title: Finding a way back home: a spirituality of exile after Hurricane Katrina.
abstract: Three years ago breath took the form of Hurricane Katrina and passed through our bodies and our lives, leaving us forever changed. We all breathed her, but for those of us living on the Gulf Coast our encounter with Katrina was more intimate, our breathing more conscious, our memory more charged, our lives forever changed. My story takes me from the winds of Hurricane Katrina blasting through the Gulf Coast, through the tube of a machine that helped keep my son's lung expanded, through the Sinai dessert and the valley of the dry bones, through the in-between spaces of grounded groundlessness, to the forests and rivers of the Berskhire Mountains, where I have relocated and started my life over. My spiritual journey "home" is a dynamic story of Earth, wind, fire, water, flesh, and Spirit.
authors.affiliation: Emily.DeMoor@mcla.edu
authors.forename: Emily Ann
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: DeMoor
mesh_terms: D002410:Catholicism; D055867:Cyclonic Storms; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D012036:Refugees / Q000523:psychology*; D029181:Spirituality