intheholler

[intheholler]

This isn't the terf blog is it

hell no, terfs can eat my entire nonbinary ass

okay ive been getting a lot of weird asks semi-recently that ive just been deleting because a lot of them have triggering shit and are unrelated to anything i post here. is there another blog with a name like mine or something that has demonstrated themselves to be bad people. or what's up

[intheholler]

I’d like to add Rosemary by Sierra Ferrell to your murder ballad playlist. Just saw her in Charleston, WV last weekend, she was amazing life and you should give that song a listen!

excellent!! i loved it and immediately stuck it on the playlist. thanks so much for the rec <33

[intheholler]

sending love to y’all as a northwest florida girl who went to college in appalachia and found nothing but love and warmth there. as a floridian i know how bad these storms can get and it’s (unfortunately) something i’m always ready for. it breaks my heart to see it come to y’all. please know our hearts are with you and we are hoping for your recovery 🩷

thank you sm for this little note of support, real sorry i didn't see it til now. emotional bandwidth at an all time low.

i hope you n yours are doin okay after those two blew through too <3 its so scary out there right now. really starting to feel the dread of climate change in my bones

[intheholler]

hii

so, i have nothing to do with appalachia or even america cause i come from alllll the way over the sea in this tiny town in england…but reading up on this blog or experiences online // my friends who have moved over here from the states has made me think abt the huge similarities in the gentrification and religious aspects from across the globe (and it’s happening everywhere, but this is just from a UK perspective)

theres lots of rich farmland and wealthy rural areas in england. but the further into the country you get, there are towns/places in deep deep poverty because of the dead industries (that goes into heavy british politics) or facing a severe homelessness crisis because everyone is building holiday villas and country retreats. **

we used to live on an old farm before the land got renovated to make space for two other houses along the road. i would find bricks and planks// wooden posts, barbed wire fences etc around which looked ‘eyesore’ (to quote my neighbour) because of how modern the surrounding area was. literally just grey shiplap. everywhere. there were neighbours who had lived there for decades trying to help out with the land; then upon realising that the only field left for miles was now a jumbo golf course, had to move away or got kicked out by the council cause they couldn’t afford to live there and ‘just weren’t needed anymore’. moving away & meeting others myself has made me realise how many people (esp large families) moved down to the overpriced city because they literally had no other option.

** every city has its surrounding land & when they begin bulldozing a village to make another coffee place, they don’t care about you, the land, the cost crisis, your job or your roots

and that’s just my experience in england, that’s not even to mention the rest of the UK (eg. the scottish highlands, most of wales, northern ireland)

but also the heavy religious aspects, the indoctrination, the isolation, churches being built over and turned into pubs/bars and still so many communities believing that it’s just the consequences of the countries sinners..

(and that’s just Christianity cause we all know how Britain has diluted and stripped so much culture and other religions down to nothing.)

god i love these asks from intl folks who note such similarities to appalachian socioeconomic/religious/political circumstances. i think it really highlights how much rural folks really understand each other in a way urban people just can't, and it gives me a nice sense of global solidarity (as much as the shared pains fucking suck)

this was really interesting to read, thanks so much for sharing and i'm sorry this took so long for me to reply to; it's been a weird few months

take care <33

[intheholler]

hang on is first day of buck season an appalachia thing? because if so i may need to reconsider if where i grew up is appalachia or not lol

as in like, making a big to-do, parents keeping their kids out of school kinda thing? lol my family wasn't big hunters but i do remember half my class would be missing so if you mean the Making A Day Of It thing then,,, perhaps yes hahah

[intheholler]

Hi!!! Love your blog and love Appalachia so much, even though I was only there for college for four years and not really in more places other than that one (the triad in nc)

Here's a very large text block with my in-depth lore ponderings relating to the book I'm writing

Today's question relates to worldbuilding! I'm coming up with lore and culture for a fictional city in a book I'm writing, and most of the city is Western European French and like Bucharest, Romania as well as Victorian London. The city is also very very steeped in immigrant culture. While there's original folk sources and original pagan lore, a lot of colonialism happened from Western Europe type countries as well as a lot of cultural shifts due to immigrants becoming a staple of the population so it's become something new.

