A reintroduction

As I reflected on my About page, this site has been through a few iterations since its inception. This site's latest, "Trauma : Disaster :: Healing : Recovery," reflects the intersection between recovering from my private catastrophes, and learning how to manage and recover from community ones.

As I write this, I'm watching the Hulu documentary "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time," feeling slightly disingenuous because I haven't, even on my worst days, lost everything the way many of New Orleans' residents did.

There are accounts from people who were recovering from severe injuries, people who couldn't leave, people who didn't think it was going to be that bad because previous storms had weakened or passed before they could get that bad.

"No one ever believes a worst-case scenario," the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)'s Marty Bahamonde says in Episode 2, and indeed, no one expected the levees to break under the weight of storm surge as Katrina moved north.

And I guess that's the thing about catastrophes: you figure you'll prevail. You learn to make do. To figure things out. You're resilient, as everyone keeps telling you.

Maybe you downplay how bad it is because you're afraid you won't be believed, that others will think you're exaggerating (double if you've been told that in the past because, after all, you're hypersensitive), or you fear other repercussions (like, say, lawsuits) down the road.

Besides, everyone goes through trauma of some kind or another. Nothing in life is permanent, and that means experiencing losses. How you experience them is the trick, as we're told.

It's not that simple

We don't, however, talk about what happens or how to manage when the losses keep piling on. I have little doubt that Katrina came and ripped away whatever was left of many people's lives following deaths, divorces, job loss, imprisonments, or other forms of abandonment.

As well, watching many of the interviewees get emotional on camera, I wonder how many of them were already struggling with personal challenges. If that stress is why, 20 years later, they're still processing the trauma of lifesaving or reporting when they were so ill prepared for that degree of catastrophe.

The emergency management community is clear now, 20 years later, that lessons were learned from Katrina. But at a time when politicians and political appointees are increasingly talking about turning disaster response back to states and localities – as was the case prior to Katrina – we may just see more large scale catastrophes made worse by limited responses. Not just hurricanes, but also wildfires, earthquakes, landslides, mass shootings, and so forth.

Growing Through Concrete was originally a site I intended to write about recovery from various forms of trauma. Maybe adding in thoughts and observations about emergency management is an overcomplication, but:

1. It would be far from the first time I've complicated some existing situation. My ADHD brain is easily bored, I'm afraid.
2. We live in complicated times, and I think we're in danger of oversimplifying our situation.

To that end, I'm keeping all the posts I uploaded previously, because those experiences still offer context for and inform what I plan to write about. Emergency management needs to be trauma-informed, increasingly so. I'm far from a professional or academic in that area, but I do have plenty of lived experience that can hopefully help others.

For the time being, my post schedule will likely remain erratic. I'm coming off a period of significant burnout, and I need to take it slow. The best I can say is at least I'm writing again, so please stay tuned, share and subscribe if this post resonates, and I hope to be back again soon.