Surviving a Doorstep Apocalypse (one year later)
One year ago, Hurricane Helene brought a thousand-year flood that changed everything here in the mountains of Western North Carolina—entire towns destroyed, highways gone, hospitals, homes, and my own apothecary lost to the waters.
In this tender and very personal anniversary episode of the podcast, I look back on this “doorstep apocalypse” and reflect on what I learned during this potent time.
The lessons unearthed in this experience are here as a guide, not just for those who have lived through a natural disaster, but for anyone walking through their own personal storms. They are a reminder that even the fiercest cataclysms aren’t just disasters–but doorways into transformation…
Tune in to explore:
🌎 What a “doorstep apocalypse” looks and feels like one year later
🌎 How disaster reveals the surprising core of the human heart
🌎 Why loss rewrites the very maps we live inside
🌎 What crisis teaches us about time, presence, and possibility
🌎 The “privilege” of this intense experience
🌎 How cataclysm can become a portal into new potential
Support Marshall High Studio’s Recovery
I’ve been thinking about recording this podcast episode for a year. There was so much I wanted to share during this huge event, so much I was learning—and yet all I could do during those months was hold on and survive.
Now that I have time, I simply want to say now– thank you.
This time last year I was in it. Literally wading through a foot of mud in my apothecary, cooking dinner on a campstove and bringing spring water by the gallon-full to friends and family without.
I was crying every day. Sometimes from terror and grief, but also from unbelievable awe. This week last year, when I let everyone here know about the overnight loss of our apothecary, we received over 800 donations from this incredible collective.
It was so moving, so soul-resurrecting, it still brings tears to my eyes.
Those donations made it possible, not only for us to keep our doors open, pay our beautiful team and envision a new future, but also for me to devote myself to our town’s recovery for the whole rest of the year.
Those donations are also what has made it possible for me to take this sabbatical now. They gave me the bravery, the trust, the groundswell of support I needed to take this leap.
From the muck, grew a lotus of a thousand petals. And each one of those thousand petals were you.
So from the quiet reflection of this week, and the colors changing on the trees, and the tender, musical trickle of the beloved creek by my house–I am sending immense gratitude to you.
Thank you for who you are and for everything you have walked through in this life.
May we continue to companion each other, with gentle togetherness, as we step into this unfolding world.
And whenever we forget, may we remember—that the cataclysms we have survived (personally and collectively) are not just endings, but openings.
That these ruptures can strip us bare, yes, but they can also reveal the depth of our love, the bedrock beauty of reality, and the ways we are all, in this very moment now, co-creating another world.
P.S. Thanks to iz Parshaw for this perfectly captured term “doorstep apocalypse” 🤍
