My mother was a revolutionary. She lived her life absolutely authentically, expressing exactly who she was and exactly how she felt?even in moments that society deemed ?inappropriate.? And that meant she felt everything as powerfully as the fire that burned inside of her, and she loved as fearlessly as the words that fell from her tongue every day.
She was a revolution of her mother, and her mother?s mother?a living, breathing example of all the mothers and grandmothers who have upheld Indigenous insurgence, claiming and making a place for themselves in systems that were seeking to terminate them.
Because of this, my mother knew struggle as deep as the land. She inherited it from her father, my mishomis. For he had learned how to be a parent from the ?teachers? who mistreated him at residential school, which created a colonial version of the Indigenous kinship system, one that was filled with dysfunction, addictions and abuse. My mother struggled as a parent, as her father had, and raised me from this place of colonial pain. But underneath all those layers of trauma, loss, sadness and violence, she was the uprising of authentic Indigenous love.
I knew, before I became a mother, it was important?vital, even?for me to find that place of Indigenous love within myself. I made the commitment to heal my relationship with my mother so that we could end this cycle of discord and abuse. I needed to ensure that my future children would have the opportunity to grow in a space of this ...