Introduction
The stories on this page are based on true events, growing up in a remote mountain town in Southeastern West Virginia. These recounts of my life and the magic of my people were written for a gathering in 2022. This was the first time I stepped on stage and spoke the stories of my people. I hope that these stories bring something of hope or inspiration to you.
Cold & Shadow (Bitter Winter Part 1)
Have you ever felt the weight of your past pulling you down? In this series, I’m opening up my heart and sharing a collection of deeply personal stories and cultural anecdotes. These tales, written during a time of profound deconstruction and healing, were first shared at a Druid Gathering in Louisiana in 2022. Through the lens of Shadow Work, I hope to inspire healing and renewal in a world that desperately needs it.
Join me on this journey of reflection and growth. Let’s dive into these stories together and find the light within the shadows.
Introduction
I was lucky to grow up in a place where a lot of the old ways are still alive. We did a lot of things by the moon–like forecasting storms and cutting our hair. We connected to the land and all her creatures, too. We had to because winters in the area could be long and unpredictable. For my people, surviving harsh winter storms was just the way of things. We were built for it.
Through evolution and shared experiences, we learned how to forecast, prepare, and hunker down when things got bad. We knew how to keep an eye out for one another through it, too. After all, there was no guarantee that outside help would come, even on the darkest nights in the middle of a harsh and unrelenting winter.
Shoot-we didn’t even have a police station! We didn’t need one. All we needed was Jesus, our guns and a good aim.
The town I grew up in wasn’t even a town. If you look it up on the Google, you’ll see that it’s called an “Unincorporated Community”–whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. It’s small and simple, but it’s a beautiful place–and wild, too.
For most of my time there, the locals were good about ethical logging, and most houses were built in small clearings. We did not clear cut the land and there are no subdivisions there–even to this day. The point is that we tried to take from the land without changing her nature.
The Darkness of Winter
I must warn you, though, that it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. There is a deeper darkness that looms at the ends of the hollers of my youth. You see, I’ve felt the emotional destruction that comes from people who hold the darkness of winter too deeply in their hearts.
I’ve gone toe to toe with generational cycles of abuse that are too common in the area to be a coincidence, and I know what happens when hibernation settles in deep–when it becomes a way of life.
Sharing these types of stories is always nerve racking. Something inside of me still freezes up when I try to talk about my childhood. Even looking at the good things can be a landmine for all the guilt, shame and pain I have yet to deal with.
…and I’m not the only one who experiences that. We all have trauma. We all go through storms. And we all need help to transmute that energy into something positive and powerful.
Society’s View on Darkness
To make matters worse, we live in a society that values the light over the dark. They tell us to wipe the tears from our eyes, put a smile on our face, and keep moving on. We see this in platitudes like: “Look on the bright side”; “Focus on the Positive”;
….and my least favorite of all
“Everything happens for a Reason”
No. Some things have no reason. We may give them purpose IF we have the tools to do so but the word ‘reason’ implies justification, and some things should never be justified.
What is Shadow work?
Shadow Work is important work–especially since we’re in a period of great deconstruction. I’m going to keep it pretty metaphorical, because I am a storyteller after all, but I want to give a quick primer before I dive in.
Throughout our lives, we experience all kinds of things. The not-so-great things; trauma, abuse, bullying, shame, indoctrination, etc. Well, those things create ‘fragments’ inside of us. In psychology, they’re often referred to as ‘parts’. For the purposes of these stories, we’ll stick to calling them Shadows.
Inside the shadows are tiny fragments of light. Those are the missing pieces of our sacred selves. Without them, we can’t be whole…and so Shadow Work is the work of integrating that light back into ourselves. The hard part is that we have to face the cold dark reality contained within those shadows. We have to get to know those truths, acknowledge how they affect our lives, and get skills to minimize their negative impacts.
If we do not do this work-–if we ignore the shadows and shy away from the darkness, they grow inside of us. We’re essentially granting them power over our thoughts–and as a result our lives.
What I have found is that the power to clear out the shadows and claim our light comes right from the darkest time of the year–Alban Arthan–the time of the Cailleach; the bringer of cold winter storms.
The Power of Stories
Now, I understand a thing or two about darkness, and I know how to harness the transformational energy of the season to re-invent and evolve. After all, I’ve died more times than some folks have lived and I’ve risen above my mental health struggles, poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. Today, I have a life and a career that-by all accounts-I was not supposed to have.
To be honest, I have stories to thank for that. When I was a child and things were bad, I always retreated to a book. Over time, I became an avid ‘daydreamer’. I was always lost in the clouds; continuously writing stories in my head.
It was my way of reclaiming my power, of changing the narrative, and of finding hope. Through stories, I was able to create a vision for a better life and work toward it.
West Virginia culture acknowledges the power of stories, too. Appalachian Storytelling is alive and well today and I’m honored to carry that tradition on and out into the broader world.
The stories I tell are the stories of ‘us’. They’re the stories about my life and my ancestor’s lives. They’re stories about the people I meet and even stories about strangers. I record them all in my ‘Book of Life’. My people believe that in the end, ‘Every ear shall hear, and every knee shall bow’. But I say why wait? We all know that time is no friend to truth, after all.
So, in the next few posts, I will tell you three stories of my own survival of the bitter winters. Each story contains a lesson…and a gift of understanding. These gifts are:
- Strength
- Hope and
- Rot
…and because I’m a scary b*tch, let’s start with rot.
Death & Dirt (Bitter Winter Part 2)
Note: this story is part of a series called “The Bitter Winter: Surviving and Healing Appalachia. For context and the full collection of stories, check out this page.
You know, they say that the Appalachian Mountains are older than dirt. My people didn’t know that. You see, they thought they were the dirt. They planted themselves deep in the land and let Spring’s bounty be birthed through them.
Even when I was growing up, which wasn’t so long ago, people still lived off the land. Some more than others, of course. I, for example, was not gifted the gift of the green thumb. All I was good for was snappin’ beans, shuckin’ corn, and wrappin’ the meat that was hunted or butchered. But I played my part in things, just the same.
People of the Dirt
My dad’s people were truly people of the dirt. They settled some land at the end of a holler that would later be named after them, and they made it their own. They lived in a shack while they built the house they would raise their kids in and immediately set to making use of the land. I don’t like to call them ‘farmers’, though. That just doesn’t fit right.
They did not strip the land and turn her into a factory.
Like most people in the area, they grew what they needed and thanked the land for her blessings.
Every fall, the ladies would gather in the kitchen and can things up. You see, they understood the importance of stretching things out and learned to ‘make do’ (out of necessity, of course).
A Legacy of Healing
My grandpa gave his life to that land and then died right there in the house he built with his bare hands. It was an untimely death, and sudden too.
I never met him, but I’ve heard plenty of stories about him. He was a faith healer and a herbalist and for a long time, he was the only medicine man in the area. They said he would be called at all hours of the night to help the sick and weary. He was the type of man, I’m told, that would drop groceries off on the front steps of anyone who had fallen upon hard times.
My favorite stories of him are the ones of him (allegedly) casting out demons. Most notably, the time he saved the soul of the warlock who lived in the wizard house at the end of my Short Granny’s holler.
For the most part, when things died they stayed right where they were. Wild animals in the woods, mostly. But my grandpa was no exception to the rule. He died but did not stay dead. For the longest time, his spirit was still alive and well in the house and land that he built.
And that warlock? Well, he’s still alive, too…but only in my heart and soul. You’ll learn more about him, later.
The Cycle of Rot and Regeneration
The point is that people in those areas understood the importance of rot and the role it plays in keeping the soil fertile enough to produce herbs for healing, produce for eating, and flowers bright enough to make it all worthwhile in the end.
