Closing the Circle

Closing the Circle

The Cottonwood is still standing. I know this the same way I understand things I haven’t seen but still feel deeply inside me. There’s a tree at Red Bridge, or one very similar, part of a lineage of trees that learn from their mothers. These trees extend their roots toward unseen water, needing no one's acknowledgment, and that tree remains standing strong.

Science has now confirmed what Indigenous knowledge has long understood - trees don’t exist in isolation. Healing also does not happen alone. Beneath the surface, mycelium connects the roots of both thriving and struggling plants, nourishing them all. I believe our memories work similarly. Our stories are not isolated events hidden away in separate corners; they are interconnected, reaching out to one another even in darkness. The story I carry is linked to the experiences of women, and together they intersect with the experiences of every woman involved in this study, as well as the stories of daughters, fathers, Cottonwood trees, and the springs that continue to flow, even when we are uncertain they will.

Closing this circle means that I carry these stories with me now, honoring those who survived and those who continue to search for their way home. This project was not just an academic exercise; it was a reckoning and a return. It involved revisiting the part of myself where the child still stood at the fence line, unaware of what she was truly learning. Finally, I turned to face her and said, "I see you. I understand what you were holding. You were not alone in this, and you do not have to bear it all anymore.”

With newfound clarity and deep reverence, I hold the hope that sharing these truths creates a pathway toward healing for our families and our communities, lighting the way for those still searching for their own way home. Healing begins through remembering. And remembering, I have learned, is never only ours. When one of us returns, we help make it a little safer for the next person to follow. In our small and imperfect way, we become like a mother tree, sending nourishment through the darkness to those we may never even meet.

That is enough. That is more than enough.

Closing Prayer

And so, I end here, the way that the Elder taught me to end. I go outside, in my mind if not always in my body, and I find the tree. I place the tobacco at its base, at that quiet threshold where bark becomes root and root becomes earth and earth becomes everything, and I speak honestly to whatever is listening, to the spirits, to the ancestors, to the women whose stories live in these pages, to the fathers we loved and the children we once were.

I am grateful for this work.

I am grateful to those who trusted me with their truth.

I am grateful for the understanding that came slowly, in pieces, the way spring always comes, incrementally and then all at once.

I ask that what was shared here travels in a good way. It finds the people who need it. It opens something in the reader, the way it opened something in me. That our families, our communities, our children who are still small and still learning what the world is, might inherit something lighter than what we were given.

I ask that the stories we told together not stop with us.

I ask for healing. For the ones still inside it. For the ones just beginning to find their way out. For the ones who loved their fathers and didn't have the words for it.

I put the tobacco down.

The circle is closed.

Turgruyahk. Thank you. It is enough. It is good.

"The goal of Indigenous Storywork is not to arrive at conclusions but to deepen our relationship with questions that matter, questions about belonging, about healing, about what we owe the stories that have shaped us."

— To Archibald (2008), and a lifetime of learning what she meant.