A somersault cartwheel!

June 30, 2026  | Tuesday Evening  |  8:55 PM  The Long-Lost Childhood Possession that I Would Love to See Again  I was around eight or nine years old when my mom went into an inpatient program for drug & alcohol addiction. She was there for 30-45 days. I don't remember a lot from that time. Dad Mackie took care of us as well as my older sisters when Mom was away. 🥰  I remember one day Dad Mackie brought me to visit Mom on the weekend. She was holding this large light brown teddy bear. It had on a yellow & white dress. And, after I ran up to her & gave her a big hug, Mom handed me the teddy bear & told me that she made it just for me  🧸 Mom had never made me anything special like that before, so I really cherished my teddy 🧸 bear even more. At the time, I didn't realize that I was a sentimentalist. But, I knew that my new teddy 🧸 bear was extra special to me.  At the treatment center, a doll maker volunteered to teac...

June 29, 2026| Monday Early Evening|4:26 PM                 My Best Friend Growing Up My best friends from childhood who I grew up with are Sundae & Chai Tea. I changed their names because I haven't spoken to them in a long time to ask if I could use their real names. I don't think it would be a problem, but I still want to respect their privacy. They're The BEST Best Friends a Native girl could ever ask for. There were a few other people in our neighborhood friend group, Sundae's siblings were all good friends of mine. 🥰 And, they lived directly next door to me. And, Queen Bee, who lived in the house between Sundae & Chai Tea. Most days, the 4 of us would be together. Or, at least 2 of us were always together after school & on the weekends.        L-R: Chai Tea, Queen Bee, Sundae & Me.  Chai Tea, she lived at the end of our house unit. Every house unit had six houses connected side...

    June 26, 2026 |  Friday Morning | 9:46 AM                              My First Pet  My very first pet was my Pet Rat Gummy Candy that I named Robert Gibson! Yes, I named my Pet Rat after Robert Gibson from The Rock'N'Roll Express! True story! My older sister Yiyah & I walked to 7-11 a short distance from our house. It took us about 15 minutes to walk there, but as kids, we had all the energy in the world so some days it could have taken us 8 - 10 minutes to walk there. It depended on our moods, I guess. We walked to 7-11 every other day sometimes & one day when we got there we saw these huge Pet Rat gummy candies & we had to buy one. It was something new in the store and I've always loved gummy worms so I wanted to try the Pet Rat's, too.  On our way home we were talking about what we should name them. Because, we planned on keeping them as pet rats for as lon...

 June 25, 2026 | Thursday Evening |  6:10 PM                                My Parents  My parents were really good together. They were really good for for one another, too. Mom always had a Marlboro Light cigarette 🚬 in her hand. Dad Mackie was always rolling his TOP tobacco into cigarettes. He always had that yellow can by his side.  My Dad Mackie was a loving & caring person. When his brother, my Uncle Dutch, was diagnosed with cancer I was maybe in 1st grade. He was always up on The Rez with his brother taking care of him. I would go with him sometimes. Me & Mom. Before Uncle Dutch got really sick, I remember him talking about The Vietnam War. I won't repeat what he said, but, it was extremely graphic. "It was War. We had to survive. If we didn't ki££ them, then, they'd ki££ us." I remember him saying.  I was sitting on the floor at my Dad Mackie's feet watch...

June 24, 2026 | Wednesday Evening | 9:44 PM The Teacher That Had the Most Influence on My Life The teacher that had the most Influence on my life is Mrs. Rottle. She was my 3rd & 4th grade teacher. She was the one teacher who helped me with my poetry writing.  I knew that I loved to write stories & poetry as a little girl, but Mrs. Rottle really helped me understand my gift of creative writing. She taught me more about what poetry was & encouraged me to write poetry as much as possible. The more she taught me about poetry, the more I fell in love with it. And, with creative writing. 📚 📖 📙 📘 🖊 ✍️🏽 ✍️🏽  My 3rd & 4th grade teacher Mrs. Rottle also let me know that it was special to be Native American. She told me that my tribe has a special place in the city of Auburn. And, that to be Muckleshoot was a blessing. She didn't use those words exactly, but you understand what she meant.  The other kids around me teased me a lot for being an ugly...

