“Life Just Keeps Flowing”
It’s been nearly three years since Cassi met Jim, Hayley, and Adam from the Great North Innocence Project during their visit to the North Dakota women’s prison. A lot has happened since then. A lot has changed, including Cassi. But, Cassi’s internal fortitude and strength that she began to cultivate and learn from as a child have remained constant throughout her ordeal, and continue to sustain her healing journey.
“Who is Cassi? I am a very determined person. I’ve always said that. Cassi is really caring, genuine, and loving. That’s who I know I am. I am very determined and whatever I put my mind to, I will do it.”
That dogged determination played a key role in Cassi advocating for her own freedom, and continues to buoy her cause to remember StarLight and honor her memory.
“I was very determined that when StarLight died, I was going to prove the world wrong. Now, we always talk about her. I’ll bring her a bunny on Easter, or a piece of birthday cake. Just because she isn’t here, doesn’t mean she didn’t matter. She might not matter to other people, but she matters to me and my little girls.”
Cassi doesn’t mince words when she talks about the long road she’s trodden to mourn her daughter and heal from her wrongful conviction. She has struggled with letting go of a sense of guilt that should have never been hers to reckon with.
“I carried her death with me for a long time. Even the autopsy couldn’t tell me that I wasn’t at fault because I felt for the longest time that I could have saved her. But I always think of those two hours of us laying there, her laying there lifeless. I thought about that for the longest time–what kind of mom are you? Why didn’t your mom sense go off to say your baby stopped breathing? I tell myself it’s okay. There’s nothing you could have done to save her. In reality, nobody could have saved her.”
Cassi says that she has leaned on her faith and her deep, embodied connection with nature to strengthen her during the hardest times.
“Up here [in the northern part of Bismarck], you can seriously see all kinds of stars. I saw the constellation that my daughter is named after, and if that’s not a sign then I don’t know what is. Of all things to see, I see Cassiopeia. When I saw that constellation, I felt a sense of peace throughout my whole body. It was a sense of peace, this has to be my daughter.”
In other moments, Cassi believes God has sent her signs to keep going, keep healing, and she has heeded that call.
“I like to think that I’m a child of God. I was going to an appointment recently, and I was praying and walking. I asked God for a sign that I was on the right path. Then, on my walk home, I see a monarch butterfly and that reminds me of my grandpa. And I see a yellow butterfly, and that reminds me of my sister, Terri. And then I see a white one, that reminds me of my daughter. I used to walk in the prison yard all the time and prayed like crazy. Days seemed never ending. I prayed StarLight would come show herself, and then a white butterfly would show up. This was the sign I needed. I came to a lot of peace with the idea of StarLight leaving me. Not that I like the idea, but there’s acceptance. It’s like a big weight off my shoulders.”
Cassi also finds grounding through practicing traditional Lakota ways. She shares them with her daughters.
“I always try to tell my kids that they’re Lakota, and to be proud of it. Everyone’s going to know by their last name that they’re Native, be proud of it. I smudge everyday, and I have this picture that sits in my living room called ‘Resilience.’ It’s of a Native lady in a ribbon skirt. The picture reminds me of what I’ve been through and that I still kept going. The name of it is a little reminder to me everyday that ‘you’re still here.’”
StarLight would have turned three years old on January 25, 2025. But instead of celebrating with her daughter earthside, Cassi is finding ways to honor her daughter, even in death, including raising awareness about sudden, unexplained infant death.
“I talk about SIDS a lot. A white man told me that SIDS isn’t real [referring to the officer who interrogated her after StarLight died]. SIDS is very real. I didn’t realize it, but I’m an advocate. To me, it was just talking about it, but I think I’m advocating for something. I want people to know SIDS is real.”
Cassi is also working to break cycles from her family of origin. After her younger sister died a sudden, unexplained death as an infant, the family never collectively grieved. But it’s important for Cassi that not only does she heal from the trauma of losing a child to sudden, unexplained infant death, but so does her mother and her siblings after the loss of her sister, Angel.
“My thing now is, we're talking about it. We had a meal with a cake to celebrate my younger sister’s birthday. Her loss hit again after we lost my sister Teri in October. So, now we talk about both Angel and Teri.”
Cassi’s most constant and powerful source of strength is her children, Leyza and Emmy. She attributes her determination to stay alive and hopeful to them. She also learned about the power of a mother-child bond after experiencing forced separation from her girls while she was incarcerated.
“I’m grateful for my kids. These kids are the best parts of me. I’m really thankful, even after everything that I lost or gave up, that I still have my kids. They are my reason for always trying. At the end of the day, it’s my kids who made me want to fight. These kids are my pride and joy. I learned that, no matter what happens, that bond is always going to be there.”
Lately, she is slowly tapping back into hobbies she enjoyed before StarLight’s death and starting to, cautiously, dream about the future.
“The future, that’s a big question. Today what I want is happiness. I want to go back, not to who I was before, I won’t ever be that person again. But I want to be where I was before I lost StarLight. At that point, I was in this time of my own healing. I was in a calm era. I had finally got to a point, before I lost StarLight, where there was nothing you could say to me to make me act out of character. I was unbothered. I want to get back to that. I want genuine happiness, where I can’t be internally rocked. It’s not anything that anyone else can do for me, I have to do it for myself. I don’t want to be that mad, angry person anymore.”
Cassi sees signs of hope that she will find that steadfast, authentic happiness she yearns for one day, even if she isn’t there yet.
“I want to heal. I don't want to be this mad, bitter woman forever. I feel like I’m not that. But that’s grief, and I’ve learned a lot about grief. But in the end, it’s going to reward me and it will reward my girls. Right now, it’s one of the harder times. But I can’t say that we don’t smile or we don’t laugh at least once a day.”
Cassi is taking life day by day. She recently moved back home to South Dakota to be closer to family. She proudly completed a series of parenting classes. She’s started to consider returning to school to finish her associate’s degree.
“Sometimes, I go sit by the river. That is where I find my peace. When everything seems chaotic, I come to the river. It just reminds me that no matter what, it just keeps flowing, life just keeps flowing.”