I am not your average girl.
I was born and raised in the Valley.
Not just any valley, Cherry Valley.
Not the valley like you’re probably thinking of out West, somewhere deep in the Hollywood Hills.
I’m talking about my valley on the East Coast, in a small town in upstate New York.
No, not the city, but a town, a village, a home.
Cherry Valley.
Hundreds of years in the making, a ravaged and war-torn place.
Economically declined, but it’s still breathing.
A long, slow beating of generations.
Cut out in between two veins of the earth.
Cherry Valley.
I was born and raised a girl in the Valley.
Mallory of the Valley.
With its ridgeline tattooed against my arm.
Orion’s belt, the three sisters, inked across my wrist.
The crescent moon I was born under protected by my heart.
My roots run deep.
I am called to come home often, but have chosen to move away.
That was my choice and I stand by and affirm that decision.
Regardless of where I am now, I will always be a Valley girl.
For life.
That is my calling and true North.
The stomping grounds of my kingdom.
The tales and times to follow are stories of the life I had there.
My upbringing, my youth, the freedom of my innocence.
The land that was mine to conquer.
The hills, fields, and streams.
How my bones were made strong from the many miles I journeyed over my homeland.
How my flesh became one with the winter.
These are the stories of how I became a girl of the Valley.
How I still am one.
How one day I shall reclaim my place there.
Salvage and secure what is truly mine.
Be buried in the soil and shed to the stones.
These are the words and promises of the legacy I will leave there.
Born a Valley girl, die a Valley girl.
This is the creation of the becoming of me.
In a place that will never die, nor fade away in the history of what is yet to come.
This is my story, raw like the land it grew upon.
Solid and whole like the crops I harvested.
If I try not to get lost in the wind,
I will always be torn to come home.