I didn’t feel ready to move into a new writing space, but I also knew that if I didn’t begin publishing in a new space soon, it would make it harder to go back. You know the picture: vacation time, no writing deadlines, a great big field to wander in. At first it feels glorious and as the weeks stretch into months the lost days begin and the tormented writing soul begs to go home. 

 

In December 2025 I moved into a new writing space. Words Facing West (Substack)

 

I’m at home here at Earth and the Great Sea, and I plan to remain here. This online journal is my inner pond, my inner well, and the free-flowing place where writing makes a broth from my thoughts and experiences. 

But I don't share my polished essays here, it's not my goal for these pages. I view it the way my write-friend Patricia explains within her blogging pages. "This space isn't about performance or expectations. It is writing in its house clothes." 

 

It’s a cleaned up version of the raw, rough draft journal writings I scribble daily in my spiral note book. When I write in my journal often writing magic happens. Because almost all of the essays and memoirs I write and are accepted for publication in books and literary journals have grown into being from something I have written in my journal. 

 

Yet I don’t want to always be performing when I write. There is also a magic I’m able to tap into with journal writing that plants seeds. For me the journal writing wandering path leads to an inner quietude with a freedom to explore my real-life journey, and an open door for readers to ponder their own thoughts and mine.

 

A Winter Solstice Love Story

For forty-three years I lived on the Central California Coast in an area that makes up the traditional Chumash homeland. In those beautiful days our solstice celebrations were rooted in the traditional ways of the Chumash. 

 

Four years ago, I moved away, away from the land and people who raised and shaped me. Now I’m living near my grandchildren on the Northern California Coast. Everything is still new for me, unfamiliar. I’m walking gently while this Indigenous California landscape in Ohlone territory teaches me who I am. 

For the record, I’m not Chumash. I’m mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German descent, with ties to Korean. And I hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in my heart. This is their heritage, their life blood, and their landscape of time. And for all Native people Solstice is a time to honor the connection to our ancestors, to the rhythm of nature and our continuing deepening ties. 

In my bones I remember, and I can still hear and feel the slap of the wansaks’—a musical instrument made from the branch of an elderberry—beat out a steady rhythm and a mix of laughing voices of my friends gathered contrast with the drift of fog and the heavy surf pounding. Lanterns are lit against the darkening evening and a fire is built, where storytelling takes place. Salmon is on the grill, potatoes are roasting, and the picnic table is loaded with more food. We are honoring solstice, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day and the longest night of the year. For people throughout the ages—from the ancient Egyptians and Celts to the Hopi—midwinter has been a time of ritual, reflection, and renewal. 

Solstices happen twice a year, around June 21 and again around December 21. The date is not fixed, it varies; the December Solstice can take place on December 20, 21, 22, 23. While we usually think of the whole day as the Solstice, it actually takes place at a specific moment when the Sun is precisely overhead the Tropic of Capricorn. Solstice helps us cultivate a deeper connection to nature and to all of the things that matter most to us. It’s a time for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. Prayers and rituals set forth a plan of life for the coming year, ceremonially turning back the sun toward its summer path. 

Throughout history, honoring the solstice has been a way to renew our connection with each other and with acts of goodwill, special rituals, and heightened awareness. Solstice is also reserved for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. It’s a period for quiet reflection, turning inward, slowing down and appreciating the day, the hour, and each moment. 

While we don’t know how long people have been celebrating the solstice, we do know that ancient cultures built stone structures designed to align with the sun at specific times, and in ancient times the winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. There was an emphasis on the fall harvest and storing food for winter. 

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind. Tonight as we near Winter Solstice, with a December moon above me, and the only light I can see, I’m falling back in time. My memories are washing over me like a series of massive waves hitting hard, without warning. As soon as I catch my breath another beautiful memory pulls me back home. My mind floats back over the years. Memories surface—and feelings that remain untouched in my heart, in that place of perpetual remembering. All those Winter Solstice nights of long ago, when we were young, and our elders walked this good earth with us, when we gathered for a good meal together, with storytelling, laughter, conversation, dance, and songs from the ancestors. Fire offerings of chia seeds, acorn flour, and berries were made, followed by prayer and ceremony. 

Now, I’m in my seventies, nearly the same age as the elder Native women who guided me, informed, instructed and shaped me into the woman I am today. I’m honoring my Indigenous community with gratitude for their love and the gift of their time they gave me, helping me give to others. 

With the night sky, dark and beautiful above, I walk toward the sea and stand silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, visions, and the strength of their faith for me to ponder. The scent of sage hangs in the air. I fill my lungs with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel and remember when we were together long ago.

First published at Words Facing West

terratrevor.substack.com