Start Where You Are:
A Hurricane, A Dancer, and the Myth of Helplessness
I watched the satellite loop of Hurricane Melissa for too long in the days before it made landfall.
The swirl. The size. The terrifying, perfect geometry of it. I refreshed news feeds. Checked on colleagues. I felt a headache start as I scrolled.
And then I did what so many of us do when the crisis is too big and we are too small: I froze.
Not dramatically. Just… stopped. Clicked away. Told myself there was nothing I could do. It is a storm, a category five hurricane.
Helplessness, I’m learning, is a reflex.
And this week, I decided to interrupt it.
I keep coming back to a single question.
What can I do?
Not “What should government?” or “CARICOM?” or “Why isn’t someone fixing…(insert thing to be fixed)...?” With genuine curiosity.
Simply: What can I do, right now, from where I am, with what I have?
Maybe it’s texting a colleague whose family is in the storm’s path.
Maybe it’s a direct donation to a relief fund doing real work on the ground.
Maybe it’s just slowing down enough to notice where I’ve gone numb.
The reflex is to think: If I can’t parachute in with a rescue team, I can’t do anything at all.
That’s despair. And that’s a trap.
Helplessness isn’t the absence of resources.
The question keeps pulling me back to another Beryl, herself a force of nature.
Beryl McBurnie.
A Trinidadian woman who, in the 1940s, took a scholarship to study dance when folks thought she should do medicine or something (anything) sensible. She could have stayed in New York with Martha Graham. Built a career. Chosen comfort.
She came home.
She returned to an island where folk dance was dismissed as “primitive.” Where traditional movement was erased in the face of colonial respectability. Where dances were being lost as the dancers died. Where no one was building theatres for the art and movement that she knew mattered.
She built one herself.
The Little Carib Theatre rose in Port of Spain, sometimes with Beryl sleeping in the building with no roof. No major funding. No institutional blessing. No guarantee it would work.
Bad mind. Breath. Courage. Sheer will.
She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t wait for the crisis to be smaller or the resources to be bigger.
She started where she was.
I think about Beryl when the world feels too broken to fix.
I think about a woman who looked at erasure and chose embodied action. Who understood that cultural memory lives in the body and will disappear with those bodies if you let it. Who would close a street to have men dancing in the road - what name police permission?
When the fires are too many. The systems too entrenched. The headlines too heavy.
When your nervous system is overwhelmed, by news, by grief, by the sheer velocity of a day, your brain’s “office manager” gets overwhelmed. You go into freeze or frenzy. You doom-scroll or shut down.
You forget that you have agency because your body no longer feels like a safe place to be.
Enter breathwork.
The breath brings you back.
Not to toxic positivity. Not to spiritual bypassing or wellness theatre. To the simple, grounded truth that you are here. You are alive. And from that place, from that place only, you can continue.
Today, in the storm’s aftermath asking…
What would be helpful?
How can I show up?
What’s the next right step?
From agency, from embodiment, from curiosity and a willingness to do something that seems small and insignificant.
I’m inviting you to ask those questions, too.
Because the myth of helplessness tells us we need to be heroic to matter. That small actions are pointless. That unless we can solve the whole problem, we shouldn’t bother starting.
But Beryl McBurnie didn’t build a theatre because she could save the world.
She built it because she could build that.
If You’re Ready to Help
For those looking for a concrete starting point, Jamaican Information Minister Dr Dana Morris Dixon announced the launch of the Government’s official platform for Hurricane Melissa relief supportjamaica.gov.jm
Additionally, here are vetted organisations providing critical on-the-ground support:
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) – The regional inter-governmental agency for disaster management in the Caribbean.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) – Emergency teams deployed across the Caribbean, often first to respond.
World Central Kitchen – Fresh, hot meals to communities in crisis. Immediate. Fundamental.
(Always take a moment to research and find the organisation that aligns with how you want to help.)
Before You Act: Come Back to Your Body
If the weight of it all makes action feel impossible, the first thing you can do is return to your breath.
Not because breathing fixes hurricanes.
But because you can’t think clearly, act effectively, or help sustainably from a dysregulated nervous system.
This is one practice I turn to when the world feels too big and I feel too small. It takes two minutes. It works.
Find a seat. Chair or floor. Feet grounded. Hands resting on your knees. Really find your seat. Feel the support of the surface you’re on. Sit like you mean it.
Exhale.
…then
Inhale slowly through your nose for a count of four.
Allow the breath in. Let it fill you.
Pause.
Hold gently at the top for a count of four.
Not clenching. Suspend the breath.
Exhale through your mouth for a count of six…Release the air like you’re filling a balloon or blowing soap bubbles - gently.
Release a little of what you’re carrying.
Hold empty at the bottom for a count of four.
Pause. Unclench.
That’s one cycle: Inhale 4 > Hold 4 > Exhale 6 > Hold 4.
Do this for two to three minutes.
The goal is to anchor your body, not to empty your mind (though you can mentally repeat “in I am breathing in, out, I am breathing out” as you do the practice)…
This gives your nervous system a predictable, safe rhythm when the world feels chaotic.
This is an Alivefullness™ practice, not calm for calm’s sake, but groundedness for action’s sake. Alivefullness is the art and science of being fully alive, present, and powerful in your body so you can move through the world with intention instead of reaction.
However you spend the next few minutes, donating, breathing, forwarding this to someone who needs it, you will have done something.
You will have refused the myth of helplessness.
We are not helpless.
We are here.
And we will continue.
If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you. Reply or leave a comment, I read every one.
If someone you know needs this reminder today, please share it.