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A Tlingit Woman Comes Home

Claiming my professional, personal, and indigenous identity during one trajectory-changing Alaskan summer

Kelsey Breseman
Engage
10 min readDec 19, 2024

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A photograph of a wild-haired smiling woman with blue water and green mountains behind her
This photo and all the others — and the art in this post — are the original works of the author

This is the story of the summer that set me up for the life I have now: writing full time, married to the love of my life, our newborn in my arms right now.

It’s my first day in seven years with an office to go to, and I’m on foot. I’ve tucked my silky dress into my rain pants, zipped up the coat, feel the little droplets beading on my cheeks. Over the bridge from Douglas to Juneau, the air smells like salt sea and green things growing.

It’s strange, at thirty-two, to take an internship. I’ve got a decade of experience in engineering: hard work, mentally engaging, remote. It’s not a bad life, and it pays well. But I’ve been burning out, steadily, for years now: job, relationship, degree, all at once. So this spring, I broke from everything. Suddenly, I’m in Juneau, Alaska: my tribe’s homeland, but not a place I’ve ever lived. And there are mountains rising up before me.

I don’t know it yet, but this is a summer that will change my life — and these mountains will save me. I will spend lonely hours awaiting texts from the man who will become my ex; long quiet afternoons reading forestry histories in the empty office; exalted minutes dipping into the…

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Published in Engage

Engage is a leading publication for creative nonfiction, showcasing personal essays, memoirs, and authentic human stories inspired by real-life and meaningful life lessons by makers, adventurers, and everyone with a memorable life story to share.

Kelsey Breseman
Kelsey Breseman

Written by Kelsey Breseman

An adventurer, engineer, indigenous Alaskan writing the nitty gritty. See my recent posts for free on Substack: https://ifoundtheme.substack.com/

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