However, I also wanted to add in a lot of American culture and I really want to know more about Appalachia / know it gets a bad rep. Currently the poorer parts of the city (or at least the working class, factory neighborhoods and the mining neighborhoods) are more towards Appalachian culture but I want to avoid stereotypes and make the culture and lore feel more natural to the grand scheme of things. I'm also thinking this is an older culture from when the city was still being founded and when the city was still frontier and the colonialism hadn't fully kicked in (ie when the land was first getting settled)

Are there any resources you can share for learning about the culture / writing the culture into the lore, and any tips you may have / opinions on how I can make this work while also being respectful?

Thank you!!!

hi there <3 lord knows how long this has been rotting in my asks and i'm so sorry

thanks for wanting to include some positive representation (however esoteric) about appalachia in your novel.

when i get these asks i always like to say, to avoid stereotypes in your writing, think about why those stereotypes exist.

why do we have such an opiate problem? why is our health so poor? why do we have a 'we don't like outsiders' reputation?

appalachian culture is really broad and diverse of course because we span across a pretty enormous section of the country. for example, coal mining is one of the things that most popularly gets associated with appalachia, but where i'm from in appalachian north carolina, mines aren't so much a thing.

but i think one big takeaway from appalachian culture that is pretty consistent throughout is community and hard work. labor rights, labor fights, helping ur neighbor.

we tend to be blue collar, union-positive working class and that sets a pretty stable foundation for a lot of our cultural traits. as in the way we are very community-minded and getting our hands dirty to keep ourselves afloat and use what's left over to keep our neighbors going. sometimes, the reverse of that actually. appalachians are hospitable and generous to a fault

if you wanted to represent appalachia without falling back on stereotypes, a self-supporting community that really values community itself could be a good landing place.

in the format of my earlier advice: why do we have an "us/them" (misconception?) reputation for keeping to ourselves? it's not that we inherently 'hate outsiders.' it's because we had no choice but to be reliant on our communities historically due to being geographically isolated in the mountains without easy access to resources. because the rest of the country turned its back on us many moons ago and so we had to turn to each other.

hope this helps some <3

[intheholler]

i feel really shitty because i have just been so despondent for the last month or two that interacting with the world in any capacity has felt so heavy

so i'm just really sorry i haven't been around.

i need to get the fight back in me. i hope this will be enough

love yall family. this fucking sucks. feel what you need to feel.

[intheholler]

re: hurricane helene hey, y'all. so... immense survivor's guilt, subsequent depression and an overall helpless malaise has made my presence on tumblr here weaker during this horrific time. but there's nothing like some good ol appalachian rage to light a fire under the proverbial ass so i'm back to push back on some of the bullshit i keep seeing get spread about what's happening in the aftermath of hurricane helene, and in western north carolina especially. 

appalachia has always been low hanging fruit for the rest of the nation, and now that disaster has struck and we are even more vulnerable than we have been in a long, long time, bad actors are using us as a way to further their political bullshit and conspiracies.

please use some of the cited-information below the cut to push back on and educate any family members, friends or otherwise when you see them spreading misinformation. now is your chance to help appalachia, no matter where you are in the united states. myths, rumors and other flavors of horseshit regarding hurricane helene debunked under the cut. please reblog.

Let me just get my heart out of the way before we get into the nitty gritty, cause I got things to say. #1: "Why should we help these people? They get these storms there all the time. They didn't move away or do anything to prepare for this, and now it's our responsibility?"

These storms are not at all commonplace. For much of this area, especially WNC, this level of flooding and damage--spanning an area the size of Belgium between NC and TN--is largely unprecedented. Growing up, we get told our mountains protect us, that they shield us from the really bad, and that's because historically, they have. Hurricanes blow through, and they bring with them hella wind and rain, but nothing like this.

We do not have the infrastructure for this, physical or otherwise. So many of our homes, businesses and everything in between have been standing for more than a century, unkept and brittle. Dams are breaking or near breaking because they are not meant to hold this kind of water. Our roads tend to follow creeks and rivers and thereby have been completely washed out. Keep in mind that in the individual hollers, and in most of these small mountain towns, we only got one road. You go up holler one way, and you don't come out the other side of it; you leave the way you came because it's the only path to take.

We are not built for this. We were not ready for this. We could not have prepared for this. And even if by some miracle we all received some premonition about this disaster, telling us to "just move" is NEVER the answer to vulnerable people living in volatile environments, especially ones as impoverished as Appalachia. Fuck you.

#2 "Appalachians are lazy and just want handouts, anyway."

First off--which one is it? Are we poor, pitiful fodder for concern trolls who deserve more than we're getting, or are we lazy, needy, greedy people who deserve to rot? Can't have both.

