INTRODUCTION

Following hazards, terrorism events, and other large-scale crises, public discourse in the United States frequently emphasizes resilience as a central recovery theme. At its core, resilience, the idea of “bouncing back” (Tierney 2019:168), aligns neatly with the hallmark ideologies of American individualism: strength, grit, and determination (Triandis 2001, Bazzi et al. 2020). Although the concept of resilience looms large in American culture, little consideration is given to the realities of what resilience demands of individuals affected by hardship, hazards, or tragedy. At its core, the term ignores contextual factors contributing to individuals’ and communities’ experiences of an event. This study highlights what Ann Masten (2013a) recognizes as a “cost” of resilience and uses grounded theory to introduce resilience fatigue. This concept explains the harmful consequences of labeling an individual resilient after facing repeated events. Here, we present how residents living in Eastern North Carolina described how they resisted being called resilient and provided strategies for an equitable and just long-term recovery.

The oversimplification and use of resilience have real-life implications, contributing to communities and people being forgotten after a disaster hits. The expectation of resilience may discount the other ongoing social ills in an affected area. It could also ignore the long-term and unequal effects of hazards on marginalized communities, especially those in regions with high poverty rates (Tierney 2019). Moreover, these places that experience hazards will likely see these events increase in intensity and frequency, thus making them more prone to future events (Michener et al. 1997, Dale et al. 2001, Gardiner 2006, Changnon 2010, Dettinger 2011).

Ignoring the cost of resilience, one could inaccurately depict these events as isolated incidents rather than considering the cumulative effects of repeated events’ exposure on communities. Given this disconnection, we use prior inductive case studies (McColl and Burkle 2012, Matarrita-Cascante and Trejos 2013) that investigated resilience by gathering qualitative data from respondents impacted by events. Through this process, we gained a better understanding of the toll associated with resilience.

For this study, we define marginalized communities as groups of individuals living in rural, low-socioeconomic communities. Although marginalization goes far beyond identifying groups based on region, we focus solely on how residents in these areas face repeated hazards. Additionally, we follow Tierney’s (2019) definition of resilience as the ability of an individual or group to bounce back or build back stronger following a disruptive event, such as a hazard. We will provide a more thorough explanation of the definition of resilience.

To add more nuance to the concept of resilience, our study gives voice to individuals whose communities have been significantly impacted by the recent rise in extreme weather events caused by global warming. We interviewed 20 residents in four counties located in the tidewater plains of Eastern North Carolina, a region particularly susceptible to flooding from hurricanes, about their experiences with resilience. Our participants endured two 500-year floods in just two years from Hurricane Matthew (2016) and Hurricane Florence (2018). Given the proximity of these major events, and the expectation of future storms, residents found the repeated expectation of being resilient fatiguing. Thus, using grounded theory, we introduce a new critique and framework centered around resilience: resilience fatigue. Our approach unpacks the contextual factors that affect hazard recovery and explains how residents in hazard-prone areas adapt to repeated exposure.

This study adds to the body of literature by introducing a new concept focusing on the cost of resilience based on the lived experiences of residents hit by repeated events. Our study also reinforces long-held best practices in qualitative research by employing grounded theory to show how participants experiencing a phenomenon make their meanings (Geer 1964, Spradley 1979, Merrick 1999). Although we hypothesized that participants would value resilience, almost none felt it was an achievable goal within their communities. Accordingly, our work emphasizes an essential ethical consideration for researchers and practitioners: to avoid the pitfalls that turn lived experiences into simplistic and binomial explanations. Doing so erodes the voices of participants (Lincoln 1993).

Furthermore, when research on policy-relevant topics oversimplifies explanations, it contributes to policies that ignore the realities of complex problems. Through our study, we show how affected communities grapple with the discourse that all communities recover and are resilient. We also give voice to the people most affected by these hazards and describe the changes they believe their communities need to truly recover and thrive.

