Memoir · In Progress
Pleasant
Valley
A memoir about losing a flower farm, leaving ministry, surviving a mental health crisis, and rebuilding on my parents’ land in a hollow called Pleasant Valley. About what happens when the thing you built is gone and you have to figure out what you were actually building.
The memoir
The farm closed. The pastorate ended. The mental health crisis arrived without announcement. The diagnosis — bipolar disorder — came later, in a hospital room, which is where most diagnoses arrive.
We moved to my parents’ land. A hollow called Pleasant Valley. Our kids played in the creek. I sat in the trailer and tried to figure out what had happened.
The essays published at Southern Legends are the raw material. The memoir is the attempt to hold them together — to say what the breakdown was about, what the rebuild is about, and what I learned about community by losing mine and then slowly being given another one.
Memoir — mental health, farm loss, ministry exit, and the slow rebuild.
Sources indexed. Long game. No rush.
Traditional publishing. No site until acquisition.
The author
Matt Headley
26 years in Calhoun County. Jacksonville, Alabama. These are his essays.