Gathering Willows Book

Gathering Willows includes four stories that I have gathered over the years at several energy locations. The first story came to me in a vivid dream just after I returned home from a road trip researching my family roots. The dream was like a movie where I played all the parts and could feel every emotion of the actors, male, female, friend or foe. When I woke up, I remember thinking, WOW! That could be a great movie, and I could replay it for several nights, long before video players! That is when I took my first screen play writers course. I wrote the dream and put it away in a notebook. Yet I never forgot it. At that time, I was trying to prove or disprove that my mother's blood line had indeed come from American Indian ancestors and French Kings. My mother, from the age of four, was raised in an orphanage in Kansas until she was sixteen. The only thing she knew about her background was that the Catholic Sisters of the orphanage called her and her sisters Wild Indians, but she was unsure if they meant they were of the blood line or just wild children; so with a few hints and death certificates in hand I headed for Kansas. While I was on this search, I also found out that not only did my mothers DNA come from Indian Chiefs and French Kings, but my father's grandfather was the last Indian Agent in Kansas, and knew my mothers grandparents well, small world is it not! I was able to research my roots deeper than I ever imagined, and have a better idea of why I have the interests I have, as my DNA is chuck full of interesting souls. Along the way, on this same road trip, I picked up a water color print by Mick Harrison at Mount Rushmore. The print is of an Indian woman, whom I always saw as a grandmother, gathering wood, with a child at her side. It has been one of my favorite possessions and not until now, twenty years later, do I realize why. One might assume that gathering wood would be a simple task, however the image embraces my stories and reminds me how some souls struggle to survive with such grace and that life is never simple.Read More