“Sharing to Save Myself”: The Mountains, Valleys and Tales of an Educated Debutante

Story by Collin Tadlock

Graphics by Isabelle DeCamillis

Video by Charlotte Zhao

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Adrian Wood is fully transparent about her mountains and valleys – one Facebook post at a time.  

When she sits down to post on her page from her home in Edenton, North Carolina, she is not just updating family on her whereabouts. 

Rather, she is checking in with over 300,000 people, staying up to date on her grocery store trips, vacations with family and even her more challenging days. 

Her blog, somewhat ironically named “Tales of an Educated Debutante,” is an honest depiction of Wood’s life at home: it is common to find her Facebook Live videos and blog posts stretching over assorted topics on her page: “Country girl gone to town (aka IKEA),” “The Millionth Day of January” and “Politics for Dummies.” 

“She’s writing because she wants to help people, and she wants people to feel less alone in the struggles of life,” said Rachel Stafford, author of the blog “Hands Free Mama.”  

“My first impression was that she was intelligent, articulate, humorous, honest, and genuine…. that impression has only been confirmed,” wrote Beth Miller, a subscriber of her page.  

The more light-hearted content, however, is not all that Wood shares. She has a passion for education, earning her Ph.D. in Educational Research from N.C. State University. 

After Wood’s parents moved to Rocky Mount, North Carolina before she was born, they knew they had fallen in love with the quaint city. Living in the Westhaven neighborhood just east of Highway 301, Wood and her older brother Adam stayed on the move: either swimming in the Tar River, dangling off a rope swing or driving her go-kart she was gifted at age seven. 

“No one seemed really concerned with what I was up to most of the time, but that was kind of good,” Wood said. “A very traditional 1980’s childhood.” 

Rocky Mount never seemed small when she lived there, and now living in a coastal community of not quite 5,000 people, Wood said Rocky Mount felt like a “great big place” to her. 

Wood and her older brother were extremely close: she tried to emulate everything he did. 

“He was my sun,” Wood said. 

When he passed away from cancer at age 19, Wood was 15 years old. When that happened, Wood remembered thinking she would never have joy again. 

“When he was gone, in my mind, I remember thinking, ‘Well God has let this bad thing happen to me, and everybody is going to get one bad thing – I had this all worked in my head. And mine has happened,’” Wood said. “So now, I can move on about my business, nothing’s going to happen to me.” 

While she was not going to be joyful, she could at least be happy. That is how she lived for many years after Adam passed. 

Wood acquired her undergraduate degree in child development from Meredith College and received her master’s in education and early intervention from UNC-Chapel Hill. 

During her time at Carolina, Wood lost three hometown friends, Anne Smith, Mark Strickland and Josh Weaver, to a fire at the Phi Gamma fraternity house in Chapel Hill on Mother’s Day, 1996. After losing her brother and three dear friends, Wood faced a dilemma: her “one bad thing” had happened again. 

“I was really thinking, ‘Uh oh, well this didn’t work in my plan. This is something that’s terrible that’s happened again – this isn’t fair,’” Wood said. 

After both tragedies Wood had faced, she lived out the life she had planned. She went back to college and received her Ph.D. from N.C. State University, and soon married her longtime boyfriend Thomas Wood in Edenton in 2002. 

She had three children- Thomas, Russell and Blair, and with a family of her own in Edenton, the plan for her life was falling into place. 

“Damn it – I was PTA President, I was a Sunday school teacher, my husband was a lawyer,” 

Wood said. “I like to say I was happy.” And then Amos came along. 

Her youngest son and fourth child, Amos, was born in November of 2013. Wood said she realized very quickly, around ten days old, that something was different about him. 

“As his development was going this way, and my other children were over here, and I had this person I loved, but it was not who I ordered… and I was grieving.” 

Although Amos was healthy, Wood struggled to sleep, overcome with the grief of her brother and hometown friends that she had suppressed for so long. 

“I realized I had been bearing all this hurt and heartache for so long, and when Amos came along, there wasn’t any more room,” Wood said. 

After three “one bad moments,” Wood found herself at a crossroads. 

“I thought “I’m going to either drown, or I’m gonna have to unload this stuff,” Wood said. 

With that realization, “Tales of an Educated Debutante” was born in 2016. 

A Facebook blog that allowed Wood to express herself through her love of writing. What started as a place to grieve for Wood quickly became a local phenomenon, as she gained more and more followers on her social media. 

“When I started sharing, those hurts didn’t own me anymore,” Wood said. 

Why “Educated Debutante”? 

Wood explained that while she was a North Carolina debutante, it was “by the skin of her teeth.” Her parents were originally from Ohio, but her father did a lot for the community, so she was invited to be a debutante. Now, Wood sees her name as more of a tongue-in-cheek reference, highlighting the irony of herself compared to a “traditional” debutante. 

“I’m gonna have a view of what an educated debutante might be, but I don’t think this is who she is,” said Wood. 

With the name “Tales of an Educated Debutante,” Wood has been able to widen her reach, expanding her page into different cultures and viewpoints. 

“I have access to this traditional debutante-ish crowd, and they might not usually follow somebody that believes things like me if it weren’t for my name,” Wood said. 

During the first few years of writing and posting, Wood used her platform to speak about her brother and Amos, grieving for them publicly through her words and pictures. Now, she posts what she is passionate about: education, special needs advocacy, and crime analysis. 

“If my followers are interested in that, I talk about it.” 

Over 300,000 followers later, Wood now has an exclusive subscriber’s page, sharing frequent Facebook Lives and additional content for paying supporters. Her subscriber page, which now has over 5,000 people, gets a behind-the-scenes look at Wood that features more of her family. 

Wood said this page is a more tight-knit community of her followers. 

On Facebook Live with Wood, followers shared their love and appreciation for her blog. Kate Mueller followed the page for over five years now and shared her reasoning of following Wood’s journey. 

“I love Adrian’s realness. She is a very eloquent writer and her sharing of Amos and the real life of living and growing with Amos is invaluable,” Mueller wrote. 

With a lot of Wood’s posts coming at night, she sometimes has to sneak away from her family and Amos to write. 

“I struggle, probably like all parents do, with balancing family and work,” said Wood. 

So, what keeps Wood entertaining her followers? 

The idea of navigating life in a way that allows people to see who she really is, not just what she looks like on the outside. Always open with her emotions, Wood talks about missing her two older sons, enrolled at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, VA, and the struggles of splitting her time between her children. 

“I try to be as honest as I can all the time, because I want other people to know that they’re not by themselves.” 

Wood’s blog has become a place of solace for many, including parents of children with autism and people dealing with the process of grief. Rachel Martin is another subscriber to Wood’s page, whose husband George recently passed away. 

“When my husband passed, I found her filling the loneliness,” Martin wrote. “She makes me be able to laugh again.”  

Looking ahead, Wood is not slowing down anytime soon. On top of drafting a book proposal, Wood plans to create more segments for her blog, expanding her topics and collaborating with other bloggers. 

She also has begun working on a collaboration with Mr. Bitz, an Edenton-based blogger and retired teacher, on a weekly education segment, focusing on the topic of education around the state and country. 

With each new follower, Wood always presents her true, authentic self, and hopes that people around her will do the same. 

“I want people to know that they don’t have to sit alone in these thoughts and feelings,” said Wood. “We just never know what people have going on behind-the-scenes, and I want people to know what I have going on behind-the-scenes.”