Joplin, Missouri is located just shy of 300 miles southwest of St. Louis. Down in the lower left corner of the state by Kansas and Oklahoma. Population roughly 50,000. And on May 22, it was the location of what can be considered the worst tornado since we started keeping records about that kind of stuff. Touching down over a stretch of land a mile wide and seven miles long, the tornado demolished 9,000 homes and claimed 159 lives.
When I visited the town seven weeks after the disaster, I expected to see pretty much what I saw. Total devastation. Spaces that used to be homes but instead were wooden shreds. I didn't quite expect the trees, the haunting trees that were still standing but almost all of their leaves and branches were ripped off, leaving them bare and out of place in the full summer foliage. The feeling I got from the wreckage reminded me of Port-au-Prince six months after the quake or even the deathly stillness of the 9th Ward in New Orleans three years after Katrina. A terrible, terrible thing had happened and people simply needed a moment or two to collect themselves.
There were some incredible stories of heroes - some supernatural, some not. In the local Pizza Hut, everyone had been trying to cram in the walk-in freezer as the sirens were going off and there was enough room for all but one person. A brave man stepped out from behind the door and held the latch shut, keeping the others safe inside. He was the only casualty from that restaurant. In a house not far from there, a father threw himself on top of his two little daughters as the tornado passed by. After they all made it through the storm, the two girls said, "Daddy, Daddy, did you see the big butterfly that was holding us down during the tornado?"
Even in the midst of all the darkness and pain, there were angels. There was hope. There was a sense of acceptance and solidarity that can only come from such a shared experience.
My trip to Joplin, as heartbreaking and emotional as it was, will - I believe - be a pivotal moment in my story. It was there that I found freedom. Freedom from things that have stuck with me and drug me down over a period of years, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from a past I could not shake.
Do you know how good freedom feels?
In my quest to figure out why I moved to St. Louis, I can say with confidence that Joplin, Missouri is pretty darn near the top of my list.
