A small-town girl meets a room full of strangers and breaks the awkward silence.<\/p>\n
On the first day of the 2016 Xposure workshop, Eden Jordan greeted the room with a wide smile and said, \u201cHi, I\u2019m Eden! Nice to meet you!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019m accepting and outgoing because I grew up in the church and I understand better that it\u2019s important to be accepting,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n
To see Christians driving people out of Christianity more than the religion itself devastates her, she said. She wants people to see that God is all about love and there should be no discriminating.<\/p>\n
In contrast to her brighter side, she also loves writing fictional short horror and gore stories. From supernatural demons to psychopaths, she enjoys creating characters with her mind.<\/p>\n
She started writing when she was given a prompt at school: \u201cYou are walking down the hall and\u2026\u201d Ever since, Jordan can\u2019t put her pencil down. Her dream is to publish a book of her short stories. She wants people to enjoy the work she puts her all into.<\/p>\n
Jordan is also an actor at her school, Lewis County High School, where she played the main role as Prudence in \u201cJuris Prudence.\u201d It\u2019s fun for her to become someone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like Halloween,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can dress up as anything you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her dream is to be a journalist, because she likes to write and it\u2019s a good way to speak her mind in a thorough and concise way. She wants her voice to be heard.<\/p>\n
Jordan was born and raised in an impoverished city, Vanceburg, Kentucky. Everyone is fond of each other there, but Jordan found that it isn\u2019t as developed as the bigger cities, especially in terms of technology. She finds things that are normal to \u201cbig-city kids\u201d exciting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do I log off of the computer?\u201d she said on her first day at Western Kentucky\u2019s annual journalism workshop.<\/p>\n
Not only is Vanceburg underdeveloped, but also has some of the rates of drug and alcohol abuse in the state of Kentucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so sad to see the best people go through so much that they turn to substance,\u201d Jordan said, fighting back tears. \u201cI know they\u2019re good. \u2026 I know they are, but they don\u2019t know any better.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were just raised in a place where that\u2019s what everyone did, she explained.<\/p>\n
Jordan is grateful to be raised around her amazing family, despite living in a broken city. She\u2019s been protected from the drugs and her family has helped shaped her lifestyle.<\/p>\n
Although there\u2019s barely any hope to grow there, Jordan has passion for her dreams and she\u2019s going to pursue them to matter what.<\/p>\n
She aims to live by these words to help her keep going: \u201cAlways keep your head held high and smile because there are people who would kill to see you fail\u201d and \u201cBe somebody who makes everybody feel like somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jordan said she wants everyone to feel wanted and not feel less than they really are.<\/p>\n
For the younger kids struggling, Jordan said, \u201cThere are going to be times when life is really hard and that\u2019s OK. Everybody goes through it, but you\u2019ve just got to soldier on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI think I\u2019m accepting and outgoing because I grew up in the church and I understand better that it\u2019s important to be accepting,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,466],"tags":[31,157,333],"staff_name":[],"class_list":["post-2433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-profiles","category-x16","tag-31","tag-eden-jordan","tag-profile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2878,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkuxposure.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}