"Don't you kill yourself!"

My mom said this to me when I was 26 years old. I was in the psych system, taking meds, in and out of different facilities, no job, alone, despairing.

"Don't you kill yourself! You think of all your Indian relatives in those covered wagons, trying just to make it west, all they did to survive so that you'd be here. You think of them."

Sometimes a parent says something to their child with a tone of voice, a facial expression, and a depth of feeling that the child has never heard before, and will never hear again. It carries a force, an almost terrible power, that will only be out into the open once, but it has been there somewhere all along, shaping, teaching, and silently forming who the child becomes.

Both my parents are survivors, in many different ways. As I get older, I am understanding more and more about what that means: not just the trauma and violence they carry with them and passed on to me, and all the pain and hurt that caused. But also their capacity to endure, to continue moving forward, to hold on.

So I want to thank my parents for helping me to survive.