Hurricane recovery can feel overwhelming. It’s still normal to not feel normal after hurricane Florence.
I am still post hurricane Florence, still living in the back rooms of my house – kitchen, bedroom, laundry room. Every time I go out, I see signs of the storm’s aftermath or hear stories of people who continue to be devastated by this storm. Most of the stories make me feel fortunate, help to keep my situation in perspective. And yet, it’s still affecting me. I remind myself of what I say to my students, clients, friends, and neighbors nearly every day – it’s normal to still not feel normal three to four months after a natural disaster. This week I hear one story of a friend moving back into her office that has finally been repaired. I hear another story of a neighbor still waiting for her roof to be fixed. She’s decided to pack up and move after the repairs.
The living room and dining room in my house are gradually being repaired, and I’m waiting for the wood trim work that has been promised every week for the past six weeks. After spending several weeks with my partner in Atlanta over the holidays in an intact house with windows that overlook bird feeders, this weekend I’m more aware how much I miss the views out of my front office and living room windows of the birdfeeders, my native plant garden beds, and people walking by on the sidewalk. I’m more aware of how these sights feed my spirit.
Yesterday, after nearly four months of sitting in my bed when I’m at the house because the sofa has been crammed into the front office, I decided to try to arrange the space in the house to support the positive emotional states I’m trying to maintain. It occurs to me that last month I was trying to bring awareness to how dependent I’d become on external space nurturing my positive emotional state and was attempting to try to be solely reliant on internal resources.
Today, I decided that wasn’t as realistic as I’d imagined. Maybe on some level is was total crap. A view from a window nurtures inspiration for me. Seeing birds helps me to feel more connected to nature. Seeing the people walk by helps me to feel a part of a community, even though most of the time I go too far toward isolation with my introverted nature when it comes to being around people.
Most of the time in this beautiful city, I find myself being more drawn toward being quiet with the birds or walking by the ocean or river and getting my people fixes in small bursts—Thursday connecting with friends at a mutual friend’s memorial service, yesterday attending another friend’s swearing in ceremony for the office of NC Senator, the day before stopping by my favorite bird store, Wild Bird and Garden, and talking with two lovely women about how to attract bluebirds to my feeder.
The bluebirds swarm my Atlanta feeder, but I never see them at my Wilmington feeder. The women tell me to put up a bluebird house, that bluebirds are will nest and claim a territory and then feed at feeders in that territory. I recall birding with my father as a young girl and how he built four or so bluebird houses. I decide that this explains why we had so many bluebirds at our feeders all those years ago. I still have Daddy’s book about how to build bluebird feeders. For a moment, I consider building one, then decide that I wander and get distracted enough as it is and that it’s likely best to just buy one and stick with the projects that are already in progress. Building a birdhouse in hurricane recovery = probably not my best use of emotional resilience resources.
So I changed the sheets, washed and dried a warmer comforter and put it on the bed, and put up a bird feeder pole just outside of the bedroom window. It helped some, but not quite enough. I can still see the stumps from all of the downed trees and the smashed fence. Hurricane recovery is difficult, but I decided to try to get creative with the front of the house, despite its state of disarray. The living room furniture is still crammed into my front office, but my partner suggests that perhaps it can be rearranged. I turned the sofa around. As long as I sit in the front ¼ of the office and face only toward the windows, I don’t have to see all of the clutter crammed behind me. I decide that I can live with this level of denial during this period of hurricane recovery.
It’s amazing what sitting and looking out a window can do for my soul. I think for a moment about Sally Mann’s photographs of views from the windows of the dying. All of the research that shows how views of nature, whether from being outside, looking out a window, or viewing a photograph, facilitate healing. As I sit on the sofa only facing forward to look out the window and sipping my favorite green tea, I can see my native plants and morning visitors at the feeder — Northern cardinals, Carolina wrens, chickadees, tufted titmouse, and a woodpecker.
The coral honeysuckle fared well in the storm. The native plants develop new growth, even in winter, to heal from the damage caused by the storm. Like us, they are still feeling the effects, they are still healing. The bee balm is growing new leaves, The coreopsis keeps growing shoots of new plants, and the native lantana is showing traces of green. Every winter I cut the lantana back to six-inch sticks. Every year, it grows to a around 12 feet in diameter and four to five feet tall. Every year, this gives me hope. Today I’ll go out and get more suet for the woodpeckers.