There’s something about July that has always felt significant to me.
Maybe it’s because it’s my birthday month. Maybe it’s because summer in East Tennessee has a way of making everything feel a little more alive — the mountains a little greener, the air a little heavier with honeysuckle and history. Or maybe it’s because I’ve always known, somewhere deep down, that the land I grew up on and the community I’ve spent my whole life serving isn’t just where I live.
It’s who I am.
This July feels different from any other. America is celebrating 250 years of independence. Your Beth Life is brand new and finding its footing. And I’m another year older, sitting with a gratitude so deep I’m not sure I have words big enough for it.
So today — on the birthday of this nation I love, in the month I came into the world, in the place my family has called home for generations — I want to tell you where I really come from.
This is my HERstory. And it starts in Cades Cove.
The Cove
Most people who visit Cades Cove see what it is today — one of the most visited destinations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a breathtaking valley ringed by mountains, dotted with historic homesteads, and alive with wildlife at every turn. They drive the loop road, pull over to watch the deer graze, and feel something they can’t quite name. A stillness. A sense of something ancient and unbroken.
What most visitors don’t know is that the families who once lived and farmed and built their lives in that valley didn’t just disappear when the land became a national park in the 1930s. Their descendants are still here. Still in Blount County. Still putting down roots in the same soil their ancestors cleared by hand more than two centuries ago.
My family is one of them.
My father’s grandparents — Samuel and Texana Sparks — were original descendants of Cades Cove. My grandmother, Ova Sparks, was born and raised in the Cove itself. She came into the world in that valley, surrounded by those mountains, part of a community that had farmed and worshipped and buried their dead in that sacred ground for generations.
When I walk the Cades Cove loop today — and I do, as often as I can — I’m not just sightseeing. I’m walking where my people walked. I’m standing on ground that is part of me in a way that goes beyond memory or sentiment. It’s in the blood.
The name Samuel has been carried in my family every single generation since then. One of my own sons bears that name today. Some things are too important to let go of.
The Farm on Montvale Station Road
On my mother’s side, the roots run just as deep — just down the road.
My grandparents were Ray and Pauline Millsaps. My grandfather Ray was a tobacco farmer, and my mother was born right there on the family farm off Montvale Station Road. If you know Blount County — and so many of you do — you can picture it exactly. Rolling farmland, a family working the earth together, the kind of life where the land and the people are inseparable.
My parents, Judy Millsaps Humphreys and Ed Shore, were both born and raised right here in Blount County. They were Tennessee through and through — until the Marine Corps called and took them somewhere else for a few years, as it does.
But Blount County called them back.
I was born at Blount Memorial Hospital — the same hospital that has welcomed so many of our community’s children into the world — and my family has been right here ever since. I was two years old in 1976, the year America turned 200. Now here we are at 250, and I’m still here. Still rooted. Still home.
The Home Builders
My parents came back to Blount County and built something — literally.
Both of my parents became home builders here. They spent their careers creating spaces where families could live, grow, gather, and build their own stories. I grew up watching that. I grew up understanding at a very early age that a home isn’t just four walls and a roof. It’s the place where life happens. Where children are raised and memories are made and families find their footing.
That understanding shaped everything I do today.
When I became a REALTOR®, it wasn’t just a career choice. It was a continuation of something my parents started. Whether it’s through a home purchase or a rental property, I care deeply about where you live and what the best home is for you and your family. That’s not a tagline. That’s a value that was built into me by two people who spent their lives doing exactly that for the families of Blount County.
I am the daughter of home builders. Of course I sell homes.
250 Years of Independence — and What It Means Here
This year America turns 250. Two and a half centuries of independence, of building, of becoming.
When I think about what that means from where I’m standing — in Blount County, at the foot of the Smokies, on land that my ancestors farmed and built and loved — I feel it differently than I might somewhere else. The families who settled Cades Cove were doing exactly what the founders envisioned. They were carving out a life on their own terms. Building homes. Raising children. Planting things that would outlast them.
Samuel and Texana Sparks didn’t know their great-great-granddaughter would one day have a website called Your Beth Life. But in some ways, everything I’m doing here — telling stories, connecting people to this community, helping families find their place in Tennessee — is a continuation of what they started.
We are all, in some way, living the life that someone before us made possible.
That is worth celebrating.
Happy Birthday, America. And to me too.
This is my first true HERstory post, and I wanted it to mean something.
I wanted you to know that when I say I know this community — I mean it in a way that goes deeper than a sales territory or a zip code. I know it the way you know something that’s been in your family for generations. The way you know the sound of your grandmother’s voice or the smell of the mountains after rain.
Blount County isn’t just where I work. It’s where I come from. And coming from somewhere — really, truly coming from somewhere — changes the way you show up for it.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading. And thank you for letting me share this corner of Tennessee and this chapter of my life with you.
Happy 4th of July. Happy 250th, America. And happy birthday to me. 🎉
Welcome to Your Beth Life — I’m so glad you’re here.
— Beth