MORGANTOWN — Micah Beachy is a WVU student, native to Mineral County and, most recently, a published author. Her book “With Love Always, Delilah” sold close to 4,000 copies on Amazon.
The book follows Delilah from middle school age until she’s 21. Beachy started writing the story a long time before she realized it would be a book — all the way back to her freshman year of
high school.
“I had a password-protected Tumblr page where I wrote down my thoughts and feelings and some experiences that I had or my friends had,” she said.
She didn’t want a diary or anything tangible. Rather, she wanted her thoughts available to revisit when she wanted. After five years, she went through her work and thought maybe she could make something that could help others.
“I spent summer of 2018 typing away, doing rewrites. By the end of August, I had something that kind of flowed and made sense under this persona of Delilah, and it was something I was proud of,” she said.
Delilah, though a fictional character, is mostly Beachy as she navigated through life. Based off her experiences, the book served a purpose — helping people.
“This book, it really touches on everything. Eating disorders, bullying, harassment, sexual misconduct, coming of age, depression, anxiety, mental health issues. Everything that everyone experiences at some point or another, but we don’t really talk about it,” she said.
As a student and artist, Beachy wanted to work through things on her own terms and did so with her writing. After writing down her feelings after one bad experience, the work behind Delilah took off.
“I read this thing, and it said ‘write hard and truthfully about what hurts,’ and that kind of set me into the creative process,” she said.
While stressful at times, Beachy said she tried to keep everything pretty copacetic. Admittedly, though, the touchy subjects stumped her a bit. She didn’t want her work to influence decision making, especially in younger girls who read her story. She said she took extra care in putting that on paper.
Beachy said the main takeaway of Delilah’s story is to let the reader know they aren’t alone.
“There’s always a silver lining … that boy who broke your heart in high school — he wasn’t your soulmate. It just felt like the end of the world at that time,” she said.
She’s gotten at least one message a day from people who said the book helped them navigate their own issues. She said she hopes readers understand that in life, there are going to be bad things, but with those bad things come great things, too.
“When you’re in those really dark places or things seem hopeless, you have to remember that something better is just around the horizon,” she said.
Beachy plans to graduate from WVU in the spring. She also said a series adapted for Amazon about Delilah’s story is in the early stages of development. She plans to move to New York City to pursue her acting career. She also said she’s working on another book.
“I’m hoping to have, not a sequel to it, but something similar in 2019,” she said.
SMarino@DominionPost.com
