Who Decided We Were Supposed to Be Normal?

Thoughtful reflections on mental health, relationships, Appalachian life, and the ordinary moments that shape us.

By Dr. Brenda Everett | The Unbound Collective

One week after the water.

My mother called me that night. I assumed she was calling to make sure I’d made it home.

Despite everyone leaving work early because of the storm, I stayed late seeing clients and closing up. It never crossed my mind that the people I loved would become part of the disaster.

I missed her call, but I caught my sister’s.

“They’re rescuing Grandma.”

I remember staring at my phone, trying to make sense of the sentence.

Grandma’s house has stairs. Beyond that, there is only a small creek nearby. It is the kind of tiny stream you pass every day without a second thought. It is a creek so small most people wouldn’t even think to elect for flood insurance. Logically, it didn’t make sense for water to ever reach her. It still doesn't. It probably never will.

How could water possibly get into her house? It didn’t seem possible.

Sometimes our minds protect us from believing what our eyes haven’t seen yet.

The Expectation of "Normal"

There is a strange expectation after a disaster.

At first, everyone understands. People ask if you’re safe. They bring meals. They fill church parking lots with bottled water, diapers, work gloves, and cleaning supplies. Neighbors walk into homes they’ve never stepped foot in before and spend hours shoveling mud out of someone else’s living room.

For a little while, everyone knows exactly what matters.

Then, almost without anyone saying it out loud, life begins asking you to be normal again.

Go back to work. Answer your emails. Return the phone calls. Smile. Be productive. Move on.

Who decided that?

It’s been just over one week.

We’ve emptied cabinets. We've hauled soaked furniture to the curb. We've asked each other what can be saved and what has to be thrown away. We’ve stared at water lines on walls in disbelief, wondering how the water could have ever reached that high in rooms where Christmas gifts were opened, birthdays were celebrated, and ordinary visits quietly unfolded.

The morning after, the sun rose anyway. It warmed generations of family photographs spread across the yard to dry. Grandparents who were gone. Babies who had become adults. Weddings. Christmas mornings. Faces from lives built over decades, lying in the grass, waiting to see if they could be saved.

It was impossible not to wonder how something so ordinary could shine on something that had changed so completely.

The Anatomy of Trauma

I rocked my sixteen-year-old daughter on the concrete steps outside while she had a panic attack. The same concrete steps that had been covered in floodwater just days before. I held her while she caught her breath. I whispered the words my faith has taught me to reach for when life stops making sense:

“God is still in control.”

I don’t know if I was trying to comfort her or remind myself.

Earlier, I noticed a crawdad making its way across the middle of the yard. It stopped me. It looked just as confused as the rest of us, crawling through a place it was never meant to be. Probably just another living thing trying to make sense of a landscape that no longer looked familiar.

Maybe that’s what trauma feels like. Displaced. Standing in the middle of what used to be home, wondering how everything changed so quickly.

For me, there is an entirely different layer to this displacement. In the Army, I was always the one on the rescuing side. I was the one who arrived to fix it, to organize the chaos, and to bring order. There is something deeply humbling and utterly defeating about switching sides. It is exhausting to find yourself at the mercy of waiting…waiting for someone else to help, while knowing their options are limited.

Psychologists call this the "helper paradox." Or simply put it is the unique, jarring trauma that happens when the person who is trained to save others suddenly becomes the one who needs saving. Your mind is screaming to take command and restore order, but your reality forces you to wait.

When you are the one waiting, you realize the quiet cruelty of the aftermath. There is no tactical team coming into your home to carry heavy furniture out of every room, to carefully pack up the fragile glass figurines and dishes, or to salvage the ordinary envelopes with bills waiting to be paid. It is just you, standing face-to-face with absolute chaos.

There is confusion, disbelief, anger, gratitude, and helplessness. Sometimes all before lunch. 

You can be deeply thankful your family survived while simultaneously grieving everything that didn’t. Those feelings don’t compete with one another; they simply exist together.

