When It Rains, It Floods

What Can You Do?

July 10, 2024

Dearest Readers,

On April 23, a torrent of water poured through almost every orifice in my apartment ceiling. From three floors up, the main water pipe burst, forcing it’s way down through two apartments to flood in on mine. Two inches of water on the bathroom, hall and kitchen floors flowed into the carpets of the bedroom and living room. Water funneled onto every surface, including my bed. There were not enough buckets/substitutions, nor was I quick enough to save my belongings from saturation. Five days later, the carpet was still wet on my bare feet. Drywall was still 100% saturated. Mildew had set in immediately and no question, mold began to grow at the 72 hour mark, as it does.

Ruby and I got out that first night, but my valuables couldn’t be moved (except my musical instruments, enough items to live on for a week or two, and some precious heirlooms/memoires.) Thankfully, I have renters insurance. Mitigation and remediation teams swooped in like a murder of crows on day three to assess, pack up and carry off the rest of my home’s contents. It all remains in treatment or storage facilities until I find a new home. Because of the property management’s determination to avoid major mold remediation efforts, I did not return to my former place.

A flood is considered a “disaster.”

In my current season of life, I have become increasingly aware of the effects internal “catastrophizing” has on me. When this disaster happened, it felt really important to me to approach it with with a clear mind, putting a bit of space between the chaos and my reaction to it. (A course I’ve taken recently was educating me to tune in and notice my emotional responses to what was happening, and to look for that space. Because of that new practice, it was a different experience from former crises.)

So, what’s happened since?

If you’ve noted my absence, you may have guessed that something was awry. You know the saying, “When it rains, it pours”? Sure enough, the flooding was followed immediately by more life storms. Since April 23, every day I’ve awakened to the reality that April 23 was merely the beginning of a deluge.

It looked like this:

1. Week One. Flood and six days of flood response.

2. Week Two. At Ruby’s oncology checkup, she finds in the grass a college student’s marijuana blunt. Toxic poisoning ensues, this time including back end paralysis and a late night emergency hospital visit.

   —INSERT flight to South Carolina w/Mom for a really fun family wedding here! THIS is one of the things that has kept me going.

3. Week Three. Ruby is poisoned again, this time causing days of gastrointestinal illness requiring ‘round the clock care, and a four a.m. emergency visit. At the same time, Mom contracts a terrible ten-day respiratory virus and needs ‘round the clock care. Nurse Linda on duty.

4. Week Four. A scheduled work trip takes me north (brother steps in to care for Mom.) Upon arrival there, the respiratory virus infects me for ten days. I still work, between coughing spells and naps.

5. Week Five. I return “home” to Mom’s independent living guest room, and focus on getting the three of us packed for our annual trip to Beaver Island. After a long drive and a short flight, we crash for a few days, resting and taking in the fresh air and magical peacefulness there. This is an interjection of rest and nature’s medicine that has kept me going.

6. Week Six. On the day five family members are to descend on the cottage for a girls’ weekend, Mom faints. I catch her and call 911. The ambulance whisks her away to the airport where a helicopter airlifts her across the pond to the mainland for an overnight hospital visit. She’s stabilized; it’s not a stroke. Test results indicate a manageable condition that explains the fainting, and we now know measures to keep her safer.

7. Week Seven. We fly back to the island for a short but really rich time with family, including eating bounteous meals, creating together, and laughing ‘til our sides hurt. This intrusion of laughter and creativity with loved ones has kept me going.

8. Week Eight. Back at home, I’m taxiing Ruby, Mom and myself to seven follow-up doctor’s appointments. I’ve moved to a rented room in a house nearby and I’ve hoped for some respite.

9. Week Nine. The stress has about done me in and I begin to unravel. Cue Imogen Heap’s “Let Go.”

A couple of years back, a British Instagram friend indicated in a course I took that she had a “mental health breakdown.” She said, “It’s no big deal—people have them all the time. They just don’t talk about it.”

The difference here in America is the deep stigma attached. The words mental and breakdown together conjure so many pejorative images and judgments. So much so that no one here would ever want to admit to the experience.

Imogen has a different take, though, and I find far more wisdom in her perspective than in our shame-based American take on mental health breaks. “Let Go” (from the brilliant film, Garden State,” says this:

So let go, so let go and jump in
Oh, well, whatcha waiting for? It's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

So let go, yeah, let go, just get in
Oh, it's so amazing here, it's alright
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

During Weeks Nine and Ten, worst case scenarios flood my mind’s eye. A sort of around-the-clock panic attack — abject terror at times — sets in, and my body feels like it’s buzzing. I cry a lot, the helpless and desperate kind of crying with which most people feel really uncomfortable. My therapist expresses she is concerned about me. Profound exhaustion has hijacked my nervous system.

Maybe you’ve experienced this. Maybe you haven’t yet—it takes some seriously overwhelming and traumatic life events to bring it about. If you’ve lived past your thirties and don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re one fortunate human. Most humans (unless you have no self-awareness or are completely emotionally shut down) will pass through similar valleys.

The part where I felt like I was drowning and couldn’t get air is behind me. And from this vantage point, I can write to you and tell you about the beauty in the breakdown.

I don’t like the abject fear part. But the tears, even the desperate tears, are beautiful. The letting go and the abandoning control, like the breaking of a dam, allows for the torrent of sometimes tormenting feelings to release. Rather than sucking you under, a tearful outpouring forces the suffocating, panicky waters out and away from you. Tears become a warm pool, a bath of comfort, that bring a buoyancy, letting rest come.

What happens when life sends you an inescapable deluge of floods all at once? How do you get through it?

There are times I find a great sense of comfort in a good cry alone. Times I feel that inexplicable comfort I call Love (with a capital L) very present and very palpable. But other times, I’m so overwhelmed that I know it’s time to reach out.

In the past ten weeks, I made a call to a friend with whom I feel incredibly safe and cried—ugly cry, all-out wailing in my car, weeping and grieving tears—for nearly an hour. I’m so incredibly lucky (blessed) with how she listened. She never made me feel bad or embarrassed, and she never shut me down with a “don’t cry” or any hint of shaming. The power of that gift from her will stay with me forever. I felt unconditionally loved.

And then, in a zoom call with a therapist I’ve met with in the last couple of years, I could not hold it together just about the whole visit. I’d start in with a reply and just cry. Some tears are anticipatory grief. Some tears are fears about my future. Some tears are just plain exhaustion.

I know I could not have made it through seasons of back-to-back stressful life events without reaching out for help. Making my situation and needs known. Making needs known doesn’t make you Needy. It makes you HUMAN. And smart. Because in sharing the needs, others know what’s going on and have the opportunity to reach out and offer help and support.

After asking for help, prayers, good-thoughts/vibes/energy (everyone has different ways of offering,) I received phone calls from a high school acquaintance I didn’t know well offering guidance about the flood, insurance and legal details. Unbelievably scrumptous chocolate cookies were sent by an angel friend I knew in Nashville just at the right time. Voicemail messages sometimes brought me happy tears, just hearing that a friend cared enough to tell me they care. Text messages sent through that little electronic box kept me going on the worst of days, when I couldn’t find my breath. My Mom continually supported me with “you’re doing great, Linda” messages, especially on days I felt I was going to fall over. The kind extension of feelings, of care and compassion from friends and family, and even from strangers, has continued to buoy me through this season.

I wrote this next piece in the moments after my favorite massage therapist, Kelly Kempter, helped me recover from the flood and the subsequent Ruby and Mom illnesses. I came to her in a bit of a state of shock in that second week. My body felt strong in the sense that adrenaline had helped me through two weeks of intense coping, but my whole self felt deeply shaken and exhausted. This poem of sorts goes out to the women who fill this world with such grace and powerful love.

These Women

Their hands,
reaching out,
graceful strong fingers grasping my wrists,
lifting me from this flood.

Their voices,
coming through this flat rectangle
to my unexpected ear,
speaking clearly with words of empowerment and action,
helping guide me out of harms way.

Their compassion,
delivered in words of inquiry,
calling me to remember that
though I am alone walking this path,
I am not.

Their strength,
wrapping me in warm blankets,
grounding me with soft, weighted sandbags,
unfolding my slouching shoulders,
unfurling my arms and stiff hands,
kneading my sore legs and soothing my pain,
so I can stand upright
and step forward again.

Their souls,
poured forth from broken hearts,
expressed from their untold sorrows,
soothing me,
from their own alchemized pain.

Their songs,
fierce and most tender all at once,
offered in notes and strains,
most powerfully from those
who have broken free from shackles.
those freedom fighters,
those warriors,
their words like rubies spilling from valiant breasts.
These songs!

My heart splits open.
My soul so stuck,
so rusty, so tired.

These women!
Let me cry.
Let me feel.
Make me feel.
Loved.

---

You just may be one of the many women I thought of as I wrote these words. I cherish you, beautiful soul.

A Song for You

I’ve loved this song for a long time. This video of Frou Frou (Imogen Heap and Guy Sigsworth) singing “Let Go” includes footage from the 1987 film "Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin; Les ailes du désir)" with brilliant photography by Henri Alekan, and direction by Wim Wenders.

A Book for You

One of the beautiful voices I’ve been savoring is that of Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

I bought the book a couple of years back to share with dear friends, but hadn’t actually read it myself. Recently, it was suggested I listen to it instead, in the voice of the author, Robin. And I’m so glad I opted for that mode of “reading.” Her words are poetry, and her voice is so soothing. In fact, as I listened on my four-hour drive north to the island, I noticed that every time I started up a chapter (between phone call interruptions from insurance/remediation companies,) that Ruby would calm from her road trip anxiety, lay down and go to sleep. I highly recommend this read for its rich content. As a nature lover, it is serving to deepen my connection with our incredible earth and fellow (non-human) inhabitants. Like these gorgeous sugar maples towering above me.

The view from my cozy sickbed on Beaver Island. Sugar Maples reaching high above our little wooded cove, from the ridges behind the house.

I wish you all you need to feel safe in your world. I wish you supportive women to remind you of your worth. I wish you hands and voices and compassion and strength and souls and songs to help you through your deluge season. To heal in all the ways you need healing.

This is “Excerpts from Wonderworld.” Wonderworld includes those hands, voices, gorgeous souls. And you, in your state of strength and your beautiful breakdown.

Please leave a comment or click on the heart to let me know you’ve read my writing. It’s valuable to me to feel I’ve reached someone with these words, and yours matter.

Thank you for coming here into my Wonderworld, floods and all. I look forward to having some good housing news soon!

Until then,

xo
Linda

and Ruby