Written Summer 2024
The most important thing about my relationship to the South is: I’ve never really left.
I bounced, one state at a time, up the coast. Childhood to college to job. I even lived in North Arlington, VA, five minutes from the D.C. line, and yet, technically, I didn’t cross it. Anyone who has lived in the greater D.C area will tell you, though, that it feels a lot different being near the city than even an hour down I-95.
Back in Arlington, I never worried about all the little shirts I wear with little political words on them. I never worried about the undercut of my hair, about the no-makeup and occasionally-braless look I sport on my errands to CVS or the library. I never worried about something as innocuous as a bumper sticker. I never worried about holding hands with the person I love.
I worry, here.
But when you leave a place for a long time, it opens up a beautiful opportunity, one that I have every single day, now. An opportunity to see all the ways that that place has changed while your understanding of it has not. (Yet.)
Communities are like bodies: they’re complicated. They are different every day. They change constantly. And someone looking at a community, without living inside it, will never truly understand the experience of being in them, of being them. Communities are like bodies because communities are bodies, after all.
I’ve begun feeling defensive of this place. I want people to know that yes, it can be really hard living here. And, there is so, so much good in this place that someone who has never visited might write off as not worth their time.
The South is worth your time. The South is not—has never been—just one thing.
The South is MAGA hats and Confederate flags. It’s terrorism in Charlottesville and the Charleston Nine shooting.
And the South is Bree Newsome.
The South is adrienne maree brown.
The South is Monica Simpson.
The South is counties that show up red on the green screens in news headquarters. And the South is the voters I get to talk to when I knock on their doors. Voters who live complex lives and who are about as predictable as any person—which is to say, not at all predictable.
The South is thousands of dollars funneled to political campaigns that want to strip people with uteruses of their right to choose what happens to their bodies. And the South is Sister Senators. The South is abortion funds and practical support networks that will give those right right back, under any circumstances.
The South is a district that was flipped by 250 votes in 2022 because people showed up and gave a shit about bodies.
The South is Heather F*cking Bauer, who flipped that flippin’ district!
The South is the religious protestors blocking cars from coming into a clinic that offers abortion. And the South is the people in the cars making complex decisions, the people walking them in (and our beautiful group chat), and the staff inside who show up day in and day out to take good care of them.
The South is a governor who refuses to intervene as legal lynchings of human beings by the state start again after over a decade. The South is laws on the books that are racist, ableist, and violent.
And the South is my friends at South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The South is everyone organizing to save Khalil’s life. The South is every name on this petition, and more—please, add your name, too.
The South is homophobic and transphobic violence. The South is Christian nationalism, conversion therapy, the prosperity gospel, and every person whose lives are demonstrably worse because their religion was weaponized to harm them.
And, the South is churches with rainbow flags. The South is the queer couples I get to see on my walks around my neighborhood, at my favorite restaurants, at organizing meetings. It’s my my beloved Resource Center for Women in Ministry in the South (RCWMS) and my beloved Community Empowerment Fund (CEF). It’s the Harriet Hancock Center, We Are Family, the Uplift Outreach Center, the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Fund.
The South is two Chappell Roan concerts, in two Southern cities, with both my siblings. The South is local drag queens and HOT-TO-GO. The South is being surrounded by queer love and absolutely wrecking my voice singing along to it.
The South is Medicaid waitlists, insurance deserts, full emergency rooms, and disabled and elderly people isolated in their homes. The South is the human beings who died of covid because of how the South failed them. And the South is Able SC, it’s L’Arche North Carolina opening their first home, it’s The Arc, it’s Monica Wiley’s work, it’s disabled advocates making their needs known to the world.
The South is hard. The South is devastating.
And the South can be, dare I say—fun?
The South is Queer Haven Books!
The South is Papa Jazz Records!
The South is hiding a beer on a beautiful beach!
The South is absolutely vibing at a Hootie and the Blowfish concert with every single dad within a many-mile radius!
The South is Sarah F*ckin’ Adams!
The South is DAWN FUCKING STALEY!!!!!!
The South raised plenty of people who like to go on TV and go out on the internet and act like being racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic is going to get them ahead in the world. And hell, maybe it is!
But the South is also my sweet family. My mom and dad and brother and sister and partner and best friends. The incredible future social workers I am learning from in classrooms in my hometown. The beautiful, bright, hilarious, children whose lives I have the absolute honor of getting to be a small part of.
It’s hush puppies and grits and grief and joy.
It’s home and it’s broken. And it’s whole.
Take care, sweet friends.
With love,
Liddy
I love this whole stream of education about where you live and hail from. It gives us a glimpse into your life while making your values clear. How’s it going? Miss you 💙
Hi Liddy!
Thank you for another smiling while laughing and a few tears while read. I have been watching ( finishing finally) the tv show A Chef's Life on PBS. Listening to all those eastern NC voices and learning from/about those southern farmers and the foods they grow. It's just the feel of this piece. I didn't know anything about that little part of the south and I am sure there's plenty I still haven't seen. ❤🧡💙💜