My life so far: 29,220 days and counting.

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Remember the Reader’s Zoom this Saturday April 11!  CLICK HERE to copy zoom link or to sign in on Saturday morning. Dialogue and discussion with Colleen O’Brien, author of Baited, a thriller based in Glacier National Park. We will talk about Nature and Place as characters in our stories. Starts @ 9:00 AM/Pacific US time—you can do the math.

And on April 16, 2026, I turn 29,220 days old. You can do the math. It means I was conceived on a hot August day with the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the trauma of WWII, floating molecules in the breath of my young parents. It means I was born on a spring morning in Montana when millions of my grandfather’s bees were hurling themselves from hives to clover buds and war crimes trials were starting up in Europe and Japan.

These 29,220 days are the time blocks that built my life. I have awakened in any number of moods on these days. I have wasted days, raced unthinkingly through hours as though life was an endless Instagram scroll. I have been brought to my knees with grief and awe, flung myself passionately into love and writing and work. I have made mistakes, bad choices, unwittingly caused harm, and wished I could roll back time. I am walking a yellow brick road with most of the bricks behind me and a decade that curves into terrain unknown.

And here I am, turning 80 years old.

I enter this birthday with profound gratitude. Still here. Still healthy and cogent. Living with a beloved partner and

Ann & me among the 8 million protesting.

held within—and contributing to—a loving community. And I have the stamina to keep practicing my passion for stories, for writing, for creating spaces where stories can be respectfully shared.

 I’m starting a Substack column called Backstories, because at 80 most of my stories are back there, trailing behind me, swirling around me, awaiting articulation into the unimaginably huge conversation humanity is having at this time.

Standing on this threshold, I have the audacity to pray for 3,650 more days. Another 1/8 of life and, in my aging body and eldering years, I vow to live ever more consciously. I not only want my remaining days to count, I want to literally count them. I want to see each sunrise as a copper coin and to deposit that penny at sunset into a pottery jar marked “Prayers for Change.” Or maybe I can construct a calendar filling one wall where I cross off each day, noting some gratitude, no matter the internal weather of my emotions or the terrors of the wider world.

I am old enough now to know the preciousness of time. I step into this decade with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of purpose. And on the day I depart—whenever and however that comes— I want my last word to be “Thank you.”

April 17—my first day of being eighty.

I received this as a gift and no designation of who it might be from. Whoever you are, thank you. I will plant many more words in this vase.

If you want to help me celebrate, the best gift you can give me is to go online and deposit good reviews for any of my books! They don’t have to be long or intricate, a few words to encourage the next reader. “I read Seven Whispers 20 years ago and it’s still on my bedside table…”  Or, “Life’s Companion is my favorite journal writing friend and teacher.” Or, “My book club loved The Beekeeper’s Question. Don’t miss this story!”

All these titles are on Bookshop,  Amazon, and in BookClubs.com. Please love on Alyssa’s amazing audio in Audible or Libro or Spotify–wherever you have downloaded it. You can recommend it on Instagram and follow me @ChristinaBeeTrue and on Facebook as The Beekeeper’s Question by Christina Baldwin.

And Thank YOU for being part of my journey and letting me be part of yours.

Pray for PEACE. Pray for JUSTICE. Pray for the children whose days are just starting that they may live in a new world we insist into being!

Saving the World: Saving the Stories

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Niece, nephew, and sister.

We have work to do to save what we most value in our world.  Well, we try. Keep trying. Keep reaching for each other. Managing our griefs. Across America people are activated. We will not stop. And we invite those who are wondering/wavering to join in. For decades of my life Minneapolis was my home. I know these streets, this weather, and the kind of people Minnesotans are. My family that still lives there is on the streets. Again. After George Floyd. After Melissa Hortman. After Annunciation Catholic School. Now, Renee Nicole Good.

On January 11, Simon Rosenberg, in Hopium Chronicles wrote:  “The world is deeply unsettled now. We don’t know how all this is going to turn out. We could lose, or we could win. But we will not win unless we understand the nature of the conflict we now find ourselves in and organize ourselves to win it. 

“To do this our Democratic leaders and all of us must far more consciously see themselves not just as legislators or party leaders or grassroots activists but as actors in a global battle for freedom and democracy. We must come to see ourselves as heirs to the American Revolution and the Post WWII Four Freedoms global system that made freedom – not dominion – the founding organizing principle of our country and the world, and recognize that it is our obligation, our responsibility, to lead this global fight – as we have for 250 years. We must be warriors for the middle class and working people, AND proud American patriots fighting for freedom and democracy here and everywhere – for our Founders declared that our inalienable rights included not just the “pursuit of happiness” but “life” and “liberty” too. And we must summon the power of those great American patriots who came before – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Dr. King – and other global freedom fighters – Churchill, Gandhi, Mandela – to inspire us in the years to come.”

Norman Rockwell illustration of the Four Freedoms

While writing The Beekeeper’s Question, I kept asking: “What have they/then got to teach us/now?” A lot, it appears.  I continue leading conversations about the values, theology, and moral code implicit in the story and in the country at that time. In his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt, laid out his vision of global human rights and the need for America to step onto the world stage and take up moral and military leadership in a world falling into fascism. (Remember that WWII started in Europe in September 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied the continent, leaving Britain to flight on its own while Churchill pleaded with the US to get involved.) When the US did enter the war eleven months later, it did so to carry out Roosevelt’s vision. And when the Cooper family listened to the radio, and dealt with the challenges of their community, they were informed and inspired by the Fireside Chats broadcast by their president. They were given the courage to do what must be done to wage the battle for freedom and democracy.

And here we are, dangerously abandoning the structures that have held some kind of global order together all the lifetimes of those of us alive on the planet. We find ourselves in a multi-faced “war” of myriad conflicts and bloody battlegrounds and “we don’t know how all this is going to turn out.”

At a library author panel last November, a women in the audience announced, “I want you to know I carry The Beekeeper’s Question in my car. Whenever I am in the ferry line or a waiting room, I read a few pages. I need them with me. They give me courage.” What a marvelous moment—to know the story is fulfilling my intention for it in the world.

