I was recently in Buncombe County invited by those leaders and community members working hard on recovery from Helene.

When your world has been turned upside down, this is an especially hard time of year.

One woman in Swananoa talked about what it was like to have one of the few livable houses on her entire street. She struggled with feelings she called “survivors guilt” as she watched her neighbors try to deal with their wrecked unlivable homes. She began welcoming people she hardly knew to her home, becoming a hub of information and support, reaching out regularly to everyone on her street. “This is the way” she said, “I turned guilt into service.”  

In every storm, leaders emerge. They form a coalition of the willing. A group of people willing to step forward and help one another. I asked a pastor in NOLA after Katrina to sum up the lessons he learned in the first year after the levees broke and he said “it all comes down to what one human being is willing to do for another.”

As we move out of the emergency phase, where hierarchical organizations responsible for rescue are most active with their structures of command and control, new structures emerge, circles of support, nurtured by willing community members working to hang on to what was most vital about their communities.

Leadership has nothing to do with position and everything to do with those willing to step forward and help.

These connected circles of common cause are the basic structures that keep us spiritually and emotionally whole in the face of extreme challenges. And in between.

No one recovers alone. From anything. And there is no healing without service.

Wrote this for me and for all those willing to work together in the service of community.

 
                                                    Love,
                                                   Angela