I write with deep gratitude for the outpouring of support that has buoyed me these past few weeks since Helene hit Southern Appalachia, resulting in catastrophic loss and continuing recovery for my new hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. I’ve felt such support, as many of you have reached out and even helped make connections toward a short-term housing situation. I am especially grateful for my Agnes Scott College network: for the next few weeks, I’ll be in a familiar location ~ in metro Atlanta (near Decatur and the college).
I also want to express enormous gratitude for everyone who’s offered assistance and asked how to support. It means a lot that people are continuing their subscriptions, as both my capacity is more limited and the to-do tasks are so many at this time. I am so grateful for writing group members volunteering to be subs, for dear friends Candace and Rasha sending emails on my behalf, and for chosen family continuing to ask: “what do you need?” So many friends have called, texted, and sent notes of support. Truly, so much gratitude!
This experience — and I’m still searching for language to name and understand this season of life, but it’s some combination of displacement + crisis + community care — continues to have wide impacts. Here are a few examples:
- Local organizations I follow begin updates by accounting for staff or group members and naming when they or their family members have lost someone. Similarly, I am still getting and sending emails on a near-daily basis asking if people are safe and what people need.
- Schools continue to set return dates and then delay them. Maybe the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA) will resume this week? That’s new hope, though it also feels uncertain, since internet is largely out and there isn’t potable city water yet.
- Both climbing gyms in Asheville flooded, and neither have timelines for reopening. Climbing is a core grounding practice for my partner, so this alone raises grief and cascading questions for us.
- Many roads and infrastructure are out, and there will be long time of rebuilding ~ rebuilding homes, buildings, roads, trails. There are numerous requests for volunteers. We are eager to be back home and to be rebuilding.
As I share these examples of loss, need, and uncertainty, I also tap into desire, longing, and recommitment. These are times when the pulls are so intense, when nothing feels “enough,” and when grief and rage attempt to swallow us whole. May I say again and often: we are not well and not meant to be well within conditions of systemic injustice, white supremacy culture, climate crisis, ongoing pandemics, genocides, fascism, denial of rights, and everyday wrongdoing.
Last week, my spiritual director Cynthia Lovin shared with me the opening lines of Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s “Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times”:
“Mis estimados: Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.
I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now. It is hard to say which one of the current egregious matters has rocked people’s worlds and beliefs more. Ours is a time of almost daily jaw-dropping astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations …
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet … I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is — we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I cannot tell you often enough that we are definitely the leaders we have been waiting for, and that we have been raised since childhood for this time precisely.”
Cynthia shared with me these words as part of introducing Kaira Jewel Lingo‘s We Were Made for These Times, and I am now listening to the audiobook. It is a balm for wounds that are still so tender.
May these passed-along words of encouragement and whatever balms are available now provide the support for moving through these difficult times, for rebuilding and remembering our capacity for showing up, and for continuing to show up, however imperfectly.
I share below a few additional recommendations on where to offer support, and I say again, with a full heart: thank you for the outpouring of support that has gotten me this far and is sure to take me through the months ahead.
If you’d like to offer support directly (again, deep gratitude!), here are three ways:
- Become a subscriber. Or continue your subscription. Thank you!
- Purchase a gift card for yourself, a colleague, or a loved one. Gift cards can be applied to coaching, writing retreats, and other offerings.
- Join an upcoming writing retreat. I am continuing to hold space through online writing retreats, so join for real-time writing community and support. Upcoming dates include Saturday, November 9th; Thursday, November 14th; Monday, November 25th; Tuesday, December 10th; Wednesday, December 18th; and Monday, December 30th.
Along with this message, I share below a photo from Beaver Lake, a favorite walk in Asheville, that I snapped the day before the “precursor rains” of Helene began to pour. I hope to walk by this lake again soon, realizing it, too, will be changed.
May we pause in moments, whenever possible, to breathe, to be, to connect with life within and beyond ourselves, because, oh, how we need each other, always and especially in these times. <3
Resource Recommendations
Here are a few places to offer support. I share additional organizations and mutual aid funds in the previous post, “Update from (Outside) Asheville: Next Steps after Hurricane Helene.” Please share your recommendations, too.
- Support Southside Community Farm’s Hurricane Helene Relief Efforts: Southside Community Farm is a local BIPOC-led farm based in Asheville’s Southside, supporting historically under-resourced neighbors through stocking the community fridge, sharing produce at farmer’s markets, and feeding neighborhood families. This fundraiser is for direct giving.
- Firestorm: Since Helene, this collectively-owned radical bookstore and event space has been coordinating mutual aid and solidarity efforts ~ from information and resource sharing to holding space for public education, including community heater builds. Become a Firestorm community sustainer here.
- Love Asheville from Afar: Another way to provide Helene relief, especially heading into the holiday season, is to shop via the newly created “Love Asheville from Afar” page, which the City set up for artists, restaurants, and local organizations to link their shops, memberships, or other fundraisers. There are a lot of shopping and donation-based options here.
- Not Another Bomb Campaign: Continue to take action through signing petitions, following election recommendations/endorsements, and supporting co-sponsors (including the Working Families Party, Rising Majority, M4BL, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, and If Not Now) here.
- Rhinannon Giddens’s Release of “Swannanoa Tunnel”: Finally, I share some music to accompany these actions. With love. <3
Again, deep gratitude,
Beth
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