June 24, 2026 |Wednesday Morning | 8:12 AM                   My Aspirations As a Child As a little girl I always knew that poetry was going to be a huge part of my life. I loved writing stories & poetry since I was 4 years old. I loved the art of creative writing from a young age.  I had a short lived dream of becoming the first Native American girl in space! I envisioned myself as an astronaut in a huge astronaut suit flying around in space & walking on the moon! I remember being in 3rd & 4th grade dreaming of going into space. 🚀👩‍🚀👩‍🚀👩‍🚀🌌🛰🌌 I knew that as a little girl NASA wouldn't allow me to go into space, but, it was a silly dream!  Another dream that I had was playing softball for the tribe & going into the playoffs. I don't know too much about it, but every year there are tribal softball tournaments & in the end, the best of the best teams go into the playoffs. I had a great love ...

June 23, 2026  | Tuesday Evening  |  6:43 PM                             Rock Collection Another thing that I loved to collect as a little girl are the rocks that I colored & designed with colored smoke from Smoke Bombs during The Fireworks Season 🎆. For me, it was tradition to get as many smoke bomb packages as possible so that I could create a whole story of characters by drawing them all on rocks with the smoke from the smoke bombs! The larger packs would have around 12 smoke bombs. The smaller packs had around 6 smoke bombs.  There were so many different sizes of rocks & sometimes, it would take 6- 10 packages of smoke bombs to fully paint over a single rock with smoke. That was one of my all-time favorite things to do during Fireworks Season, paint & draw on rocks with smoke bombs.  Outside of Fireworks Season, I collected rocks throughout the rest of the year. I ...

June 23, 2026  | Tuesday Afternoon  | 2:33 PM               Things I Collected as A Child As a little girl I collected Cabbage Patch Dolls, Indian Head Nickels, pencils, mixed tapes that I recorded from the radio & pressed pennies that I placed on the train tracks & had a special box for them. I also collected stickers, too. The boxes that I used were shoe boxes. I would use my stickers, construction paper, images from a variety of magazines & I would create collages around the boxes & box lids & use them for different things.  Other things that I collected are hand written letters from my friends, Holiday Troll Dolls from Hallmark & when I got into my early teenage years I began collecting porcelain dolls & porcelain clown dolls. My mom would buy them for me just because she loved me. 🥰 I began to collect different varieties of music boxes around the same time that I began to collect porcelain do...

June 22, 2026  | Monday Afternoon  | 3:48 PM           The First Song I Remember Hearing  The very first song that I remember hearing is Quiet Riot's: Metal Health . I only remember the chorus of that song when they sing, Bang Your Head!  🤣 And, I remember my eldest sister, M.B. playfully banging her head against the wall.  When it comes to music that I really enjoyed listening to as a little girl, I remember Madonna's earlier music. I really loved her music when I was a little girl. One of my favorite songs was, Lucky Star. My 2nd eldest sister is a huge Madonna fan & her love for Madonna introduced me to her music. Then, I remember the song, True Blue, by Madonna coming out, too. And, Borderline. I loved those three songs by Madonna as a little girl even if I didn't fully understand the lyrics at the time.  All of those songs came out before I was 10 years old. A lot of my favorite artists were influenced by what ...

     June 21, 2026  | Sunday Night  | 9:41 PM If I Could Do It All Over Again I Would Change Many people always say nothing. I'd change nothing. But, for me, if I could change one thing I would have stayed home from Church that one night that I went to Church with Mom. Then, my life would have taken a whole different route.  Or, I would have waited a little bit longer to ask my Mom for a couple of dollars to get a Pepsi from The Smoke Shop. Because, if I had waited until Church was halfway through then I might never have been met with those people in the van.  I never thought about it from my mom's perspective. 