Literature review

This section lays the groundwork for the remainder of our study by illustrating three essential and interrelated points. First, we discuss how hazard exposure exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities. Second, we describe how these challenges are especially salient in rural communities, with higher poverty rates, unemployment, and food insecurity than in other areas. The confluence of these two factors leads to the next point about the emotional recovery and experiences of individuals in under-resourced areas during repeated hazard exposure. Last, we provide context around the term resilience with a high-level introduction of the term, how it has been used in scholarship, and how its usage comes at a cost.

Hazards and vulnerability

As climate change disrupts weather patterns worldwide, repeated hazard exposure has become accepted in certain regions (Gardiner 2004). The frequency and intensity of hazards have also increased, and these events are nearly always accompanied by dramatic and unprecedented effects on people and ecosystems (Michener et al. 1997, Dale et al. 2001, Gardiner 2006, Changon 2010, Dettinger 2011). Environmental professor Stephen Gardiner explained “The planet is at serious risk of a shift in a global climate comparable in magnitude to an ice age (albeit in the other direction) but occurring over decades rather than millennia” (Gardiner 2011:11).

The United States provides multiple recent examples of consecutive hazards. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans has experienced significant damages from other hurricanes, such as Hurricane Wilma (2005), Hurricane Gustave (2008), Hurricane Isaac (2012), Hurricane Nate (2017), and Hurricane Barry (2019), to name a few (Roth 2012). California repeatedly faces record-breaking, lethal and damaging wildfires (Arango et al. 2019). In other parts of the country, the intensity and frequency of tornadoes and violent thunderstorms have also risen (NOAA 2018). Each of these events results in loss of life, destruction of property, and devastating social and emotional impacts. As the number of such events increases, so does exposure to these effects, leaving residents responding to the compounding hazards impacting their communities (Santos 2019, Sullivan et al. 2019).

Rural community conditions

Pre-storm conditions, such as socioeconomic status, resources, family background, and social support are significant predictors of whether an individual can successfully recover after a hazard (Fothergill and Peek 2015). Rural areas often have higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, and unemployment than suburban and urban areas (USDA ERS 2024). These challenges have persisted for decades (Elder and Conger 2000).

Economically, rural communities have struggled to keep pace with the economic growth of the rest of the U.S., especially as agricultural production has declined. Rural communities struggled to keep up as a larger proportion of the U.S. economy moved toward service-based industries. Their educational attainment, human capital attributes, industrial infrastructure, and household incomes tend to be lower than more urban areas (Falk and Lobao 2003). Because of these factors, attempts to maintain pace with or catch up to non-rural economic development often prove fruitless, further marginalizing rural communities from urbanized regions (Biermacher et al. 2007).

Social and political capital related to the ability to obtain resources and navigate bureaucracy are essential predictors of hazard recovery (Tierney 2019). Prior research shows that hazardous events exacerbate socioeconomic differences, making it more difficult for communities to recover (Kates et al. 2006, Tierney 2019). In contrast, socioeconomically advantaged communities have greater social and political capital, a more significant measure of resources, knowledge, and networks.

Additionally, marginalized populations in rural communities may be reluctant to relocate to a less hazard-prone area. Rural residents experience high social-place attachment, which binds people generationally, socially, and religiously to their land (Lewicka 2011, Davis et al. 2022). Living and belonging to a community, sometimes for hundreds or thousands of years, is an intrinsic part of individuals’ and families’ identities and shared experiences (Lehman 2008, Morgan 2010, Lewicka 2011, Stewart and Abbott-Chapman 2011).

Emotional recovery from a hazard

Research on trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has often focused on the aftermath of manmade disasters, such as terrorist attacks, war, and gun violence (Başoğlu and Salcioglu 2011, Peek 2011, Hutchison 2016). However, hazards also produce stress and can negatively impact survivors’ mental health and well-being (Davis et al. 2021). Further, as Clemens and colleagues (2013) found, survivors reported feeling petrified and hopeless in the immediate aftermath of an event. In the long-term, residents stated they continued being stressed and worried about how they would manage.

