The thought of having to recap everything that has happened in my life over the last three months - an international move, a terrifying natural disaster, an evacuation out of the Appalachian Mountains with my children, my family separated by bureaucracy, not even to mention the election (no please, don’t mention it) - is so much. It’s what’s kept me from writing at all for a long time; where do I even begin?
There are other things I want to write about: the paradigm-shifting kindness I’ve seen over the last few weeks, the heron who stands in the stream near my new house in the mountains, the way I’m turning over in my mind how central the River in my English village was to me for the last 10 years and how, just five weeks after moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the river here broke her banks and swallowed entire towns, schools, cars, people…
The way I have felt, in the midst of everything, a sense that what I went through five years ago, when a life-changing diagnosis shifted the trajectory of my life, prepared me for this moment.
When I drove my kids out of the mountains three days after Hurricane Helene wiped away everything below the entrance to our neighbourhood, I left without knowing where we were going. The night before, I had sat in my friend Jessica’s car and heard a radio report that one road off the mountain had been cleared, so I stayed up all night and when the sun rose, I threw our stuff into the back of our borrowed Honda Pilot and headed out. I told the boys to keep their eyes ahead - I didn’t know what we would see.
And when I got to South Carolina, I made a split decision to turn left up 85 North and head to my friend Sarah’s house, because I knew my sons could play with hers, and I could have a minute to myself to process what we had just done. What had just happened to us.
That night, I sat at Sarah’s kitchen counter while she stood at her stove, and she said: “What are the odds?”
And I said: “I’ve survived so many things.”
If you look at the numbers, I’m pretty unlucky:
The chance of my specific illness at aged 37 was 0.5%.
I read somewhere that the chance of the rainfall the hurricane produced in the Appalachian Mountains was 0.1%. If you also factor in the odds of my moving from England to the epicenter of the hurricane’s devastation five weeks before it hit…I don’t even know those odds.
For decades, I had crippling anxiety. I feared everything, catastrophised everything, made up ridiculous scenarios in my head about horrific things happening to me or my family. And now, here I am, on the other side of a couple of very real ridiculous scenarios: Alive. Whole. Loved. Hopeful.
I’ve seen some of the things I couldn’t have bet on, and survived them. That comes with some guilt - many have not survived: not the same illness I had, not the same storm - but the guilt fortifies my responsibility to live.
My God, look at us.
We just got clean tap water back two days ago, after 7 weeks without it due to the storm damaging our reservoir. The night before, I drove up to the top of our hill to do two loads of laundry in the well water at my friend’s parents’ house.
Here’s a video I made up there while the sun set - while my kids were at a Friendsgiving dinner with their church youth group, and my husband (with us, at last) nursed a cold on our living room couch:
We are so, so lucky.
xx
Faith
And we’re all so lucky to have you.
Congratulations. May you continue to yield the rewards of your courage x