In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir
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Read between May 16 - May 28, 2022
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Someone’s always discovering the treasures buried in hollers—lumber, mineral rights, gas rights—and when they’re not ravaging the forests we explored as children, unsupervised and unafraid, or muddling the clear streams where we splashed and found fossils and learned to pick up crawdads without getting pinched, when they’re not ravaging our minds with OxyContin and cheap heroin and low-paying jobs and Mountain Dew and broken schools, it is us doing the ravaging: pulling our guns out or throwing fists, taking a beating in front of the kids, or searching desperately through Dad’s dresser while ...more
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I understood that I did not own the word no
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As frustrating as it is to accommodate the child’s no, that word is essential. No functions in a way that please don’t never has, in a way that tears and cries never will.
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I waited for moments to pass, for the confusion to subside, for the adults around me to say, Everything is okay. No one ever did.
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It was not my word, but it came to be mine before many others. It was roughly akin to little slut, which I learned around the age of nine, when I was wearing a floral shirt that tied at the bottom. I thought it was fashionable, though I had no way to know such things. It came from a real clothing store—not a Big Lots or a consignment shop—so I prized it above my other shirts and felt just the faintest hint of being pretty when I wore it. But my dad caught a glimpse of skin between the bottom of the shirt and the top of my shorts. When he first told me I should cover up, I laughed, thinking it ...more
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I grew familiar with a feeling of dread that was nearly eclipsed by weariness.
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I didn’t understand that it wasn’t okay to hurt me,
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I already knew how important it was for girls to keep our mouths shut. No one thought to tell me when I became an adult, It’s okay now, you’re allowed to say no.
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I had to unlearn the most important lesson I had learned as a child, the most important rule of survival—to be quiet
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In a landscape littered with disappointment, immediate gratification seems to make sense.
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Despair takes on a different look, depending on where you go, but those who have lived it can see it in others.
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For the first time, I was struck with the understanding that as hard as I had tried to make sense of the whole mess, it was time to give that up.
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She hadn’t left him until she knew he was going to kill her. She wasn’t sure he was going to kill me. Neither was I. And that became my measuring stick for relationships from then on.
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But we never really forget—we just tuck things away, and they quietly creep into each of our actions, our thoughts, our words, our principles, and our fears.
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You have every right to your anger. Nobody will ever take that away from you. But it is hurting only you.
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I didn’t understand that letting someone else decide for me was still a choice,
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I learned there are unspoken rules to follow, and they have everything to do with your class, your gender, your education.
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epigenetic research theorizes that some of our DNA is encoded from our ancestors’ experiences and that our grandparents’ lives have as much of an impact on us as those of our own parents.
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I knew that poor people had a good chance of getting into more trouble if they called the police—you might have a warrant for unpaid traffic fines, or maybe the baby has a bruise and the police call Social Services. Maybe you had a drink or something to calm the nerves, and now your husband’s come home to knock you into the wall a little. Call the cops—maybe you’ll go to jail, maybe he will.