Letters to Young Appalachians
Dear Young Appalachian,
I am sure you are expecting some witty words of wisdom that will inevitably make you feel the need to roll your eyes. Something like, that you need to go to college and get a degree so you can have a career and support your family. Sorry to disappoint so early into my letter but that’s not what you are going to get. The truth is, it’s different for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have a master’s degree or learn a trade. You can be a welder, a doctor, a lineman, a teacher, a sanitation worker, a CEO, a cashier, or a custodian because all of these occupations will provide for you and your family.
Now, let’s talk about “doing it justice.” I would expect you to have two questions:
1. What is “it”?
2. How do I do “it” justice?
The phrase, “do it justice” means to do, treat, or represent someone or something with due fairness or appreciation or to treat or show something or someone in a way that is as good as it should be. So how do you do it justice?
Slow down. Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up. Don’t be a teenager when you should be a kid. Be a kid and do that justice. Don’t be an adult when you should be a teenager. Be a teenager and do that justice. Once you become an adult, you will be an adult for the rest of your life. There’s no going back to do things differently; no take- backs, no do-overs. Be young and do that justice.
Be honest about your mental health and do it justice. How you see yourself is so much more important than how other people see you. Growing up we learn a lot about how important our physical health is. But we don’t put enough emphasis on how important our mental health is and the impact it can have on our overall health. What does that mean? If you are happy, be happy. If you are sad, be sad. If you are upset, be upset. If you are mad, be mad. Whatever your emotions are talk about them, be honest about them, and do them justice. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to need help. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to accept help. It’s okay to speak up about mental health. Find your voice, use it, and do it justice.
Of course, this letter would not be complete without some wise words about alcohol and drug use. You see, I am an alcoholic and no matter how long I am sober, I will always be an alcoholic. No amount of time will ever change that. When you are young, you want to have fun, impress your friends, do some things you know you shouldn’t because it’s exciting. I mean, it’s just once or twice, maybe a few times, so what’s it going to hurt, right? What they don’t tell you is that for some people, there can never be just one. It’s not as simple as one drink or one drug because, for some of us, there is something very scary and dangerous inside of us and with every drink or drug we take, we awaken it little by little. One drink or one drug becomes two, then four, and so on until we reach a point where no matter what we do, there is never
enough. Educate yourself. Be self-aware and do that justice.
I spent most of my life trying to be the person I thought I was supposed to be and do all of the things I thought I was supposed to do. I worried more about being the person I thought everyone else expected me to be instead of finding out who I was and
what I really wanted to do. So many years I spent squandering my talent and my
heart. I never did them justice. Now, after nearly half of my life has gone by, three rehab stints and one suicide attempt later, I realize all of the time I wasted on trivial things and all of the time I lost on the things that matter. All of the time that I will never get back (remember, no take-backs and no do-overs). All of that time wasted because I never did it justice.
Don’t be who you think you are supposed to be. Don’t be who you think everyone else wants or expects you to be. Be who you are...and do that justice.
Sincerely, Danielle Caudill
Dear Young Appalachian,
Be prepared, because I can speak in standard English, but when I’m talking person to person or telling my stories, I use my mountain dialect. My dialect lets me say more of what’s in my heart than I can when I clean it up, and I want to write this letter from my heart.
Based on my experience of growing up, everybody will tell you, “Do what I tell you!” Or, “You have to do this to be successful.” Or even, “You have to do this or that if you’re gonna make anything out of yourself.” And what that means is, “Get able to make money so you can have stuff. Lots of stuff like the Kardashians.”
I have Native American blood and Mommy passed on a lot of Native American culture on to me. I was the youngest, so I think I got the most. But what she said was, “You are somebody. That’s innate, it’s who you feel yourself to be inside. It’s your purpose. You be that and you will have what you need to have in order to do what you need to do.”
It’s like the Monarch butterflies. Some people say that when it’s a caterpillar, it’s just a worm. They’re okay with killing it because they see it as a worm and they don’t like worms. And even if they don’t kill it, they don’t see it as anything special. But inside that caterpillar, even inside that little egg stuck on the bottom side of a milkweed leaf, there’s this beautiful butterfly waiting to fly.
And flying takes time. And it has to change a lot, and there are always risks involved right up to the time the caterpillar turns into what’s inside of a chrysalis. That’s actually when the internal struggle really happens. There’s these cells that some people call ‘imaginal’ cells, and they are trying to change. But there’s these other cells that don’t want the change to happen so they treat those cells that are changing sort of like cancers trying to grow, or like some invader coming in trying to change their life.
But those imaginal cells are just what the caterpillar can be--a butterfly. If they win out, then beautiful wings unfold in the sun and the butterfly flies off and eats nectar from flowers and leaves eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves so other Monarch butterflies can come along after it’s gone.
