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When I was 16 years old I got a cut on my foot that was extremely painful. Twenty years later that cut doesn’t carry the sharp and searing pain that it once did. It now carries a scar — a permanent reminder of pain that I had endured.
A year ago, when I wrote the first article in a series about the impact of Hurricane Helene from someone whose town was physically ravaged by the hurricane, the pain for our community was much like that cut on my foot. The pain was almost unbearable, it was deep, and I thought it would never subside.
A short drive in any direction will show you that our community still has the scars from Hurricane Helene. From homes being rebuilt, to places where homes or businesses once stood and now have been abandoned or leveled. Even my lawn has taken on a new shape and form from all the water that rushed through it.
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Part of what I have come to realize is that parts of the community are never going to be the same.
Our brains have even changed over the course of the past year. I now despise when the wind is blowing and the trees even wiggle a little. The once peaceful sound of rushing water has a new tone. The crackling of tree branches — natural sounds in the surrounding woods — bring heightened senses. Trauma does that.
This summer when the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in, and the rain began to pelt the windows, my daughters would ask if the storm was going to be like Helene, proving that the storm was and forever will be a marker in their childhood.
Just with any scar, at times it can be ripped open — causing that same searing pain. Recovery from a natural disaster can be much like grief. It ebbs and flows between healing and pain.
We have people in our community who are just now returning to their homes after a year of rebuilding. A year of waiting. A cut that still is healing in their lives.
Despite these scars, our community has taken the only path available — forward. Educators and students alike rolled up their sleeves and moved back to learning.
At the start of this school year, my 9-year-old daughter had to write a personal narrative and she chose Helene as the topic. She wrote: “A couple of days after my birthday, the power came back on! We were excited and things got better.”
She is right, things are getting better. Just like that gash on my foot, the pain of Helene began to heal with each day that passed, and public schools were the center of that healing.
Day by day, our community has watched as the slices that Helene made across our beautiful mountains slowly and steadily are being rebuilt. Getting our students back in the place where they belong and the comfort of having a consistent routine was a big piece of the puzzle for healing.
Isn’t that what schools are for: to be more than a building, but to be a rock of the community? That was never on display more than during the weeks and months after Helene. It is a lesson that will be a part of our community forever.
Even after a year, the scars of Helene are still with western North Carolina. Everyone is healing in their own way, but one thing is certain, we are healing.
When you are injured, you go to a hospital to get the services you need to recover. When the gash from the hurricane was fresh and wide open, our community flocked to our local public schools for the support they needed.
One year after Helene, our schools are still providing the services our community needs. The services may have adapted and changed over the last 12 months, but the call to action is still the same. Students still enter the hallways with the scars of the storm whether they are faded reminders or wounds that are raw and continually reopened.
No matter the severity of the injury, our public schools are there serving as a center of hope and healing for the community at large, from now until the end of time.
Editor’s note: The N.C. Press Association has awarded EdNC its public service award for our coverage and strategic support of western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. You can see all of our coverage here.
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