Chapter Twenty
I Am Home
For most of my life, I thought home was a place.
Maybe that began on Short Fork.
A little girl doesn't think about what makes somewhere home. She just knows the road, the holler, the people, the sounds, and where she's supposed to lay her head at night.
She doesn't know yet how quickly all of those things can change.
I didn't.
*
My childhood taught me early that houses don't last forever.
We moved. We started over. We moved again.
Then came Paintsville. A house. A field. A mountain. A pond. Bluegill that Mom would fry after we brought them home. The sound of race cars from 201 Speedway. Dad trying to teach me how to drive and me nearly putting us into a tree.
For a while, that was home.
Then one Fourth of July, it burned.
Maybe that was the first time I understood that something could disappear even when you weren't ready to lose it.
*
We started over again.
Johnson Fork.
The two-story white farmhouse. The barn. Gardens. Animals. Life everywhere.
That place became home too.
Until August 1993.
Dad walked onto the back porch and never walked back inside.
I was fifteen.
There are moments that divide your life into before and after.
That was one of mine.
Same house. Same land. Same family.
Nothing felt the same.
That's when I learned that a house can still be standing and home can still disappear.
*
Mom tried to survive losing Dad.
I was young enough to be angry about the ways she changed. I needed my mother. Calvin needed his mother.
But Mom needed something nobody could give her.
She needed Dad back.
Understanding doesn't rewrite what happened. It simply allows you to look backward with older eyes.
Mom wasn't only Mom. She was a woman, a wife, a mother, a person who loved someone and then had to wake up every morning in a world where he wasn't there.
*
Then I became a mother.
Seventeen years old, holding a baby girl and wondering how in the world anyone thought I was qualified to take her home.
There are moments in life when you don't become ready. You simply become responsible.
Motherhood was one of them.
My children probably thought I was raising them.
They were raising me right along with them.
*
I spent years trying to build the kind of home I thought a family was supposed to have.
A mother. A father. Children. A house. Land. Vehicles. Jobs.
Sometimes we were okay. Sometimes we weren't.
You cannot look at somebody's house and know whether they're happy inside it.
You cannot count someone's possessions and calculate their peace.
Eventually I learned that none of those things were worth more than myself.
*
Eventually, I walked away.
For somebody who had lost homes before, you'd think leaving one willingly would have been impossible.
Instead, it taught me the difference between losing something and releasing it.
I chose myself.
And when I settled into my new home, I didn't have nearly as much as I'd had before.
But I had peace.
*
I also stopped running from a truth I'd known since I was young.
I loved women.
Eventually I understood that nobody else had to live with the consequences of the choices they wanted me to make.
I did.
So I stopped asking permission.
I lived openly. I loved openly.
I married a woman. That marriage eventually ended.
Some things are private. Some things can simply be acknowledged and left behind.
That relationship mattered. Then it ended.
And my story continued.
*
On April 7, 2025, Bull checked on me.
Such a small thing.
A message.
My phone lit up. A woman in Georgia wanted to know if I was okay.
I answered.
Sometimes life changes quietly.
Bull became my friend. Then my best friend. Then the woman who drove from Georgia to Kentucky to meet me.
Somewhere along the way, the woman inside my phone became the woman beside me.
Eventually, I left the state that had held almost my entire story.
I wasn't leaving my history behind.
I brought it with me.
*
Then came August 6, 2026.
Bull became my wife.
On my bouquet was a pendant that had belonged to her mother.
My parents weren't there. Bull's mother wasn't there.
But love has a strange way of surviving the people who first gave it to us.
We carry pieces of them forward.
*
Now, when I look back over my life, I see something I couldn't see while I was living it.
I spent years believing I was always starting over.
Maybe I wasn't.
Maybe I was continuing.
The little girl from Short Fork didn't disappear when we moved. She came with me.
So did the girl from Paintsville. The teenager from Johnson Fork. The daughter who lost her dad. The seventeen-year-old mother. The woman who stayed. The woman who finally left. The woman who stopped hiding. The woman who loved, lost, and loved again.
They're all still here.
They're all me.
*
I used to think strength meant never falling apart.
I don't anymore.
I've fallen apart. I've cried. I've been scared. I've stayed when I should have left. I've made mistakes. I've loved imperfectly. I've survived imperfectly.
But I survived.
Maybe strength is realizing that when everything falls apart, you are still there.
And as long as you're still there, you can build again.
*
If I could stand in front of every younger version of me, I wouldn't tell them everything that's coming.
I'd tell them only this:
Keep going.
There are roads ahead you can't see yet. There are people you haven't met. There are versions of yourself you haven't become.
There are endings that will feel like the end of everything.
They aren't.
Keep going.
*
I started this story believing home was somewhere behind me.
Maybe Short Fork. Maybe Paintsville. Maybe Johnson Fork. Maybe one of the houses that no longer exists.
For years, I thought if I could get back to the right place, find the right person, build the right house, or create the right family, I would finally feel settled.
But home was never waiting at the end of a road.