Second off--we been hearing that about us since the dawn of time. Wasn't true then, ain't true now.

Appalachia has been verifiably exploited as long as there have been people to exploit, but that is a topic long since discussed here.

We don't WANT anything. We NEED it. Alongside the aid coming in through donations, official search and rescue and organized volunteer services, much of the boots on the ground are Appalachians themselves!! We take care of our own, and it's always been that way.

They got people on foot hiking up into the hollers to bring supplies to cut-off communities. They got pack mules passing otherwise impassable roads where no car nor other vehicle can tread to get lifesaving necessities to the hollers. Look around, and you'll find countless stories. Just in my personal circle alone, I got a sister bringing supplies up by foot, and her hiking group is moving through so much toxic mud that the soles of their fucking boots are melting. I got a brother in law taking chainsaws to downed trees to clear the path for supply deliveries. I got another sister meeting friends of mine at the state line to collect donations and distribute them by hand to counties all over WNC. We can do this, but we can't do it alone.

#3 "It's a conspiracy/It's not that widespread outside of Asheville because we don't see pictures of anywhere else."

It's happening. It's fucking happening.

You don't see pictures because many of us don't have reliable cell service right now, let alone wifi. Hell, even in perfect weather there's a joke that you better have a friend with a cell phone from each provider when you go out because only one of you is getting service at any given time in any given place. There is no way to document this from the inside for many folks at this point in time, and there is NO WAY IN from the outside.

As I mentioned--you got one road leading up the holler. That road is now gone. No one is making it up the mountain to take pictures of these horrific scenes, y'all. If they're going up the mountain its to care for their neighbors, to bring supplies to individuals and entire communities so isolated by the devastation that the only way they can be reached is on foot (or hoof!).

Which also brings me to my next counterargument: "Nothing is being done to help."

#4 "Volunteers are being turned away/Donations are being confiscated."

Volunteers are being DISCOURAGED from coming in out of state, but they're not being told to leave with a malicious intent. And they are not even being forcibly denied. They can still come, but it's really not a good idea. As I mentioned, these roads wasn't meant to take this kind of damage. They are falling apart, and all this extra traffic coming in on these streets barely hanging on is making them worse and making it harder for organized relief and rescue operations to actually get in there. People are getting stuck and taking away time and resources that could be going to survivors. Outsiders with good intentions are eating up the scarce gas and using up even scarcer water. Some of these places, like Black Mountain, physically do not have enough hands to manage and distribute the amount of donations being brought in in, so they're getting rerouted. Donations are not fucking being confiscated.

#5 "They aren't letting people be rescued/They're closing the airspace off."

The airspace is OPEN, with some temporary restrictions in place by the FAA for civilians and volunteers. Civilians can still access airspace in coordination with officials and emergency responders. What they ain't allowing is people just flying in willy nilly. What they ain't letting in is unauthorized air traffic that is clogging up airspace which otherwise needs to be used by official aircraft to bring in donations/S&R groups. Airspace is still accessible in the area, but it's not safe to just have everyone with a big heart trying to search and rescue, especially with no training, organization or proper skills. What they ain't letting happen is people trying to take trucks up obliterated roads that can't be traveled, no matter how confident you are in your vehicle. Christ, y'all. The point isn't to add more bodies to the count!

#6 "National Guardsmen are being told not to go."

The National Guard HAS been deployed.

And in numbers, too. What you're hearing is rumor of people asking to be deployed and being told no, because that's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. People can't just rush in unorganized. There is a system. There has always been a system.

#7 "But I saw TikToks of people coming to help and locals shouting them out of town!"

Oh, honey. No, what you saw was people doing what they LOVE to do in Appalachia: take poverty tours. Record how we live. Post their poverty (and now disaster) porn with thoughts and prayers and oh those poor creatures to get likes. That's been happening to us since before TikTok. Before the internet.

During FDR's administration, photographers from the Farm Security Administration went down to collect poverty porn and turn it into Hollow Folk, a collection of photographs which was then used by eugenicists and corporations alike to dehumanize us further so we could be exploited and relocated with the favor of the nation behind them.

We're done with it. We been done with it. And now, in this time of crisis where people are DEAD, you're clogging up our roads, taking up our gas, AND shoving cameras in our face. Y'all ain't from here and now more than ever y'all kinds need to get the FUCK out.