Researchers have identified several vital predictors that foreshadow how an individual will process and recover from the trauma of a hazard (Fothergill and Peek 2015). These indicators focus on the types of loss, pre-existing mental health conditions, and community support. For instance, a person’s recovery can be impeded by a greater loss, such as losing a home or a loved one. Pre-existing mental health conditions can exacerbate or prolong the experience of trauma. Additionally, the lack of community support can strengthen the intensity or duration of PTSD symptoms and other feelings of helplessness, fatigue, or guilt (Boon et al. 2012, Neria et al. 2008, Osofsky et al. 2009). When the effects of trauma linger, they can negatively impede growth, progress, and quality of life in a community. In school-age children, hazard-related traumas are linked to lower student achievement, higher rates of student misbehavior, and higher rates of absenteeism (Ceyhan and Ceyhan 2007, Pane et al. 2008).

Romano et al. (2006:208) described grief after a hazard as a “double psychic event.” The two reasons include: (1) individuals have witnessed and survived a traumatic event that has potentially cost the lives of people whom they know; and (2) they must also deal with massive loss of homes, routines, jobs, and a sense of normalcy. In mental health research and clinical practice, this layered experience of grief is known as complicated grief or traumatic grief (Romano et al. 2006, Kristensen et al. 2010).

In addition to the internal experiences of grief, communities affected by hazards experience collective grief, a phenomenon in which groups of people experience and process the same negative emotions together (Warnick 2016). Researchers have found that the collective experience of negative emotions strengthens social bonds and facilitates social cohesion (Rennung and Göritz 2015). At the same time, social bonds and social support systems are necessary for grief recovery (de Volo 2006, Kristensen et al. 2010, Ekanayake et al. 2103, Dyregrov et al. 2015, Sveen et al. 2018). Ultimately, the individual and social experience of grief are complicated and time-consuming, two aspects of the emotion that are interrupted by the experience of a second (or third or fourth) hazard.

Unpacking resilience

We begin with a deconstruction of resilience that looks at the meaning of the term. Masten (2014:10) defined resilience as “the capacity of a dynamic system to withstand and recover from significant challenges that threaten its stability, vitality, and development.” Norris et al. (2008:130) argued that resilience is “a process linking a set of adaptive capacities to a positive trajectory of functioning and adaptation after a disturbance.” By focusing on the idea of a positive trajectory and positive functioning, resilience takes the aftermath of an event a step beyond recovery. At its core, resilience, the concept of “bouncing back” (Tierney 2019:168), aligns neatly with the hallmark ideologies of American individualism (Triandis 2001, Bazzi et al. 2020). As a result, it has been widely used in policy, research, and the media as the benchmark for communities and individuals who have experienced hazards.

When used colloquially, resilience ignores the contextual factors of the individual and community. Existing empirical research on resilience sheds light on how pre-hazard conditions influence post-hazard outcomes. For instance, Frankenberg et al. (2013) found that individuals with higher educational attainment were better able to achieve resilience after a hazard. Research has also identified another contextual factor: the urban-rural classification of communities. Two studies (Sturgis 2018, Mower 2019) pointed to the heightened vulnerability and the long recovery process for homes in rural areas. Their results showed that rural communities were more likely to experience damage after a hazard and had longer wait times for insurance payouts and governmental assistance than their non-rural peers. Here, residents living in rural communities were less able to achieve resilience after a hazard.

Resilience requires a great deal of social support and networking capacity (Ronan and Johnston 2005, Wright et al. 2012, Masten et al. 2021, Ungar 2021). These social supports are crucial for mitigating the harmful mental health impacts hazards can have on individuals (Prinstein et al. 1996, Ronan and Johnston 2005, Neria et al. 2008, Osofsky et al. 2009, Boon et al. 2012, Masten and Narayan 2012). However, access to social support is often limited in the near term of a hazard, especially in rural areas where utilities and roads may be out of service for days and weeks.

