“When Tiffany was in prison we wrote back and forth. She wrote that she was tired of carrying the burden of her past. I had materials sent to her to write her story, as a method of getting at the pain that was haunting her. I would be a witness, I told her. Write without censoring. If there were any stories that she didn’t want me to read, to write it anyway and staple the pages together. I would not read them. This was about bringing everything to the surface so it could be let go and have no more power over her.
…We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge”
Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior
