As families affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the surrounding areas continue to regroup, HSLDA is continuing to award Compassion Grants to those that need assistance to keep homeschooling. Below is the story of one of these families.
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Alecia English and her family live in a modest home at the top of a hill about 20 minutes north of Asheville in North Carolina, a place they thought was safe from extreme weather events. But the psychological toll of living through Helene and the physical destruction of their community around them changed that perception forever, even if they escaped with their home intact.
“It was hard to sleep, not knowing how I was going to take care of my children,” Alecia said of the weeks following the storm. “I would wake up in a panic over and over throughout the night.”
They suffered many damages to their way of life less dramatic than losing a home or a loved one, but still significant, such as the inability to rely on local grocery stores for medically necessary food, a frightening waiting period to obtain the gas they needed to evacuate, and the difficulty of returning to work as everyone else was cleaning up and repairing the physical damage.
“Survivor’s guilt is part of the landscape that we’re still dealing with too,” she said. “How did this happen? We’re still just confused—How did this happen?”
Alecia and her husband, Justin, homeschool their four children: Ruth, 16, Henry, 12, George, 10, and Magnus, 7. They are just one of the families HSLDA assisted with a Compassion Grant in the wake of Helene to ensure they’re able to continue homeschooling.
They used the money to pay for a testing service, which both fulfills a legal requirement for homeschooling in North Carolina and helps Alecia assess where her kids are in order to map out the best plan for them the following year. She finds it particularly helpful in designing a plan for Magnus, who has a catastrophic form of epilepsy that can be fatal if left untreated.