Look Ma, I'm an Author Now
The Terror of Learning Out Loud
My first book comes out this month, so I guess I’m an author now. Everyone around me acts like I should be excited.
I have no idea what to expect and I’m unable to pretend like I do. I’d say my internal state oscillates between curiosity and terror.
My book is about cultural trauma and a big part of that involves a sustained psychological attack on identity and the rules we internalize because of it.
When I first learned about this, my entire life made sense. I’d been feeling that sustained psychological attack for as long as I can remember.
Every world I’ve stepped into has taught me there are consequences for saying or being the wrong thing. The rules conflict and overlap. Too much here, not enough there.
When I’m new to something, I’m on high alert. Life has taught me that not knowing the rules is met with social punishment, yet it rarely seems to be anyone’s job to explain what they are.
This shit is exhausting.
Writing Money In The Mountains: The Cultural Trauma of Appalachia felt like breaking every rule instilled in me about social safety and survival. For example:
Appalachian Rules: Don’t get too big for your britches. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. Don’t trust outsiders. Think of the sacrifices made so you can go to school and get out. Sit up straight. Mind your manners. Lose the gum. Don’t embarrass us. Be grateful. Be proud. Of your work ethic, not yourself. Don’t be arrogant. Pull yourself up. Don’t forget where you come from.
Therapist Rules: Be a blank slate. HIPAA. Documentation. Liability. DSM. You are the expert. Your client is the expert. Insurance companies are the expert. Joint Commission. CARF. Chart audits. The Board. Your clients are struggling with addiction, poverty, and the trauma of being alive. Boundaries. Document it or it didn’t happen. Don’t document it too much. It could be read aloud in court. Self-care.
Academic Rules: Write in anticipation of criticism. APA 7th edition. Don’t overclaim. Don’t imply causality. Sure, that’s an appropriate word, but is it the most appropriate? Stay in your discipline. Build new knowledge. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t draw attention to the hierarchy. Stay objective. No one can. Peer Review. Don’t worry about remembering where you come from. No one here will ever let you forget. Cite your sources.
I don’t know the mechanisms of publishing a book or being an author or what the rules are or if they matter or if they exist.
Being new at something is bad for me in a way that is different than typical anxiety. I know I’m a systems gal living in a linear world. I need to understand the mechanisms before I can form questions or opinions.
It’s rare that anyone explains the mechanisms.
Breaking the rules can be a necessary and empowering thing.
Breaking the rules attached to survival feels dangerous.
In the fall of 2019, I decided to pursue my PhD while continuing to work full time as a therapist in community mental health. I figured I got my master’s while raising three kids, so how much harder could it be?
There’s a reason they say ignorance is bliss.
It soon felt like I was scaling a brick wall as it was being cemented between social classes I didn’t know existed. Within the ivory halls of academia, I became a hillbilly. To many people at home, I was an enemy within—an untrustworthy member of the academic elite.
I learned to code switch between red-hat wearing conservatives and blue-in-the-face liberals with the ease of flipping on a light. On each side, I faced people I thought I belonged with shitting on either my hometown or my educational achievements.
I grew weary of translating.
To soothe my ever-increasing sense of isolation, I turned to my most reliable form of escapism. Work.
My research started out looking at the opioid epidemic and rural mental health. It was validating when I found articles referring to this as collective trauma because that meant “real” researchers and I agreed. It also meant I had to keep looking.
This path led me to the concept of diseases of despair—deaths related to substance use, suicide, and hopelessness in the wake of economic decline. They are more prevalent and fatal within Appalachia compared to the rest of the country. Researchers weren’t sure why.
I knew why.
Before I knew the clinical terms, I knew the lived reality. The time I apologized to a WIC case manager for being pregnant again. The audible sighs in the grocery line arising behind me when I took out the bright orange food stamp card. The well-intended tone-deaf comments of strangers who were glad their tax dollars were going to “someone like me”.
I see it every day. People who believe they need to be in a state of absolute crisis before deserving care. The fear that admitting loneliness, depression, or anxiety means weakness. The belief that if one can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they barely deserve compassion. The help people need barely exists, and when it does, it’s so burdensome and untrustworthy you are better off figuring it out yourself.
As I went further into the research about cultural beliefs, mental health, and Appalachia, any feelings of validation I had gave way to betrayal. I always knew there was something about my town that meant I was inferior or less than.
I didn’t know we were so othered that we were being studied.
The more I learned about cultural trauma and Appalachia, the more America and the political divide made sense. I didn’t want this information to remain locked in the ivory tower. The people I cared about most weren’t reading academic journals. So, I started talking on TikTok.
An acquiring editor found me and next thing I knew, I was having a serious chat about writing “the antidote to hillbilly elegy”.
I signed my first publishing contract in July 2025.
I get to publish a book! I’d been wanting to publish a book. Even better, I’d been wanting to publish this book. And I managed to pull this off without decoding the overwhelming “get an agent and send query letter” stuff I read about.
Are you kidding me?!
That relief was short lived.
I’ve never been here before.
I can’t code switch if I don’t know the code.
Author Rules: None of the previous rules apply. All of them do. You risk personal, professional, and public humiliation with every word. Write anyway. Who do you think you are anyway? People are dying. From despair. Who cares about the rules? You know who they protect. Write the book. Maybe a chapter. Or a paragraph. It doesn’t have to be perfect. There are editors. What happens in editing? Don’t get ahead of yourself. They can’t edit nothing. Work bitch. Do your job. You sound like a textbook. Burn that shit. Oh wah your hand hurts? You are on a deadline. Don’t you dare miss that deadline. You don’t need extensions or excuses. That’s not who you are. Keep going. Write the book. Just write the book.
Write.
The.
Fucking.
Book.
Did I write the book? Sometimes I can’t remember.
I did. It comes out on June 20th.
I didn’t mean to get too big for my britches. If there’s a Joint Commission related to books, no one’s told me. I get why academics are really hung up on not overclaiming shit.
It’s terrifying to simply speak.
Generational survival strategies don’t stop feeling true just because you understand where they came from. I know too much to continue performing gratitude “for the opportunity”, which is probably the most sacred rule of all.
Breaking them all feels like risking death.
Looking around, I’d say it’s scarier not to.
When I talk about my work with rural mental health or cultural trauma in Appalachia, I often hear “Rayelle, that’s not just Appalachia. That’s America.”
That’s exactly the point.