✨ FEMA ✨

FEMA deserves its own section, because holy shit. I'm mad that I'm about to defend the man in any capacity but it needs to be done. So, I'm gonna preface this by saying, largely, fuck FEMA. There are many valid complaints against FEMA and their inefficiency, but right now is not the time to use them as a tool of misinformation against Appalachia. We got enough problems without pouring the salt of government conspiracies into these raw, gaping wounds that barely even have bandaids applied to them right now.

SO. Let's get into it.

#8 "This is all planned and by design/Don't evacuate, because FEMA is just gonna take your land and mineral rights!"

If they wanted the fucking lithium or anything else for that matter, they would just enact Eminent Domain. They don't need elaborate schemes and """weather control""" to take it. They can just literally... do it. Did we all fail civics in middle school?

(And this is purely anecdotal so I have no proof of this, but a friend of mine told me a few days ago people were actually being told NOT to evacuate in Lake Lure because they didn't anticipate the flooding to be this bad.)

What y'all SHOULD be worried about are these companies and their "disaster investors" who swoop in like fucking vultures and try to get people to sell their land before FEMA has a chance to assist them. These companies prey on the vulnerable, offering them quick cash for their land and for far less than they'd get if they held out for FEMA's relief instead.

#9. "But... but FEMA is only giving out a piddly $750 in relief!"

Yes, they are giving out $750. INITIALLY. This $750 is initial relief money for immediate needs. Medicine, food, supplies. It is NOT all that's being allocated to folks. From FEMA's website:

This is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs.

A service being offered in the meantime, for example, is for temporary housing and you can still currently apply for it!

Long-term disaster relief funds are not being released immediately. That does not mean they do not exist.

Here is what FEMA has already allocated for North Carolina alone.

Please note I said "allocated" but not "paid out." Which brings me to my next point.

#10 "FEMA is giving their relief money to undocumented immigrants!"

This is false, and you can verify this for yourself. Cash payouts to undocumented immigrants isn't even a thing, dude. They haven't even paid out to citizens in their entirety yet. From the FEMA page "Questions and Answers for Undocumented Immigrants Regarding FEMA Assistance:"

This is in regards to STATE, LOCAL AND VOLUNTEER AGENCIES. Not through FEMA or any other federal programs. This is probably what people are hearing about, and not even bothering to look into it before running off to tell lies.

And in this, as you can see--undocumented immigrants who CAN receive assistance are not receiving cash. They are not just getting money handed over to them to spend on whatever your racist, xenophobic uncle thinks they are. FEMA is required by law to report on the use of their funds each month by the 5th day. Historically, it looks like it takes about a week for them to be posted. Keep an eye on this page to see for yourself in coming days that FEMA is not giving out money from their funds to immigrants.

#11 "But FEMA has appointees from Biden!!! How can we trust that this is the truth?!"

Please use critical thinking skills. Please, we beg. Yes, there are appointed FEMA officials from this administration, but there are also appointed officials from Trump's time in office. What sense does it make that during Trump's administration, FEMA employees were Good And Pure, and suddenly, just because they are active under Biden's administration, they are suddenly Evil And Corrupt? This is clear bias and has no solid footing.

Besides, the President doesn't even have any sway over FEMA funding like this. That is ALL congress.

H.R. 9747 "Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025," which provides relief funding (among other things) for the 2025 fiscal year, was ACTIVELY VOTED AGAINST by Republicans, including Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene--two people spreading the bullshit the loudest. UGH. Okay. In exasperated conclusion: Please, please, PLEASE leave Appalachia alone and let us get back on our feet without having to constantly dodge dumbass conspiracy theories. We are heartbroken and grieving and would really appreciate a brief reprieve from being the nation's fucking punching bag. Help us, don't hurt us.

[intheholler]

if you're like me just dyin to do something to help, please consider donating or even volunteering if you're near an affected area and have the resources to do so

hey yall, ill get to asks n that soon i promise but i just wanted to come on and check in and see how yall are doing about the hurricane

im heartbroken but glad my folks are okay. beloved childhood places have been absolutely leveled and obliterated. ive never seen highways n roads so tore up. my folks are entirely without cell service or wifi so it's hard to communicate. appalachia don't usually take this kind of intense beating from these storms, it's really fucking upsetting

please be safe out there family. my heart is also with yall in florida and everywhere else affected

[intheholler]

hey yall, ill get to asks n that soon i promise but i just wanted to come on and check in and see how yall are doing about the hurricane

im heartbroken but glad my folks are okay. beloved childhood places have been absolutely leveled and obliterated. ive never seen highways n roads so tore up. my folks are entirely without cell service or wifi so it's hard to communicate. appalachia don't usually take this kind of intense beating from these storms, it's really fucking upsetting

please be safe out there family. my heart is also with yall in florida and everywhere else affected