June 21, 2026 | Sunday Morning 🌄 | 9:04 AM       What's The Hardest Thing You Ever Did The Hardest thing that I ever had to do was bury my beautiful mother. 💔 😢 😭 😥 We lost her on October 5th, 2024. I am still in shock that she's no longer with us. I pretend that she's on a trip with the Tribal Elders Program & she's siteseeing back East somewhere. Or, she's on a casino 🎰 trip & visiting all the tribal casinos in a certain area. I tell myself, "She'll stop by with gifts when she gets home, but, another trip always pops up along the way." 🫤

  June 21, 2026  |  Sunday Morning  | 8:50 AM               The Person I Loved the Most The person who I loved the most as a child is my beautiful mother. She was & will always remain the greatest love of my life. Along with my family. But, I truly loved & adored my mom when I was a little girl. I loved my older siblings. I loved my baby sister. And, I loved spending time with all of my cousins, too. When you are Native & you're from The Rez, you're naturally going to have a lot of cousins! Because I grew up off The Rez, I didn't realize or know how big our family was. 

June 21, 2026| Sunday Morning 🌄 | 8:19 AM The Person Who had the Greatest Impact on My Life  Definitely my beautiful mother. 🥰 And, my Dad Mackie. I love them both tremendously. Words can't express how much love & adoration that I have for them. It's important for children to have both parents in their lives. Even though Dad Mackie wasn't my biological father, he stepped up & raised us all with unconditional love. And, I mean unconditional love. He was a proud father to all of us.  As an adult woman, looking back, I am beyond grateful that we all had a wonderful father. He left us too soon due to lung cancer, but, there's no missing piece in my heart and soul due to an absent mother or father. I had my mom & dad.  I'm not boasting. Not at all. I just recently realized the importance on a soul level of having both parents in my life as a little girl. That part of me is solid. We lost Dad Mackie when I was 8 or 9 years old. I remember that ve...

        June 21, 2026  |  Sunday Morning 🌄                    The Age I become an adult I've always been an old soul. I've always been extremely mature for my age. So, I was seen as mature for my age when I was 13 - 15 years old.  Life experiences at the age of 12 years old, too, placed a personal growth spurt upon me. So, even though I was still really young, I was seen as a mature person. Troubled. And, forced to grow up faster than most people around me.  It got really messy in my early teenage years. After being placed with certain family members here & there, I ended up homeless on the streets of Seattle. When you're on the streets & surviving through the kindness of homeless youth programs & shelters, you grow up a lot quicker than those kids who have the opportunity to be kids and experience middle school & high school like most normal people.  I was still i...

               June 20, 2026  |  Saturday  The first thing I bought with my own money I honestly do not remember. I remember helping family members sell fireworks at the fireworks stands here on The Rez when I was a little girl. My cousin Bee & I worked at her Mom's fireworks stand and it was a lot of fun. During fireworks season as a little kid I worked in exchange for fireworks. However, because we were so young, LoL, we didn't actually work! We would create skits and holler from inside the fireworks stands & try to bring in customers that way! Or, we'd stand in front of the fireworks stands as the adults stood inside the fireworks stands & try to wave people in! "Come to our Fireworks Stand! We have the best deals!" 🤭🤭🤣 Me & my cousin Bee were 5/6/7 years old & we thought that we were actually & truly working! Her Mom or Dad would then tell us to choose what fireworks we wanted for the day ...

                June 20, 2026  |Saturday                   Music I Loved as a Child As a child, I loved the music that I was first introduced to by my older siblings & mother. Mom loved/ loves Elvis Presley & my older siblings loved (still love) 1980's Rock. So, growing up at 1101 I would listen to Elvis when Mom put on his cassettes or VHS tapes. And, my older sisters would listen to AC/DC, Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Poison & other rock groups.  I have this one special memory in my treasure box of memories of my eldest sister, MB listening to a song by Quiet Riot. 😊 Part of the lyrics say, "Bang your head," and she's sitting with her back against the wall & she pretends to bang her head against the wall. She was singing along with the music & smiling & enjoying the moment. She has the most beautiful smile.  Other music groups that my older sibling...

