This is a story, but not really just a story.  I’m going to tell you about someone, well,
really a collection of someone’s. 

First, let me explain to you how I found her.  It was during my maiden years; I was
blessed to have a series of trials and hardships come into my life.  I say I was blessed because
hardships help define who we become and our influences in this world. Different people use
different ways to overcome or rise above challenges.  I was no different and I leaned heavily on
prominent elements in my life such as religion and friends to get through. There was a time that
seemed like no matter how far ahead I would get, I was still falling. The mechanisms I had relied
upon to help get me through were failing me – they weren’t enough. Constant sensations of
drowning and choking were prevalent in day to day existence. It was during this dark time I
found Grandmother Star. 

I was walking at night; I used night walking as a coping mechanism.  I still remember the
suffocating feeling of loneliness and isolation. It was then that Grandmother Star caught my eye.
A bright beacon that stood out among the other stars. I was in college at this time and being
fairly educated didn’t associate the significance other than a pretty star, to take a quote “just
burning balls of gas burning billions of miles away”. 

Suddenly I felt that I was being watched over, almost protected. The comfort I felt didn’t
make a lot of sense but I was yearning so I accepted it. I watched that star as I walked the rest
of that night, and the next night, and for many, many nights after. Overtime, I began to search
the heavens for this star.  My grandmothers had long passed away but I felt comfort as if from
an elder, so I began to call her Grandmother Star.  Before this, I didn’t believe in ancestors; my
upbringing and religion shuttered any possibility. However, I knew, by gazing at her brilliance
and sensing the power being radiated to me, that this star was somehow connected to the
ancestors–MY ancestors going back to when our kind understood the earth and
themselves. Their existence and influence became a clear reality, as clear as the bright silvery
light from Grandmother against the black night sky. I used this power to find my way through the
difficulties I was facing.  I learned to rely on myself because I had Grandmother Star watching
me, guiding me to my purpose, and she would not fail me. For years I looked to the heavens for
Grandmother Star, to refresh my spirit, clinging to the feelings of guidance and balance that I
obtained, in a sense from her very presence in the sky. 

This is my writing about the light.  The light that someone saw in me that I couldn’t see in
myself.  As I aged, I began to recognize the real purpose of Grandmother Star; an external
tangible symbol which represented my own power. I now understand that my ancestors
manifested as Grandmother Star to help me find myself. I still revere Grandmother Star, but
have since come to realize that I carry the souls of my ancestors in my own blood. Like the DNA
for my person, their DNA is recombined and intertwined to make me, and I am, therefore, one
with them. It took those hardships which I faced to help me realize this. The evolution of my
enlightenment leads me into a path of knowing there is always more. But through this searching,
I understand I am enough, and I am ready. The external light of Grandmother Star is just that,
the external symbol of the light we hold in ourselves.