Recent research explores how resilience can also come as a cost to residents impacted by an event (Brody et al. 2013, Masten et al. 2021, Ungar 2021, Wilbur and Gone 2023). Masten (2013a) questioned the weight or toll of resilience given deeply challenging adversity. Scholars have also noted the lingering effects of experiencing harsh conditions, such as hazards, may represent the hidden cost of resilience (Brody et al. 2013, Masten et al. 2021). Brody and colleagues (2013) conducted a longitudinal study to assess the extent to which Black children living in high-risk, low-socioeconomic communities remained “resilient” given their environment. Respondents completed a survey at roughly age 11 and a final one at 19 to determine the extent to which their resilience persisted. Their findings revealed students exhibited high levels of psychological risk, suggesting that resilience was temporary and not long-term.

Ungar (2018, 2021) and Masten (2013a, 2014) have written extensively about resilience and the usefulness of a multisystemic approach to limit its cost. Ungar (2018) stated that a resilient system is open, encourages connectivity, creates spaces to evolve and learn, and is diverse and inclusive of various types of supports. Ungar also argued that focusing on resilience across multiple multisystemic approaches can inform practices and policies that ultimately help those who are impacted by hazards. He furthered surmises that resilience has more to do with the types of resources we receive, rather than an innate characteristic to push through from within (Ungar 2019).

Masten has since revised her definition of resilience to reflect current multisystemic understandings of resilience (Masten 2013a, b). Through this work Masten and colleagues argued the importance of using complete multifaceted approaches to highlight critical aspects of evidence. Further, Masten (2014) and Wilbur and Gone (2023) critiqued the process of identifying who gets to determine who is resilient and who is deemed resilient. Masten questioned who constructed this process and highlighted clear power dynamics between the one who labels and the labeled.

Theoretical approach

We employed grounded theory in our study to understand how the experience of repeated hazards impact rural communities. Grounded theory is a “systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories from the data themselves” (Charmaz 2014:1). It is a process by which the data guide the development of theory, as opposed to applying an existing theory to data (Lincoln and Guba 1985). The theory-building process is not linear (Charmaz 2014) and requires the constant comparative method used through interactive data collection and analysis (Glaser 1965, Glaser and Strauss 1967, Strauss and Corbin 1990). Researchers primarily use qualitative data from interviews or focus groups to inform the formation of the theory (Creswell 2011).

Working toward a theory grounds the data into an appropriate framework (Charmaz 2014). It allows researchers to create a theory based on the data without forcing it to align with an ill-fitting theory. The use of grounded theory provides flexibility to the real world by working to identify a concern or point of interest for a targeted population (Creswell 2011, Charmaz 2014). This approach is essential in our study given that there is limited research on notions of fatigue around resilience and that it allows us to consider alternative meanings of phenomena.

Context of the study

The low-lying coastal plains of Eastern North Carolina are prone to flooding, especially during the hurricane season, which lasts from June through November each year. According to the North Carolina State Climate Office (2018), one tropical storm has hit the state every two years between 1851 and 2016. Additional data revealed that parts of Eastern North Carolina were affected by nearly 20 hurricanes between 2017 and 2019 (North Carolina Climate Office 2018). Sturgis (2018) found that the counties that experienced the most storm damage between 2016 and 2019 had populations with higher proportions of people of color than the rest of the state on average. This paper focuses on Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, two hazards that impacted Eastern North Carolina in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Together the two storms caused 110 direct deaths, produced more than $23.5 billion in damage to North Carolina communities, and disrupted the lives of millions across the state (NOAA 2017, 2018).

Over half of North Carolina’s 3.2 million rural residents reside in the 28 counties that compose its eastern region (NC East Alliance 2014). The region is more racially diverse than the rest of the state, although cities and counties are highly segregated by race. Although most urban areas have experienced an unprecedented influx of new residents from other parts of the U.S., rural county populations in North Carolina remained flat or have decreased in the last decade (U.S. Census Bureau 2012, Stanford 2017). Research shows repeated hurricane exposure has contributed to population loss in Eastern North Carolina (Stanford 2017, Liu et al. 2024).