The thing is, they don’t always make it. Sometimes those imaginal cells lose out and the whole thing dies. My forty-year-old daughter was almost like a Monarch caterpillar chrysalis that lost the battle by the time she was twenty. She was a good writer, and she had a compassionate heart. She wanted to write and she wanted to help people, but she got into drugs. Wanting the drug took the place of her wanting to write, and believe me, she wasn’t compassionate when all she could think about was getting her next fix. She’d steal, even from her parents.
She’s been clean now for more than two years. She’s been clean for that long before, but this time, there’s a difference. I raised her two boys, and when the oldest one found out what day she was going into rehab, he went out and got that date tattooed right over his heart with the words, ‘the day I got my family back.’
When her youngest boy turned sixteen, he wanted to get a tattoo on his arm and he wanted his mother and me to get one just like it on ours. And we did. We went together to this tattoo shop and went through all that pain to celebrate the journey we’d been through together and the rest of the journey to come.
My daughter still doesn’t write, but her compassionate heart and bright spirit does people good when she checks them out at Good Will. She’s back to being who she is. My daughter can fly.
I’m not saying don’t try to make money, don’t try to have things. Poverty is hard, and I know! I went to college after I was married and had two kids because of the poverty. It ain’t no fun not to be able to do anything because you’re too poor. And at that time, what Mommy had taught me hadn’t sunk in yet. I had this advisor in my first year at Berea College, Loyal Jones. He was a good Appalachian man who had some wisdom.
When he asked me why I’d come to college, I said “so I can be somebody! I’m tired of being poor!” See, I’d confused being somebody with having money and stuff. That wise man said, “Well, you might as well go home. College won’t make you somebody! Knowledge is important, get all you can get, but it’s not going to put you on the path you ought to be on. You have to do that yourself.”
And I did. I finished college. I love to learn and I still learn all I can about anything. Like I’ve learned I can paint! But that’s another story. The one I want to tell you now is about learning that I am a storyteller, that telling stories is my purpose.
After college, I tried teaching high school and found out that wasn’t who I was. Then this opportunity to become a teaching artist with the Kentucky Arts Council came up and I got invited to teach a week of classes at a school in Salyersville. I had to stay in a motel nights because it was too far for me to drive back and forth every day.
I was in a really hard part of my life then. Both my children were addicts. We had tried so many ways— drug rehabs, counselling, you name it, my husband Marion and me, we tried anything we could to fix our kids. By that time, we had gone in debt for $60,000 trying to fix our kids. And it hadn’t worked. That night, I’d laid out all our bills on that motel bed. The minimum I could pay added up to $1,000 and I had $100 in the bank. But I decided that was all right. I was making money now and payments would be late, but we could do it.
The next morning while I was getting ready to go tell stories in that school, my husband called. He’s a good Appalachian man, but I’ve never seen him cry. He’s just that way. He tries to hide his feelings. Well, that morning, I heard that good man’s voice break when he told me our son was in jail. And we didn’t know where our daughter was with our baby grandson. He asked me to come home. I had to tell him I couldn’t. We had to have what I could earn.
I’m making a long story short for you, but that night I realized I had a $100,000 term life insurance policy on myself. I prayed for God to take me home. Marion would have the money and things would be all right. Let me tell you. When I woke up and saw those motel curtains the next morning, I was mad at God! But. I had to go on to work and tell stories as if I didn’t have all these problems, and I did. And that night, the change happened.
It’s part of my Native American tradition to think of rocks as the Grandfathers of the earth. They’ve been here since the beginning, they’ve seen everything. Rocks carry stories. I took out the rock I always carry, and I poured out all of my story—all the childhood trauma, all the pain I was going through, all the fear and desperation—I gave everything that wasn’t me to that Grandfather rock. And then, I held that rock under running water to wash away, be become part of the river’s flow, to be one more story in a universe of stories.
And I was left, an Appalachian woman story-teller who loves to share stories with young people, whose children were still addicted to drugs, who was still in awful debt, who couldn’t fix anything, but who could go on living with peace in her heart and joy in her life. That day in the classroom, I was so different. I wanted to share stories and all the joy and peace that was in me. And I still do, these many years later.
I still had a lot to go through. Things didn’t get better right away and at times got even worse. But I was who I needed to be now. I was different. I still kept trying to help my children and I had my grandsons to raise, but I wasn’t anybody’s savior anymore. And little by little, I started having what I needed to have in order to do what I needed to do. I share stories.
And let me tell you. If bad things are going on in your life and it’s from other people, it’s not your fault. Don’t carry that. And if bad things are going on in your life because of some mistake you’ve made, there’s help. Get help. Grow your wings and fly, right here in Appalachia or wherever your beautiful wings need to go. The most important thing you can do is become the butterfly that’s in you, because that lets you help others grow their wings too.
Be what you need to be and you’ll have what you need to have in order to do what you need to do. You were meant to fly!
Sincerely,
Octavia Sexton,
Appalachian Story-Teller