Long after the floods, there’s community

In August, I was planning on visiting and presenting in local communities for the group What’s Next, East Kentucky?!  

Then awful flooding disrupted their lives and communities. 

In September, the Brushy Fork Leadership Institute invited me to their Leadership Summit in nearby Berea, Kentucky, to address flooding, disasters and recovery, and maybe resilience, too. 

They didn’t need help with infrastructure and repairs. There are experts in those things. 

They didn’t need some generic feel-good motivational presentation. 

They certainly didn’t need yet another big city expert telling them what they should do. 

Strong social ties, it turns out, help with recovering from a disaster. 

Right after a disaster we all pull together, but those temporary ties can quickly fray. We have to take special care of our social ties to strengthen them. 

So I shared rural stories. I talked about the people and places that have managed to come back from some truly awful situations. I told how they managed to rebuild their social ties while they rebuilt their small communities. 

I shared my own experience as a rancher struggling through 11 of the past 12 years in drought.

And I told Deb’s story of spending years helping a community turn around their mindset after the loss of their big factory and its jobs. 

And I thought you might want to hear this, too. Whether your community is going through a disaster right now or not. All our communities are vulnerable in some way. 

Deb and I turned it into a video for you. You can learn more about that at SaveYour.Town. 

Keep shaping a better future for your town,

Becky