If you’re new around here, I am getting personal in this series of emails. I want to share more about how I ended up in this space as an artist, mom, advocate, and community support professional.  You can catch up on them here: one, two, three, and four.

I was 16 years old and completely unprepared the first time I boarded a plane with a group full of strangers bound for Bismarck, North Dakota. In all honesty, I really can’t pinpoint why exactly I signed up for the trip in the first place. Part of it was a desire to serve. I was finally in a place where my health was stable enough that traveling, even domestically, was not-so-scary anymore. Part of it was a desire to belong. I was five years into my life post-diagnosis and I often felt alone and without a sense of community.

A few years after my diagnosis, my family changed churches and started attending a larger Episcopal church in the area which had a long-standing partnership with a church and Young Life group. They were and still are specifically serving a the Lakota youth on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. I knew that we would be learning about the culture of the Lakota tribe, supporting the local youth outreach program, and would use in-person time to continue nurturing this decades old relationship between the community on the Rez and the community in Pennsylvania. So, entirely unaware of how this trip would influence my life, I went for a summer trip thinking it would be a one and done thing.

The last day of my first trip to Standing Rock in 2007

What I didn’t count on? 

First, that North Dakota would quickly steal my heart with its big skies, dynamic sunsets, and unpredictable weather. I was so inspired by the landscape there. 

Second, that I would learn more about community, privilege, and the importance of showing up in 10 days than I had learned in the previous 16 years of my life. I learned about the years and years of abuse, oppression, racism, cultural genocide, and neglect that came as a result of declaring reservations mission fields for the Church. I was confronted with my white privilege in a very real way for the first time. The theological and social frameworks of my upbringing were challenged. 

And third, that I would keep coming back. From 2007-2010 I visited the Rez 5 times. 2 of those times, I spent the majority of my summer break there rather than just a 10 day trip.

On my first trip, I learned about the Lakota word “tiospaye” which basically translates into extended family. It is so much more than that: it’s a worldview that we are all relatives. The sisters and brothers of your grandparents? They’re your grandparents too. And their children? Those are your aunties and uncles. Family grows beyond our basic understanding of the nuclear family and includes those we choose and adopt as family too. It is not just in title but in how family respects each other and takes care of each other as well. 

And in the most simplistic explanation of it, the history of tipospaye as a Lakota value is that no one would be an outsider and that no matter where you go, you would have a family. 

As someone who felt so alone, so isolated, being confronted with this beautiful representation of community broke me and inspired me. I was an ignorant and sick outsider representing a group of people that for hundreds of years acted to change (or really, eradicate) their culture. And yet, I was welcomed in, supported, encouraged. I belonged. I quickly found out I would never be the same again as I forged lifelong relationships that shaped who I am today through people who are still apart of my life 12 years later.

As my trips out west continued, I was encouraged to use my interest in art to help support community programs. Art projects were organized for the camps we ran in the summers and I had the opportunity to paint a mural on one trip as well, but the thing I loved the most was learning about the history of making in the Lakota culture through the elders in the community. They told stories about beading and quill work, making regalia for dancers in their family, and the importance of craft in the preservation of their traditions. These learning experiences are what encouraged me to first pursue a double major in studio art and sociology, and then switch to studio art and secondary education to put my interest in art, community, and cultural into action. Spoiler alert: that double major never became a dual degree, but more on that another time.

In an effort to make this as accurate as possible, it was not always the best of times on those trips. I had to confront things about myself that were not pretty: about how I made decisions and how I perceived myself and others. There were times when I absolutely missed the mark, and times when I felt utterly defeated. There were physically and emotionally taxing parts of volunteering my time that left me feeling raw and questioning if I could ever be fit to lead again. We dealt with tornados and rattlesnakes and bats living in our lodge at camp. The teams I lived and worked with could have explosive arguments when sleep ran low and pressure ran high. The tribe was regularly rocked by grief and suicide pacts and tragedies beyond what I can even begin to explain. We had a regular rotation of visiting groups who brought with them their own ideas about partnership and sometimes a heavy dose of racism. I was beginning to understand the intricacies of community and grasp it the weight of it as more than a buzz word, but a living breathing entity all its own.

I’ll end with something that quite honestly, brings tears to my eyes to type and is why this email is a little late today. Terry Star was the Youth Pastor and Program Director I worked under during my trips. He was an incredible mentor. He encouraged me to continue pursuing my passion where art and community intersected, even as I moved around the country for college from Pennsylvania to California to Massachusetts. On my trips out to the Rez he was always the first to text me when he knew my plane had landed. We kept in touch as I pursued my bachelor’s degree (he helped me with some pronunciation and gave more context on tribal art during my art history courses with the utmost patience). With his encouragement I sought out new ways to pursue an interest in community outreach and development through the lens of art or art education even as my health and career took detours along the way. 

When he made a trip to Maryland in 2013 a few weeks before our wedding, Travis and I took him out for his favorite Maryland meal: soft-shell crabs. It was like 3 days had passed since we last got together in person, not 3 years. It was with shock and devastation that I received a middle of the night call just a few months later. Terry passed away suddenly on March 4, 2014. His death came as a shock to his family and friends. We lost a pillar in our community.

About a year after his death, in early 2015, I started a painting in his honor (pictured above). That was the year I started my business. When I decided to rebrand this year, I paid tribute to Terry and the impact of my friendships from the Rez. The illustration mark in my logo today is based on a painting I created inspired by wildflowers growing wild in the land behind the camp where I lived and worked on those trips out to North Dakota. Always in my heart.