When life gives you trauma, make a career
I became a refugee at 12 years old. At 12 years old, I became an adult. At 12 years old, I discovered resilience.
At 12 years old, I was excitedly walking the halls of Edna Karr Magnet School with friends I’d held since first grade. We were happy to have tested into our preferred school. A couple weeks into the school year, a mandatory evacuation order for my hometown was announced. A hurricane that stampeded the Caribbean was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico. This wasn’t a big deal for any of us. We had evacuated before and experienced a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Ivan the year prior. We knew we’d have to make up the missed “hurricane days” at the end of the school year.
That was the last time I saw many of my friends. What happened in the coming days, weeks, months, years and decades is difficult to put in words. Twenty years later, Hurricane Katrina is the avulsion that changed the course of uncountable lives like my own.
An average Sunday: I woke up to the sound of my dad’s salvaged push mower and my mom listening to Yolanda Adams. The smell of grits, eggs, and bacon wafted to a small bedroom I shared with two other siblings in our 1200 ft2 half of a shotgun house. Not too long after breakfast, I went outside to see if any of my many cousins, who lived to the left and right of us, were outside, ready to play.
It was Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005: I found myself heading west on I-10 in a maroon Dodge Ram 1500 passenger van (the family car) with my mom, dad, sisters and brother. We led a modern mule train of cousins, aunts and uncles traveling westward across the Gulf of Mexico’s coastal plain with a few days worth of clothes. Our north star was Galveston, TX, where we planned to stay with relatives. We weren’t the only family with long-distance travel plans.
It was Monday, Aug. 29, 2005: We arrived at my great-aunt Wilda’s house after 24 hours of nonstop driving due to the unprecedented number of vehicles on the road. The drive from our home in Algiers Point usually took six hours. The house wasn’t that big, but it was large enough to hold nearly a dozen of us as we claimed any flat surfaces as beds. Those who couldn’t find a space scattered across Galveston and Houston to stay with other relatives. Outside of being in a new place, many things were the same. I got to have a normal breakfast, watch TV and play outside with my siblings and cousins. At night, we all sat around Aunt Wilda’s TV to watch “Yo Momma” and “Wildin’ Out.” We didn’t know what was happening at home, but we figured it didn’t matter. We’d be back soon.
It was Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005: I sat in front of my Aunt Wilda’s TV taking in the devastation with the rest of my family. News cameras in New Orleans revealed my own vision of hell, as the remnants of the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history continued its rampage further inland.
As a 12 year old, I didn’t know how to comprehend what I was seeing. This wasn’t the first time my family evacuated. It wasn’t the first time we had seen media reporting on a storm that hit the city (usually from the comfort of our home). It wasn’t the first time my family had to depend on government assistance. However, it was the first time that I wouldn’t go home just a few days after a storm. It was the first time I was called a refugee. It was the first time I experienced housing insecurity. It was the first time I felt the pressure of being an adult.
At its peak, after multiple levee failures, 80% of New Orleans was flooded. The city was closed to non-emergency personnel, which led to many of us having to start new lives in our new “homes.” Aunt Wilda could no longer house us, so we spent those early months living in a two-bed hotel room at Moody Gardens that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paid for (where we subsisted on microwaveable meals and fast food) or in a vacation condo rental called Casa Del Mar (where I got the sofa bed in the common space). We became first-time renters while living in a rundown, Section 8 house operated by a slum lord. It was bigger than our house in New Orleans and a block from the beach, but it wasn’t home. Two weeks after evacuating, we were enrolled in school. The middle school I enrolled initially resisted me starting on the “gifted” academic track because they didn’t have my records (they were underwater), and I didn’t test into it (because the test was offered to students in sixth grade). Fortunately, my mother’s strong advocacy for my abilities prevailed, and I was consequently allowed to take upper-level math and science courses in high school. Life was different in myriad aspects, and there was never any guarantee that it would be normal again.
My family spent the better part of the next six years living in Galveston, where I graduated high school in 2011. My experiences in Galveston exposed me to social settings and personal demands that shaped how I view the world and the person that I became. We dealt with housing insecurity that included living in three different Section 8 rentals and months-long stays at Casa Del Mar when we didn’t have other options. I went from a primarily Black and impoverished educational environment (i.e. students, teachers and staff) to one that was primarily White and middle class.
In retrospect, my academic experience in Galveston was probably my first time dealing with imposter syndrome. I became the family’s primary cook at 13, primary driver at 15 and took over responsibility for my younger siblings’ educational progress. I wasn’t asked to do these things, but I assumed the responsibility. I gave up the rest of my childhood to ensure that my family could settle on dry ground after a historic disaster of immeasurable impact.
My academic career is rooted in the recognition that Louisiana’s vast coastal wetlands are its true first line of defense against hurricane damage. Louisiana’s coastal armor has been rapidly eroding over the past century, which leaves many lives unknowingly exposed to harm. I was able to make something good out of what could have been a permanent derailing of a life; however, not everyone was able to. My scientific pursuits are driven by generating rigorous understandings of coastal wetlands change so that we can do more to protect them. I want to do my part to ensure that vulnerable lives on coasts around the world aren’t just one bad storm away from having their lives forever changed. I have harnessed my trauma to foster good for others, because resilience is necessary for survival.
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