Asking Ourselves What Might Be Possible

Next week marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Helene, which we now know was the deadliest hurricane to make landfall since Katrina (2005). Tearing across more than 500 miles of land in five states, over half the fatalities were in North Carolina alone. Among those who died, I can count 10 souls within a few minutes walk or short drive from the desk I’m sitting at right now. It’s not easy remembering our neighborhood’s survival, evacuating my son, being separated from my husband, and the thirteen days it took before I knew which of my friends and neighbors had survived. And yet–we were so lucky to lose as little as we did.

So many of you reading this blog right now rose up in support during that time; you shared resources, stayed flexible, extended kindness, and paid witness to what this small corner of Appalachia endured.

And that enduring continues today:

• In July, FEMA contractors removed the tree whose top third had partially snapped and was dangling over our driveway for 10 months.
• In August, our request for debris removal support was approved, and we’re told a contractor will be in touch, likely by the end of 2025.
• In September, our road is being repaved and fully, properly restored. (The part of the road that was impassable because it was completely eradicated was repaired prior.)
• Even as our local government reports difficulties receiving some of the promised FEMA funding, improvements continue to roll out—from replacing water lines to rerouting hiking trails. The work is impressive!
• And of course, some folks are still volunteering at neighbors’ houses, churches, and relief centers. Here’s a shot of our latest efforts, where River and I sorted bottled water donations into ready-made boxes that families could pick up at an abandoned school-building-turned-relief-center. We also had a chance to restock baby formula and diapers. Amazing to think we’ve gone from the destruction shown below (where our post office used to be), to where we are today.

The jarring leaps from micro to macro are almost too much to bear, these days, and the Helene anniversary is just one example. I wrote last month about “yes and” mentality, and I’d still say that’s helping me through. Politically motivated assassinations, yes, and the monarchs have landed in the community garden. The erosion of free speech, yes, and canning 60 quarts of homegrown food with my family. The rewriting of history, yes, and building a fort in the woods with my child. “Yes, and” doesn’t condone today’s atrocities. “Yes, and” allows for self-efficacy and joy even in the face of atrocity. And guess what can’t survive where self-efficacy and joy live? Fascism.

I’m not saying the monarch butterflies are going to swarm the Capitol and fix everything. (Though imagine it with me for just a moment…thousands of wings flapping incessant hope into the mouths of anyone spreading lies…all the erasure and violence and low-balling and capitulation suddenly held in a winged, silken embrace…) But I am saying that it’s important to keep asking ourselves what might be possible.

Because it’s envisioning and imagining, paired with action, that will get us through this dark age. Nothing is more powerful than the mind. How we exercise our minds is a choice we get to make every day, and it’s a choice no individual can ever take from another.

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