I feel a thick cord. It connects my spirits to a memory that I have tried to forget. I have pretended it wasn't there, and I drank or even smoked my … - Joy Harjo

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I feel a thick cord. It connects my spirits to a memory that I have tried to forget. I have pretended it wasn't there, and I drank or even smoked my way around it when I was younger. Then I buried the memory under accomplishment. My story is stalled here, as if the cord has choked off the rest of the story and I cannot move forward. As the story maker, I have to find a way. First, I need to speak and remember what I do not want to remember. Even now, years later, when my mother is gone, even the monster is gone, I have come to understand they do not want the haunting either. They want to move on.

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About Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951) is a poet, musician, author and the first Native American United States Poet Laureate.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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Additional quotes by Joy Harjo

In my community, we are taught that leadership qualities include humility, compassion, a sense of fairness, the ability to listen, preparation and carry-through, a love for the people, and a strong spiritual center that begins with a connection to Earth.

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

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In the United terminal in Chicago at five on a Friday afternoon
The sky is breaking with rain and wind and all the flights
Are delayed forever. We will never get to where we are going
And there’s no way back to where we’ve been.

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