My family and I survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005; we left my

Host: The sky was bruised that day — a heavy, suffocating shade of gray that pressed down on the earth like a warning no one wanted to believe. The air was thick, hot, and wet, humming with tension and silence before the storm’s arrival.

A long stretch of highway cut through the marshlands of Mississippi, but by nightfall it had vanished — swallowed by wind, by water, by chaos. Hurricane Katrina had come, and she was not a storm; she was a god.

Now, years later, in a small abandoned church, Jack sat near a broken window, looking out at what used to be a neighborhood — just concrete slabs, bent trees, and ghosts that had forgotten how to leave. His hands, rough and weathered, traced the outlines of the wood grain on the pew, as if reading the memory of survival etched into it.

Across from him sat Jeeny, a notebook open on her lap, her eyes watching him not as a journalist or friend, but as a witness — the kind who knows that some stories burn as they’re told.

Host: The light from the window shifted, falling in gold and dust across their faces — two people suspended between remembrance and reckoning.

Jeeny: (softly) “Jesmyn Ward once said, ‘My family and I survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005; we left my grandmother's flooding house, were refused shelter by a white family, and took refuge in trucks in an open field during a Category Five hurricane. I saw an entire town demolished, people fighting over water, breaking open caskets searching for something that could help them survive.’”

Jack: (nodding slowly) “I read that once. It never left me. Some words — they don’t just describe the storm. They are the storm.”

Jeeny: “Yes. She didn’t write tragedy; she wrote testimony.”

Jack: “And testimony demands witnesses.”

Jeeny: “That’s why we remember.”

Host: The wind outside stirred again, rattling the church’s broken panes. In the distance, thunder murmured — not rage this time, but remembrance.

Jack: “You ever notice how disaster reveals the bones of a country? All the cracks we pretend aren’t there — they split wide open.”

Jeeny: “Yes. Katrina wasn’t just wind and water. It was a mirror. And what it showed us wasn’t nature’s cruelty — it was our own.”

Jack: “A family refused shelter because of their color. That’s not weather. That’s history repeating itself with new debris.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The flood didn’t drown the prejudice — it exposed it.”

Host: The rain began, soft at first, pattering on the shattered stained glass, turning the colored fragments into trembling jewels. The church seemed to breathe with it — as though the storm outside had returned not to destroy, but to listen.

Jack: “You know, I remember watching the footage back then — people on rooftops, waving at helicopters that never came. Reporters said ‘chaos.’ But what I saw was abandonment.”

Jeeny: “Because to the powerful, certain lives are always optional.”

Jack: “And survival becomes rebellion.”

Jeeny: “Jesmyn understood that. She wrote the South not as geography — but as inheritance. Poverty, race, resilience — they’re all part of the same bloodstream.”

Jack: “That’s what kills me. The same America that prays for storms to pass keeps building walls that stop compassion from crossing the street.”

Jeeny: “Because storms don’t discriminate. But we do.”

Host: The rain intensified, slanting across the window like a moving shadow. The candle on the pew between them flickered — light bending in rhythm with the wind.

Jack: “You ever think about what it means to survive something like that? Not just physically, but spiritually?”

Jeeny: “It means carrying ghosts. You keep them in your lungs like air. You breathe memory because forgetting would be betrayal.”

Jack: “But how do you live after watching a town erased?”

Jeeny: “By rebuilding — not the houses, but the dignity.”

Host: Her voice softened, trembling at the edges. The rain became a roar, like applause from a sky that refused to quiet down.

Jeeny: “That line — about people breaking open caskets to survive — that’s the truth we’re not supposed to see. When desperation becomes the only law.”

Jack: “That’s what survival really looks like — not courage, but hunger, grief, rage. People mistake endurance for strength.”

Jeeny: “No one endures cleanly.”

Jack: “And yet, that’s what makes it sacred.”

Host: The church creaked, old wood groaning as though remembering its own congregation — voices that once filled it with hymns now replaced by rain.

Jack: “I wonder what Jesmyn Ward felt when she wrote that. Relief? Pain? Guilt for surviving?”

Jeeny: “Probably all of it. Survival isn’t triumph. It’s a burden you keep learning how to carry without it breaking you.”

Jack: “She turned it into language. That’s how she carried it.”

Jeeny: “That’s what writers do. They make beauty out of ruin — not to romanticize it, but to testify that they’re still standing.”

Host: The rain softened again, slowing to a steady whisper. The storm had passed, but its rhythm lingered — the echo of what cannot be forgotten.

Jack: “You think America learned anything from that?”

Jeeny: “Not enough. It never does. But people did — the ones who lived through it. They learned that the only safety is each other.”

Jack: “And the only shelter is empathy.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.”

Host: The candle flickered out. Only the light of the gray morning remained — gentle, solemn, true.

Jack stood, walking toward the window, looking out at the still-flooded fields beyond. The rainwater reflected the broken cross from the church steeple — bent, but still standing.

Jack: “You know, survival stories like Jesmyn’s — they shouldn’t just move us. They should indict us.”

Jeeny: “They do. If you’re listening.”

Jack: “Then maybe that’s what we owe her. Not pity — presence.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Presence is the beginning of change.”

Host: The camera panned out slowly, the two of them framed by the ruins — a church without sermons, a sky without color, a world that had not yet forgiven itself.

And as the scene faded into the sound of soft rain and distant thunder, Jesmyn Ward’s words lingered — not as tragedy, but as testimony:

“My family and I survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005; we left my grandmother's flooding house, were refused shelter by a white family, and took refuge in trucks in an open field during a Category Five hurricane. I saw an entire town demolished, people fighting over water, breaking open caskets searching for something that could help them survive.”

Host: Because survival is not a miracle.
It is memory wearing armor.

And those who endure storms
don’t come out clean —
they come out true.