Speaking up, speaking truth

There’s a kind of qui­et that set­tles over the Appalachian hills in win­ter — not silence exact­ly, but a charged still­ness. The kind that feels like the land is lis­ten­ing. The kind that makes you notice your own breath, your own heart­beat, the things you’ve been car­ry­ing a lit­tle too long.

I grew up in that qui­et. Not the peace­ful kind, but the heavy kind—the kind born when a whole fam­i­ly learns ear­ly that cer­tain truths are too dan­ger­ous to say out loud. The kind passed down like a fam­i­ly Bible: Not every­thing can be spo­ken, girl — at least not if you want to stay safe, stay liked, stay belonging.

But the longer I live, the more I under­stand this: silence may keep the peace, but it can’t keep the truth. Sooner or lat­er, the truth will grow too wild for the cage we put it in.

Faith, if it’s real, demands more from us than silence. It asks us to reck­on. It asks us to speak. It asks us to love our peo­ple enough to tell the truth — even when it shakes some­thing loose.

Breaking the generational quiet

When I first began writ­ing my mem­oir, guilt sat heavy in my chest. Was I dis­hon­or­ing the women who came before me by speak­ing aloud what they endured in silence? Crossing some unspo­ken line?

Truth in our fam­i­ly was always on the tip of tongues but rarely passed the lips. My mother—blunt, fire-tongued, nev­er one to soft­en her words — kept cer­tain truths locked away. Her bold­ness was armor, not free­dom, forged from grief she nev­er learned to name. Losing her own moth­er young left a wound wrapped tight in anger and sur­vival. She could con­front the world, but not her own pain.

I inher­it­ed a mix­ture of both: Great Gran’s qui­et faith and my mother’s sharp-edged voice. But the silence in our fam­i­ly — around hurt, fear, injus­tice — was as bind­ing as any chain. Breaking it felt like break­ing a com­mand­ment. Staying qui­et felt like break­ing myself.

Then I remem­bered Gran’s porch church — where truth was not pun­ished but wel­comed, where sto­ries trav­eled from heart to heart, where hon­esty itself was a form of heal­ing. And I real­ized: Breaking silence is not break­ing fam­i­ly. It is break­ing cycles.

Generational trau­ma doesn’t van­ish because we ignore it. It ends when some­one turns around and says, “This stops here.”And that some­one is always a woman with a shak­ing voice and a spine stronger than she knows.

This is where Appalachian lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy lives — not in sem­i­nary books or shout­ed ser­mons, but in small, stub­born rev­o­lu­tions inside a woman’s chest. It begins when we decide we will car­ry no more unspo­ken wounds. When we say, “This ends with me.” When we see that truth-telling is not rebel­lion — it is devo­tion. It is love in its most stub­born, moun­tain form. And it is the first step toward free­dom, both per­son­al and communal.

From personal courage to collective liberation

What begins in a sin­gle heart even­tu­al­ly reach­es the hills them­selves. Courage, once per­son­al, becomes collective.

Appalachia has always been asked to keep qui­et — qui­et about pover­ty, cor­rup­tion, coal mon­ey, whose bod­ies get used in the name of “jobs,” domes­tic vio­lence, addic­tion, polit­i­cal bul­ly­ing, and the pres­sure to “not shame the family.”

But qui­et does not pro­tect us — it only pro­tects the sys­tems that harm us.

If faith means any­thing in these moun­tains, it must mean this: God is not hon­ored by our silence in the face of suf­fer­ing. Jesus didn’t bless the com­fort­able; he blessed those who dared to see, name, and con­front what oth­ers refused to touch.

Appalachian lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy says:
The holy thing is the hon­est thing.
The sacred thing is the coura­geous thing.
The faith­ful thing is the one that sets peo­ple free.

And free­dom often begins with a sin­gle voice say­ing, “I see the harm. And I won’t pre­tend I don’t.”

What my Great Gran taught me about truth

Gran didn’t have much, but she had truth — the slow, steady kind that grows deep roots.

She fed any­one who stepped onto her porch. She prayed for peo­ple by name, one by one. She wouldn’t let a neigh­bor go hun­gry, even if she had to give up her own sup­per. And she’d say things like, “A lie don’t stay buried. Dirt can’t keep it.”

She was not a woman of spec­ta­cle. She was a woman of wit­ness. She believed faith was lived, not stat­ed — leaned on, not displayed.

Looking back, I see now: Her kitchen table was a sanc­tu­ary, and her truth-telling was activism long before I ever had that word. She mod­eled a world­view that today I under­stand as Appalachian lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy: Faith means tend­ing the vul­ner­a­ble. Faith means nam­ing what’s wrong. Faith means stand­ing your ground in love, not fear.

Those teach­ings were seeds. They sprout­ed in me slow­ly — but they sprout­ed nonetheless.

Why we speak up now

We are liv­ing in a moment when Appalachian voic­es mat­ter more than ever. Our region is exploit­ed and roman­ti­cized in the same breath. We are praised for being “resilient” while being denied the resources need­ed to thrive. We are used as polit­i­cal props but rarely lis­tened to with dignity.

So yes, we speak. Not to be loud. Not to be dra­mat­ic. Not to be “dis­re­spect­ful.” But because truth deserves air. Because our chil­dren deserve bet­ter. Because the land deserves bet­ter. Because silence has nev­er saved us before.

Speaking up in Appalachia is not betray­al — it is stew­ard­ship. It is pro­tec­tion. It is prophecy.

It is a prayer for the next gen­er­a­tion that says, “I want you to inher­it free­dom, not fear.”

And if that means we become the women our fam­i­lies once whis­pered about, then let them whis­per. We’ve grown too wise to be qui­et now.

Questions for read­ers: Where is your voice need­ed this year?

1. Where have you stayed silent to “keep the peace,” and what has that silence cost you — or some­one else?
Consider whether peace built on fear or dis­com­fort is peace at all.

2. What injus­tice, hypocrisy, or harm in your com­mu­ni­ty stirs some­thing holy inside you?
That tug might be your call­ing, not your burden.

3. Whose sto­ries have gone unheard?
Think about elders, young peo­ple, work­ing folks, or neigh­bors liv­ing on the mar­gins. What would it look like to ampli­fy their voices?

4. What truth have you been car­ry­ing that is ready — maybe over­due — to be spo­ken aloud?
Courage often begins with one hon­est sentence.

5. Where can you offer pro­tec­tion or sup­port to some­one who has less pow­er, less priv­i­lege, or less safe­ty than you?
Your voice might be the shield they’ve nev­er had.

6. What small, prac­ti­cal action could you take this week to align your life more close­ly with your val­ues?
Commitment grows from tiny, faith­ful steps.

7. How will you hon­or both your her­itage and your own hard-won wis­dom as you speak up?
Appalachian lib­er­a­tion often begins with remem­ber­ing who we come from and who we refuse to become.