When I left New Orleans in 2006, I knew I needed to work through everything that happened. I knew I needed to get a handle on my drinking and find some kind of mental stability again. The drinking was still a problem for several more years, but I found three things helpful on the mental health front:
- In 2007, I worked with a group of displaced New Orleanians in Houston documenting the stories of people who relocated there after the flood. I assumed I would only be telling their stories, but I realized I needed to start writing my own story, too. We were working under James Pennebaker’s “expressive writing” framework. We took a workshop in his methods, and I started to write essays on the flood’s aftermath and my disillusionment during rebuilding. At that time, they were only for me. It wasn’t long before I had tens of thousands of raw words.
- I enrolled in a master’s program in 2007 and earned a master of science in library and information science. My focus was digital asset management (digital archives), and there was something mentally healing about working with databases and cataloging. In a very real way, organizing information helped me build a frame to hold the emotions I wasn’t yet ready to feel.
- Once I had the first essays written, I felt able to turn the experience into something potentially useful. It was never my intention to tell my own story, but as I got deeper into writing I realized there was potentially something I could add to the conversation about what happened in the city that year.
It’s funny to me now, so many years later, that this book exists in the world. It lived with me for so many years, it’s funny to talk with people who read it and know they now know the story. Hello, welcome. 🙂
Somewhere in the book I think I mentioned this: stories are profoundly healing. It sounds cliche. I know. But I strongly believe everyone carries at least one story they want to share, and that story deserves to be told. Stories bring us together.
And obviously I’m a big believer in using story as a way to process grief.
As the world becomes increasingly digital-first, and AI is more involved with our content creation (which it will be), it becomes even more important to share our human stories. /soapbox