VOF Week 2 (The Dust Settles Slowly)

I have always believed the world was a beautiful place and saw the beauty in it. I know it sounds a little strange but as a child I could feel Nature and it was my friend. It was the sun on my face, the ground beneath my feet, the trees and animals, they all had a voice that spoke to me. We often played together and sometimes they gave me a gift. I could feel it and hear it in my thoughts and sometimes it would say something like close my eyes and take a step this way, 4 that way, 2 this way and now look down. Sometimes it was a flower like a Bluebell beside a tree or a wild strawberry growing in our backyard or sometimes just a rock that had shiny bits in it that sparkled.

Once when I was going to the little creek in the woods behind our house that I talked with a bear somehow. It said something like ’look up but don’t be scared since I just wanted to say hi’ and I saw it sitting there on the other side of the small creek and told my 2 sisters to look at the bear and they ran away screaming. I think this connection to Nature was part of my Aleut heritage and why I take pride in being a Native. I think I lost a lot of this when entering school and facing prejudice every day and think this is why it happens to us, so we lose this connection to Nature.

It is this connection with Nature that I think a lot of indigenous people feel and why I feel a fellowship with them. I loved looking at the atlas maps and imaging visiting all these places. I always believed that people were not bad and the trouble must arise from a bad translation. I wanted to be an interpreter once I read about them. They took what one person said and translated it so the other person could understand it too.

It was this idea that all I needed to do was help people understand each other to make the world better that eventually led me to this site. I loved the idea of it and how it seemed made just for me since it was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! While I feel like I have just climbed out of a gorge to where everyone else is and am lying there all dusty and ragged, it is a much better place then where I had been before.

I honestly believe that showing other woman how just by changing the way you feel inside yourself it will help change the world around you. Becoming a citizen journalist is one way of spreading my faith that we can do it together. Even as I type this the dust settles slowly and people can see me as I am.