What the Water Couldn’t Wash Away…

Where Healing Meets the River…

A journey of becoming after Hurricane Helene

❤️‍🩹 Chapter Three

The Time Between Us

A few weeks ago my high school class celebrated our 50-year reunion.

I wasn’t there.

Life had taken me somewhere else that weekend, but thanks to FaceTime and my BFF, I was able to smile, laugh, and reconnect with classmates from a distance.

As I watched familiar faces on a small screen, I found myself thinking less about the reunion…

…and more about the fifty years in between.

Fifty years.

It seems impossible.

Some of the faces looked just as I remembered.

Others had changed in the beautiful ways that only time can change us.

And then there were the faces that weren’t there at all.

Friends whose names were spoken with love instead of laughter.

Lives remembered instead of reunited.

It reminded me that time is both generous and fragile.

As my plane crossed over the mountains of North Carolina, I looked down at a landscape that has shaped so much of my life.

From thirty thousand feet, the rivers looked peaceful.

The mountains looked timeless.

You couldn’t see the places where Helene carved new paths through the valleys.

You couldn’t see the scars.

You couldn’t see the stories.

And I realized…

People are a lot like that.

We pass one another every day without seeing what has changed beneath the surface.

We celebrate birthdays.

Attend reunions.

Smile for photographs.

And yet every one of us carries a landscape that has been reshaped by something.

For me, Hurricane Helene became one of those defining moments… especially at this stage of my life.

For someone else, it may have been the loss of a spouse.

A diagnosis.

A divorce.

A dream that quietly slipped away.

Or simply the realization that time keeps moving faster than we ever imagined.

Watching my classmates laugh together reminded me of something I didn’t expect.

What I’ve been longing for isn’t simply more years.

It isn’t even the chance to go back.

It’s connection.

The kind that says…

“I still see you.”

“Tell me who you’ve become.”

Maybe that’s what these past two years have really been teaching me.

Healing isn’t about returning to who we were.

It’s about having the courage to become who we are now.

And perhaps that’s the greatest reunion of all.

The one where, after everything life has taken and everything life has given…

…we finally find our way back to ourselves.

❤️‍🩹 What Helene Is Still Teaching Me…

Time has become one of my greatest teachers.

Not because it answers every question.

But because it gently reveals what truly matters.

This season has reminded me that every person I meet has lived through a story I cannot see.

Some have buried dreams.

Some have buried loved ones.

Some have quietly rebuilt their lives after storms no one else witnessed.

And some are still finding the courage to begin again.

Helene taught me that landscapes aren’t the only things that change.

People do, too.

The years soften some of us.

They strengthen others.

Sometimes they leave scars.

Sometimes they deepen compassion.

Often, they do both.

When I think about my classmates, I no longer wonder only how much we’ve changed.

I wonder what has shaped us.

What joys we’ve carried.

What losses we’ve survived.

What rivers we’ve each had to cross.

Perhaps that’s what growing older offers us, if we’re willing to receive it.

Not certainty.

But tenderness.

A little less judgment.

A little more curiosity.

A little more grace.

If these past two years have taught me anything, it’s this:

Everyone is carrying something.

And sometimes the greatest act of love is simply slowing down long enough to ask…

“How are you… really?”

Because while the river changed its course…

So did we.

And somehow…

There is still beauty to be found in both.

With much love,

Lucia🩷