“The rain did not start gradually,” writes Suzanne Jones. “[It began] like a faucet turned all the way on high, soaking Pam, me, the swing set, and the whole yard with water.”
With these words, Jones describes the beginning of her family’s four-year odyssey to withstand the damage of Hurricane Agnes and secure new housing. After the hurricane triggers a devastating flood, the family’s home and business are destroyed. Yet even as the Jones family is forced to live in a government-supplied trailer, Suzanne and her siblings look back on the experience fondly. It’s this dichotomy between the adults’ and childrens’ understanding of the events that prompted Jones to write From the Flood.
With her personal experience as a trauma recovery specialist, Jones takes a shrewd look at the events of 1972 and put together the pieces of her family’s different experiences. Read our full review of From the Flood here, and keep reading as Jones discusses what went into chronicling her family’s journey.
Q: What inspired you to document your experiences into a book?
A: The first spark of inspiration for the memoir was way back in 2012 after the earthquake in Haiti. I had met Steve Gross, a colleague in the field that works across the globe training community leaders how to help children recover from the devastation of natural disasters using play. That was when I reflected on my own personal experience of losing everything to a natural disaster as a kid. I realized that my siblings and I naturally used play after the flood to help us. Of course we weren’t aware of it at the time, but every game of house or make believe involved some sort of natural disaster, whether it was a flood or a tornado (our two favorites!). Finally a few years after that my Dad asked my sister, brother and I what were our best childhood memories. When we unanimously told him it was the years we had to live in a government issued trailer after the flood destroyed everything we had his jaw practically dropped to the floor. Those were the absolute worst years of his life. That’s when I knew there was a story to tell.
Q: You’ve described how your perception of the events differed for you as a child from your parents. While writing your memoir, did you find that there were important pieces of information that you had forgotten, or that a child simply would not have noticed, given their age?
A: Absolutely! I spent hours and hours with my parents, listening to their stories and their experiences so that I could get an accurate timeline and gain a clear understanding of our experience as a family through the flood. My sister also shared her memories, and while she was also still just a kid she remembered things that I did not. But the conversations with my parents was critical, because I really wanted to juxtapose what they were going through with what we were experiencing as kids. I needed to understand the experience they were going through and all the emotions that came with that experience.
Q: What part of the story would you say was the most challenging to write?
A: The hardest part without a doubt was getting the sequence of events and the timeline correct. As a kid you don’t really remember things in linear time, childhood memories are more like snapshots and feelings. I had to understand when it started raining, how long it rained for, when the river crested, when the evacuation occured, what exactly happened in the days and weeks following the evacuation and how long we stayed at each place. My parents were so helpful with all of that. When you go through something like that as an adult, you remember everything.
Q: How did your work as a trauma recovery specialist inform your process of writing this book? And how did it color your experience of recounting your own memories of the event?
A: I think my expertise informed the writing in a couple of different ways. First, I really recognized that we (all the kids) actually thrived through these years because of the choices my parents made. They shielded us from images of the disaster, they let us be kids and gave us a certain degree of freedom to play and feel like we were on a great adventure. The book illustrates how given the right environment, kids can thrive through adversity — especially if they feel safe and loved, which we did. Second, I know that the sensory aspects of traumatic experiences are the way in which we remember those experiences, so I really wanted to help readers understand that. The smell of the mud, for example, is something no one who has been through that flood will forget. I had to sort of re-live things as I was writing so that I could really help the reader feel like they were there.
Q: What are you hoping readers will take away from this book?
A: Well first, anyone who was a kid in the 70’s will feel very nostalgic reading this book, regardless of being in a flood! It was so fun to remember the things we played with like big wheels and Barbies, but also things that were seared into my memory like the Dorothy Hamill hair craze. New stories that kids don’t understand but remember like Patty Hearst and the Manson Family are also in there.
Second, I really wanted readers to learn from this story that really difficult and devastating things can also uncover gifts that wouldn’t be there if not for the experience. The flood was the worst thing my parents ever had to go through, but I’m sure they never could have foreseen that living in the trailer and meeting the people we met there would change their lives (and ours) forever. My mom especially experienced an incredible transformation, it’s something that wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been in those trailers.
Finally, I really wanted readers to rediscover the joy of childhood. We were able to make a game of everything! Especially in this age of COVID-19, I want readers to know that kids can thrive if you allow them to be kids and surround them with adults who are mindful of what they expose them to—including their own anxiety.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I’ve started writing a novel. I think it’s time to try my hand at fiction, though the book is definitely inspired by true events. Having written two non-fiction books I often have to remind myself that I can just let my imagination run wild. It’s both freeing and a little daunting.
About Suzanne Jones:
Suzanne Jones is an expert in the field of trauma recovery through somatic methods. She has presented workshops and talks at Omega Institute, Kripalu, mental and behavioral health facilities in the greater Boston area, and national conferences. She has been profiled on CNN and in Yoga Journal, the New York Times, Shape, and Whole Living, and she’s been interviewed by author Rick Hanson for his Foundations of Well-Being online course.
Jones founded the TIMBo Collective (formerly called yogaHOPE) in 2006 and developed the TIMBo program for transforming trauma in 2009. Since its launch, her program has been delivered to over four thousand women in the U.S., Haiti, Kenya, and Iran and helped transform client care at organizations in Massachusetts; Washington, DC; and Georgia, serving women overcoming homelessness, addiction, and domestic violence.
Jones also writes a blog for the TIMBo Collective and Elephant Journal. There Is Nothing to Fix was her first book, followed by From the Flood.
