Eventually, we all make it home, and we each make an individual path by any means. - Joy Harjo

WASHING MY MOTHER’S BODY I never got to wash my mother’s body when she died. I return to take care of her in memory. That’s how I make peace when things are left undone. I go back and open the door. I step in to make my ritual. To do what should have been done, what needs to be fixed so that my spirit can move on, So that the children and grandchildren are not caught in a knot Of regret they do not understand.

It will never be right as long as you are angry, I wanted to say, but who was I to say, because I was a child. And because I was a child I cowered under the table to hide when he started coming my way in anger. My cowering made him even angrier, because I was not brave at all.

But this wasn’t enough to sustain the need for artistic expression. I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. I felt like I had left my dreams of being