Residents of these eastern counties have deep, ancestral ties that emotionally bind them to the land (Davis et al. 2022). For Native American residents, these ties may date thousands of years to the Eurasian migration across the Bering Strait. These ties may date back to early colonial settlements in North Carolina for White residents. For Black residents, these ties may date back to forced enslavement and land grants given to formerly enslaved people via the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Although the region once prospered, it is now the poorest region in the state and among the poorest areas in the U.S. (Saporito and Sohoni 2007, Berner et al. 2016, Nichol and Hunt 2018). Eastern North Carolina flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries because of slavery, thanks to tobacco, cotton, and other agricultural production. Later, railroading and textile mills contributed to the region’s robust industry. Today, nearly all 41 counties east of North Carolina’s Research Triangle region have higher poverty rates than the rest of the state (Sher 1988).

Together, the region’s environmental, social, and economic realities explain why Eastern North Carolina is a perfect case study for unpacking resilience. As our findings will highlight, the existing inequities and vulnerabilities in the area make achieving resilience for one storm and successive hazards difficult.

METHODS

We identified the 51 North Carolina counties as part of the FEMA disaster declarations^[1] after either Hurricanes Matthew or Florence (FEMA 2016, 2018). We then narrowed the counties to only those in the eastern part of the state, equally 41 counties (Eastern North Carolina Dataset Project 2006). From there, we selected four counties representing the racial makeup of the region’s population: two were majority White, one was majority Black, and the fourth county was majority American Indian/Native American (see Table 1). Moreover, the economic characteristics of these counties reflect the educational and economic composition of the region (see Table 2).

In October 2018, just weeks after Hurricane Florence made landfall, a team of undergraduate researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted field interviews with residents of these four counties. We identified participants who were active members of local government agencies, non-profits, businesses, church offices, and other volunteer groups that were active in recovery efforts during both storms. Narrowing our focus to these individuals’ perspectives was necessary because their work provided more intimate, firsthand knowledge and experiences with recovery and resilience across the community. These participants are best equipped to explain the community’s collective experiences with resilience. Once identified, the research team contacted individuals to assess their interest in participating. A total of eight participants agreed to participate.

From there, we used a snowball sampling technique to generate new participants who met these criteria. In total, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted. The final sample included seven participants from County A, three from County B, three from County C, and seven from County D (see Table 3). The interviews followed a semi-structured format, each lasting between 20 and 60 minutes face-to-face. The interviews specifically asked participants about their community’s experience with the expectation of resilience and how they managed their expectations across multiple hazards.

Data process

Interviewers completed debriefing summaries after each interview. Qualitative interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed by the interviewers. Identifying information was redacted from the transcribed interviews to protect the privacy of our respondents. The resulting cleaned transcripts were then thoroughly reviewed for accuracy, ensuring the reliability of our data.

Our analyses consisted of three cycles of rigorous coding. In the first cycle, the authors replaced all names with pseudonyms where the first letter of their identifier matched the county’s name. For instance, respondents from County A received names that began with A and so forth. Next, we used an exploratory-descriptive approach (Brink 1998) to analyze the data. In this step, we identified patterns, similarities, and differences across the interviews. Here, we combined complementary approaches to coding: descriptive, process, and emotional, which allowed us to see the actions and reactions participants experienced and observed in their communities following the hurricanes (Saldaña 2021). Often, this involved coding texts across multiple codes, reflecting the interrelatedness of the data. During this first step, we observed resilience fatigue as a noteworthy construct that describes how affected communities feel about the expectation of recovery in their context.

In the second step, we narrowed our focus to resilience fatigue. This process involved reorganizing and refining the codes from the first step to capture patterns we observed during the first cycle. Our participants then perceived resilience as a negative expectation for their communities, given their current circumstances and persistent socioeconomic conditions. The analysis of respondents’ interpretations of resilience and the existing literature that critiques the use of resilience as a framework, allowed us to develop a three-pronged theory representing resilience fatigue. The three facets are as follows: (1) physical and emotional exhaustion, (2) relentlessness toward normalcy, and (3) anxiety and fears of future hazards.

