We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured the difficult loss she wrote about in her memoir Pushing up the Sky, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German) through the seven cycles of life in their Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.
With tender honesty, Trevor explores how the end is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something.
"Terra Trevor's book is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades. There are phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I'd previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I could have finished this book in a day, I chose to move slowly, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way."
—Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence