After the storm has passed the real work begins...

You think that the storm is the bad part, but it is really the clean-up and rebuilding that takes guts.

Here I am with a little over a week left in Eureka. I wish I could see into the future. I try to stay optimistic, but it’s difficult.

Two out of three of my children are not speaking to me. I am going back to Texas to try to rebuild my relationships with my children. It seems like my life has crumbled around me, blasted apart. I need to mend, pick up the pieces and bind myself back to my family. They need me; I need them.

I feel like the thin, fabric veil was rent, torn apart in one short sentence: “I don’t love you anymore.”

This whirlwind started that night, a storm of pain that I had been trying to hold in was let loose and consumed me and my family. I know now that the pressure had been building for some time. Even when I tried to sit calm in the eye of the storm, the damage was happening all around me. Pretending it wasn’t happening didn’t help. Giving in to the force of the storm and riding the winds and waves didn’t make it stop. I feel like I have been thrown clear, washed up on a distant shore, a car stuck in a tree after the water recedes. I see the desolation and destruction all around me. It seems like an almost insurmountable task to try to clean up the damage and move forward.

Hurricane Ike hit Galveston a few months after we moved back to the Gulf coast. I was in Friendswood, so I was not in the worst part of the storm, but I remember the wailing of the wind, the crack of the transformer blowing, the relentlessness of the rain. My ancestors survived the 1900 storm; I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them in that house, cowering on the upper floor while the water of the Gulf tried to reclaim the island. My great-grandfather Willie didn’t let it wash them away. I have a picture of the house after the storm, rubble piled all around it, even a boat leaning up against the house.

You think that the storm is the bad part, but it is really the clean-up and rebuilding that takes guts.

Like so many people do after natural disasters like hurricanes, I wanted to just move away, leave the devastation behind me. It seemed easier to just move on and start over somewhere else. The problem is that in doing that I had to leave behind almost everyone that I loved. I kidded myself by thinking that was ok. It wasn’t ok. When my oldest son stopped responding to my calls and texts, I knew just how wrong that I had been.

So I am going back to Texas.

I am going to do anything and everything I can to clean up this mess. My three children are the most important people in the world to me. I need to show them that.

The storm is over. It is time for the hard work of cleaning and rebuilding. It’s going to take some time and a lot of hard work and dedication.

I know I can’t do this alone.

Namaste’ ya’ll.