Sunday, May 17, 2020

The legacy of 'masani,' Matriarch



Family matriarch (Photo by Venaya Yazzie ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)


Its been a long three months.

At times the reality of my grandmother's passing does not seem 'real.' Yet, we, the family are here without her in our daily lives.  The times are as turbulent as the winds that have been brewing here in northwest New Mexico, USA.  The legacy she left is abundant! Through the years she taught many skills to her daughter and to me, her adopted granddaughter.  I know I have a blessed life because of what she taught to me.

My narrative is her narrative. I am her, she was me.  The ways in which she lived her life in her latter years of life are embedded in my bones and her dialogue is rooted in my own tongue.  I miss her so much, and at times in my life, I feel so lost without her by my side.

My grandmother was my best friend, my most favorite person in the whole world.  I walk here not alone with her beauty beside me.  This reality has created a "unbalance" in my life to be sure.  Today, as I work to re-calibrate my place on earth, I hope to live a life that she would be proud of.

This capture I share concerns her, my dear matriarch's constant perpetuation of the Dine' cultural lifeways of the female being.  She was a weaver, a lineage of art ways she inherited from her mother, my great grandmother.  I have great respect for such ways and therefore will continue that legacy, its the only way I can pay honor to her.

Blessings.






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