I remember pie pans strewn across my grandma’s kitchen counters. She was always collecting very specific ingredients for plants in need. Now, I didn’t pay attention much so I can’t really tell you what those ingredients were or how she used them to create rich soil. What I do know is that woman could grow virtually anything. She took pride in it, too. For all her meanness, at least she gave that gift to the land.
In this way, death was given a purpose. Things to rot were not off-putting or gross. It was understood to be the way of things. In fact, it was revered to be a powerful tool and cornerstone of survival.
It’s the cycle of rot to regeneration…and here’s the thing. It happens, no matter what. We usually don’t pay it much mind, but it’s always there. It’s constantly tearing us down and building us back up.
The Darkness of Rot
I guess it makes sense to shy away from it. Death is death and although it breeds light, it’s still chaotic and painful. To understand that, you don’t have to look much further than my momma’s family.
They settled some land on the back of a mountain, just off the banks of an ancient river. Terry, WV used to be an old mining town. Now, if you don’t know much about those mining towns, I’ll tell you this. There is nothing sadder than an abandoned coal mine.
…and my grandpa—who had lived through WWII and was a retired coal miner—well, I guess you can say he was consumed by that sadness. It put a darkness in him that made him an awful man. There are stories about him that have no place in these stories, but they’re there.
They live on as warnings for what happens when we don’t control the rot…when we try to ignore the shadows or ‘drink them away’. You see, the shadows grew so dark inside of my grandfather that they spilled out of him. In some ways, they still hang over the heads of my matriarchal bloodline, today.
What I can tell you is that Terry Road was FULL of death. It just kind of hung around the place…it still does, even to this day.
Connection with Spirit
I think that’s where my connection with spirit comes from. There are plenty of stories of my great grandma’s haunted house and how she seemed to know how to ‘keep the spirits in line’. In fact, legend has it that each room had its own designated spirit. There was one room, for example, that didn’t ‘like’ men. There are plenty of stories where men went in and came out white as a ghost. What happened in there is between them and God, I guess. I sure would like to know those stories, though.
I think that’s why winter gives us time to pause. Shoot, even the sun stops moving for a few days after the darkest night of the year. For me, that pause symbolizes reflection. It’s Mother Earth’s way of telling us to make our own metaphorical pie pans—that way we can sort through the death that the previous year has laid at our feet.
It’s an opportunity to decide what can be reused and what should be left to rot. If we do this exceptionally well, the soil will be ripe and ready for revival in the coming Spring.
Strength and Survival
Of course, it’s hard to achieve all of this without a healthy dose of strength. I’m proud to say that’s something that my people have in spades. It was hard-earned, too. You see—survival and strength go hand in hand. With each triumph, we harden. And so the next storm is easier to bear.
Our next story will be just about that. It’s the story of the journey the Cailleach takes through the cold of winter to deliver the flame that will become the spark of Spring’s renewal.
That story, titled “Birth’s Blizzards, and Biscuits” is the next story in our series.
Births, Blizzards, and Biscuits (Bitter Winter Part 3)
I was born just 22 days after the Spring Equinox, giving me a healthy dose of that playful Springtime energy. I’m full of the kind of frolic and folly that you would expect from a child of the blooming Spring. I like fairies, pixies, and glitz and glamour. Some days, I am but a child in the meadow.
Shoot. My daddy called me princess up until the day he died.
…but like the Dark Half of the Year, that’s only half the story.
Let me explain. The blooming Spring I was born in. Well, it forgot to bloom.
On my due date (April 3, 1987), a rare Springtime blizzard hit the small town that I grew up in. That Blizzard was called the ‘Great Spring Snowstorm’. For three days, snow fell steadily across Southern West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky. You might not know this, but snow falling that long and slow can be deadly.
Especially when it’s unexpected.
Especially for people living in remote mountain regions who are cut off from resources and left to fend for themselves.
That’s why my people were inclined to maintain a healthy balance of fear and respect for great mother winter, and the gifts of destruction and renewal she brought with her.
We knew all too well that the Cailleach can be one hell of a high vengeful biscuit eater…and because of her blessings at my birth, so can I.
A Testament to My Mother
But the moral of this story isn’t that. In fact, this story isn’t even mine. I’m a long shot away from being the hero or main character of this story.
No, this story is a testament to my mother and all the women of stone and fire from which I was molded.
It’s important to note that I wasn’t born on April 3rd. In fact, I waited 8 full days to make my way into this world.
I try to imagine what it must have been like for my mother. Here she was, just 22 years old, pregnant with her second child and 45 minutes over mountainous terrain from the nearest hospital. Heck, the only thing she had to get her there when it was time for my birth was a broken-down car.
I imagine my mom, watching the snow fall—day after day—foot after foot—blanketing everything around her with danger. It had to feel like an endless anticipation of hows and what ifs.
She seemed to have handled it all pretty well, though. Labor started in the early morning of April 11th, but she waited 7 hours to tell anyone. Finally, she told my dad it was time, and everyone went to work asking neighbors and family for help getting her to the hospital.
Even after all that, she refused to get into the car and go to the hospital until she had one final bath. You see, personal hygiene is far more important to Hillbillies than popular media would have you believe.
To make a long story short, we made it to the hospital just fine and after a few more hours of pain and waiting, I made myself into this world.
Strength and Determination
As I tell this story, I stand in full appreciation of the grit and gristle that lives so deeply in the bones of the women who birthed me. That strength and rock-hard determination to make it through any storm is the reason I’m alive to tell this story today.
At Imbolc, we celebrate the flickering flame of Brighid’s hearth. But so often, we forget to thank the Cailleach for carrying it through the harsh winter storms in the first place. We are thankful for the strength and lessons that come from our ancestors, but we forget to honor the pain they went through to birth them.
My mom and her kin were not the only ones to benefit from the strength of survival. No, everyone reading this story today can harness that gift and use it to survive the things that were designed to destroy us.
Short Granny’s Legacy
To understand this, you don’t have to look any further than my Short Granny. She was my grandmother on my father’s side and she was a spitfire! She lived at the head of the holler with the Wizard house at the mouth and I used to ride my bike up there to see her. It wasn’t very far—maybe a quarter of a mile—but I swear her land felt like a different world.
She had a weeping willow at the mouth of her driveway that felt like a passageway into the land of the fae. It was a magical place, built by a magical woman.
But my Short Granny was no fair fae. That old bird was tough!
I could never understand why everyone was so scared of her. She was 4’9″ and weighed maybe 90 lbs. She had white hair, pale skin, and a constant set of bruises all over her body. By the time I was 5, she was already bent to match that great Willow’s limbs. I don’t know if it was the osteoporosis or the orneriness that made her that way, but she was bent and twisted all the same.
When I close my eyes and think of the Cailleach, she is what I see. I know that land she built, she built it with her bare hands. She did it alone and she did not do it softly. Maybe that was what was needed at the time, but I wonder what would have been different if she had lived through one less dark winter night. OR if she had learned that she didn’t have to carry that flame through the darkness alone in the first place.
I haven’t had much ancestral contact with her for most of my life, but she came forth during a Samhain ritual a few years back. I think I’m starting to understand why.
I think she’s here to remind me (and all of you) that you can make it through the winter storm and be all the stronger for it, but you better make sure that you tend the flame along the way. You don’t want to end up being an ornery old twisted woman at the end of a holler, after all.
Oh, and when life gives you biscuits…make gravy.
Hope and Renewal
It wasn’t all darkness, though. There’s a hope that comes from seeing the light return…in knowing that it happens year after year, without fail. If strength is like breaking a bone, then hope is the mend.
The next story talks about just that. I call that story Wizards, Warmth, and the Awen.
