Independence Lyrics

When I was a baby girl

Born on my ancestral land

I shared a bedroom with my family

Happily

Bathed outdoors in a tin tub

Held mother's hand through an open-air market

Rode on father's motorbike

Stood ankle deep along the bay shore

arms outstretched to the sea

When I was a young girl

Living in a foreign land

Mother worked 12-hour days

Father worked 3 jobs

sisters were being teenagers

And I was a little one

Walking myself home

Unlocking my own doors

Cooking eggs on sacred rice

When I was a girl on the verge

My hair smelled of coffee and steamed milk

On naps between the morning shift and morning class

I lived for a summer alone in a house

walked through my fears with no one else

My eyes fixated on the future

I took two weeks to say farewell to my family

And moved myself across a country

When I was a young woman

No place was home

I loved so hard

Lost myself

Sang my magic songs

Had my fun

$25 to my name

Consumed by madness

I quit the game

Rode like the wind to oblivion

When I was a grown woman

I remembered long lost ways

Embodied old truths

Fell back into the arms of my family

My heart in the sea

head in the clouds

feet rooted in the earth

I heard the songs of our kin

Of four legs, of wings, of fins.

I came to understand

What sustains them

Sustains me

And I was finally free