The history of WWII has pretty much been written, but the stories continue to rise. In recent conversation with Alyssa Keene, the novel’s marvelous audio narrator, she used the word “blueprint;” that the actions, bravery, willingness to risk of people who lived during WWII provide a model for our own actions, bravery, and willingness to risk now. Alyssa has completed writing the first draft of her grandfather’s experiences being rescued by the French resistance and secretly passed to safety, so another blueprint is coming.  And things that were lost or disregarded keep coming to light.

Last summer, a tiny ad appeared on the local e-list: “1940s postage stamps, anybody want them?”

I do.

A little collection I could paste into signed copies of The Beekeeper’s Question, alongside letters I had made up between the characters of the separated newlyweds. Maire was writing from Montana where she’s gone to live with her father-in-law. Her soldier man, Franklin, was billeted in Northern Ireland and then fighting in the North Africa campaign. Letters—crossing the Atlantic in a mismatched timeline, crumpled into mailbags, riding the bowels of ship conveys (40% sinking rate in the early years of the war,) communication missing or repeated or uncertain of reception. This was how it was—the best that ordinary people could do. Sure, I’ll take those stamps.

I arrived to find this woman clearing out her garage, getting ready to move. I tell her why I want the stamps, offer her a copy of the book. We chat about that long-gone era of our parents’ generation. “There’s this box,” she says,  “War letters between my parents. My father’s Army memorabilia, photos, ration books, military instructions for an occupying Army. I don’t know what to with it all.” My eyes got large. “You want it?”

I do.

The box is sitting in my backyard office. I haven’t read the letters or tried to organize them by date (all those helpful stamps with postmarked dates were cut off and dumped into a little plastic bag, so the chronology of the envelopes is gone). I have sorted out some interesting booklets (see photo) and asked if Molly Guptill Manning, who wrote the acclaimed, When Books Went to War, and who curates the exhibit “The Best Read Army in the World,” if she wants them. I’ll find an archive that wants the letters.

I reached out to my friend and sister/writer, Gretchen Staebler, for advice. She has a published memoir about her years dedicated to caring for her mother (who died at age 100) and living in the house of her childhood—including everything her parents had ever saved. Including their World War II correspondence, and her father’s family’s war correspondence—a boxed cache of over 1500 letters. Eventually, she edited the letters into a privately published volume. She let me read some to help set the tone of letters between Maire and Franklin. We remain in a long dialogue about what impact the letters had in the moments of their exchange, in the lineage of a family, and where these might be deposited for a future we cannot imagine to find and explore.

Gretchen appeared with me on the January 17, readers zoom to talk about letter writing in the 1940s, the work of cataloguing and archiving, and how the realness of these exchanges reaches through time. 

A Hmmm in the Chaos

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In these tumultuous weeks of autumn, 2025, I have been thinking about the generations in my novel, The Beekeeper’s Question. The impact and uncertainty of a faraway war rocks the community of Pigeon River, Montana in 1942-43. The young are swept into the situation, into the pressures of living through. Chapter 2 ends with a scene in the Philadelphia train station where Franklin Cooper is leaving for deployment and Maire, his bride, is standing on the platform among other women and families. (p14)

“At 30th Street Station, she buried her face in his jacket, nervously twisting the brass button bright on olive-green wool. Franklin heaved his duffel onboard and jumped up behind it. His hand reached through an open window. Maire’s hand reached from the platform. The hiss of brakes releasing. Rail cars jerking. Fingers slipping. His hand waving among dozens of finger-tipped branches reaching from the train. He was a soldier. She was his wife. It was their war.”

Though circumstances are different, I hear a similar tenor of concern, endurance, determination to make a life in the midst of it all, in conversations with mid-life nieces, nephews, and our daughter. These conversations focus on the practical, applicable, manageable: How do I stabilize my employment? Get to the right place to make it through? Cope with rising costs for housing, cars, insurance, food, education? What’s going to still be in place when my children are grown?

And then there are the elders in the story: Doc, Leo, Josie. They are the holders of perspective and life experience. Doc and Leo talk about the edgy moment of their arrival, how the Homestead Act gave them land and title, how the Indians had been forced into reservations, and then how the presence of the Indian School and the suffering of Native children awakened them to history and social consequences they still grapple with decades later.

Doc, the only woman in her medical school at the turn of the twentieth century. Leo, carrying on a life-long discussion with the bees and the Bible. And Josie Shines the Light, attached to the spirit of the land and the soul of her people, protecting knowledge forbidden by colonization.

In a scene in Josie’s lodge, tucked in the backcountry hills of the reservation, Leo is crediting her with saving his adopted son’s life. (p128) Josie responds, “Your son owes his life to his own spirit and to Iistapatapiop, Creator. We who serve our people know each one must swim their own river. Jesse was drowning when he arrived, but he was reaching for the surface.”

Regret twisted Leo’s heart. “In that season of loss, I too was near drowning. I was not a good father when he needed me most.”

Her eyes bore into him. “He needed you most on the day he was born. You took him as your own. You gave him a name, a family, a childhood.”

Our circumstances are different, but in the peer conversations around me, I hear a similar awareness of how we both hold and cannot hold the generations behind us. These conversations focus on where we can exercise empowerment, protect moral values, take care of grandchildren, leave our stories for a future we will not see.

At a recent panel for community authors, one woman said into the crowd, “This is a book I keep in my car. Whenever I’m in the ferry line or waiting somewhere, I pull it out and read whatever pages come open. I need these people. They are spiritual guides from their time to our time.”

And now we can have it in the magical voicing that Alyssa Keene brought to the story. Join us for the reader Zoom, and a merry conversation on the spoken and written word.

SHORT – The Beekeeper’s Question Audio Sample Video

Hanging onto the thread

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The sky is streaked with lingering light.

