It's funny how it doesn't seem to matter how much good work you do for your order. It doesn't seem to matter to some how hard you work either. When council broke very few Masters stuck around and made sure everyone felt safe, felt like they were being cared for even though leadership was restructuring.

It doesn?t seem to matter to some either that I did this worried sick about my now husband who was off on a very dangerous mission he might not have come back from or that I was still grieving for the loss of one of my students. So much so that I was reminded by most of my family more than once that there is no death, there is only the Force.

What some have seen as a lack of care for the matter has been in fact, grief so deep that merely expressing it would send me into uncontrollable sobbing. Not exactly the way a Jedi Master should present herself in public. Grief my husband doesn't know how to deal with and so simply asks me to let it go. Grief my step daughter understands all too well and has been a strong shoulder to help me bear the weight.

Each time I try to get past it however, yet another dark ugly rumor swirls past like a tattered cape, another whisper of what bad Jedi my family are.

Bad because we go out beyond the doors of our order and try to help people in need. Because there is never a 100% success rate at this and occasionally we lose. This is seen as failure on our part and when we stand together, work together, mistakes are labeled lies because we don?t sell each other out and say which of us made the mistake. As far as any of us is concerned, we all did. Because my family does not take one of us and sacrifice them up to the alter of vengeance some have set before us we are labeled and accused of crimes that do not even exist.

For what else is it but vengeance? Justice was done the moment I was given the assignment to work with troubled students so we don?t ever again have a tree with a name on it in my husband's beloved garden. Because who but a former troubled student herself is better at guiding another back to the right path. One must know the forest to lead others out of it.

My 'punishment' for my 'crime' was to spend the rest of my days making sure it never happens again. A fit and just resolution that eases my grief. Eases it because a miscalculation is not a crime, it?s a mistake. An unfortunate one but no worse, I'm afraid, than some mistakes made by other members of the order.

The attitude of some is worse though. Those that don't realize I could have washed my hands of the situation, the boy would have died anyways and no one would have known I knew why. No one would have blamed me for not acting. For giving up. No one seems to blame anyone around here for cowardice. Being too afraid to act is perfectly acceptable apparently. Doing what's right, even if you don't always succeed? that, that is grounds for having your name dragged through the mud, your family ridiculed.

Well, I've never known a Kenobi or a Yonsz to give up without a fight and now I'm both and I'm not about to dishonor either name by slinking away with my tail between my legs.

My husband, bless his heart, bought an entire planet for me just so we could leave all this crap and start over and do what?s right without a handful of more Jedi than thous breathing down our necks when they would have done a worse job than we did. When he realized his escape plan was going to break my heart one way or another, he gave it away to his best friend in a show of confidence that we could make things better between our opposing factions and that he understood what I needed from him.

You see his very first concern is how much this hurts me, to have my own family turn on me this way. He doesn't have the self discipline I have to not punch people that hurt the one he loves. It is a flaw in his character but an endearing one I'm loath to correct. Just as my sarcasm is one he does not correct. He understands something few outside of my family do, sarcasm is my defense mechanism when I am hurt by what another says or does. It is not meant to show that I do not care, but that the other person is not considering that I do, as a matter of fact have feelings and they are stepping on them.

And so I will stay and fight for my family, for as my Master Stitch says, ohana. We as Jedi are ohana. All of us, even the ones we don?t like for whatever reason. I have never judged my ohana for the mistakes they have made, we all make mistakes. I and my family have only ever turned on another person when the mistake was no mistake at all but a deliberate attempt to hurt someone or a group of someones.

Mistakes happen. Hatefulness however, is not the way of a Jedi and I will stand up to it. Now, in this time, in this place, I will face my accusers if they so dare to speak to me on any matter they believe I have lied about and will ask them to show me proof of their allegations.

And I will show them the truth they seek.

This I do for the ohana that took me and gave me a second chance I did not deserve. I have never forgotten this. They are being repaid in full with interest. They have from the start but now I think it might be time for the order to see what it really is to be a Jedi.

And what it is not.