Meet The Founder
Christina Gray
One person can make a difference.
My name is Christina Gray, and I didn’t start this because I wanted to help. I started it because is was no way I wasn’t going to help.
I started helping because I wanted someone to do something. Somebody. Anybody!
I waited with bated breath for the parade of heroes to arrive, and there was no cinematic entrance. Instead, I saw it was regular people like me showing up to do amazing things. Most of them had no idea what they were doing, but they figured it out day by day. I stepped up not because this is my background or wish, but because I love the people there and they need as much help as they could get. I spent about 80 hours sobbing in bed texting my friends to make sure they were alive after the initial tragedy, and then I started helping as much as I possibly could and haven’t stopped since. Saving 100s of lives. It’s true that the antidote to despair is action. I didn’t wake up one day with aspirations to take on giant projects and responsibilities, but I did wake up one day to my world changed, knowing I had to do something about it.
I told everyone I could about what was happening in North Carolina, disheartened it was not plastered on every news station, radio show, and newspaper headline. Afterall, this is one of the few things that actually IS news, not whatever Big Name did Medium Thing. I told the grocery store clerk, any man that even glanced my way was brought into a long diatribe about how they could help, and I spoke to the Sangha I go to filling them in, unsure of what the answer to it all was.
I soon learned the hard way people don’t like hearing sad news, and people don’t always care about people they don’t know. I did burst into tears an embarrassing number of times after being brushed off by very wealthy people I knew could help but didn’t, especially knowing that every night that passed more people froze to death. Imagine surviving something like that, managing to keep your kids alive, but you have nothing: no car, no house, no clothes, literally everything is gone, and then your kids start freezing to death one by one. Quietly, only to be discovered in the morning. That’s what happened to the people of Appalachia over the winter. They were left to die, and I didn’t take no for an answer knowing this. I kept trying and learning the ridiculously frustrating intricacies of how to ask for help on behalf of people that needed it. It seems like it should be easier, but Appalachia is a historically forgotten and brushed off area. Knowing this, I was determined to not let them suffer.
Things happen slowly and then suddenly, and suddenly I was operating as a small nonprofit, so I made it official to keep it going. In the picture above, I’m at a festival sharing information and encouraging donations. I made the calender with pictures I’d taken in the area and sold them to raise money.
I am lucky to be in a place in life in which I have an abundance of time, a lack of responsibilities other than a dog I’ve been doing life with for the last 9 years, and a unique past that has taught me the skills to lead, inspire, stay alive in the woods, negotiate prices, farm, forest garden, and even construction. For the foreseeable future, this is my focus.
Appalachia is Forever was born.
What would you do?
Take a moment to imagine you’re the mother whose baby was washed from her arms during Helene and asked the next person she saw days later, a lineman, to find his body in the brush so she could bury him, unable to bring herself to look.
Feel the sensation of being buried chest-deep in mud, thick Appalachian red clay, and on the 8th day you’re found. Below you is your wife and daughter than you slowly crushed to death over the course of the last week.
Hear the wind and the cracking of trees around you. You’re safe from the river rising. You’re safe from the mudslides. You’re safe in bed with your husband. You hear a crack and a tree splits your roof in half. Thankfully it missed you by inches, but your husband was instantly crushed.
Or maybe you’re a young girl named Christina, super lucky to only know one person who died and not be living in the area at the time, hearing all these stories, feeling helpless. Do you think you’d step up too?
What’s stopping you now?
