What Am I Doing?

What am I doing?

Ever have that doubt?

The thought that arises after you've committed to something big.

The last-ditch efforts of the mind to get you to turn the car around, cancel the ticket, forfeit your spot.   

Yesterday, at the Artist Communities Alliance conference, Avis Charley—a Dakota + Diné artist and Mellon Research Fellow—told a story about the drive she made to the AIA Research Center for Contemporary Native Arts from Lost Angeles to Santa Fe. 

She was on her way to spend months in the archives.

Forgiveness, she said, is what she hoped to find there. 

When we pilgrimage to sacred sites—whether they are lands that hold our ancestors, archives that hold our stories, or the private chambers of our own hearts—it makes perfect sense that fear would try to take the wheel.

What am I doing?

What am I doing?

What am I doing?

Stay the course.

Fear is welcome in the land of the heart - it's a necessary threshold inviting us into the land of the unknown.

Avis shared of “rabbit holes” in the archive.

Fragments of histories and stories of Native American women, mothers, grandmothers like hers whose invited her to delve more deeply in.

Those months of searching were sacred to her.  

And not only to the adult woman and artist that stood before us on the stage, but as she said, to the thirteen year old girl she once was.  

I invite you to learn more about Avis's work here.

And remember –  when fear questions your resolve, there is a girl inside you who’s asking you to stay the course, even with doubt and terror in your heart.

 xo naomi