Helplessness is its own kind of grief. It’s standing in front of something that cannot be undone. It’s watching people you know lose everything. It’s wishing there were words that could somehow make any of it hurt less. It’s realizing there are some things love cannot protect people from.

Then there are the memories. For some, this flood didn’t arrive alone. It carried other losses with it like other moments when life changed without permission.

Maybe it wasn’t water last time. Maybe it was a different disaster: a deployment, an accident, an abusive home, a diagnosis, or a painful loss. The body doesn’t always separate today’s fear from yesterday’s. Trauma has a way of recognizing itself.

Sometimes the flood is outside our windows. Sometimes it’s the memories that rise inside us. Both deserve compassion.

The Weight of Appalachian Strength

You stare at the weather forecast a little longer than you used to. You make stupid jokes because you don’t know what else to say, and because the obvious words would make you cry.

We don’t openly cry very well here. In Appalachia, vulnerability is often hidden, saved for the privacy of back porches after everyone has gone home. We hide it behind truck tailgates, quickly at the kitchen sink before anyone sees, or during long drives down winding roads where no one can see our faces.

We were raised to keep going. To carry the weight. To help the neighbor before we help ourselves. Sometimes that strength serves us. Sometimes it leaves us carrying more than anyone was ever meant to carry alone.

Maybe that’s what people outside Appalachia don’t always understand. We know how to show up. We don’t wait to be asked. We bring food, we haul drywall, we clean out homes, and we hand strangers a shovel. We quietly check on one another because that’s what we’ve always done. It isn’t because we’ve planned it this way; it’s because this is how we’ve survived together for generations.

But carrying on isn’t the same thing as being okay.

Our nervous systems don’t care that the road has reopened. Trauma doesn’t end when the water recedes. For many people, that’s when it truly begins.

The volunteers go home. The piles of debris slowly disappear. Then comes the quiet.

That’s when children begin asking questions they couldn’t ask before. That’s when sleep becomes difficult. That’s when you notice the dark clouds more every time it rains. That’s when your body finally realizes what your mind has been too busy to feel.

A Kinder Question

As a therapist, I understand the science of trauma. As someone whose own family was rescued from their homes during this flood, I understand something else now.

There isn’t a timeline for this. There isn’t a prize for pretending you’re okay.

If you’ve cried in the grocery store…
If you’ve stared at pictures online, unable to stop scrolling…
If you’ve felt guilty because you did not prepare enough…
If you’ve been exhausted by things that never used to feel hard…
If you’ve found yourself angry without knowing exactly why…
If you’ve felt entirely helpless…

You’re not failing. You’re responding to something extraordinary.

So maybe this week we stop asking ourselves why we aren’t back to normal. Maybe we ask something kinder: What would it look like to be gentle with ourselves while we learn this new landscape?

Maybe it means accepting help.
Maybe it means sitting on the porch instead of opening another ruined box.
Maybe it means letting yourself cry with no explanation needed.
Maybe it means talking about what happened.
Maybe it means saying, "I’m not okay yet."

Not because you’ve given up, but because you’ve stopped pretending.

The water will continue to recede. Homes will slowly be rebuilt. The mud will eventually wash away. But hearts don’t follow the same timeline as construction. We will rebuild houses, but I’m not as sure about rebuilding the feeling of home.

So if you aren’t yourself yet…
If you’re carrying confusion beside gratitude…
If you’re struggling to find your words, your car keys, or even remembering to eat…
If you’re exhausted but moving forward…

Maybe nothing is wrong with you.

Maybe after all we’ve seen, all we’ve carried, and all we’ve lost, the better question was never how quickly we could get back to normal. Maybe it was always this:

Who decided we were supposed to be normal?

And until we find an answer, maybe we stop expecting ourselves to be.

Whatever steadies you. Whether it’s your faith, your family, your community, or simply the next breath. Maybe just try to hold onto it. We don’t have to pretend nothing happened. We only have to keep taking the next step, the next drink of water, the next meal, even when the ground still feels unsteady.