Pushing up the Sky

PUSHING UP THE SKY: A Memoir

KAAN: Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network; 1st edition (2006) Hardcover. www.wearekaan.org/history

Finalist for the Louis Littlecoon Oliver Memorial Prose Award with Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.

Terra Trevor, mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and her husband had one child before choosing to add more children to their family through foster care and adoption. They adopted twice: a one-year-old in 1984 and a ten-year-old in 1987, from South Korea. There are two stories in Trevor’s personal account. The first is about her third child experiencing difficulty adjusting from foster care in South Korea to adoption in the United States. The second story is about her son diagnosed with a brain tumor shortly after the arrival of a new sibling, an event that changed all of their lives forever.

This is the story of a family facing incredible challenges. It is a story of compromises, insights, profound joy, deep suffering, and terrific rewards. Most of all, it’s a story on the meaning of family, learning to let go of expectations and forge a new identity. In lyric prose Pushing up the Sky illuminates losses and blessings coming together. Hope is offered as a path, with the resolve to celebrate each new day and to cherish every second of it.

Praise for PUSHING UP THE SKY

“Terra Trevor’s ‘Pushing up the Sky’ is a revelation of the struggles and triumphs packed into the hyphens between Korean and Native American and American. From her, we learn that adoption can best be mutual, that the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child’s ways. With unflinching honesty and unfailing love, Trevor details the risks and heartaches of taking in, the bittersweetness of letting go, and the everlasting bonds that grow between them all. With ‘Pushing up the Sky’, the ‘literature of adoption’ comes of age as literature, worthy of an honored place in the human story.”—Robert Bensen, editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education

“This powerful journey through life is elegantly unfolded by author Terra Trevor. Weaving her personal story through parenting, death, grief and living, she gives readers a glimpse of her soul. Trevor’s story brought to life by her exceptional writing brought tears to my eyes. I could share her heartache and felt tendrils of joy spring to life as she began her healing journey.”—Kim Phagan-Hansel, Adoption and Fostering Families Today magazine

“Terra Trevor has woven together a moving story of love and heartache across time and culture. She has integrated her own American Indian culture into the dynamics of transracial adoption and described in detail life in a transracial family that has not been done before to this extent. Her courage to describe these events with great honesty, bears witness to a family that provided warmth, encouragement and humor in the face of adversity.”—Phil Capper, Adoption Australia magazine

“In Pushing Up the Sky, Terra Trevor gives a personal and insightful account of the joys and challenges inherent in transracial adoptions. She also shares the personal growth she found in an unexpected loss and difficult family relationships. I was deeply moved by her sensitivity to her children’s struggles for identity. I was incredibly proud of how she supported them. In revealing her emotional responses to traumatic experiences, she brings us closer to each other. And in that process, makes a tremendous contribution to all of us. I highly recommend this book.” —Dawn Downey, author of Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room

Author’s Note

The title Pushing up the Sky is from a traditional Native story of the Snohomish tribe which testifies and speaks to the great power of what we can accomplish when people work together with a common goal.

I wouldn’t be here without the steadfast support and love of many people. This is a true story. Some names and details have been changed.

Pushing up the Sky was originally published in 2006. It was my first book. In the years since I have learned a great many writing and motherhood lessons, which have allowed me to become a better writer and a better mother and grandmother. Within the pages of Pushing up the Sky, I offer my humble beginnings.

If I could be granted one wish I would ask not for rave reviews, only that this book might change a million hearts, and that it will be read for more decades, beyond my lifetime.

While I will never know how many people have been touched, and perhaps changed, I do know that it has been passed steadily from the hands of many readers because I have received hundreds of emails with kind words. May the 20th Anniversary eBook edition of Pushing up the Sky, be another step along that road.

Terra Trevor, 2026

AFTER PUSHING UP THE SKY

WE WHO WALK THE SEVEN WAYS: A Memoir

University of Nebraska Press, 2023

We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After the difficult journey with multiple loss she wrote about in her memoir Pushing up the Sky, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Terra through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.

With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something. Read More | Order