My heart is healing in the most unexpected way.. and now it is the only way that i can imagine finding healing.

I've always been more at home in other cultures.
Somehow, I found everything i missed about the world of the comox valley and waldorf reverence and festival life, a deeper understanding of the people i know who live here, and a definite intense remembrance of the first place i fell for, Japan.

So after connecting with my own history - German. And accepting that I am Canadian, after all, my childhood was full of farms and lakes and being tucked in with parashut blankets. It was snow and maple syrup forests. It was friends, the best and only i would ever want. It was good and sweet - (until i grew up and was hit with the loss of what i thought it all would be) and so, yes. The land I loved, the people I loved, my mother and father and sister and brother and grandpa and grandma and cousins and aunties and uncles, and parents friends. All of my firsts in life and much of what grounds me to myself, happened between the two oceans. In a place called, Canada - although it has so many other names.

Still, something burst open and I belonged. Once again, in a place where I was a visitor - where I do not know the language or the dances. Where I have not eater what they have eaten or been where they have been. Where I do not even know where to sit or how to speak.

I belong.

Where I only have new aquaintances. 
Where I sit with sorrow and feel content.
Where the sounds made are the screams that I identify with 
and though I do not know the story I feel it's truth.

I am deeply grateful (forever and always) to the Fort Rupert Band and all the Families that welcomed me to their Potlatch, this weekend Oct 12-13 2018

It hit me like never before, that this transporting by drummers and dancers and artists and storytellers - was unwanted, interrupted, and forbidden. The treasures taken and the people completely overlooked, imprisoned, misrepresented, and unseen.

this weekend, i heard the very songs that were silenced. that is not lost on me and i can barely keep the tears away as i type this.

i love this photo. Where the light floods in and through the very heart of the totem giving the eagle or firebird the gentle touch of being seen and calling it to fly again.