(In case you’d forgotten.)

The people to be are the ones to come after us who are not yet here. First Nations people call them the seventh generation. The land does not belong to us, it belongs to them, and we are only here to take care of it for the time being. We are to ensure that the abundance and beauty of the land remain for those to come. This belief speaks volumes about respect. Respect for the land that sustains us, and respect for all other living beings. For without it, we are all forever lost.

The question awakened me. What do I have to offer to the world? I didn’t know what my answer was at first.

But then a voice whispered in my mind three words: Love, truth and storyteller.

Then I felt my throat get tight. I couldn’t possibly say that in front of a room full of people. They would laugh, they would not understand. But then I realized my pounding heart and sweaty palms had nothing to do with them. I was scared to own what was mine, what I had to offer the world. That would make me horribly vulnerable.

But you can’t connect without being vulnerable.

I am a storyteller who writes the truth with love. Truth is scary and ugly sometimes. But love softens it, moulds it into something broken but still beautiful. What will I do for the people to be? Write. And hope that somehow my words make the world a better place for the people now and for the people to come. We are only safe guarding our home, after all.

What will YOU do for the people to be?

I had a dream catcher as a child. It hung over my bed amongst the flowered wallpaper. Soft brown leather wrapping and wrapping. A string weaving an intricate web dotted with pretty beads. Feathers trailing from the bottom of the circle. It kept away bad dreams usually.

Sometimes I’d just sit and hold it. My little fingers would trace the web, trying to find a pattern. Around and around the web. Circle, circle, circle. Life always moving…even if we don’t see any sort of pattern or direction.

We can act like a dream catcher in our waking moments. Welcoming each new day with the sunshine and letting the mistakes and aches of yesterday fade. Allowing ourselves to enjoy the simple moments and be open to the good all around us. While letting go of our hold on darkness…releasing our problems and not sweating the small stuff and trusting.

Pretend you’re a dream catcher for a moment and see what magic happens…

I haven’t had a dream catcher for years. I feel the need to find one again.

but i wish anyways

i wish for light and more light

for long hot summer days, sun kissed skin, peaches warm from sun, juice trickling down my arm, sitting in your red truck, smell of leather, thunderstorms

to never fade away

i smile at a dandelion flower

they’re too pretty to be weeds

A voice in your head whispers: “Rock the boat. Don’t be afraid to let the words…controlled…subdued…contained…drift away on the breeze like a leaf in autumn. You have to rock the boat. You have to grow. You have to not be afraid.”

And you do.

You make it back to land, clothes hanging limp, gasping for air, but free.

Other times…memory waits to trip one at the door…or muses in a desk drawer. Memories. I sit here thinking…its funny what our mind remembers. The moments that are stored away without us knowing. Its funny too what we don’t remember. Or try not to.

I remember…warm milk with rice and sugar at Grandma’s. All the many little houses she moved in and out of when I was little. I remember…racing down the hill in our backyard in the wagon (miraculously no injuries came of it). And building fairy houses. I remember that afternoon when it poured rain and my sister and I ran out in our pyjamas to dance in it. I remember…glimpses too. Small moments that I can’t quite place.

I don’t wear black. But I play melancholy piano music.

And I light candles when there is no light.

You. Memories. Remember. Too.

of dreams,

of fragments,

bits of colour

like stained glass window

shattered across floor.

I step on shards.

they bite skin,

sing out ‘stop, stop.’

I don’t.

fragments become apart of me.

bits of dreams,

I chase them

out of day dreams

out of grey

into a soft pink blush.

Even as my feet

are left scarred.