08/29/2025
20 years later..my life after Hurricane KATRINA
There are a few events in a lifetime when a person can recall with precision the exact day of the week, date of the month, time of the day and location when an monumental event took place in their lives. For me August 28 2005 will forever be one of those days.
That is the day I sat pregnant for the very first time (with my belly exceeding swollen and looking like it would burst open if I as much as sneezed) watching one of the most epic natural disasters in US history chart a path headed straight for my city. I would later find out that was also the day my family and friends planned to surprise me with a baby showers. It ended up getting cancelled. lol
Many of you may have also sat watching the impending devestation that would forever be known as Hurricane Katrina, but for me it was personal because my family and I would be amongst the last of the evacuees to exit New Orleans before the mayor shut the city down. It would take us 2 days in total to make it to Dallas by car which on a normal day is an 8hr road trip at best.
When we got to Dallas, I sat glued to the television for hours on end watching the devastation unfold right before my eyes and feeling completely helpless not just because I was outrageously pregnant and next to immobile, but because both my mother and father had chosen to stay behind; each lived alone and in parts of the city that had been estimated to have received 8-10 feet of flood water. And there was the fact that neither could swim?
In all my life, then and now, I can not ever remember feeling that helpless and hopeless simultaneously. Overnight I had become homeless and jobless despite all the hard fought credentials I had managed to acquire. Isn’t it funny how life's events can make a mockery of all the things you once held so dear only to show you where your focus should really be?
For a while, a very long while infact, I wondered if I would ever heal from the scarring, brusing and deep wounds left by Hurricane Katrina including: being called a refugee in my own country; mass insurance fraud that allowed companies to pay the bare minimum or nothing on polices that had been paid faithfully for decades; losing 90% of everything I owned; having to get a new obgyn at 7 1/2 months preganant and giving birth without my support system; going back to the city in which I was born and raised and not being able to find my way around because the entire landscape had changed; seeing the blue tarps, blighted houses, residual water lines and markings denoting if bodies were found in a house during the recovery process for far too many years after the hurricane.
Then there were the phycologcial scars that resulted from learning that people were still dying almost weekly from what we (New Orleanians) knew to be PKS - Post Katrina Stress. Stress resulting from folks being uprubtly uprooted from the friends, families and communities they had known all of their lives. Unfortuantely my father would be a casualty of post Katrina stress.
These were the deaths that were Never reported or recorded because the news cameras had moved on to the next Big Story. SIDE NOTE: I will forever be grateful to Brian Williams and NBC nightly news for reporting on the situation in New Orleans every night for 365 days straight because as he said, “you may be tired of hearing about it but not as tired as they are of living it and for many displaced residents this is the only way they know what’s going on.” He was absoultely right. That broadcast was a life line for so many of us who could not return because…well there was just nothing left to return to.
Then there was, and still is, the not knowing who made it out alive and who didn’t because in 2005 there was no social media platforms to use to locate people or texting for that matter so locating people was done primarily by word of mouth. To this day, 20 years late, there are people I knew by face not name who I have never seen or heard of or from since Aug 27, 2005. So I'm just left to wonder did they relocated or did they not make it out before the floods. You have no idea what that feels like.
But in the end, the life lessons that came out of that once dark, very, very dark, place are what I now govern my life by.
1. **Hummanity wins everytime**. Despite the battle of whether we should be called refugees or evacuees or the cries from various mayors (including Tx) who said there wasn’t room for all “those” people in their cites, so many people all across this country rose up to show us compassion by offer all types of help and even welcoming us into their homes. By the way, I ended up with 3 (THREE) baby showers. But the best, most needed gift was the lady from White rock church who took us out for a mani/pedi. That might seem inconsequential, but for us it was a little reminder that we had a life and routines, which included the simple pleasures of a spa day, before our lives were upended.
2. **Relationship is everything**. I don’t take for granted that I will always have the luxury of “giving them a call when I get a chance” so I make an effort to keep in contact regularly, even if it’s it a smiley face emoji just to say “hi”. If you have a place in my life, be it client or friend, I need to know where you are.
3. **Titles.** Accomplishments and accolades are truley wonderful things but they should not soley define who you are at your core, so be sure that you have depth and conviction and a unbaised love of humanity
4. **Things. They** really can be replaced so never put too much value on them so you don’t lose sight of what you have left if they are taken away. You can never ever replace your life or that of your loved ones.
5. **You truley are stronger than you think** and there are always lessons to be learned in the dark places. There comes a point somewhere along the way where you must stop crying and wishing things could be the same and embrace your New Normal.
6. **Life is cyclical** so you won’t always be down. So when you’re back on top use your testimony to encourage someone who is in a valley.
And though I never thought I could be grateful for anything Hurricane Katrina did in my life, it gave me the best gift I never knew I needed. It stripped away any and all distractions they may have kept me from being single mindedly focused on what became my new, and greatest ever, title - MOMMY.
Michelle Dominique is a Healthcoach, wellness content creator and Certified Lymphatic therapist who lives in Dallas, Tx with her beautiful daughter. In addition to acquiring several new titles since 2005, she has also acquired a loving network of friends, family and clients that might as well be family ❤️ Check out her work on u-tube@michelledominique3799
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