When the Unforeseen Seeps In
Cleaning Up After the Disaster We Never Saw Coming
Opening my front door after a week hiking in the pristine beauty of the Austrian Alps, the first thing we noticed was the smell: thick, swollen, wrong. I flipped the light switch. Nothing. Then: ping, ping, ping. The sound of water. Not dripping considerately into a sink, but the unmistakable slap and plonk of water on water.
The mind does strange things in moments like this, racing ahead to consequences before catching up to facts. The flat had been dry when we left. Now, it was flooded. The air was cold. The house was dark. I braced myself, held my breath. What kind of water was it? Then, a small mercy—the only detectable smell was wet paint.
Relief should have settled in, but it didn’t. As we marched forward through the dark entrance hall, we saw the damage had already spread. Our floors, our furniture, the walls I had freshly painted to make the space feel lighter, more open, inviting to the next owner. That had been the plan. The flat was on the market, and we wanted to sell quickly. To move on, to step into something new before someone else claimed the space we had our eyes on. Instead, we would be watching our timeline stretch and warp like the soaked floors beneath our feet.
A window of clarity opened: I called my upstairs neighbor. She answered mid-crisis, soaking up water from her own floors. She had returned home just moments before us and was equally surprised.
Was I angry? I could have been, might have been if I let myself. But there are moments when anger feels almost indulgent. Frustration, yes. Weariness, certainly. But anger? Not completely. Because upstairs, the source of the flood—my neighbor—was in the midst of her own undoing. She had lost her mother the week before. The water had come from her flat, but so had the grief, pouring into every part of her life. Whatever frustration I carried was nothing compared to hers.
So we talked, she and I, and hugged amidst the wreckage of our respective homes. We listed what would need replacing, what could be salvaged, what had to be torn up and redone. We called the insurance company, the electrician, and other technicians to assess the damage. We will find repair crews. We will clear away the water and make our spaces whole again.
Lately, it feels as though everyone is doing this kind of work—not just in our homes, but in our lives, our communities, even in the way we make sense of the world. Something breaks, something shifts, and suddenly we are left to clean up after a disaster we never saw coming. It’s not just personal—though for many, personal struggles would be more than enough. The sheer scale of it is overwhelming, as the world cracks open at every seam.
It would be easy to shut down. To throw up our hands and let the waters rise unchecked. To sit in anger, letting it spiral inward, turning into resentment or apathy. But anger, like floodwater, must be directed somewhere, channeled into something that will not destroy but reshape.
“We are in our documentary moment. This is it and it’s not a rehearsal.” Jane Fonda said this last week as she accepted her Lifetime Achievement award at the SAG gala and her words are ringing in my ears. She is a fighter, someone who has proven again and again that giving up is not an option. She has marched forward despite protest, aggression, and even arrest, carrying a message further, bringing hope to those who may not have the chance, the voice, or the will to stand up.
We are all in our own documentary moments right now, and it is up to us how we tell our own stories.
Progress doesn’t come all at once. It comes in small, deliberate steps. It comes when we pause, take stock of what is broken, and choose, even in frustration, to move forward. It comes when we meet setbacks not with resignation but with curiosity, with a willingness to see what might emerge in the rebuilding. When we move forward with forgiveness, with an open heart, with hope—not as naïveté, but as a quiet act of defiance against the gloom—we might just create space for something better to take shape.
As for me? Today, I will clean the floors and rent a dehumidifier. I will document the damage and make lists for what can be done tomorrow. The sun has come out, so I think I will also open all the windows wide and let the sunshine do her work.
How do you navigate unexpected disruptions in your life? What helped you move forward? I would love to hear your stories.