Like a memory from my own past, I sense her story so vividly that my breath catches. As the sun slips slowly beyond the horizon casting a mythical shadow around everything, Sings the Wind sighs and the trees replay her sorrow.
Haunting.................the pain and anguish wash over me and tears well in my pale blue eyes, the same eyes I see staring at me through time and distance.
The first time I heard Taylor Swift's song "Safe and Sound", I swear that Sings the Wind was screaming through the warm evening air. I could picture her on a grassy knoll, her hair blowing behind her as she sang into the wind. This exact scene exists in the Disney cartoon Pocahontas. My breath caught the first time I saw that movie, too.
I know the spirit of consciousness of our ancestors lives inside each of us. Recently, I came across a helpful hints guide to search for Native American ancestors, and one of the suggestions is to actually pay attention to whispered suggestions. Some people call this "your gut". Native Americans call this following a spirit guide. Working on genealogy intensively lately has put me in touch with an inner voice.
Sings the Wind is a character I developed a few years ago. At times, I can almost sense her precense. Her story is not created by me. It's hard to explain. I do not "think" about her story, rather, I feel her story. Possessing a deep sorrow, her voice is the wind. Have you ever stood silent and just listened to the wind? Like an echo through time and space, her story reaches my ears in the varying swayings of air. If I close my eyes tight enough and block out the modern world, I can almost see the story as though it were a movie I have seen. Sings the Wind longs to be "Safe and Sound". She longs for comfort and security that she never experienced in her lifetime. When she sings, she cries out for a world of abundance and safety, a world of family. I remember hearing a story from my dad about his grandmother or great grandmother who, at the last of her life when she was senile, replaying a story of horror when her tribe was rounded up and forced onto a reservation. Looking at the family tree, I know that 3 of the 4 of his great grandmothers passed before his birth. His two grandmothers survived until my father was in his late 30s. Existing documentation makes the verification of this story almost impossible, but having heard the story many times, I trust that some part of it is true.
In my family tree, I am currently working on 2 possible Native American connections: Mary Jane Williams and Mary Polly Hogshead. The timelines for each of these women or their descendants does match up with the Cherokee Trail of Tears. With each new piece of information I locate, the more I truly can hear a story play in the wind.
from Disney's Pocahontas:
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew................
Haunting.................the pain and anguish wash over me and tears well in my pale blue eyes, the same eyes I see staring at me through time and distance.
The first time I heard Taylor Swift's song "Safe and Sound", I swear that Sings the Wind was screaming through the warm evening air. I could picture her on a grassy knoll, her hair blowing behind her as she sang into the wind. This exact scene exists in the Disney cartoon Pocahontas. My breath caught the first time I saw that movie, too.
I know the spirit of consciousness of our ancestors lives inside each of us. Recently, I came across a helpful hints guide to search for Native American ancestors, and one of the suggestions is to actually pay attention to whispered suggestions. Some people call this "your gut". Native Americans call this following a spirit guide. Working on genealogy intensively lately has put me in touch with an inner voice.
Sings the Wind is a character I developed a few years ago. At times, I can almost sense her precense. Her story is not created by me. It's hard to explain. I do not "think" about her story, rather, I feel her story. Possessing a deep sorrow, her voice is the wind. Have you ever stood silent and just listened to the wind? Like an echo through time and space, her story reaches my ears in the varying swayings of air. If I close my eyes tight enough and block out the modern world, I can almost see the story as though it were a movie I have seen. Sings the Wind longs to be "Safe and Sound". She longs for comfort and security that she never experienced in her lifetime. When she sings, she cries out for a world of abundance and safety, a world of family. I remember hearing a story from my dad about his grandmother or great grandmother who, at the last of her life when she was senile, replaying a story of horror when her tribe was rounded up and forced onto a reservation. Looking at the family tree, I know that 3 of the 4 of his great grandmothers passed before his birth. His two grandmothers survived until my father was in his late 30s. Existing documentation makes the verification of this story almost impossible, but having heard the story many times, I trust that some part of it is true.
In my family tree, I am currently working on 2 possible Native American connections: Mary Jane Williams and Mary Polly Hogshead. The timelines for each of these women or their descendants does match up with the Cherokee Trail of Tears. With each new piece of information I locate, the more I truly can hear a story play in the wind.
from Disney's Pocahontas:
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew................
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