Mid-October 2025: Before going into the storyline that I’ve been noodling on the past few weeks, I want to acknowledge the huge hingepoint we are in: Portland and Chicago under siege by the US president, Gaza in tenuous ceasefire and hostage release, Ukraine shouldering into another season of war. None of this goes away. All of this breaks our hearts one way and another. Pause. Breathe. Keep an open heart.

Moonset, early morning facing west.

In Chapter One of my book, Storycatcher, I write, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. … The thread is slender, but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future we dream in words.” Never have I felt this more than true than now. I am swinging over the unknown while the threads coming at me are a tangled mess of broken narratives, soundbites, AI concoctions, manipulated information, reels and threads and phone-held videos—some of them helpful, amidst all that is not. Some of them the warps of lies. The lies are the hardest to deal with—the assumption that I will simply turn over my own thought process, moral code, and reality to whatever they say is true.

Every autumn for 30+ years this backyard maple has turned golden yellow… this year it is turning crimson red.

It’s a mystery.

In this whiplash environment, in the debris field of narrative, the battle of the story wars rages. And I am doing my best to hold on to the storyline that is my life, one thin thread-of-selfhood stitching my way through these times.

Greenbank Farm– early morning dog walks.

I am repeatedly challenged to ask myself, “What is my storyline in all this chaos? How do I articulate and live out what is most important to me? How do I hold myself to purpose on a daily, even hourly, basis? When I wander, where do I go to find my thread again? Journal writing? Dog walk? Weeding the garden? Tea with a friend?

Many days, this constant need for self-redirection is strenuous practice. My capacity to put “mental arms” around huge quantities of information and story and to synthesize incoming data into coherence has been a lifelong gift and challenge. As I age, and as the quantity of incoming stimulation explodes around me, the double-edged nature of being a synthesizer becomes ever more apparent. This is my skill: and it requires focus in the midst of all the peripheral data and story.

It is exactly a year since The Beekeeper’s Question came out, and I realize how deeply that writing project and  background research held me to a core sense of purpose. Waking in the mornings, I would project myself into the hours of the day and look for writing time, research time, hours to fit my life with the Cooper family, the Shines the Light clan, and the wartime lives of folks in Pigeon River, Montana, into my life with my beloved partner and family, dear friends, and the lives of folks on Whidbey Island, Washington. My author question remained: What have they, then, got to teach us, now, about how to live through times of social uncertainty and war without assured outcome?

My parents & grandparents, aka: Franklin, Maire, Doc, Leo

People ask me: “What’s the sequel? How do Maire and Franklin, Jesse and Willow move through the postwar years? Why don’t you write the lives of Flora and Drum? Or Boyd’s journey through the war… Are you doing a screenplay?” Of course, I still have big dreams for this book and the potential that it could be a dynamic mini-series. And the reality is that a book is like a baby—it needs daily feeding, tending, reminding other people it’s still here. The Beekeeper’s Question is now a toddler, and I am holding its hand and walking with it into a wider world.

She who tends and translates the hummm of the hive.

 

This autumn I am also teaching on-line, offering lectures, co-hosting our local writing café. These activities counterbalance the many ways I feel incompetent dealing with on-line promotion, bookstore introductions, booking podcasts, or seeking reviews. It would be easy to give up–but I am the servant to the story. I spent ten years dedicated to this book. These incredible people live only the page and in the audio. They kept me going through DT’s first presidency, the pandemic, and most the years of my seventies. They are counting on my stamina to keep them alive. But now that I’m in the piecemeal tasks of book maintenance, I often feel lost as a writer.  I want my core back— I want a sense of holding onto the thread.

 I do not know if I will be able or willing to take on another huge project. In six months, I will turn eighty years old. I am basically strong, healthy, dealing with small health challenges, nothing life threatening. I can recite huge quantities of story and background research on World War II, beekeeping, Celtic Shamanism, labor issues in the 1940s, etc. etc. and then forget for a few seconds why I walked into the kitchen. Overall, okay. More than okay. Thriving in a serious hearted way.

Friends on the road. Friends in chemo and radiation. Friends in the hospital. Late Dahlias and prayer candle… going 24/7.

Meanwhile, three things I know to be true about myself. One, writing is a lifeline. Writing is spiritual practice, activism, tribal—and I will continue this never-ending story as long as I have fingers and mind.

Two, Nature is my holy place.  I need daily contact with earth/air/fire/water. Geranium in a flowerpot, a tree pushing up the sidewalk, beach stones rolling under the wave action remind me of the planetary interdependence to which I belong. Everywhere I have traveled, Nature is the biggest marvel and my touchstone. I am so grateful to live where I do—a modest house nested at the edge of wild.

Leucistic doe eating apples in the roadbed.

Three, my life is seated in community. I put my time and attention into loving engagement. I show up to community needs—from tending aging neighbors, to demonstrating, to facilitating places of repose.  I am getting ready for whatever shall be asked of me in all these crises. Loving the folks in front of me, steadying myself and staying strong.

Watch for surprises–like a rooster escaped from the chicken yard crowing his freedom.

So, holding onto the thread means touching the ground I stand on, for some time every day. It means staying in the swirl of reciprocity with people around me and in connection through channels like these. And it means that every day between now and my birthday I am going to write something—short or long, I don’t know, but to keep putting who I am to the page, to discover what passion and projects remain mine to do.

“Life hangs by a narrative thread.

This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are,

and where we come from, and where we might go…”

If we can make the path by writing: write.

The heart of the world is always expressing itself… even the fir needles beg the wind to shape a heart in my meandering path.

READER ZOOM CONVERSATIONS RETURN ON NOVEMBER 22. 9:00 AM PACIFIC/NOON EASTERN…  This session will be a dialogue between Christina and Alyssa Keene, the actress who narrated the audio version of the book.  On Audible and 30+ other distribution networks–including Libro. You can buy it through any local bookstore that has an audiobook account.

Read/listen.

Join in for a delightful conversation.