In the third step, we addressed the validity of these new themes. To do this, we followed the process outlined by Boyatzis (1998) to quantify and systematize the content of thematic quotes. We identified the number of participants that aligned with each theme. This process ensured that the themes identified were indeed noteworthy across the sample. This step also prohibited us from applying biases to participants’ meanings and experiences (Merrick 1999). The following section presents the findings that emerged through this analytic process, demonstrating how resilience fatigue emerged as central to our data. We show how resilience functions as an unjust expectation that undermines communities’ social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities in hazard-prone regions.

RESULTS

Findings from interviews and the literature highlighted three significant facets: (1) physical and emotional exhaustion, (2) relentlessness toward normalcy, and (3) anxiety and fear of future hazards. Using grounded theory to guide our analysis, we surmise that these facets represent the overarching theme of resilience fatigue (Fig. 1). Our results demonstrate how resilience language is often problematic, especially for those who face repeated hazards with little support to assist recovery. In this section, we break down each theme, discuss the related evidence our participants provided, and conclude with a summation of how respondents advocate for more permanent resilient tactics for their communities.

Physical and emotional exhaustion

When Hurricane Florence hit Eastern North Carolina in 2018, many communities were actively recovering from Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Participants described how the proximity of the two storms compounded the stresses and strains placed on their community. They expressed frustration about starting a new recovery when the old one was still ongoing. During this chaotic environment, participants still felt pressure to come back stronger and more resilient, although the compounding impacts on top of the pre-existing inequalities made that impossible. Abigail summarized this sentiment by saying: “If we hear the d@mn word resiliency one more time ... we’re not resilient ... I just want to go back to my life.”

Other participants expressed a longing to get back to their lives, a chance to return to normalcy. At the same time, participants recognized the inability to recover given the current circumstances. The length of recovery was one of the reasons participants felt resilience was beyond their grasp. Donahue was still waiting for his insurance settlement from Matthew when Florence hit. Despite the passage of time, he noted that his community was still experiencing a lot of uncertainty and disorganization. He stated, “It’s been two years, and we still don’t know what we’re doing.”

Donahue’s sentiment was common amongst residents. He noted that financial relief promised for Hurricane Matthew had not arrived before Hurricane Florence, thus making the ability to be resilient impossible without physical recovery. DeShawna, also from the same county, described how community members experienced different wait times and separated members of the community based on their experiences. She said,

I was fine. We bounced back pretty quickly, but if you go down the hall and you talk to [neighbor], she still hasn’t gotten her FEMA money from the first disaster. Two years later so no she’s not recovered. Her definition of recovery is going to be very, very different than my definition.

As the literature shows, social support is a necessary element of recovery. For our respondents, the more time passed without support for everyone, the more fragmented the community became. David explained how feelings of frustration about the absence of support contributed to emotional exhaustion and tension in his community. The long wait eroded his community’s ability to be resilient. David explained,

From a community standpoint, you always feel like it’s strong. Everybody’s in the same boat, and everyone tends to pull together instead of pulling apart. The longer the event goes on, the less that tends to be the case. People start to get frustrated; people start to compete for resources like gas, generators, and food.

Some respondents also spoke of the loss of basic needs such as food and shelter, while others addressed the loss of life. Cameron lost his daughter to suicide several years before Hurricane Matthew, a wound he says he is still dealing with every day. He likens his experience to what many people affected by hazards will go through for years. As he explains,

For some of them, it won’t really heal. It’s like when I lost my daughter. Some people will lose people, they’ll lose precious things that bring memories, maybe they’ve lost all their photos. You just learn to get through it. You don’t get over it, you get through it.

Cameron’s words acknowledge that coming back stronger or bouncing in the face of tremendous loss, like the loss of life, is an infeasible and unfair expectation that neglects the multitude of tragedies the hazards brought.

