I keep thinking about this idea that we are all writing a story. None of us fully controls the opening chapters. Some people begin life surrounded by stability, encouragement, safety, and opportunity. Others begin with chaos, neglect, poverty, addiction, abuse, loss, discrimination, instability, or trauma. Life is not fair in how it distributes suffering. Some […]
You Still Hold the Pen Read More »
The rain started sometime after midnight. Not the violent kind of storm that rattles windows or sends people scrambling for weather alerts, just a steady Appalachian rain falling softly through the darkness. Before going to bed, I had accidentally left the door cracked open, and during the night the opening widened and the house slowly
Open Windows, Rainstorms, and Resilience Read More »
My great-grandfather, William Washington Elmore, was a handsome man, except for his left eye, which had been blinded when he was young. (See the photo attached. He is the young man in the front row.) In 1908, at age twenty-six, he married my great-grandmother, Diana Vincent. She was only sixteen. They were country folk, living
William Elmore and Brownie Read More »