By Living Room Realty, July 16, 2025
When Waters Rise, So Should We: A Closing Day Reflection
— by Zoë Spring
Tomorrow, I’ll place a set of keys into the hands of two people starting a new chapter.
A moment that should feel like a simple transaction — but rarely does.
Even in joy, we can feel the weight of the world — the headlines, the hush beneath them, the invisible threads that bind our stories to those unraveling elsewhere.
Far from here, the water has risen fast. Not just the kind that rushes into streets and lingers in basements, but the kind that swells quietly — in the form of lost time, broken systems, and the aching weight of lives left behind.
You can feel it if you pause long enough. That tug of collective grief. The tension of a world tipping sideways.
And yet, even in the darkest moments — the ones that steal sleep and shatter routines — people still search for home.
Not just a house. But a refuge. A place where the air softens, where the walls remember your laughter, and the light lands just right on days when everything else feels wrong.
To lose a home is to lose a language — one spoken in footsteps and dinner tables and the hum of safety.
It’s a kind of mourning we rarely know how to name.
But I believe in something quietly radical:
The idea that when people lose the shape of their world, others can help trace it again.
Not in perfection. Not in haste. But through the shared work of reaching for one another — until wholeness begins to take shape again.
That’s how community begins to mend — by being the voice that answers when someone calls into the dark.
By being the one who shows up when it’s inconvenient.
By giving what you can, even when your own hands are tired.
So tomorrow, while I celebrate a new beginning, I’m also holding space for the endings happening elsewhere.
For the silent battles, the heavy hearts, and the homes that now exist only in memory.
And I’m asking, gently:
If you have light, share it.
If you have shelter, extend it.
If you have faith — in goodness, in people, in tomorrow — hold it high so others can see it too.
The world is weary.
But we are still here. Still reaching. Still rising.
Because even when the waters come, we are not powerless.
We are the patchwork. The bridge. The rebuilders.
And somewhere in the quiet after the storm,
we will meet each other again —
not just as strangers,
but as neighbors.
— Zoë
donation resources
https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201
https://texsar.networkforgood.com/projects/254910-responding-to-the-july-4-texas-floods?fbclid=IwY2xjawLWSV9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFLM0g0MlJ2OFBNNkVmSUFSAR6gXCX9A5Qywv5AsNa_zAkbR17lH893hGuqVTGMRxjrLTo65rgxp7ojXjOrDA_aem_3cb4WaDPlYOOe56jww2s5w
