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I have been a little weird since day one. My family and the beautiful people of Hawaiʻi gave me room to be that way without shame. They helped me understand that I did not have to walk exactly as someone else walked to have a place in the world.

Pearl Beneath the Pacific Sky is a poem about learning to walk in my own light. I picture the sky at the hour of my birth—the sun and moon, Matāliʻi, and the planets—as a personal compass. I do not read it as a prediction of my fate. It gives me an image for the people and places that formed me.

I walk with God and the Church beside me, and with my ancestors and personal history beside me too. What matters now is what I do with the light I have received.

I was born to stand out by being myself. I was born to steward what has been entrusted to me.

The poem is attached below.