I have a lot to share with everyone about our trip but none of it is as important as what’s happening in our home and the grief we feel.

This weekend, hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina hard. Asheville has received “biblical flooding”, making the city we’ve spent 8 years in almost unrecognizable. Boone, the town Grant and I met in, went to college in and were shaped by, is also devastated along with many other towns in the area. We are heartbroken. It’s a new, and indescribable heartache to be on the other side of the world and watch, helplessly, as our city washes away.

It’s taken almost three days to be able to get in touch with most of our people back home and to hear that they’re okay- and we still haven’t heard from everyone. The power and cell phone service has been out for days; the city was completely closed off, no one in or out, until one highway opened up yesterday. Gas and food is running low, water is shut off and growing scarcely dire. The hospital is beginning to overflow and the death toll is growing. Despite the fact that its nearly unprecedented for this region to have been damaged this severely, and let alone, by a hurricane, there is very little national media coverage.

Almost everyone I love was affected by this. My best friend had spinal surgery the day before the storm hit and is now forced to recover with scarce food, water, electricity, and communications. Another friend lives in a neighborhood where the floods went to the roofs of their second story homes and they had to swim out of the windows to survive. Trees have fallen on friends houses; homes have flooded. Places we used to go to have washed away as if they were never there. My loved ones are waiting in lines for hours for gas, canned food, a gallon of water-and that’s when they can reliably find these things.

Western North Carolina is not prepared for hurricanes. No one was prepared for this and no one expected this to happen. The river rose more than 19 feet in as many hours and physically wiped away a vibrant community. But in 2020, we saw Asheville come together to protect one another and I have no doubt they’ll do it again to rebuild. Appalachia is resilient but we need help. If you’re able to, please donate to help my friends, family, and neighbors survive this nightmare. Please donate to help rebuild our beautiful home. And if you’re one of our people in western North Carolina (and northern South Carolina) and you’re reading this know that we love you and are with you even an ocean away-reach out if we can do anything.

You can find an exhaustive and vetted list of organizations to donate to at this link. Many of them have been doing work in our community for years. You can find pictures of the devastation here.

With love,

Amelia