So What Now? A Reflection on Helene and Beyond
by JD Ellison
As we inch closer to 2025, I find myself wondering not just what we’ll carry forward, but what we’ll leave behind. To be honest, I hesitate even to ask, because this feels like one of those questions that’s either too heavy or too obvious to hold for too long. But still, here I am. Helene—the storm, the disaster, the collective trauma—has shaped us in ways we’re only beginning to understand. It lingers, a shadow in the background and a weight on our shoulders, even as we try to think beyond it. Yet, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that recovery doesn’t happen on our preferred timeline. It moves at its own maddening, uneven pace.
The thing is, Helene isn’t just a storm; it’s also a metaphor for everything else. The disaster didn’t just flood our homes and our streets; it revealed, once again, how capitalism has hollowed out our ability to respond to crises, let alone recover from them. How do you grieve, rest, or rebuild when rent is still due? When wages are stagnant? When the systems that should hold you up seem built to grind you down? Helene didn’t invent these conditions—it exposed them, amplified them, made them impossible to ignore.
So as we set our sights on a new year, with its fresh ambitions and relentless demands, I find myself asking: what do we leave behind? Is it okay to let go of the shorthand that Helene has become—the way we explain everything from our collective fatigue to our individual bad moods? Is it okay to want to stop naming it, to stop giving it space in our conversations and our calendars? But if we do that, if we “move on,” are we also at risk of leaving behind the solidarity that disaster birthed?
I think about the neighbors we met when the waters rose, the meals we shared, the way we showed up for each other without asking who deserved it. Are we still carrying groceries up the steps for each other, even if it’s not floodwater but the weight of daily life we’re fighting now? Or was that just a moment—a fleeting connection borne of crisis, gone now that the immediate emergency has passed?
These questions feel, on the one hand, indulgent—who has time to sit and wonder when there’s still so much to do? And yet, they also feel necessary. Because Helene is in the past, yes, but it’s also everywhere, all the time, shaping how we live and how we dream, even when we’d rather not think about it.
So, from one disaster survivor to another: what now? What do we carry, and what do we leave? Can we imagine a future that honors both the losses we’ve endured and the communities we’ve built, a future that makes space for grief and joy, rest and action? I don’t have the answers. But I do know this: asking the question is, in itself, a kind of beginning.
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