Hurricane after Hurricane

October 9, 2024. I am checking the news once again. Fast and furious, Hurricane Milton is approaching Florida. The white spiral on the screen swirls and swells. The headlines announce each increase from Category 3 to 4 to 5. As the storm grows, terror, angst, and feelings of helplessness multiply. How vulnerable we humans are. And how oblivious we are to our vulnerabilities. We have SUVs, HD smart TVs, AI assistants, virtual reality games, wireless home security systems, all this technology, and yet we are made of skin and bones. We cannot withstand the force of 150-plus mph winds. 

I refresh the page and read that Tampa Bay’s mayor has warned that when Milton hits, single-story homes will become coffins. 

I follow updates, the impossible traffic facing those fleeing and the incalculable risks borne by those staying behind. Meanwhile, I am far from the threat, across the continent, vacationing on an idyllic island in the Pacific Northwest. I walk out to the deck and glance at the waters. It is low tide. Then I return to my phone, refreshing the screen to see new predictions for landfall in Florida. 

I have become familiar with this pattern in recent years, witnessing my own tumbling deep into the rabbit hole of news cycles. I see it in slow motion, as if in a movie where the camera’s focus goes from the calm Pacific to turmoil flashing on the screen. This impulse to constantly check the news for updates on disasters feels like an addiction. I click, compulsively read headlines, jump from website to website, losing myself in the narrative of the catastrophes: environmental, corporate, political. “I want to know what is happening in the world,” I tell myself in self-defense. “I need to know, I am a citizen, a human being, after all.” 

What I read—wars, famines, disasters, never-ending hostility, hatreds—I try to keep to myself. My kids are young; I want to shield them while I can. Yet on the eve of Milton, I relinquish control. I tell them about the approaching hurricane. My five-year-old has questions. The winds, the rain, the coast, the homes. “Where is Florida, who lives there?” he asks. “People we don’t know,” I say. “People,” I underscore. I tell him everything I can in earnest. “You’re safe,” I remind him. “We are safe,” I repeat. I cannot offer it as a promise but as a mantra. At least for now. 

The next morning, my son asks to see images, photos of the aftermath. We survey the devastation on the screen while cross-legged on the couch, supported by cozy pillows and covered by wool blankets. We see streets turned to rivers, roofs torn apart, trees with broken branches. I avoid photos of survivors as much as I can, those faces frozen in time with anguish. 

Long before I had kids, I read A Chorus of Stones by feminist essayist Susan Griffin. It has been almost two decades, but I still remember her question and my own knotted self-awareness: “Encountering such images, one is grateful to be spared. But is one ever really free of the fate of others?” No, we are not. How can we be? We are interconnected, we all share this earth, we share life. Yet here I am with my pillows and blankets, scrolling for news updates from a faraway state, and there they are, with power lines down, unhoused, perhaps injured or far worse. 

We are safe. Until we are not.    

I ask myself, What can one do hurricane after hurricane? Wildfire after wildfire? All the droughts, floods, displacements? How can one go beyond witnessing? Write checks to the organizations helping with recovery efforts? Send letters to the congressmen and congresswomen demanding legal measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and policy changes to encourage clean energy investments? Make personal commitments such as installing solar panels, eating less meat, recycling, and riding bikes? Can these actions add up to something effective in the end? What is the definition of effective when it comes to environmental collapse? Where is the end? 

Hurricane Milton dissipated on October 13, leaving behind more than a thousand damaged homes, ravaged farms, devastated families, and more than thirty people dead. People we don’t know. People.

There is a poem by Jane Hirshfield, “Let Them Not Say.” I have been reciting it often:

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

…

Let them not say:   they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Milton came and went. Like Katrina, Harvey, Ian, Maria, Sandy. There will be more storms, and with more frequency. So let us say it loud and clear, and with conviction despite our regret, sorrow, outrage, and dread. Let us admit: “We are not doing enough!” I do not know what enough is, none of us really knows, but we are certainly not doing it. This fact, I must also tell my kids in earnest. They already notice it. I have to explain to them how we are failing the earth, how we are failing one another and ourselves. It will confuse them, I know. It will break their eager hearts. But better brokenhearted than ignorant, because soon they will see me again, head bent forward, one hand pressing against my temple while reading the news, mouthing the words: Category 3 to 4 to 5, state of emergency, evacuations in order. Maybe the threat will be far away; maybe it will be nearby. 

We are safe until we are not. We are never free of the fate of others–our kids in particular. 

Doomscrolling on the sidelines is not a solution in the slightest. I also know fatalism is not acceptable. Apathy is worse, even lethal. Each is a “pathology of perpetration” that normalizes the physical and ecological but also the systematic and psychic violence that goes hand in hand with climate breakdown. They perpetuate problems and prolong suffering, personal and collective, by enabling and extending social injustice, economic inequality, political and corporate corruption, and environmental degradation everywhere.

I am not a climate scientist, economist, or policymaker, but a career in psychology has taught me that I would rather be alarmed—searching for answers, visions, and a way out—than be numb. And motherhood has taught me that we are always stronger together in our sincerity, even in the most vulnerable moments, especially in the most vulnerable moments. So here is a new mantra: “My heart is awake. Our hearts are awake.” I hope that if nothing better, we can at least let them say that.