Remember What You Love, and What Loves You

We are so much more than the headlines and heretics that make the news. If the past few months have taught me anything, it’s exactly that. If you’re grasping for good news, validation, a guidepost, or a path forward, here are a few things that have supported me the past few weeks:

• Activist Songbook
• Rebecca Solnit’s posts, including this: “Remember what you love. Remember what loves you…Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones…You can walk on in the rain…you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but it still being woven and mended and washed.”
• 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won

That list was in part informed by Nonprofit AF, a fantastic blogger and activist.

In other difficult–but still hopeful–news, six weeks after Helene my car has been repaired and the tangle of three trees hanging over our property (dangerously close to River’s room) has been professionally felled. I took some time to actually walk adjacent to the one acre of white pine trees on our 2.87 acre lot the other day because I wanted to be sure I’d counted correctly. All along, I’ve said we lost six pine trees on that corner of our lot. To my amazement, I found six pine trees had fallen fully down, flush with the ground, and another nine trees were leaning at an aggressive angle or snapped off altogether. While we didn’t experience a microburst, I remain amazed that we escaped with as little damage as we did.

Needless to say, as I write this, Yancey County Schools remain closed, and we are the only county in the affected areas that have yet to be able to send our children back to the classroom. I’d like to tell you that Brad, River, and I have found our new rhythm, but the truth is, we haven’t. River and I stay in Virginia during the week so I can run my business with consistent internet and he can attend school. Brad remains home in North Carolina to keep his job, and care for our pets and house. We still have no landlines, cell reception is at about 70%, and internet service isn’t good enough to bet your business on. When we come together as a family on weekends for 36-48 hours, there’s enough time to hug, catch up, share a meal, then pack up and do it all over again the next weekend. It is both extremely fortunate, and pretty disorienting.

Locally, so much has been done to save lives, rehome families, supply or evacuate those in need, and honor the dead. Much has also been done to restore power in places where poles and lines were literally ripped from the ground and sent far downstream. Most of us in the outer reaches of Yancey County went without power for two to four weeks. That’s not long, when you look around and see entire roadways, townships, and railroad lines obliterated. And while many bridges are still out, causing longer drive times and making school bus routes impossible, many more roads have been repaired by locals teaming together with their own big rigs and gravel, or by the DOT.

Through all of this, River has been very brave and is making friends. He even received his first report card with real grades (his public school in North Carolina doesn’t give letter grades until 3rd grade). He made honor role!

I’m quite tired each day, and miss my spouse and the company of other adults in general, but I’m also confident we will look back on this and be able to say we did the best we could. During the pandemic, River was much younger and I was profoundly sick with long covid and resulting organ damage; as a result, I could not show up for him in the ways I longed to. This time? I’m giving him everything I’ve got, with a trauma-informed approach and parenting skills I’m confident in. It feels so good to know what to do and simultaneously be capable of doing it. When I was ill, that was not the case.

And so here he is on a sunny afternoon after school. When I picked him up, we decided to walk past all the stores on the right side of Jackson Street in Gate City, VA – our new, temporary home – to see what we could see. The next day, we walked down the left side of the street, and did the same. It was a delight to explore and make the best of being somewhere new, even if under odd circumstances. And here’s a shot of that small downtown, and another of the sunset view from Brad’s old family homestead where we are lucky to have landed. Also shown: River at play with his best friends one weekend when we returned to Celo; me peeking at my covered garden plants that miraculously survived the storm; and River opening handmade cards that a classroom in Wisconsin mailed to us after the storm.

Thank you all for your ongoing support throughout this tumultuous time, especially amidst the larger scale wars and political unrest surrounding us all. This month, my provocations are a direct ask for your support. I cherish this community of readers and writers, and I’d like to reach more creative thinkers like you. So please comment below if you have anything to share.

• Can you e-introduce me to a writer who might be interested in the EMERGE + Publishing Bundle? Funds from enrollment in this program directly support the mission of the WRITEABILITY nonprofit.
• Do you know a writer who gets stuck in the drafting stage, unsure how to discern what to keep, what to cut, and when to stop revising? If so, will you please email that writer and directly invite them to enter the Next-Level Writing Contest? It’s completely free.
• If none of the above applies, and/or if you are aware of a literary organization or informal writers group or gathering that might benefit from either of these opportunities, will you please tell me more about that group below in the comments? I’d like to expand my audience, and I trust my readership here to point me in the right direction.

PS If you enjoy my emails and support the mission and ethos of my offerings, will you send a new writer my way? Here’s how.

Are you on my newsletter list? When you sign up, you’ll get my monthly questions and you’ll also receive the 5 S’s Applied to Story downloadable PDF. I send emails approximately every month with mini craft essays, special notices, early-bird registrations, and announcements for subscribers only. No spam, ever; and your email address is never shared. Sign up here.