During my time in Roanoke, Virginia pursuing my Bachelors, I took photographic interest in my Grandmother’s abandoned childhood home in a nearby rural Appalachian town called Boones Mill. Upon my first visit to the house I knew very little about my grandmother’s upbringing, and I used my photographic study of the location to deepen my understanding of my own family history. Through a series of visits over the course of a year and a half, and by hearing stories about the location from older family members, I slowly uncovered details that had previously been hidden to me. My repetitive and meditative practice helped deepen my connection with the space. For years I obsessed over my investigation, asking everyone in the family that ever visited the house to recount their memories. I learned that my grandmother’s parents had been alcoholics, and during prohibition had significant proximity to the production of homemade liquor, a practice known outside of Appalachia as “Moonshining.” My grandmother also tragically lost her younger sister to a sudden brain aneurysm in their school bathroom, when her sister was only 15. Before my study of the Boones Mill house, I knew nothing of my great aunt Joanna. The house was owned by my grandmother until her death in 2023, but sat abandoned since 1995. Upon my first visit to the house, I was struck with how many items were left behind, giving me the impression that someone left the space in a hurry. I now understand the pain of my grandmother's childhood and believe that she held on to the house for sentimental reasons, but could not bear to go back and see it in such disarray in order to clean it out. I took a purely documentary approach to photographing the left behind items, never altering any of the scenes from how they were when I arrived.