When my Mom died in 2002, she had very few material possessions. One of the few things she left behind that I wanted was a jar of her green beans. Mom canned green beans each spring, like she had learned to as a girl in Appalachia seventy years before, even thought you can buy fresh or frozen green beans in the grocery store any time of the year nowadays. It was a ritual deeply important to her, because those cans of green beans she had put up as a girl had often been the food that kept her and her eight siblings alive through the winters of her girlhood during the Depression in eastern Tennessee. I keep the jar in my bedroom as a daily reminder of my Mom and the struggles she faced.
In our final session today, we met with two members of In Praise of Mountain Women, an all-volunteer organization that works to empower women in Appalachia. One thing they do is stage a biannual conference focused on self-empowerment. Many of the attendees are what are called “First Step” Women, because they have never been outside their home community before attending the conference. It is the first time many of them have ever slept somewhere other than their own home. It is a place where, for the first time, they connect with other women and begin to find their voice. In explaining her journey, Renda Keith of In Praise said at one point, “Before I joined In Praise, I did what I was told: I shut up and kept the house and took care of the children and canned and I thought that was all I was good for.” When she lost her husband to suicide eight years before, with four small children to raise now on her own, she had realized she would have to be more than she had been taught she was, and she joined In Praise.
I spent the rest of the session trying not to cry, because this woman – young enough to be my Mom’s daughter or even her granddaughter, was still being taught the same lessons that my Mom had been taught as a girl. But she had, through In Praise of Mountain Women, found her own power and grown into a powerful advocate for herself and other women. In just wished my Mom had had access to something like that. And I realized that I myself had come full circle, back to the place where my family had started, able now to help folks “down home” have the opportunities my Mom ha deserved but had never gotten.
Thank God for In Praise of Mountain Women.