Relentlessness toward normalcy

Participants described their constant drive toward normality, a moment that existed before the hurricanes. Respondents described difficulty in maintaining habits and traditions given the constantly changing environment. In some instances, residents spoke of creating new norms to survive, while others described pushing through emotionally turbulent times to maintain some form of normalcy. Arthur equated normality to freedom. He stated,

It’s discouraging and disorienting, but I think there’s a desire to get back to normalcy, to get back into whatever routine you had, and to have a normal day with normal interactions. I think it’s freedom: freedom of movement, the luxuries that we have here with clean water and plentiful food. When a natural disaster comes, your freedom is taken. I think that’s the biggest psychological challenge, is getting that back.

Darlene is an educator who spoke about the tremendous effort to foster normalcy by reopening schools after the hurricanes. Darlene expressed her pressures to support students representing low-socioeconomic and rural households. Darlene stated,

I know we need to return to normalcy as quickly as people. Schools opening on a full schedule provides a bit of normalcy. Schools are the hope of the community. I tried to get our schools opened in a safe and orderly manner as quickly as we possibly could. That is very tedious, time-consuming work ... We are an economically distressed county, especially with the impact of the hurricanes. One of the things we can provide in the school system is a caring environment. And a breakfast and lunch for the students. Our folks depend on us to take care of 2300 students from 7 am to 4 pm so they can go back to work and their lives.

Participants also described managing the psychological and emotional fallout from each successive storm more efficiently. With each hazard, participants recalled spending less and less time processing grief, loss, and trauma and more time focusing on regaining a sense of normalcy. DeShawna explained how people in her community were not afforded the opportunity to mourn. Further, their economic survival depends on returning to their routines as quickly as possible. She explained,

You can't really [mourn] if you’ve got a family. You need an income. You don’t have a choice. Really. You’ll find 95 percent of the people in this world are dependent on their livelihood. The minute our doors open, I’m back at work. I’m not taking off days to mourn the hurricane. You know you’ve got to bounce back ... It’s mandated by just life in general. I have to keep sending my kids to school. I can’t just say, “Oh, we had a hurricane here last year, we’re not recovered.”

When asked what a successful recovery looked like for their community, Colleen provided a dilemma for residents living in a similar place. Colleen stated, “Going back to normal. Some people can’t go back to normal.”

Anxiety and fear of future disasters

Although some participants believed their responses to hazards improved over time, others recognized that their abilities were limited. Respondents knew that another hurricane that impacted their community would be inevitable and that this imminent danger created great anxiety in their communities. Beatrice said that every instance of inclement weather brought up the traumas of past storms:

I think when storms come now, people get more anxious. You don’t remember hearing about people doing that. I would be in class sometimes, and we would have a bad storm, and you could just see some of the students start shaking. It was just an anxiety reaction.

Other participants feared what another major hazard would do to their communities. Abigail worried that a storm of the same magnitude as previous storms would wipe out local businesses. She stated, “I feel really bad for the town. I honestly don’t know how much more we could take, like if in another two years, we get another 500-year flood.”

Although the participants expressed fear of future storms, their strong attachment to their communities and the land kept them rooted. To them, the storms were just another part of life. Just as participants placed a value on keeping their families safe, they also valued living in an area intertwined with their family and previous generations. DeShawna stated:

Well, this is where your roots are. And you know we think about people that live in other parts of the country that are always hit with tornadoes or earthquakes, why did they stay there? I guess you can’t live your life worrying so much about, ‘Oh, we’re always at risk of flooding and hurricanes here in North Carolina.’ Your home’s in North Carolina, your family’s here, and everything that you know is here. Your friends are here. Those are things that you need in your life to kind of subsist. You can’t just pack up and go because you’re scared of another hurricane coming, and you don’t know when it’s going to come.

For the residents of this region, the fear is not stronger than the emotional bonds that tie them to the land and people. It explains how they adapt and learn to live with the danger.

Systemic changes needed for lasting resilience

Despite the numerous difficulties and losses participants experienced during the two hurricanes, they still spoke of a desire to be resilient. Given their experiences with the storms and the socioeconomic climate of their communities, our participants have come to define resilience as something achieved by long-term, systemic improvements to their local contexts. To become resilient after a storm, measures must be implemented before the storm to improve conditions on the ground and keep the local economy and local community from collapsing. Donte explained this rationale in this way: