A Healthier New Normal after Disasters

We can extend the honeymoon phase of community cohesion

Photo by Spencer DeMera on Unsplash

My beloved town of Asheville, North Carolina was recently rocked to its core by Hurricane Helene that brought historic flooding and devastation to the entire western North Carolina region.

I have been so grateful to be tucked snugly away from the front lines of daily survival mode while staying with my son and his family in Denver.

As I scrolled through social media for updates this morning, I saw this chart that someone posted about the phases of emotional highs and lows following natural disasters.

Image credit: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

My first thought was that this tracks with what I’ve seen and experienced in the past. My immediate next thought was:

It doesn't need to be this way. We can and will do this better.

As a community in Asheville and the wider western North Carolina region, we are certainly tracking with the Pre-Disaster, Impact, Heroic and Honeymoon phases. The level of heroic rescue, support and generosity in every neighborhood and community has been astounding. Some of us have entered the Honeymoon phase ~ appreciating deeply the spirit of our community and those who have stepped in {including those from outside the area} with incredible kindness and generosity.

As I see it, the high emotional levels of the Honeymoon phase are a direct result of the community cohesion inherent in this stage.

The point in the graph where emotional levels fall off the cliff into Disillusionment is the same point at which we default back into our silos. This is where the daily community interactions and engagement recede into "ok, now I need to go back to my individual life and figure out how to support myself and my family, rebuild my home, restore my income...."

The We reverts to Me again. But not because this is just human nature. Not because this is “just how it is.” It’s that our society has become so used to the silos and separation that we think this individualized existence is normal.

Our natural state as humans is the opposite of the individualized way of being ~ we are designed to operate in community, in a field of mutual support.

As human beings, we have the ability to choose to operate differently, to change the systems that are not working for us and that are not in alignment with our innate capacity for thriving.

We can realize that the reason we have felt such a high during the Honeymoon phase is because we have been operating closer to our natural state of community and collaboration.

We can resist the default tendency to pull away from the center once the acute crisis has been handled. We can instead lean into the center, together coming up with ways we can continue to support each other. We can continue to collectively, at the scale of neighborhoods and smaller communities, self-organize to understand needs and offer resources and gifts. We can continue the village spirit in our daily and weekly activities.

One of the gifts in these tragic events is to remind us of who we really are at our cores. We are not meant to live in separation and silos. We do not each need to go through an extended period of Disillusionment, allowing feelings of isolation and hopelessness to take us down. We can bridge quickly into the Reconstruction phase, rebuilding as a community that is rooted in mutual support and thriving as a collective.

That is not to say we bypass the inevitable feelings of grief, overwhelm and loss we will experience. It is to say that we can move through these states with much greater ease, compassion and integration when we are held in a collective container of community.

The Honeymoon phase can be our New Normal ~ a way of being that supports us in feeling a greater sense of belonging, connection and community than ever before. A way of living, leading and operating that is not only catalyzed by natural and other disasters, but that allows us to create a stable base of resiliency that lessens their impact ~ a way of being that may even help to minimize their occurrence in the first place.

This is a moment in time when we get to see clearly what has been and choose differently. We need not continue repeating patterns and cycles that no longer serve us. We do not need to do this all alone anymore.

Together we can create a New Normal that looks a whole lot like mutual thriving, resiliency and regeneration.

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How does this land for you? What are you seeing as possible? If you resonate with this post, please comment and share widely, helping to generate a collective choice to create a mutually thriving New Normal.