Brenda Kay Beck

  Kinaaldá: A Navajo Girl’s Journey Into Womanhood follows my daughter’s kinaaldá, the traditional Navajo puberty ceremony which takes place over four days in Kayenta, Arizona. By walking in Changing Woman’s footsteps and following the prayers and teachings of the Holy People throughout the ceremony, the spirit of Changing Woman is awakened within her. On the last morning she is…

  “Full Moon Rising” is an early chapter in my upcoming memoir, Changing Woman Speaks: From Lost to Found in the Navajo Beauty Way. We’re about to begin a baby blessing ceremony in California for my niece’s newborn, but the godmother is not allowed to come in because she’s on her moon cycle. Tensions arise in the non-native circle because…

  Sand and Stone, the second chapter of my upcoming memoir, Changing Woman Speaks: From Lost to Found in the Navajo Beauty Way, finds me in a rental car late a night with a Navajo medicine man jostling through a dark ravine on the Navajo Indian Reservation. As we head towards a secret ceremony, our headlights pierce the darkness and…

  In Chapter One of my upcoming memoir, Changing Woman Speaks: From Lost to Found in the Navajo Beauty Way, I chuck my corporate heels for a pair of moccasins in one impetuous 48-hour adventure that takes me from New York City to the Navajo Indian Reservation in northern Arizona. It begins a wild ride that entails rifles, coyotes, sand paintings…

  Change is inevitable. But not always easy. We can be battered by change, jostled and scattered like loose feathers in the wind. Or we can be the eagle flying high above the storm navigating our way safely and in control as we ride the energies of the air. The Navajo diety, Changing Woman, teaches us that all of forms…