Zenfull Heart | October 29, 2026
Hurricane Isaias on October 9, 2026. Satellite image: NASA Worldview, Terra MODIS.
On October 9, Hurricane Isaias came through the Florida Panhandle, and I found myself experiencing something I had never experienced before. I was alone in Gulf Breeze, Florida, pet sitting for a family, watching the trees sway, the windows shake, and branches and BIG trees fall around the property. We lost electricity for more than three days, and what I thought was an emergency preparedness plan turned out to be far less prepared than I had expected.
I was frustrated, overwhelmed, and honestly felt very unsupported throughout much of the experience. There were situations where I felt my time, effort, and well-being weren't being valued. Even after the storm passed, dealing with the cleanup and some unexpected conversations about compensation brought up feelings I hadn't anticipated. I was questioning what my time was worth, and why I felt obligated to accept certain situations simply because I felt I had to take any money that was offered. I could feel myself slipping back into old survival patterns, and I did reach backwards to feel “seen and supported,” until I questioned why, because I knew I was never valued, seen, understood or cared for by that person. But they were my “longest constant ‘family’ type of support.” Then I lost my shit, and all the hurt, loneliness and pain also came back. I now see I was not loving ME when I reached back to what hurt me!
Then something happened during a Zoom call with two friends after the electricity finally came back on. As I was talking about the hurricane and everything that had happened, I said something that caught even me by surprise. "I have lived in a hurricane my entire life."
As a little girl, I never knew which version of my father I was going to come home to. Would he be loving and peaceful, drunk, angry, or completely unpredictable? I never knew where I might be living next or who I might be staying with. There was so much instability throughout my childhood that I learned to prepare myself for just about anything. Years later, I found myself doing the exact same thing in a relationship that lasted over sixteen years. I never knew what mood my former partner would be in or what I might be walking into. I was constantly anticipating, adjusting, and preparing for everyone else's emotions, hoping I could somehow keep things peaceful.
There it was. I had spent so much of my life living in a hurricane without even realizing it. I pictured myself standing right at the edge of the eye, with half my body being blown around by the chaos while the other half desperately reached for peace and love each day. For years, I searched for that peace and love through a partner, other relationships, money, businesses, material things, and anything else I thought might fill something inside me. I didn't understand that what I was really craving was the healing and connection within myself.
This hurricane brought so many of those old patterns right back to the surface. I struggled with real social anxiety, self-doubt and fear when I wanted to get out and help with community relief efforts. I found myself reaching back toward familiar people and situations when I felt alone and unsupported. I also watched my fears surrounding money come flooding back when an IRS issue I thought would be accepted was denied. I had convinced myself that if I lost more money, everything I was building would somehow come to an end. But my value, my purpose, and everything I've worked toward are not determined by what's sitting in my bank account.
Something else happened that made me question how I see myself. Two people I have worked with on my healing journey asked if they could hire me to help them implement some of the AI systems and tools I've been learning. My immediate response was, "Why would you want to hire me?" That question stopped me in my tracks. Here were people recognizing something valuable in my skills, and my first instinct was to question why anyone would pay me for them. It made me realize how much work I still have to do around recognizing my own worth.
And then, in the middle of all this, I decided to treat myself to a massage. During our conversation, I mentioned how much I'd been doing with AI and joked about it saying I now "Let Go and Let Claude." She suggested putting it on a shirt, and suddenly an entirely new business idea came to life. Over the following week, I began creating I Am Not a Robot, a new brand built around some fun AI-inspired sayings. I have been designing shirts, mugs, stickers, and other products, building social media accounts, and discovering opportunities I wouldn't have imagined even a few months ago. I'm incredibly grateful for my business coach, who introduced me to tools that have allowed me to create things I never thought I could do without being technically savvy.
Looking back over these past couple of weeks, I realize how much this hurricane has brought into my awareness. It wasn't just about losing electricity, spoiled food, fallen trees, or feeling unappreciated. It exposed old wounds I was not fully seeing yet, surrounding abandonment, feeling unheard, undervalued, financial insecurity, needing someone to “help” and the belief that I somehow have to prove my value to others or give my time, effort and energy away for free. It also showed me how easily I can fall back into familiar patterns, even after all the healing work I have done.
I'm grateful that things went wrong, and I'm certainly not suggesting that every difficult experience needs to be turned into something positive. But I am grateful for what this particular hurricane helped me recognize about myself. I can still feel frustrated, angry, disappointed and afraid without allowing those feelings to determine who I am or what my future holds.
For most of my life, I was preparing for the next hurricane without even knowing I was doing it. Today, I'm learning that I don't have to live that way anymore. And that's the greatest gift Hurricane Isaias gave me.
