Pele’s Unquenchable Cry: A Mother’s Lava-Heart for Puna’s Stolen Breath #KahuPuna
- wearepuna
- Nov 6
- 4 min read
I'm so accustomed to the silence now—no response has become the norm for years, like the hush before Pele's lava kisses the sea. My entire family turned away, ghosted me completely... 😞❤️🔥⚠️⚔️🌋 It barely stings anymore, yet somehow, deep down, it still aches with an intensity that catches me off guard, a subterranean rumble echoing Pele's unquenchable fire. ⚔️🌋 Therapy has been a lifeline, a sacred spring amid the scorched earth.
Through session after session, I've come to see that these past 10 years—ever since I dove headfirst into fierce advocacy, channeling Pele's righteous fury—anything I share gets dismissed as "whining" by those who don't want to hear it, or who cling to their own views. But it's never been that; it's a mother's desperate fight to shield her child from poison, from air that steals his breath, thick as the vog that cloaks her volcanic wrath. How could I be just a simple mom protecting her keiki, when Pele herself roars through my veins?
This battle has carved immense trauma into so many of us, myself included—diagnosed CPTSD from a lifetime of it, 37 years strong, forged in the crucible of her glowing rivers. Our health is still being stolen, our human rights stripped away like ancient forests consumed by her flows, and no one dares touch it for fear of the backlash. That's the reality in Puna's geothermal shadow, endured year after heartbreaking year, under the gaze of the goddess who births and destroys.
No one truly grasps the daily trauma, the profound PTSD episodes that grip us here in lower Puna, where Pele's breath mingles with our poisoned skies. No one else in Hawai'i wakes each morning wondering if the air might claim them today, a toxic haze born from wounds in her sacred skin; watching keiki to kupuna grow so ill they can barely walk, battling chronic illnesses that ravage us—at the very least, like embers smoldering long after the eruption. And it's all hidden because the foreign industry refuses to report our poisonings, burying truths beneath layers of cooled pahoehoe. This has been the unspoken truth for years; ask anyone from the heart of it, #aolepgv. If it's not documented, it's invalidated. This isn't about blame—it's our lived reality, and something has to break, like the earth cracking open to release her molten heart. Our keiki must matter; what we say has to be believed as truth. 😞⚠️
We pour out empathy and aloha for our elder kupuna, who break into tears just trying to speak of it, emotional flashbacks stealing their words like steam rising from her vents. Yet we're all the same down here, enduring the very horrors that traumatized everyone during the HGPA days, when Pele's fury first boiled over in modern memory.
So why do the younger generations face the same invalidation, the same ignoring, with trauma and PTSD from daily poisonings in 2025, as her lava tubes pulse unseen beneath us? Since 2018, it's been worse than ever—worse than HGPA, a relentless flow that reshapes the land—and so many have been bought out, moved on, or trapped in poverty without escape, far from her protective embrace. They can't fathom how severe it remains, how her fire still claims what is hers.
The blowouts of the early '90s were only the start... we live it every single day, our trauma as valid as the aa fields that scar her flanks, sharp and enduring. You'll search in vain for records of our sufferings; Israel has mastered the art of concealing us in the radius—from propaganda to owning every seat of power that could aid the people, to branding native-born Puna folks as "crazy," while Pele weeps rivers of fire in silence.
That doesn't make it any less real. The cycle must shatter, like caldera walls giving way, and I believe it starts with people listening, believing, and amplifying our community's truths—echoing Pele's thunderous voice. That's KahuPuna's sacred mission—to lift these hidden voices and stories into the light, as dawn breaks over her steaming craters.
I'm teetering on the edge of surrender, but I can't. I love Pele with every fiber of my being, her molten spirit my guide. I love 'āina too fiercely, born from her fiery womb. I love life itself too much, the dance of creation amid destruction.
The tides are shifting, like ocean meeting lava in explosive rebirth.
For years, I've held onto hope that one day this would matter enough to the world—that people would rise to mālama Pele, to honor her sacred rage, that outsiders would care when they finally eyed drilling Mauna and beyond, piercing her very heart.
And with a full heart, I can say: that day is here, as new land emerges from her flows. ❤️🔥❤️🔥 I only wish it had come decades sooner, sparing us the unimaginable suffering, the lives lost like offerings to her altar, the culture forever erased from one of Hawai'i's most sacred wahi pana, now veiled in hardening stone.
It's okay if folks can't reply—I know my fire burns intense, a blaze fed by Pele's eternal flame. But it springs from a well of profound love and terror for our home's eternal destruction, and for my child never knowing healing, clean air, or true health in her lifetime, like her mom once dreamed beneath starlit skies over her domain.
I have to embrace it, pour everything into KahuPuna, and fight to save our home, standing guard as Pele's kahu.
Activism is a crucible—not for the faint of heart, tempered in her volcanic forge.
The path through seems to be laying it all bare, rewriting the dark narratives we've been fed for far too long... and holding each other close, loving one another through the waves of trauma it unleashes for so many, as steam vents release the pressure of ages.
I thank God every day for my therapist. Mental health warriors are desperately needed in lower Puna, oases in her rugged, fiery landscape—I don't know where I'd be without my doctor.
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