It wasn't something another person could hand me.
Home was something I had to find inside myself.
Bull is part of my home. My children are part of my home. Mom and Dad will always be part of it. Kentucky is part of it. Georgia is part of it now too.
But none of those things require me to disappear inside them.
I can love someone deeply without losing myself. I can leave a place without losing where I came from. I can remember people without living only in grief.
And I can belong somewhere without giving up belonging to myself.
*
My life isn't perfect. I don't expect it to be.
But I'm not the frightened girl waiting for somebody else to tell her what happens next anymore.
I'm the woman who lived through everything that came before.
I know her now.
I trust her.
After all the houses, all the roads, all the people I've loved, all the things I've lost, all the times I've started again, I don't have to keep searching for home.
I am home.
A Letter to My Dad
Dear Dad,
There are so many things I wish I could tell you.
I wish I had known, when I was young, how precious ordinary days were. I wish I had asked more questions, listened to more stories, and held on a little tighter to the moments when you were simply there.
I still remember you trying to teach me to drive in that field in Paintsville. I remember the farm, the animals, and the life we had on Johnson Fork. I remember the little things that probably didn't seem important at the time but became important after you were gone.
I remember the day we lost you. Some moments divide a life into before and after, and that day did that to mine.
I was only fifteen. There was so much life ahead of me that you never got to see.
You didn't get to watch me become the woman I am today. You didn't get to see all of your grandchildren grow. You weren't here for the times I fell apart, the times I started over, or the day I finally learned that I could choose my own life.
But I have carried you through all of it.
There were times I wished I could sit beside you and ask what you thought I should do. There were times I wanted to hear your voice or see you sitting in your chair again.
I hope you would be proud of me.
Not because I got everything right. I didn't.
But because I kept going.
I became a mother. I worked hard. I loved my children with everything I had. I survived things I never imagined I would have to survive. I learned how to start over, and eventually I learned how to be myself.
I wish you could have met Bull. I wish you could have seen me on my wedding day and known that after all the roads my life took, I found peace.
No matter how many years pass, I will always be your little girl.
I love you, Dad.
I miss you.
And I carry you with me everywhere I go.
Love always,
Your daughter,
Neva
A Letter to Myself
Dear Neva,
You're going to cry more tears than you can imagine. You're going to lose people you love. You'll spend years trying to become the person everyone else expects you to be.
Don't spend your life carrying guilt that was never yours to carry.
You're going to become a mother while you're still young. There will be nights when you're exhausted and afraid, but your children will remember that their mother loved them with everything she had.
There will be relationships that leave scars. Remember: you don't have to lose yourself to love someone else.
You'll start over more than once. Each time, you'll become a little stronger, a little wiser, and a little more yourself.
Keep climbing those Kentucky hills. Hold your daddy a little tighter while you still can. Tell your mama you love her, even on the days you don't understand her. Love your babies with your whole heart.
Don't spend your life trying to fit into someone else's idea of who you're supposed to be.
I'm proud of you.
With love,
Neva
A Letter to My Mom
Dear Mom,
As a little girl, I didn't understand what grief had done to you. After Dad died, it sometimes felt like I had lost both of my parents.
Now that I've lived more life, I understand so much more.
I remember your banana pudding and the vanilla wafers I stole. I remember you taking coffee to Dad's chair every morning after he died. I remember you driving me to every doctor's appointment when I was pregnant.
Those long trips to Lexington were the months when I found my mother again.
There were times we didn't understand each other, but through it all, you were still my mom.
Thank you for giving me life and for the sacrifices I didn't understand until I became a mother myself.
I love you. I always have, and I always will.
Love,
Your daughter,
Neva
A Letter to My Children
My precious children,
You have always been the greatest blessing of my life.
You saw me struggle, cry, make difficult decisions, and begin again. Sometimes I got things right. Sometimes I didn't. But I never stopped trying to give you a good life.
You gave me purpose when I felt lost and hope when I couldn't see it for myself.
Thank you for loving me through my imperfections and for supporting me when I chose a new path.
Never stay where your spirit is being broken. Never believe you have to become someone else to earn love.
Be kind. Work hard. Forgive often. Laugh as much as you can. Love with your whole heart.
No matter how old you are, you will always be my babies.
Forever and always,
Mom
A Letter to My Wife, Cynthia “Bull” Linley
My Dearest Bull,
One simple message changed my life.
On April 7, 2025, you reached out to check on me. At a time when so many people had formed opinions without knowing my story, you chose kindness.
Before we met face to face, you became my best friend.
I'll never forget walking out of work and seeing you waiting in the parking lot—or our perfectly imperfect first kiss when we bumped noses and teeth and laughed.
You didn't ask me to become anyone else.
Thank you for loving my children, welcoming my family, and showing me what peaceful love looks like.
You didn't rescue me. I had already fought my way through the hardest chapters of my life.
But you walked beside me as I began a new one.
Every mile eventually led me to you.
You are my best friend, my greatest blessing, and my home.
Forever yours,
Your Wife,
Neva