Becoming “Doc”

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It’s a marvelous sign when readers of The Beekeeper’s Question so identify with characters they want to become like them. For several months now I have had the honor of conversing with book club members, both in person and on zoom—mostly women in their 60’s/70’s—inspired by the character “Doc,” as a role model of practical older woman wisdom.

For those who haven’t yet read the book, Doc is Jereldene Jesperson, a seventy-something, unmarried country physician serving the rural community of Pigeon River, Montana. She is the friend of widower, Leo Cooper, the local parson, beekeeper, and father of sons, one in the war, one in the valley. The Cooper family, in which Doc is an honorary auntie, is central to the story and to the community’s ability to make their way through the early years of World War II.

Franklin, Maire, Doc, Leo

Leo’s bee yards

Author, creativity coach and blogger, Sally Fox recorded an excellent podcast of me when the book came out last fall. (Click here to listen.) Recently she posted a blog about wisdom keepers and their important roles in the very real drama of our times. She writes:

One such wisdom keeper, Jereldene Jesperson, known to everyone as “Doc,”  stood out to me after reading The Beekeeper’s Question, a powerful novel by acclaimed Northwest writer Christina Baldwin. Set in an isolated Montana town in 1942, it tells the story of a family and community dealing with divides.

Doc is the family doctor—the only one the town could get. Though she arrived as an outsider, she tends to the bodies and souls of the valley with an open heart, caring even for those who once distrusted her. Over time, she becomes the wise woman people turn to in times of crisis.

I felt moved by her wisdom, comforted by her presence, and left the book feeling like we needed more Docs—seasoned by life, and able to offer their practical wisdom when the world seems to be running off the rails. You can find them everywhere if you know what to look for:

  • They are often older, though some are wise beyond their years.
  • They have known heartbreak but haven’t grown cynical. They still believe in goodness.
  • They observe deeply, understanding that no one is perfect. Their compassion bridges divides.
  • They don’t pretend to be above anyone. They burn their toast, drop dishes, and occasionally forget to put oil in the car. They get lonely and angry and sometimes need to talk themselves down from a high horse.
  • They love to laugh.
  • They are not easily rattled but will speak truth to power in a clear, no-nonsense way.
  • They have experienced life and death and understand the brevity of our time here.
  • They mentor and support others, grieving losses, celebrating victories.
  • They believe in America’s core values yet acknowledge how rights have not always been applied equally.
  • They know when to offer a hug, mug of tea, or spoonful of honey.
  • They love without concern for racial, cultural, or gender differences.
  • They bring perspective, a steady light in the storm, a reassuring shoulder. And a voice that says, “We’ll figure it out like we’ve always done.”
  • They have faced loss and aren’t afraid to love again.

The list reminded me how amazing it was to bring Doc to life; to put good words in her mouth and good actions in her community role. Readers ask me who she is modeled after, and the truest answer is  “the best of you/me/us.”

And Leo… well, he is based on the best aspects of the men in my family–men I would call “the stewards” of  masculinity, who can both tend and defend. He is seasoned, seeking, and rises again and again to cope with the challenges his family, congregation, and bees face in uncertainty.

This is true wisdom: femininity combined with fierceness: masculinity combined with tenderness. Leo and Doc are a team that brings physical and spiritual comfort into the room, serves tea with honey to the suffering. They show up, face into difficult conversations, counsel the younger generation, love the babies and children, hold onto their values. Right now, I see their faces everywhere in the protests rising across America. We are becoming Doc. Becoming Leo

My oldest cousin–age 95, marching in protest. Doc indeed!

I notice how a large proportion of  the protesters are white-skinned and grey-haired. Some people are lamenting, “Where are the youngers?” They’re busy–trying to survive financially, reassure their children (and each other), hold onto meaning in a world where meaning is shattered daily. Our job–the elders–is to get out there and raise our voices. Our generation is responsible for a lot of this mess: so it’s our responsibility to call it back. And it’s time to use our white privilege to stand in front of those being targeted: immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and to make alliances, to reach out, open dialogue, stand fierce, stay tender. As Doc and Leo reassure each other, “We’ll figure it out.” That’s our job now. See you there–in our communities, making good trouble.

Trauma and Transformation

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Life is full of challenges. We grow by baby steps, facing risks, being supported by older/bigger/wiser folks around us. We learn to handle stress, expand our capacities, discover our resilience. And all this prepares us when challenge becomes trauma. Trauma is injury or emotional distress caused by events that overwhelm our ability to cope. Abuse, assault, battle, betrayal, drastic injury or illness: we do not wish traumatic events upon ourselves or each other, but they happen. We are triggered into trauma when events beyond our control veer out of control.

We are also fascinated by trauma—especially when it’s not our own. We seek out stories that allow us to travel vicariously through the drastic edges of human experience, cheering for people to learn, to thrive, and to show us the way. We understand that trauma is a hinge-point: it will make us or break us. The ‘hero’ comes through trauma incorporating wisdom; “I have suffered and here is what I learned.” The ‘villain’ uses trauma as a wrecking ball; “I was wronged by life, and you shall suffer for it more.”

Writers embed trauma in stories because trauma is embedded in life. In the formative years of writing my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question, an editor told me, “Do not protect your characters. They must make bad decisions, costly mistakes, hurt each other and choose what course their lives will take. When in doubt, make it worse.”

“Make it worse” became a mantra writing scenes for the story. World War II is happening: trauma is everywhere. I had to write about this within the perspective of that time. The US Army in the North Africa campaign (where the young soldier, Franklin, is sent) applied what was called “forward treatment,” shipping overwhelmed soldiers to a field hospital putting them into an induced sleep cure for a week, and then, supposedly rested, sending them back to the front. Though trauma has always accompanied soldiers home from war, society didn’t address it as a collective issue, just sent survivors to their families and communities and hoped they’d carry on.

After the Vietnam war, the 700,0000 American servicemen and personnel who required psychological help, taught us that unaddressed trauma escalates in delayed response. The persistence of what was named “post-Vietnam syndrome” led to defining Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and opened up the study of trauma. My friend Michael Orange, a Vietnam veteran, helped me “make it worse” for the character of Franklin Cooper, the beekeeper’s son confronted with war, battle, and physical trauma.

