“Now I know what it feels like to be a refugee,” my sister Jane said. She’s been forced from her home in Weaverville, North Carolina. Her house, which she thoughtfully designed and moved into in 2022, was spared Hurricane Helene’s flood waters, but the storm knocked out electricity, water and cell service for an indeterminate period of time. Residents were advised to evacuate. My sister drove a winding and mottled path, around washed out, hilly roads as segments of the highway were impassible. She found refuge at the home of a friend who offered a place to stay with warm showers and functioning toilets.

Jane was drawn to the beauty of western North Carolina decades ago. Settling in Asheville provided robust entrepreneurial opportunities, quality schools for her sons, and an emergent arts and culture scene. Asheville was considered a climate haven. Today, Asheville is caked in mud. Receding floodwaters reveal a landscape ravaged by the once calm French Broad River.

“Our home has flooded and we’ve lost our apiary,” read the message on my cousin’s Go Fund Me page. His home, in a bucolic town just outside Nysa, Poland, was flooded when Storm Boris swept through Central Europe in mid-September. Photos accompanying the request for assistance show the interior of a modern, airy home, with furniture and housewares floating in brown water. My cousin is a beekeeper. His carefully tended hives are toppled and scattered in mud, devastated by the swollen Klodzka River.

Storm Boris brought record heavy rainfall to Central Europe, flooding areas in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. My Poland-based cousins are gathering funds to help our family near Nysa. I, too, made a donation even though I have not met this particular cousin. His father was my mother’s eldest brother who, as a teenager, managed to escape the Germans who snapped him up from the road in Radgoszcz — as the Germans did in WWII actions called “Lapanki” — to deport him to Germany as a Forced Laborer. (I will share the story of his brave escape another time.)

My father’s family lives in Prudnik, Poland, which lies sixteen miles west of Nysa, on the Czech Border. The New York Times showed drone film footage of flooding in tiny, quaint Prudnik. I thought, “I know this place. I’ve walked here. My family lives here.”

The scene of the cemetery where my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are buried —  including my beloved Uncle Czeslaw, a Carpathian mountaineer, who died in February at age 94 — under water broke my heart. I’ve walked along those graves to place flowers or light a candle. My family didn’t exactly “choose” Prudnik. My father’s parents settled in Western Ukraine, near Lwow (Lviv) in the 1920s when it was part of Poland. They were forced to evacuate at the end of WWII, as borders shifted and their region was absorbed into the U.S.S.R.

Vermont experienced devastating floods in 2023 and 2024. Friends in Central Vermont lost part of their back yard when the normally calm stream on their property ballooned to a torrent, tearing away part of their lawn. Images of a mud-caked Montpelier, streets lined with dumpsters, populate my mind’s eye. Montpelier residents are still waiting for the restoration of a fully functioning post office after the North Branch River flooded downtown in July 2023. Vermont was considered a climate haven.

Here in Krakow, I walk along the Vistula River past the Wawel Palace each day. The river jumped its banks in September but, fortunately, waters did not reach the city’s medieval core.

I cannot imagine. But then, I can. History repeats.

My maternal grandparents were forced to seek refuge for themselves and their children in an unheated attic in Sutkow, a neighboring village, when German soldiers occupied their home. (It’s worth noting the cruelty of the Germans: they booby-trapped the home with grenades before leaving.) Borders shifted at Yalta, forcing my paternal grandparents to become refugees, abandoning the home my grandfather designed and built overlooking the Bieszczady Mountains. They traveled via cattle car, with their children, to find a home in the resettlement area of Silesia and landed in Prudnik. My father arrived in the U.S. in 1949 as a WWII refugee, with one suitcase and hope for a better life. My mother arrived in the U.S. in 1959 with one suitcase, leaving behind her beloved parents and a life limited by a corrupt communist system.

Where do I find HOPE amid these climate uncertainties? I think of my ancestors and their resilience. I also think of several young people I know of who are contributing their intellect and talents to unraveling climate change’s emergent challenges — in atmospheric physics, in applying space science to create computer models to anticipate climate impacts on infectious disease transmission and in promoting consumptive alternatives to how we live our lives. I also think of young people creating music, art, prose and poetry that bring joy. Learning to find joy amid uncertainty is key.

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