RESILIENCE and the Life of Trees

Nine months since super typhoon Odette hit Siargao, the beautiful island I once called home.

A good friend recently asked me to write about resilience. My first reaction was a definite No. This is far too big a topic for me to tackle and I am not an expert.

However.

Today (depending on what time zone you’re in) marks 9 months since super typhoon Odette hit Siargao Island, my former home of almost four years. While I still have have much to share about my time on the island, this is not my story.

I had left a few weeks prior but some of my dearest friends had to live through this traumatic event, along with all that followed: no contact to the outside world for days, not enough food or clean water, little protection from the elements with more rain and no roof over their heads and not much shade either, with many trees and structures gone. No electricity for months. There were 20,000 displaced people across the affected area in the South of the Philippines from this event alone.

I’ve often wondered how I would have coped had I stayed. How would you have coped?

The island is slowly recovering. Many have left but those who have stayed are rebuilding, nature is growing back, it looks like things are getting back to ‘normal’.

What we don’t see is how the individual comes out of an experience like this.

…

Read the full article with photos on Substack:

https://hadassa.substack.com/p/resilience-and-the-life-of-trees