if you've ever gotten out of something and then looked up a few years later and realised you were back in the same shape of thing — different people, same weather — joy harjo's story is for you. because that's exactly what happened to her, and the way out is worth looking at closely.
she was born in tulsa in 1951, muscogee (creek) on her father's side. her memoir crazy brave (2012) opens on the pattern: a father whose drinking came with a violent temper, and after her parents split, a stepfather whose cruelty got worse — and more disturbing — as she got older. at 16, in 1967, she left, for the institute of american indian arts in santa fe, one of the only places then that took native teenagers' art seriously.
leaving the house didn't end the pattern. by her own account, and reviews of the book, she was back in oklahoma soon after as a hungry, pregnant teenager, married young, living with her husband's family. that didn't last. then a second relationship — with, in one reviewer's words, 'a poet, activist, and terrible drunk' — where the drinking and abuse ran the house again. and all the while she was succeeding as a student and raising two children. a split life. she describes it turning into panic attacks.
the doorway
here's the line, from crazy brave: "it was the spirit of poetry who reached out and found me as i stood there at the doorway between panic and love." she doesn't tell it as a hobby she picked up. she tells it as something that came for her, at the exact hinge — the old pattern on one side, a life she could actually choose on the other — and she went with it.
she left the relationship. she raised her son and daughter on her own. she went to the university of new mexico intending medicine, switched to art, then to writing, and graduated in 1976; then the iowa writers' workshop, mfa 1978. she's said there were no native names in the american poetry books when she started. she put some there — she had some horses (1983), in mad love and war (1990), and eventually crazy brave itself.
the pattern came back in a new shape. so did the way out. she didn't wait to be rescued from it — she built something that met her at the door.
the saxophone
the second thing worth taking is smaller and, honestly, more useful for most of us. around 40, already an established poet, she took up the saxophone. not as a joke. she formed bands, made records that mix poems and horns and muscogee song, and has said writing and performing are both 'about learning to listen, much like in music.' the point for the loop: what got you out in one decade doesn't have to be the only tool you ever get. she added a whole new discipline in the middle of her life.
in 2019 she was named u.s. poet laureate — the first native american to hold it — and served three terms. she's spent that platform saying poetry is 'the voice of what can't be spoken' and 'without poetry, we lose our way.'
the honest ledger
she's alive and she wrote her own story, so this piece stays inside what she's said. the men in it aren't named here, and the article doesn't claim anything about her own drinking — the pattern she describes belonged to the houses she was in. the exact order of relationships shifts a little between sources; the throughline doesn't.
for the loop: what's your doorway right now — the spot between the panic and the thing you'd choose? and what small craft could you build that meets you there, on your own timeline, whether you're 19 or 40?