Trauma is also present in the experiences of the women in the story: sexual assault, miscarriages, beatings, deaths of loved ones. Maire, Franklin’s wife, suffers from nightmares and anxiety. Willow, her sister-in-law, carries both the spiritual wisdom and intergenerational trauma of her Blackfeet people. In fact, women are twice as prone to PTSD as men but their trauma, often arising out of domestic life, is persistently discounted as an aspect of being “the weaker sex,” and enduring “women’s conditions.”

For those who have read The Beekeeper’s Question, I will be hosting a dialogue with Michael author of, Embracing the Ghosts, PTSD and the Vietnam Quagmire, and his wife Cynthia author of, Shock Waves, A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One’s PTSD on the role of trauma and PTSD in the book. The ZOOM is MARCH 22, 9:00/Pacific—do the math for your time zone as needed. Click here to register. This takes you to my email–ask and I send you the zoom link.

The 1940’s has many echoes of then to now, and those echoes only grow stronger. I found a tee-shirt on Etsy printed with the slogan: “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it right now.”

Trauma is a catalyst. It shifts our lives—ready or not. The person we become depends on the choices we make in response to trauma. The same is true for communities and countries as we collectively respond to war, oppression, natural disaster, regime change. We become how we respond. The year 2025 is exposing trauma from the personal to the global—and we cannot avoid it. We are in a hinge-point of reckoning.

Image from social media.

As an American born just after World War II, I have been steeped in the mythos that mine is the “greatest country on earth,” that we are forever the righteous victors. I have been steeped in arrogance that American character, our delusions of the self-made (white) man, should be a model for all of societies. We are Americans: we can do anything we want, and the world will be better for it.  Evidence to the contrary disregarded. Welcome to our reckoning.

We are living through a huge shift in how we be human on the planet. We are collectively deciding whether we descend or ascend in our basic nature. Reckoning at this scale is terrifying. No matter how much we read, scroll through news sources and analysis, we cannot get true perspective. We are small and the issues are huge. We are embedded in the moment like tiny pieces in the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle. Yet anyone who does jigsaw puzzles knows even the tiniest missing piece impacts the whole. We are needed—everyone of us—to stay present and play our part, to fit ourselves into the pieces around us, to make a pattern and a story within the perimeters of our lives.

Americana Art Enterprises: The world’s largest commercially available puzzle called What a Wonderful World is an 8′ (2.4m) tall by 29′ (8.8m) long 60,000 piece world map.

It took me ten years to channel the enormity of World War II through the microcosm of Pigeon River, Montana and the lives of the Cooper family. And now I am challenged, in my aging years, to live through this crisis in the microcosm of Whidbey Island, Washington and my own life and community. As I stagger out of winter’s shock, in the greening of early March, I am determined to use every added minute of light and each unfurling bud to rise, to meet trauma with transformation. I take the tiny piece of my life and snap it into connection, find the adjoining pieces, and act with trust that the whole picture will emerge—whether or not I live to see it.

Page 101, The Beekeeper’s Question: it is August 1942.

Rocking on porch chairs waiting for night breeze, Leo whispered into the dusk, “This war is a three-headed dragon, each black mouth round with teeth, consuming young men.”

“That’s surely the strain of it,” Doc peered skyward, “We don’t know what will become of them. Or us. Or our country.” Caged between the Big and Little Dippers, Draco the Dragon writhed in the night sky. … Doc stared at the cosmic expanse of the Milky Way.  “You’re the local preacher and I’m an old country doctor, what can we do?”

            “Help people live through the sacrifices required of us now.”

Even if you’re a rusty, one-legged scarecrow, you have a job guarding tulips. Let’s go…

Maximum Sentence in Westwolf Killing

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I have written several blog posts about the hit-and-run-killing of Mika Westwolf by a white woman with apparent ties to white supremacy. For background on this story see the posts, Because It’s All Still Happening, and Request for Allyship.

It took 23 months for this case to come to the court, but finally, the family and the defendant had their day for sentencing Feb. 7, 2024. The article below is from the Missoulian, written by  Sam  Wilson/Nora Mabie, photos by Ben Allan Smith © Missoulian. 

I also commend this article from charkoosta.com which goes into more depthl of the family’s testimony, and the judge’s response. A complicated case. The raising of the defendant’s children at issue, and the ongoing trauma to the family and wider community–both Native and white.

Family members listen in court. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

Missoulian POLSON — A Butte woman was sentenced Friday to 10 years in the Montana State Women’s Prison for the vehicular homicide of Mika Westwolf, a young Native American woman who she killed in a hit-and-run crash while walking along the highway near Arlee last year.

After roughly four hours of testimony in the Lake County Courthouse, District Judge Molly Owen sentenced Sunny K. White, 29, to the maximum sentence allowed under a plea deal reached with state prosecutors in November. In exchange for guilty pleas to vehicular homicide while under the influence and for leaving the scene of the crash, prosecutors dropped three other felony charges.

Carissa Heavy Runner testifying in court. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

“I wouldn’t just let my daughter be forgotten,” Westwolf’s mother, Carissa Heavy Runner, told a crowd after the hearing. “We did what we came here to do today. … The only way we can be healed is to be seen and to be heard. To speak our truth, hear our truth. No one can tell it better than us.”

George Heavy Runner, Westwolf’s grandfather, called the ruling “a victory.”

“This is what we asked for,” he said of the decision. “To show that her life did matter.”

White cannot be paroled for all 10 years of her prison sentence, followed by a 20-year suspended sentence during which she will remain on parole. If she violates her release conditions during that time, she can be sent back to prison.

As Westwolf’s family testified throughout the hearing, Owen repeatedly asked if they supported the plea agreement, noting that if she went beyond those terms with her sentence, White’s lawyers could take the case to trial instead.

“I do believe that if I rejected the plea agreement, this would delay the case even further and I do believe that Mika’s family deserves some finality here,” Owen told the packed courtroom, adding that she “might have concerns with the length of the sentence.”

Grandfather testifying. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

Friday’s hearing ends what has been a nearly two-year journey for Westwolf’s family and friends, many of whom spoke critically of the plea deal and what they saw as a half-hearted initial investigation. White spent just seven days in jail on an initial charge of child endangerment, and homicide charges were not brought until seven months later.

A tearful White was remanded to the custody of the Lake County sheriff for transportation to the Montana State Women’s Prison at the conclusion of the hearing Friday afternoon.

“I know there are no words that I can speak to ease that pain and I wish there were,” White said at the end of the hearing, emotionally addressing Westwolf’s friends and family. “I will be living with the guilt of my actions in this terrible accident that took her life and I pray that someday you can find forgiveness for me.”

The sentencing hearing included statements from a dozen of Westwolf’s friends and family, followed by statements from a handful of White’s family and supporters.

“A precious limb has fallen from our family tree in the loss of our dear Mika,” Westwolf’s grandfather said. “It can never be put back to grow with us, and we’ll never be able to witness what was to be of the potential, had she lived.”

Several people mentioned White’s alleged white nationalist ties, citing the names of her children, Aryan and Nation.

“You hurt our hearts and our spirit,” said Thomas Combs, Westwolf’s cousin. “This might be painful for you, but you have no idea — your children are still alive.”

White’s sister, Hannah White, also took the stand to offer support for her sister and disputed the white supremacy narrative.

“There is a lot of false information out there with her and her children’s names,” Hannah White said, suggesting those were instead the views held by her children’s father. “She’s not racist; she’s not white supremacist.”

She also described her sister as “loving” and “compassionate,” telling the court that “being a mother is the job that she was meant to do, and I truly hope that she continues to get to do that.”

Kim Paul, Westwolf’s adopted grandmother, addressed White directly.

“Do you think yourself superior?” she asked. “Did you intentionally do this? We will never know. … Her family is owed justice and Mika is owed her dignity.”

Paul described Westwolf, who was Blackfeet, Navajo, Cree and Klamath, as a caring and smart woman who was dedicated to her community.

Photo of Mika, held in her mother’s hands.© Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

“Mika was going to be a wildlife biologist, or a botanist, or a veterinarian or a landscape architect, or something outside, and some valuable service-oriented career that would help us positively impact this world,” she said. “How do you measure that?”

Kevin Howard, Westwolf’s stepfather, condemned the criminal justice system.

“I don’t know of any white folks that have to go on marches and create a spectacle in order to receive justice,” he said, adding family members worked to investigate Westwolf’s death as they grieved.

Several of Westwolf’s family members also spoke of forgiveness for White, including her biological father Michael John Westwolf II.

“I forgive you with all my heart and pray for the Creator to do the same and show you that love is stronger than hate,” Westwolf II said, as White became emotional while seated next to her defense attorneys.

White also pleaded guilty to one felony count of for leaving the scene. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dismissed three other felonies: two counts of child endangerment and one count of criminal possession of dangerous drugs.

Members of Westwolf’s family and friends at times asked for the maximum sentence under law, and objected to the terms of the plea agreement.

Westwolf’s death in March 2023 drew national attention. Her family led a statewide campaign, with awareness walks, rallies and other events, calling for justice and awareness in her case as well as other cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

After the judge’s decision, Heavy Runner told a crowd outside the courthouse she would continue to advocate for justice in the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

“We want to empower other families to not give up,” she said. “We can’t do it alone. We have to do this together. This is what Indigenous families are up against.”

Acknowledging the repeated allegations of White having a racist ideology, Owens noted during her sentencing that prosecutors had not charged the case as a hate crime.

At the hearing’s conclusion, Assistant Attorney General Thorin Geist said that Montana’s hate crime statutes require prosecutors to prove intent, and the state lacked sufficient evidence to do so.

“We have to prove that her motivation was the race of the individual, and I think it is a legal impossibility in a negligence case,” Geist said.

White’s two young children were reportedly in the car when their mother struck and killed Westwolf, according to the crash report and charging documents. White left the scene after hitting Westwolf in the early morning hours of March 31, 2023.

Evidence collected from the crash site indicated Westwolf was walking in the northbound lane of traffic when she was struck. She was hit head-on by the car’s passenger side, the case affidavit states. Westwolf died on scene from multiple blunt-force injuries.

Cell phone data put White’s location at the crash scene at exactly 3 a.m., according to the affidavit. A highway trooper discovered her body on the road at 4:15 a.m.

Authorities tracked down White, according to the crash report, and found her Cadillac Escalade in Polson roughly an hour later using a description of damage the vehicle sustained from the collision.

White told officers she was driving from Butte to Kalispell when the crash occurred, according to charging documents. She said she didn’t stop because she thought she had hit a deer, prosecutors alleged.

But according to the affidavit, investigators spoke with a witness who saw an SUV with a headlight out stopped along the side of the road that morning near the crash scene.

“He stated that the vehicle was on the side of the road facing north and noticed a headlight was out as he passed the vehicle while also traveling in a northbound direction,” the affidavit states. “Then the vehicle caught up to him and passed him traveling north going 90 miles per hour.”

Owens referenced that piece of evidence when she sentenced White.

“Even with this information, you continue to state that you thought you hit a deer,” she told White. “You killed someone, while under the influence, and you continue to deny your responsibility for that.”

Supporters and family hug outside courtroom. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

And so that part of the journey of justice is done. But as often happens, a passion for larger justice has been awakened in Mika’s mother, who vows to continue advocating for missing Indigenous people. You can follow her on MikaMatters.com and Facebook.

And now I ask myself: What is awakened in ME? What do I vow to continue advocating for? What am I willing to march for? Stand for? Risk for? More on that never-ending conversation soon. Right now a pause, a breath, an acknowledgment of the grief of this family and the roads they invite us to walk with them.

