In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

The holler is quintessential Appalachia—the perfect symbol for this complex physical and cultural landscape.

Here, the word is everything—it is saturated and dripping with history and sorrow and, still, beauty—a living paradox of place wrapping its arms around you in verdant honeysuckle vines that hold you close, that never let go.

What is history anyway? A story: The last man standing holds the pen. A sense of place: I am on this path that is hardly comprehensible. A birthright: I may be from, but I am not of that world.

Words were weapons, just another form of violence that I hid from.

In a landscape littered with disappointment, immediate gratification seems to make sense. In a region defined by broken promises, you might as well take the safe bet, the pleasure of a moment that might never return.

why everything was so pretty around me, yet I felt so ugly inside.

all my relationships perfectly met my low expectations.

But it still takes a good twenty years to pull yourself out of poverty, as I came to find out. And that’s if you’re lucky—no medical crisis, no new traumas that make mental health seem like some silly fairy tale, the realm of princesses and parents who somehow manage to give just the right amount of support to their children. If you can survive the weight of bills you can’t pay and the emotional demand of children who you know deserve to be loved better than you

know how to love, and if you can endure the loneliness and the panic that takes your breath away when you imagine what would happen to your children if you died or someone took them from you, then you just might make it, eventually. So I hear.

But the hero of the story is always the storyteller. The storyteller is the one with power.

Dignity is far from important, and in the throes of poverty, the need to survive outweighs all else except the need to forget your misery.

I wanted to die. I didn’t want to hurt my children, which is probably why I never followed through. But on some days, I felt they might be better off without me. I felt like my life had been a waste—too many mistakes, too much

The only reason I survived motherhood was because I was so stubborn, I poured every bit of myself into it, unwilling to fail my children

childhood slips away without warning, and we find ourselves pretending to be grown, pretending we want to be part of this world with jobs and bills, but numbing ourselves

But just like the coal bosses brought in scabs to break the strikes, it is always someone at a higher pay grade who convinces workers to blame immigrants, people of color, and other poor people when the owner won’t pay fair wages. In a land like this, people have actually been fighting for their lives—not figuratively or metaphorically—since they first decided to take their chances in this unforgiving Eden.

our stories do matter—they tell us who we are, give us history and context that help us define ourselves.