Misa M. M. Kelly

June 5, 2023

Shifting focus, refining focus, embracing clarity, reframing. Focusing on Medicine, in the earth sense, not Western sense.

March 18, 2023

I havenʻt put much effort into this, and, since I launched it, have written alot. It seems like I enjoy just writing to write, and have not been that interested in publishing to this little corner of the internet. But, I feel a tug, to start, using this space. 

November 2021

Exploring Living a Sacred Life

Poetry takes many shapes and forms:  writing, songs, dances, sculptures, drawings, paintings, installations, stories, dreams. It can be alchemical, it can be ordinary, it can be nothing more than a wiggle or a scrawl or scribble. It is what it is, and we are who we are and what we are. Best to just embrace it and keep up the good work. Keep growing and evolving. The creative expressions are a part of the wounded healer journey that brought me to a state of relative wholeness. In the present moment, it is a part of cultivating a sacred life, questing harmony, balance, and a greater understanding of the human condition and the container in which we live. It is a form of advocacy for the land, the air, the water. I live for our descendants, with care for what type of world we wish to leave them.

me ke aloha

No Name - big self

ʻIoloani OʻKelly Puʻu - indiviual self

November 2020

Iʻm O.k, you are O.k., we are all O.kay.

I was born Annette Marie Pu'u on July 8,1959 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a mixed-race Hawaiian father and a mother born to Yugoslavian immigrants from the regions of Gorenje and Logarska Dolina.

When I left my hometown to pursue my passion for dance, and an MFA, to support my quest at that time to heal from the impact of deep trauma, and to take space, I changed my name to Misa Miele Mandigo Kelly. I changed my name to step away for a period from biological family to make space to heal, and to discover who I was separate from my family's religious and political paradigms moving forward with the positive things from childhood, and the gifts of resiliency, moving forward into adulthood.

I was, at this time, on a truth quest, a direction from the still small voice inside when I asked specific question. 

With the truth quest resulted in stepping into the healing river with the study of dance triggering the surfacing of what I had repressed.  

I was also, at that time, terrified of my family and overwhelmed by flashbacks. I was also terrified of my own birth name in that those who had harmed me, in a Catholic educational setting, taught me to fear my name.

My own views, from this truth quest, have evolved into something radically different than the political, social, economic, and spiritual views of my parents as well as the state of being of the communities they interfaced with who became an extended family of wounders so to speak.

 In the present moment, I feel whole, and have developed a busy albeit quiet lifestyle full of adventure, being, as well as doing what brings me happiness, joy: lots of time in nature, kayaking with my beloved, returning to school with fresh educational goals, studying shamanism, painting, drawing, singing/songwriting, writing, and studying languages, Hawaiian at the top of the heap right now.

I am grateful for this beautiful odyssey called life.

Me ke aloha!

Aunty