{"id":171,"date":"2026-06-08T15:37:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=171"},"modified":"2026-08-07T13:34:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:34:48","slug":"michelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"Michelle"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-post-date has-text-align-right\"><time datetime=\"2026-06-08T15:37:41-04:00\">June 8, 2026<\/time><\/div>\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse has-text-align-center has-bodoni-moda-font-family\" style=\"font-style:normal;font-weight:500\">To Michelle,<br><br>I don't know how to speak to you<br>Without carrying everything at once.<br>So I'll start here<br>With what the papers never asked<br>And the courts could never hold.<br><br>You &amp; I come from the same<br>Woman.<br>She was our mother<br>Before she became a headline,<br>Before her name was spoken<br>Only in past tense.<br>That truth stays<br>No matter what happened after.<br><br>When I read about that night,<br>I feel the split again,<br>Love on one side,<br>Horror on the other,<br>And nowhere to set them down.<br>I am not writing to rewrite facts.<br>I am writing because silence<br>Has already taken too much from us.<br><br>I think about what shaped you.<br>What shaped me.<br>About how pain doesn't arrive<br>Suddenly,<br>Fully formed.<br>It accumulates,<br>Through addiction, loss, systems that<br>Break families early<br>And call it protection.<br><br>None of this erases what happened.<br>None of it brings our Mom back.<br>There is poem strong enough <br>To undo that night,<br>Or soften the reality of it.<br><br>But I need you to know this:<br>You are still my sister.<br>That doesn't disappear<br>Because grief became unbearable.<br>Because alcohol blurred what should<br>Never be blurred.<br>Because tragedy took everything<br>Too far.<br><br>I don't know what you remember.<br>I don't know what memories haunt<br>You<br>Or what silence lives in your chest.<br>I imagine you carry weight<br>That has no name,<br>That no sentence can complete.<br><br>I carry my own,<br>A different kind of loss,<br>But loss all the same.<br>A mother gone.<br>A family that never got the chance<br>To heal before it shattered.<br><br>I hold anger.<br>And sorrow.<br>And questions with no place to land.<br>I hold boundaries<br>And still<br>I hold grief for you, too.<br><br>This is not forgiveness written<br>Prematurely.<br>This is not forgetting.<br>This is acknowledgment,<br>That we are both daughters of the<br>Same woman,<br>Both shaped by a history that failed us,<br>Both surviving something<br>That never should have happened.<br><br>I don't know what comes next for us.<br>I only know that love<br>Does not always look clean or simple,<br>And sometimes it speaks<br>By refusing to erase either the harm<br>Or the humanity.<br><br>Mom deserved more.<br>So did we.<br><br>And somehow,<br>we are still here.<br><br><\/pre>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-post-author-name has-text-align-right\">Stacy Provost<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To Michelle,I don&#8217;t know how to speak to youWithout carrying everything at once.So I&#8217;ll start hereWith what the papers never askedAnd the courts could never hold.You &amp; I come from the sameWoman.She was our motherBefore she became a headline,Before her name was spokenOnly in past tense.That truth staysNo matter what happened after.When I read about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279613110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1368,1364,1382,1365,1376,1360,1387,1394,1366],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blogging","tag-indigenous","tag-iwritewhereiamquiet","tag-mental-health","tag-personal","tag-poems","tag-quietbystacy","tag-raw","tag-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/shcsBK-michelle","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":259,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=259","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":0},"title":"To The Article That Thought It Told The Story","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"August 6, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I read your headlineand my chest tightened.You reduced my motherto a minute of reading,to numbers & charges,to alcohol & a courtroom calendar.You said her name-Roberta Iron Shirt-but you didn't know how to hold it.You placed it beside violenceas if that was the sum of her life.You counted wounds.You counted years.You\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":100,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=100","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":1},"title":"I Write Where I Am Quiet: A Seasonal Series","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"April 16, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Prologue: I Write Where I Am QuietI write where I am quiet,not because I have nothing to say,but because my voice learnedhow to survive softly.The loud world taught me to listen.The quiet taught me truth.So I place my words here,carefully,like stones around a firethat still burns. Winter: Where I Learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":155,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=155","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":2},"title":"Dear Dad","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"June 8, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Dad,I don't know how to beginBecause I never knew how to find you.Your name came to me late in life,Like a door finally labeledAfter years of standing outside it.I said it quietly at first,testing the soundWondering what it carried.I don't know your voice.I don't know your handsOr whether you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":125,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=125","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":3},"title":"When the Noise Won&#8217;t Quiet","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"April 19, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Some days your mind is a roomwith too many voices,all talking at onceabout everything that could gowrong.The air feels heavier than it should,like breathing through invisibleweight,and even silencesounds like pressure.You try to look normal.You laugh when you should,nod when people talk,pretend the storm in your chestis just a passing cloud.But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blog\"","block_context":{"text":"blog","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=blog"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=35","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":4},"title":"My name is Stacy","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"April 14, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"My name is StacyIt's the name I answer to.Not the one my ancestors whisperedinto the earth,But the one the world handed meand expected me to fit inside.It's English.Clean.Easy to pronounce.A name that never makes people ask questions.A name that learned earlyHow to keep my truths from showing first.I am Indigenouseven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"authors\"","block_context":{"text":"authors","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=authors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":92,"url":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?p=92","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":5},"title":"What I Carried Quietly","author":"Stacy Provost","date":"April 15, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I am shy by nature,introverted,the kind of child who learned earlythat watching was safer than speaking.Silence became a second skinI wore without question.I was born in 1985, Blackfoot at my core,though no taught me how toname it then.By the age of seven,I was taken,not because I wasn't loved,but because love\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/279613110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwritewhereiamquiet.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}