How do you prepare for the weather of your life?

No sooner had I landed from Miami before I was whisked up and headed to get last minute storm prep items for what was an impending hurricane coming to New England.

What do we need? The strategizing began immediately. “I’ve got a camping stove so we can cook”. Check. Propane? Check. Water containers for drinking water, coolers, ice? Check. Check. Check.

Luckily one of my best girlfriends was house sitting for me and had done the first round of grocery shopping so now we were in the triage stage of prepping for battle or adventure depending on your lens. It felt like we stepped into a version of Thelma and Louise with the storm as our adversary.

If you are unfamiliar with hurricanes they are, in many ways, similar to experiencing the pandemic if you could speed the whole thing up into a matter of 2-5 days start to finish. Theoretical impending doom outta nowhere. Nothing to know for sure you can hold onto. No one has any more answers than you do. We prepared for more of the unknown.

First you find out it’s happening but it’s nowhere near you. Then you spend the day trying to accurately ascertain the impossible: When will it arrive? How bad will it be? What will I need to be best prepared for the unknown, for the worst.? What damage is likely? Power outages?

We brought the plants and outdoor furniture inside, hoping it would prove worth the effort. The storm tracker bobbed and weaved with ease across the map of the east coast like a motorcycle on a crowded highway. With any minor shift in direction the forecast would change completely.

Forecasters say “35 mile hour winds. No 105 mile an hour winds ending at 4 pm, no 10 pm, rain, no rain, prepare for terrible flooding.” The day sounds like this: “Think we only need two extra phone battery packs, no four, no two. Landfall at noon on the Cape, no 2 pm in New York you should shower by 11 am in case we lose power.”

Not unlike life in general really. We ask ourselves, “What will we need to face the unknown; for whatever weather is approaching us?”. We want to know how we can feel most protected, ready and safe from what we can’t know ahead of time, especially if it feels ominous. What’s our personal version of “Have what I need’?

You can get in the ballpark: camp stove ready, head lamps, generator (wife, steady salary, tenure) even but no matter how prepared you are there are always unknowns in storms and in life’s day to day that you can’t account for in advance to avoid them, not to mention the emotions . Many you wouldn’t want to anyway because their lessons are far too valuable to miss.

We don’t know what’s coming. We watch for signs and signals to stay put or move forward like a game of red light, green light. But as in hurricanes, we can trust we can handle whatever comes, that we have done our best to prepare, we have what we need and if we don’t, we can still trust that we will be ok even then and get what we need regardless.

In our case, we hunkered down, did a puzzle, ate snacks and enjoyed the candlelight while the trees in my backyard did the ultimate dance performance in the wind. The ferocious monster, that 105 mile an hour hurricane turned itself into a 40-50 mile tropical storm. Nothing other than a 36 hour power outage to report.

How do you prepare for the weather of your life? Where can you lean into trusting yourself in a deeper way?