[intheholler]

just wanted to share my worthless piece on the "if i count" dynamic

lived in appalachia all my life, traveled the south a ways. i think, no matter where you're from, there's a marked difference in those of us who were spend/spent time in rural areas, tiny quiet towns, etc. and those who were raised in big cities - even big cities in the south.

all the rural areas have something in common - sure, the specific cultures and types of people who settled the land may be different, but our ancestors (and even us in modern times) had to come much more to terms with living with the land, making the most out of a little, than those who have only ever known the city, and especially those who look down on rural folks

and once you've gotten a taste of that rural life, and even the types of poverty that come with it... once you've been raised by people who lived with that, it doesn't shake out of you, no matter where you end up finding yourself. it ingrains itself in your soul, to where sometimes personally i feel like an entirely different species to those who have only ever known the concrete jungle, who have never been around anyone who trekked through the holler or hiked the plains or climbed those big mountains.

that type of living, that type of history that gets leeched into you even if you feel you didn't get the full experience of living there, puts that spirit into your soul, and you carry it. whether you got it from a life of personal experience, or you were raised by a country man or woman, or anything between.

even if you find yourself in a metropolis, you're not lookin' at it the same way that people who have always lived there do... even if it seems like them ol' hollers and hills, or plains, or valleys, or mountains are light years away.

you can't abandon it. it can't abandon you. you can try to tamper your accent, you can try to remove all signs of the "negative" stereotypes, but it's the soil that fed your roots. once you've been touched by it, you're as much the holler as the holler itself is, in a way

that's my two cents, anyway

you can't abandon it. it can't abandon you. you can try to tamper your accent, you can try to remove all signs of the "negative" stereotypes, but it's the soil that fed your roots. once you've been touched by it, you're as much the holler as the holler itself is, in a way

THIS is what i have tried n tried to say over the course of dozens of such posts, and you managed to condense it into one neat, poignant paragraph. thank you. i have nothing to add.

this whole ask is beautiful and exactly what i always want to say, actually. i'd wanna pin it to my blog but atp, i simply cannot part with The Sign

thanks so much for this. was definitely not worthless <33

[intheholler]

Hi! Recently discovered you via your murder ballads post. Have you been introduced to Terrance Zdunich (Of "Repo! The Genetic Opera" fame) American Murder Song? I'm a big fan of his other works but reading your post gave me a good "Ah-ha!" Moment where I began to understand some of the underlying base themes.

Anyway, love your nerdy shit, maybe we can be mutuals someday.... Haha jk... Unless?

hi hello!! no, actually im not familiar with that, HOWEVER repo has been a guilty pleasure of mine since it came out so now i'm curious lol. ty for the rec!

also... perhaps we could be mutuals someday. maybe................... today, even?

[intheholler]

do you think its wrong to use the word coon to refer to the animal? ive always grown up with that word being used and i dont want to kill that part of my dialect, it feels like a murder, but i also know the history surrounding the word and how it was used as a slur. what do you think?

yes, i definitely think its wrong to continue using that word. words and their meanings shift, and that word has definitely taken on a meaning that is inextricable from its racist roots. especially because it is still used as a slur.

i think, as appalachians, that is a part of the self-work we have to do--disentangling from ourselves the negative aspects of our culture (including manners of speech) that are inherently harmful, including casual racism, while retaining the positives.

what i mean is: you should absolutely keep your dialectal vocabulary for other, innocuous words n phrases, but not for the ones that actively harm others, like this one.

we shouldn't want to hold onto that word. yes, there was a point for almost all of us, learning and repeating harmful shit when we didn't know better as kids. and then, there is now, when we do. it's our job to recognize these aspects and get rid of them. our sense of familiarity for lack of a better word is not as important as the safety and the comfort of vulnerable populations targeted by such language.

thanks for the question and for doing the work to think about these parts of yourself, i know from experience it can be very uncomfortable. but, again, our comfort is not more important than those oppressed by such language.

take care <33

[intheholler]

This might be a bit of a random and tangety question, but I was wondering if y’all also experience the erasure of people already livin’ in areas about to be or in the process of gentrification.

Cause I’m from the Mornington peninsula, this relatively mid sized region in Australia, some of it can be pretty rural, over all we have a population density of 230 per square km (which is 88 per square mile??) which is mostly because of the few bigger population centres.