BLESSING FOR THE LONGEST NIGHT

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Thinking we could all use some beauty and light–I am sharing some of my sunset photos–taken from the edge of our neighborhood– and Jan Richardson’s Solstice poem. She is such a generous poet, sending words of comfort, companionship, and wisdom into the world.

(I have adjusted the line breaks to fit in this blog format.)

 

All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been
gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way
by memory, by touch, by the pull of the moon even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough
to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held
so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart;
a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand.
Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go,
you will be walking toward the dawn.

~ Jan Richardson ~

Prayers unceasing in whatever ways we pray/in/tend for peace.

And when we turn around… a new day is rising.

Request for Allyship

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NOTE: This blogpost is archived as part of my writing list. It contains a time-sensitive request that went past on December 13,2024. However, the educational aspects of the story remain relevant, and the community will be informed as the court system makes a decision. Thank you to readers who wrote letters and emails. Some of you shared your words in the comments or emails: such thoughtful, compassionate outreach. And thank you to those who just read with curiosity. All open-hearted, thought-provoking, call and response, and quiet contemplation is welcome here.

I knew writing The Beekeeper’s Question would require reckoning with the injustices of western settlement. Despite my birth into the territory of the book, in childhood I was taught almost nothing about Indigenous people or the history of the land on which my grandparents homesteaded. I had to read and research to educate myself enough to write Piikuni characters into the story. And I needed a Blackfeet cultural advisor willing to confront my cultural blinders and help me fulfill my intentions for accuracy and respect.

It took me three and a half years to find such an advisor.  A friend-of-a-friend introduced us. We started texting in a stream of words like a river already flowing. She shared realities of Native people today, and elucidated history from the Indigenous perspective.  She told me of the harm done to her grandmother at the Fort Shaw Indian School. I told her my grandfather had been a teacher there. Their lives may have intersected: now ours were intersecting. We decided our ancestors wanted healing.

Grand Entry, No. American Indian Days, July 2019

The characters of Jesse, Willow, Gramma Josie, BB, Darrell, Aunt Aggie, the council, and little Drum all contain bits of her education, guidance, and validation. Nato’kssin, my friend.

Now her extended family needs allyship.

Many readers ask me what to do about the issues raised in the story. Here’s something immediate: You can help one family confront one tragic death. You can write one letter to a court in Montana, asking that the life of a young Indigenous woman, Mika Westwolf, be valued in the justice system, and that the young woman who killed her in a hit and run is held accountable.

I have written this story before in my blog post: “Because it’s all still happening.” Mika Westwolf was killed as she walked alongside Montana Highway 93 on the Flathead Reservation, heading home late at night on March 31, 2023.   When Popular Information ran Mika’s story, and Amy Goodman picked it up for Democracy Now, the death of this young woman and the tragedies of many Native families came to white-eyes attention.

The woman who hit Mika is named Sunny White. She named her little children Aryan and Nation. The combination of vehicular homicide, white supremacy, and hate-crime brought the FBI into the case. Her auntie describes the scene this way: “The newspapers keep saying “crash” there was no crash…she ran off the road to run Mika down in cold blood and drove away… the police caught up with her hours later, passed out in her rig,…when they woke her she is recorded in the police cam yelling “I’m going to prison forever pls don’t arrest me.” Well that tells everyone she knew what she did and intentionally left Mika to die alone…later she changed it to “I thought I hit a deer.” It’s ridiculous to be charged 45-yrs and have charges dropped to five yrs in a plea agreement… we need letters, just one paragraph, or email, or phone calls saying white people are watching this and care that the family gets justice”

Here’s what I am saying via email: I have been following this case since it received national attention in the spring/summer of 2023. Any event like this is a complex tragedy, but Sunny White must be held accountable for vehicular homicide, for child endangerment and other charges. The justice system needs to validate the loss of Mika Westwolf to her family and her people. Standards of sentencing need to be observed without prejudice, and a signal sent to Indigenous citizens that Montana law takes their harm and disappearance and deaths seriously.  Thank you. Christina Baldwin, Montana born.

This is what Mika’s mother wrote on Facebook and the www.MikaMatters.com website.

“On the morning of October 30th, 2024, in Polson, Mt the pre-conference trial hearing for Sunny White was held. That morning, Sunny White pleaded guilty to “vehicular homicide and incidents involving another person.”

White was also charged with two counts of criminal child endangerment and one count of criminal possession of dangerous drugs, which were dismissed as part of the plea deal. Sunny White was under the influence of fentanyl and meth when she struck Mika with her vehicle leaving her on the side of the road.

The total sentence could include up to 40 years in prison with substantial fines. If the stars all aligned in White’s favor in her sentencing, White would only receive five years or less. This is not acceptable to me or my family.

We, the family of Mika, initially hoped for a jury trial. We wanted to bring more visibility to Mika’s case and continue to pressure Lake County to work (as it should) with no racial biases. This is one of the many issues that we, as indigenous people, still have to still face, in this country, in 2024!

I am asking you that if you care about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and my daughter’s case to please write a letter to Katie Campbell (Sergeant of the Kalispell Region Probation and Parole Board). It is Katie Campbell’s duty to write the final report for Sunny White’s sentencing, that the judge will read. We hope that with our families’ testimonies (at the sentencing), and the letters that you will provide; Sunny White will receive the maximum amount of years and any chance of early parole will be denied. …  In the end, my ultimate goal is to get justice for my daughter, Mika, and try to get the sentencing laws changed in the state of Montana. Right now, the penalties do not work in favor of the victim. People get more time for theft, burglary, and drug convictions than taking a human life.

WE NEED YOU. If you care about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People and my daughters’ case to please write a letter to Katie Campbell (Sergeant of the Kalispell Region Probation and Parole Board). 

Please write letters, email, or call:
Katie Campbell
Sergeant, Kalispell Region Probation and Parole Bureau
kcampbell2@mt.gov

Office: 406-872-6254

36235 Kerr Dam Rd Polson, MT. 59860

Victim Impact Statement please include at the top of your Statement

  • Primary victim’s name: Mika J. Westwolf
  • Defendant name(s): Sunny K. White
  • Date of crime: March 31,2023
  • Location of crime: North of Arlee, MT near Mile marker 20

Deadline is December 13th, 2024 (Her mother says to send letters and emails beyond that date as well.)

