But I never planned to write about my journey though motherhood. It began with a single essay in 1984 when my editor invited me to write a feature article, and my readership grew. I'm well into grandmotherhood now, and I'm leaving a trail of my motherhood footprints behind.
When I began assembling a collection of my essays to include here, I found that each one begged for revision. A number of my feature articles were too magazine-y in tone and needed to be reshaped into essay and memoir. Other pieces, when further examined with my poet’s eye, had become too pretentious and gave off the full-bodied notion that as a mother I had things all figured out, which of course I don’t.
I also contemplated my gloomy stories. Although I'm often remembered for difficulties I've faced, I want it to go down in history that there has also been great joy within my journey through motherhood. Today as a mother and grandmother my life in no way resembles what I had hoped for, or expected it to be, and yet I am deeply thankful for where this journey has led me. I also enjoy seeing how my perspective has evolved and changed over the past five decades.
Thank you to the editors where these essays were first published.
Photo by Lawrence K. Ho
Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press), and Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story (KAAN: Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network). Her essays are widely published in anthologies, including Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), and Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity and Both/And Belonging, forthcoming from Beacon Press, Fall 2026.