Anyhow when I was growin’ up the ninch (as we call it) was seen as this largely poor, backwards, farming/fishing region full of conservatives who hated outsiders or somethin’ (to be honest the last part is correct)

But these days a lot of people have shifted from viewing people on the ninch from backwards hill dwellers to… not even existing?

A lot of our towns are seen as desirable as holiday realestate but this hasn’t rehabilitated people from the ninch in the eye’s of outsiders but instead they just ignore that we are even here, and that they are displacin’ us.

Does this happen in gentrified parts of Appalachia or are outsiders still hostile to locals?

i definitely do still notice hostility, but in a way, it can absolutely be framed as them just... not seeing us, like you said. they aggressively want to scrub clean the culture n the people to get to the pretty parts, to the point where, no, they don't consider us unless they're looking down on us as they "clean up the place."

ppl will come here n complain about how UnSaFe it is cause they hear guns going off in the woods with ppl just mindin their business, hunting on their own land or just shootin having fun. they come here n mock our accents and the way we live, pearl clutching bc they have to drive two hours away to get to a Target. then they just start filling in the commercial gaps instead of accepting that just aint how we live here. things like that.

basically, they want a pretty lil mountain view out the back of their vacation home, but they don't actually want the mountains; they want it to be like where they came from. hell, sometimes they dont even want the view. theyll flatten ridges to build their mcmansions instead. so, no, gentrification definitely hasn't redeemed appalachians in the eye of the general public that flock here, either.

anyway, solidarity <3 sounds like there's a lot in common between our region and yours

[intheholler]

Is it okay that, as someone in the general south instead of Appalachia, I still feel a sense of solidarity with y'all? (I'm on the other side of the river.) I just noticed a lot of similarities between the groups and I feel like I'd be at home there, too.

oh absofuckinlutely!! the deep south n southern/central appalachia are more similar than they aren't imo, and the rest of the nation just kinda lumps us together bc of how alike we are, actually.

like, we share the same sociopolitical and financial burdens. we share the weight of the same heavy hand of religious influence pressin down on our backs. we all are hurt by the same stereotypes and assumptions. our dialects/accents earn us unfair stereotypes and social/academic disadvantages. we all struggle grow up in shitty, underfunded schools. the list goes on.

tbh i feel like only people like us (from these regions, i mean) can tell the subtle (but marked) differences in our culture. i feel solidarity with yall too <3

[intheholler]

same anon from nyc; had more to add.

what i do have:

my papa has the accent and my momma killed hers

green beans and dandelions

playing solitaire from cards of coal companies; theyre my papas, and every game, he tells me the sins of each company

the pride and grit and courage

the experience on the land

the stories and folklore

soul pain…

…turning pain into armor

love

sensing family in other appalachians

generational opioid issues

abandonment

bravery

wvu hat

named after a mountain in TN

fend for yourself nights

fwiw, these are all definitely appalachian experiences. if i met you, we'd have a hell of a lot of overlap in common to talk about. do with that what you need to <3 that said--be easy to yourself okay? you don't deserve the torment of tallying your identity against your perceived self. you don't have to prove yourself to me or nobody else.

but i know how it feel to have The Crisis and how important it is to have ur identity validated. i'm so pleased if i can help give yall that.

actually, gonna use this time to say: that goes for all of yall looking to me for validation. i am honored that you seek it from me, and if i can make u feel more at home in your identities, however far removed you feel from them, i am touched. that said, no matter what i say, your identity is yours, and i am just another weirdo with a tumblr account who happens to be appalachian and whose blog got this kind of attention by sheer luck, not because i am The Authority. don't let me or nobody else tell you you are or are not who you know yourself to be. love yall <3

[intheholler]

i dont feel appalachian enough

i know i am

but ive grown up in nyc my whole life, after my mother “got out”

i still go back, every year, for nearly a fourth of the year, (since i was 8)

but how do i know if i count?

big city kid and country hillbilly? it seems improbable

you got them roots from ur mama who also gave you the blood. you were raised by an appalachian woman--and the women are the heart of these hills--and you come back to immerse yourself for a quarter of the year every year.

i am never one to believe that moving from a place takes that place out of you. people stay away from home for all kinds of reasons outside of their control n it aint fair to say you are not the thing that you are just bc you are not home.

if u feel a connection to the hollers n hills, then you have a connection, and you're always enough <3