Once upon a time my grandfather, a newly ordained Methodist missionary, was assigned, as his “Christian ministry” to participate in the torturous “re-education” of Indian children. And once upon a time the descendants of a surviving Indian girl and a “re-educated” parson met to tell a story. Mika’s death became part of our story beyond the book. And writing Katie Campbell is part of my commitment to restitution and healing beyond the book.

View of butte and “Pigeon River,” site of The Beekeeper’s Question

I know this is an edgy request, but this is an edgy time. Do what feels right in your heart but do something. Maybe for Mika, maybe for some other cause. We are called to courage and engagement. Now, more than ever.

 

 

 

Because it’s all still happening

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I am both surprised and not surprised at how many white friends and acquaintances have avoided seeing the acclaimed movie, Killers of the Flower Moon.  They report some variation of— “I don’t want to watch the violence, it makes me too uncomfortable…”  And I encourage them with some variation of—“Maybe it’s our turn to be uncomfortable, to witness the real history we are standing in. Maybe we need to educate ourselves so we can have a different conversation, because it’s all still happening.”

Image from movie poster and trailer posted on-line.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a culture-shifting piece of work; like Apocalypse Now changed the view of the Vietnam War, and Schindler’s List, presented the Holocaust in one agonizing unraveling story, or Going After Private Ryan showed ordinary men rising to extraordinary sacrifice. Each of these films is violent, message-driven, ambiguous in outcome, heroic and villainous: classics.

Years ago, I went to see Shindler’s List on a Christmas Day when I had no other plans and was hanging out with Jewish friends. We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and then went to a late matinee. Three hours later we emerged in total silence to walk past a long line of mostly Jewish people waiting to get in. They looked in our faces and saw that we were stunned and mourning. We looked at their faces and saw their determination to endure being shown the horrors of their ancestral story. Out of the silence, people began to recite the Kaddish—prayer for the dead. As the lobby echoed with this ancient lament, I learned that we can experience one another’s difficult stories as an act of spiritual allyship.

It was in that spirit of willingness to know something I did not want to know, and to reckon with my relationship to this history, that I watched Killers of the Flower Moon. First in the total submersion of a darkened theater, and again with several friends on a large screen TV on an afternoon when we could stop and take a breath, sit outside a few minutes, talk with one another, and then go back to finish the tale.

Whidbey sunset– nature watches over us.

You may be carrying enough trauma or sorrow that seeing this movie is not appropriate. Please take care of yourself first and foremost.  I have found my dives into the interviews, now archived all over the internet, to be as interesting as the film. Lily Gladstone, who portrayed Mollie Burkhart, the Osage wife of Leo DiCaprio’s character, has beautifully centered the Native narrative and elucidated Native issues for a white audience.

Tantoo Cardinal, who plays the mother of Mollie and her sisters, said, “I grew up in Northern Alberta among the tar sands. I know what happens when the oil industry doesn’t want to be messed with. And I know the greed that has overcome this world until this land, North America, belongs basically to business. I’m delighted people are being educated about what my ancestors lived through—and we live through it now. …People think the movie is hard, but it’s gentle compared to the actual experience of colonialism and genocide and the abuse our cultures have gone through.”

Image from Native Hope website.

Interestingly, May 5th (Cinco de Mayo), also links Holocaust Remembrance Day and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Day. Of these three, MMIW,or MMIP(oeple) is perhaps the least known, but through organizations like NativeHope.org  we can educate our-white-selves to the realities of Indigenous suffering and honor the persistent vulnerability and resilience of Indigenous communities. Murder is the #3 cause of death for Indigenous women

One story that touches close to my heart is the hit-and-run death of Mika Westwolf who was killed alongside Montana Highway 93 on the Flathead Reservation, walking home late at night on March 31, 2023. I have connection to her extended family and have been brought deeper into their story. What it takes for Indigenous families to get justice is a courageous capacity to channel their outrage, and expose their private grief to media attention.

When Popular Information ran the story, and Amy Goodman picked it up for Democracy Now, the death of this young woman and the tragedies of many Native families came to white-eyes attention. The woman who hit her has the last name White, and her little children are named Aryan and Nation. The combination of vehicular homicide, white supremacy, and hate-crime brought the FBI into the case.

It is Mika’s story that opened my heart to this issue. It is the courage of her mother, her grandmother, her extended family and the devastation of those who loved her that makes me determined to stand alongside their spiritual fierceness. Knowing is the source of acting. Caring is the source of reckoning.

Image from MikaMatters.com website

Crises of injustice tumble into each other. I see ever more clearly that when we do not address the hard work of restitution, violence rolls from one generation to the next, from one group of people to the next. If I start listing all our crises, it’s overwhelming. Desperate immigrants seeking safer places, college campuses roiling with protest and police, wars grunting on in horror. Today, I am holding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People in my heart… because I can, because I am willing to stand alongside their pain. Today I have a candle lit for Mika, because Mika Matters.

Perhaps this is not where you are called to put your heart… but I hope you will put it somewhere in the sorrows and needs of the world. And if you are the one who is suffering, that you will reach out and ask for what you need. May we continue to grow, to look out for each other, to bear witness when we cannot fix and to fix what we can, because it’s all still happening.

Thank you for reading these words and sitting in this story with me. Thank you for letting Mika come to the edge of your heart, even for a few moments.

Please scroll down these comments–especially to the one from Kim, part of Mika’s family. Think of Mika’s mother, one week before Mother’s Day, giving two speeches about MMIW, one at the University of Montana, Missoula. There is wisdom in the circle as we listen to one another.

 

Lily Gladstone’s next movie is Fancy Dance about a family dealing with the disappearance of Lily’s character’s sister. It starts streaming on Apple+ in late June.