Wizards, Warmth, and the Awen (Bitter Winter Part 4)
Note: this story is part of a series called “The Bitter Winter: Surviving and Healing Appalachia. For context and the full collection of stories, check out this page.
Some of my best memories come from the time we lived in that Wizard house at the end of my Short Granny’s holler. I bet you’re wondering why I keep calling it the Wizard house, though. Well, remember that Warlock I talked about earlier? The one my grandpa supposedly cured?
The Wizard house was his house.
I remember digging in the yard as a kid and we would dig up the most peculiar things. Mostly jars with strange objects in them. Things like barbed wire, thorns, buttons and seemingly random odds and ends. We did what any curious kids would do, of course. We opened those jars to harvest their treasures.
Now that I’m an adult and have been a practicing witch for over a decade and a half, I wince at that fact. There’s no telling what misfortunes I’ve invited into my life by opening those jars. After all, some things should be left just as they are. Some magicks should be left undisturbed.
There are plenty of other stories about that house and the strange things that happened there. Like the fact that I vividly remembered spending time with an old woman who lived in a clearing behind the Wizard house, only to find out in adulthood that she (nor the clearing) ever existed.
It goes to show that magic never truly dies, and in that, hope for renewal lives on.
The Blizzard of ’93
Maybe that’s why that Wizard house was the perfect setting for the worst of the three blizzards I’ve survived; the blizzard of ’93.
I was six years old at the time and my mama was pregnant with my little brother. Now, you need to know that the blizzard of ’93 was a BAD storm. Historic, even. It was so bad that the adults had to take turns staying up at night; not just to tend the fire, but also to keep the pathway to the door clear.
We worked together to make it through, though. We carried in wood and coal for the stove and helped to melt snow to fill a washtub for baths. It was a lot of work, but we were fortunate enough to have the warmth and means to cook on that old wood stove. Some folks in the area didn’t have half that, and later in my life, neither did I.
Community and Resilience
Now, if the adults were stressed about making it through, they didn’t show it. I hold firmly the image of them-mostly womenfolk-sitting around the table laughing and playing cards. It’s an odd thing to think about now, given what I know about the dangers of winter storms. As a child, though, it was kind of fun.
Maybe it’s because everything was a game, and the shuffle, shuffle bridge background noise of my childhood has been with me ever since. I remember lying on a palette in the room next to the kitchen, trying desperately to hear what the adults were talking about. Between the laughter, shuffling and hushed bits, I did learn a few things.
I learned that you should never let a cat in a crib wtih a baby; lest the cat steal the baby’s breath. I learned about the time my great grandma heard a child laugh and knew he was going to die. Sure enough, he died shortly after that. Most of all, I learned about the role that hope and community play in survival.
Magic and Memories
My Grandma Eula Mae was never very far from a deck of cards. I remember her laid across her bed–a notebook, pen and endless game of solitaire before her.
I wish I had thought to ask her what it was about cards that brought her such comfort–but I think I know the answer because I am much the same. It’s really grounding, you know…the act of shuffling cards. I think that it calmed her and kept her centered. And for a woman who went through all the storms she went through, she was calm.
Like, scary calm.
She could write you a letter dripping with kindness and still cut you to pieces. You see, my Grandma Eula Mae was no harsh blizzard; she was the quiet wind that settled in before the storm.
The Role of Games
Like many traditions in the area, there were other practical applications for her connection with the cards–and games, in general. Intuition and pattern recognition were essential for survival. They’ve fallen out of use a bit today–what with technology and the opioid epidemic. But for our ancestors, those skills were used to forecast and to help make decisions admist chaos.
It was more than play; it was training.
Knowing what I know now about Awen and the importance of play in connecting to the Divine Creative energy, it’s no surprise that these games were the harbinger of hope during these dark times.
So I say to all of you. You would do well to find those places of light from your life and hold steadfast to them…even if it means you have to face and clear out the shadows.
The gift of hope is there for you to grasp and without hope, even the smallest of storms can be too much to bear.