       June 18, 2026  |  Thursday  |  9:05 PM  When was the last time you did something for the first time  I don't remember. It's been a long time ago. I am only guessing, but it could have been traveling to Eastern Washington with two of my older sisters last summer ☀️.  We traveled to Omak, Washington & got a hotel room on The Colville Indian Reservation for a couple of nights & visited some of our family members.  It was my very first time ever being on The Colville Rez & when we were there we also visited The Grand Coulee Dam. It was a really cool site. We visited the museum next to The Grand Coulee Dam & it was shared a lot of history about the local tribes & about The Grand Coulee Dam. We traveled there for Gram Pat's 90th Birthday Celebration & Family reunion. Gram Pat is my older sister Tammy's mom. Tammy was married to my brother Doug & they have 3 children together. Tammy &...

June 17, 2026  | Wednesday  |  7:19 P.M.                                My Firsts ☆ First Friend My very first friend other than Bobbie & her granddaughter was a neighbor girl named Renee. Her parents were really great friends with my mom when we lived at 1101. I don't have any memories of her, but I do remember that we always played together. In my box of memories, I know that she was my very first friend outside of family in life. My very first best friend that I have memories with was a tall, skinny blonde haired girl named Danielle. We met in either headstart or kindergarten. She was extremely kind to me. We met one another when we were maybe 5 years old. We attended an elementary school together that was on The Federal Way Hill, but still in our city's school district. (Auburn School District #408). Then, we both began attending school together at Dick Scobee Elementary Sc...

                June 17, 2026  | Wednesday  People in history I admire  I admire the Language Keepers of my tribe past, present & future. But especially, the language speakers past of my tribe. Without them, we would have lost our language & a huge part of our cultural identity.  As a little girl I remember hearing my mom's boyfriend speaking our Indian language. Everyone on The Rez called him Uncle Allen so that's what I called him, too. 😊 He spoke our Muckleshoot language fluently. He was one of the few tribal members left who could speak our Muckleshoot Indian language.  I remember having this overwhelming feeling of happiness and joy when I first learned that we had our own language. As a little girl, I knew it was important & extremely special. I didn't understand why at the time. I might have been 9 or 10 years old when I first heard words spoken in my Muckleshoot language.  We were goin...

When I look into the past, the thing I miss the most is Me. I miss the girl who I was who could walk around everywhere and not even worry about what other people thought about me. I loved who I was & accepted myself exactly as I was. I was entirely myself. I didn't see myself as how others saw me: A dork, nerd, ugly, weird & unpopular. And, my confidence was 100% solid. Unshakable. Cemented in self love.  At home, I was surrounded by unconditional love. I was spoiled by my mom. My dad was extremely loving, caring, protective & fun. I'd fight with my siblings here & there, but our love for one another was absolute. So, it was only in school that other students saw me differently. What annoyed me the most was when the kids at school would gang up around me & pretend to dance around a fake fire like the Bugs Bunny cartoons & put their hand to mouth & make fake war-hoop cries & pretend to shoot fake bows & arrows at me. I miss my chil...

June 16, 2026 | Image of - Ruth's Golden Aster  The single most profound act of kindness that I will never forget  When I lost my beautiful mother on October 5th, 2024 I was devastated. I was in shock. She was the most important person in my life. We were really great friends & I never thought that that day would ever happen. I didn't reach out to anyone at the time. I was moving through life like a zombie. I was on autopilot & I prayed for my beautiful mother to wake up. Breathe. "Mommy, please open your eyes & come back home to me." She never did. 💔😭😢 I shared brief moments on X & prayed that they would reach my mother. Her name is Marlene. She is Muckleshoot & Puyallup. Her mothers name is Alvina from the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. Her fathers name is George & he is from the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. My mom was the baby of the family. She was nicknamed Monk from her dad because she would always climb trees on our family proper...