Still Healing

I was born and raised in Appalachia. I come from proud, brave, resilient people with a colorful ancestry. Appalachia is a liminal space culturally, geographically and spiritually, which means it is an in between space. It’s a place known for its beauty, rich history, and haunting ghost stories, but it’s equally known for poverty, lack of education, and collapse of industry.

As a child I always wanted to escape the mountains I now adore. I felt suffocated and small. Back then I didn’t know I was dealing with internalized shame from the expectations of others. I just knew we were poor, and that we were constantly reminded of how worthless poor people were because we received fifty dollars in food stamps every month. We survived by living in a trailer. A trailer on the side of a mountain where the pipes froze in the wintertime, and you could barely breathe when the summer came around.

At a young age I felt the sting of doubt from others.

The bar was low for girls like me. I was expected to get pregnant by fourteen and marry young. No one ever expected me to leave, but I always knew I was meant for more. That deeply ingrained knowing made me resent my ancestry, my home, and the accent that everyone mocked.

Now that I’m grown in mind, body, and spirit, I have realized I am who I am because of the mountains where I was born. I have been shaped by my loyal, complicated, stubborn family. I have learned most people adore my accent. Those who label me as uneducated because of the way I speak? Well, they don’t matter at the end of the day.

I’ve always carried my ancestry in my bones, the blessings and the burdens. That’s the way it is when you’re born in a liminal space. You’re vilified and misunderstood because you don’t fit neatly into a certain box. Society says we should label ourselves. If we don’t, they will. But I am proud to say I am Appalachian through and through. Like the ancient mountains where I was born, I’ve never fit under one label. I am not easily defined, nor easily controlled. When I was younger, I tried to hide parts of myself to fit in. Now, I am embracing every part.

Like the ghosts of home who still wander the paths of the forest searching for peace and rest, I do the same. I am my family’s legacy. I am a writer who embodies many voices and speaks truths that have been silenced for generations. I am the voice of my people. I grew up listening to the many stories of the elders around me, often sitting at their feet or on their laps and taking in every word they spoke and some they didn’t. Sometimes their silence held more truth than their lips. When they did speak, their voices held age-old wisdom of their colored past.

As a child their stories came alive in my young mind. I saw who they used to be, who they became, and who they had longed to be. Theirs was an ancient gospel of grit that spoke to my soul.

Now, I write to honor their voices, my ghosts of Appalachia. I also write to preserve and introduce more of our culture to the outside world. I want people to remember that we’ve always been more than what they thought we were. Finally, I also write for myself. Storytelling was my escape, and now, it is my chosen path through this life.

Welcome to iDreamInFiction.net I'm Edie Lavoy, and this blog is for all of us who are still healing.