Hope Becomes Avoidance
…but the story doesn’t end there. You see, there was one more blizzard in my life that I’ve yet to mention and with the time I have left, I want to say a few words about it.
Well, I don’t really WANT to talk about it because it’s from a pretty unpleasant time in my life. I’m going to speak on it, though, because the lesson of hope would be incomplete without it.
When I was in my early teen years, we lived in this old run down trailer. It was so bad that icicles would form on the outlets and it had holes so big in the floors that Opossums would sometimes make their way inside. We rode out the blizzard of ’98 there–just my mom, brothers and I.
I mean, we got by just fine. At the end of the day, we had no choice to make the best of it. But it wasn’t easy. Nothing about living in that old trailer in the winter was easy.
That year, just like every other year, we insulated the windows to help with the cold. It made that trailer such a dark place.
But after darkness comes hope and every year, when my mom declared the end of winter, we would remove the insulation from the windows. I don’t now how to describe the warmth that would come over me as the fragments of light filled the room.
Yes, there’s hope in the returning spring…as long as you don’t look too far ahead. As long as you ignore the fact that the cold and darkness will come again…and again….and again.
I think that if you do that exceptionally well, hope can become avoidance.
That was certainly true for most of the women I know from back home. There are just too many things that happen in those hollers that no one talks about. Toxic marriages an family relationships abound, but everyone shows up to church on Sunday with picture perfect smiles.
I’ve seen women hit their knees at 3 a.m; praying for softness, safety and change. When no peace comes, they pray harder and they blame the devil and they blame themselves but the do not blame the hands that harmed them.
I’m guilty of it, too. For most of my life, I’ve held on so closely to the light that I’ve lost who I am.
Facing the Shadows
Remember when I said that stories saved my life? It’s because I used them to pretend the shadows didn’t exist at all. The bad parts (or ‘shadows’) became characters. I gave them a name and locked them away and then completely disconnected from them. I was able to understand them, but not feel them.
That’s not to say that the story of who I was and who I am isn’t true…because it is. The problem is that it’s not the full truth.
I work so hard to show the world how great and radiant I am and because of that, I’ve forsaken my inner wounded child. Now that shadow part lives inside of me and it loves to whisper pretty little nothings in my ear. It tells me that no one will ever love me–unless I give them everything I have.
It tells me that I can keep nothing to myself and so my body pays the tax for my brain’s misfiring. I offer myself up to the lowest bidder and then forget to cash the check.
It’s like I’m standing on the street holding up a sign that says:
“Will work for attention”
I want you all to think I’m worthy…so maybe then I’ll think I’m worthy. Until I shift my thinking, that part of me will never be anything more than the trash that lives in that trailer on the edge of the woods.
The Path to Healing
You know, writing these stories was an exercise in Shadow Work for me. Out of all the places I went, that last bit was the hardest to write. I wanted to point that out because poverty trauma is real, y’all. I don’t think we acknowledge that much and so we end up with broken people with broken thinking.
It’s an epidemic of self-loathing and low self worth. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m projecting there.
The truth is that I really feel like no one would respect me if they knew where I came from. In those moments of self-doubt, I can close my eyes and see 15 year old Ashley staring back at me. No one knows the depths of my sadness quite like she does.
I started writing a story not too long ago about a porcelain doll. She was used and discarded and now she’s lonely and broken. She lives in a deep, dark cave without even the tiniest fragment of light shining through. She’s more than just a character in a story. She is me and I am her. I know that I cannot be whole until I put her back together.
…and some days. Well, most days. I don’t feel strong enough to do that.
I am doing it, though–slowly but surely. Through therapy and Shadow Work and telling my stories in rooms full of people, I am on the path to healing. I hope you found something in all of this that gives you strength to face your shadows…to find healing in the darkest parts of yourself.
Always remember that you deserve healing. You are worth it, after all.
Ashley Rodriguez 