Like so many people, I have a deep and personal connection to Asheville, North Carolina, a once-sleepy mountain town grown into an artists’ enclave and vacation haven for people weary of bright lights and big cities.

I grew up 63 miles south of the town of 95,000 in the also once-sleepy berg of Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which in recent decades, began developing into its own grown-up artsy city and destination.

I spent my childhood taking Sunday drives with my family to mountain spots north of Greenville, to Chimney Rock and Brevard, to Asheville and Hendersonville, to Table Rock, Pretty Place and Paris Mountain. At some point, I lived in Boone deep in the mountains west and north of Asheville. I attended Appalachian State University for a year. I worked with my mother at Blowing Rock Hospital eight miles from Boone.

My best memories are from the sensorial days of childhood, tripping along rocks in cold mountain creeks, riding in the family station wagon along winding roads with the windows open and the mountain wind in my hair, breathing in the scent of mountain laurel heavy in the air.

My memories are also recent; as an adult, I often visited the area with my husband and children. During our visits, we drove along the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and Asheville's River Arts District, and strolled the town's eclectic night scene. We saw a jazz band at the Orange Peel, stayed at downtown hotels, had meals and beers with local friends at trendy places like the Laughing Seed restaurant.

We decided Asheville is us. The Blue Ridge mountains are in and of my family’s blood, literally; my children and I have North Carolina Cherokee in our lineage. As for Asheville in particular, we felt a strong affinity for this quirky town in the mountains with its temperate climate and laid-back hippie style, a community of people designated by one travel writer a “mountain haven with a funky soul.” My kids and I as recently as a few months ago talked about packing up sometime in the future and moving from Ohio to the Asheville area.

And now I can’t fathom what I’m seeing in the wake of Helene. The Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, then followed an unusual 500-mile path north to brutalize the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee, leaving 4.5 million homes without power, and killing 227 at last count, the majority of them in North Carolina.

In fact, no place was more affected than western North Carolina, no more prepared for a hurricane than Idaho.

I have experienced hurricanes. We all are aware of hurricanes now, the preponderance and severity of which scientists attribute in great part to climate change. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are hotter this year than ever before in recorded history, a phenomenon scientists blame on human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This contributes to greater rainfall, warmer winds and more hurricanes with greater intensity.

I personally was directly affected by Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Hugo in South Carolina in 1989. I was a journalist living with my husband and infant in Columbia when Hugo made a direct hit 100 miles away north of Charleston. As for Katrina, the storm gutted the house I inherited in New Orleans with my sisters when our mother died just four months before.

I know the fear and uncertainty of waiting for a hurricane while wanting to believe the best, while deciding whether to evacuate or just board up the windows. I know the stress after the worst has happened, deciding whether and how to rebuild while needing to get on with jobs and children and survival.

I know the heartbreak of seeing things and places I love, destroyed. I know hurricane trauma for myself and for my sister, who still lives in New Orleans, who feels the post-traumatic stress of Katrina year after year as hurricane season approaches. I have seen her worry over whether to evacuate time and time again. I have also seen economically challenged people not evacuate because they had no means, only to be ostracized for not leaving town. I have witnessed the politics.

It’s one thing to experience a hurricane in a coastal region. It’s another for hurricane-force winds and torrential rain to move through a mountain region.

“When you get a really extreme rainfall in mountainous regions, you see flooding, you see the potential for landslides,” Antonia Sebastian, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences told ABC News. “You see a lot more road washouts than you might in a coastal area with the same kind of storm. That's that elevation component. The topography component really adds to the severity of the flooding that people experience.”

I think of the people affected by Helene, including relatives in my hometown, including friends in Asheville, many of whom relocated to the city to find a gentler way of life. They include my old newspaper friend Anne who left Chicago and a thriving law business a decade ago, along with her husband, who left his stressful job on the stock exchange, to move to a cabin on a piece of land in Flat Rock, 30 miles south of Asheville. Anne has a horse, Isis, there, and neighbors who raise goats.

As Helene was headed north, a creek was rising on Anne and Rodger’s property. They moved to a motel so Anne could try to keep working at her current job settling disability cases. Cell service has been spotty, but the last I heard, Anne had just gotten word that her horse was safe and that power had been restored at her house. “I hate to complain," Anne said. "But this is so stressful. I’m exhausted.”

Anne and Rodger have been “lucky,” as have been other friends and relatives who “only” lost power and water for a few days, and in a few cases, trees. Others in Helene’s path, as we know, are missing houses, cars, neighborhoods, neighbors. We see footage of bridges washing away in the mountains while residents film the destruction, whole houses floating down rivers, a four-mile section of Interstate 40, broken.

More than a week out now, as would be expected, people continue to live without running water and cell phone service. Some 1.1 million people across the Southeast still have no way to light or cool their homes. Rescue and recovery teams are on the ground, but people are still missing. The federal government's emergency relief department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being accused of not moving fast enough, and worse, of diverting emergency funds.

FEMA has defended its services, reporting on its web site that federal relief to the region to date had surpassed $137 million. FEMA reports that 7,000 personnel from across the federal workforce have been deployed and that 15 million meals, 14 million liters of water, 157 generators and more than half a million tarps have been delivered to the region.

We hear of restoration efforts by the government. We also hear about restoration efforts from the trenches: A group of nurses from a neighboring county transports supplies and medical help on horseback to places too difficult to reach otherwise. A group on mules called the Mountain Mule Packers does the same. An Asheville retailer whose furniture store flooded put his salvageable stock on the street and told people to come get it. Reports of people wading into water to save other people and animals are widespread as are free food giveaways.

“The ramen place a few blocks up was cooking everything in their kitchen and handing it out for free for hours. The dive bar down the road had become a medic tent, run by folks in the neighborhood who offered everything, including the last Band-Aids in their pantries,” wrote USA Today writer Casey Blake who lives in Asheville.

I recall this with Hugo. After we recovered from the shock, good people began helping good people until South Carolina was South Carolina again.

This, too, is the story.

Just as Asheville began decades ago reinventing itself to become a charming refuge for residents and tourists alike, so is Asheville putting itself together again.

“It has actually been really inspiring here, like a big old snow day,” my friend, Asheville resident and longtime activist Leslie Abbott, posted on her Facebook page. “So much neighborliness, creativity, generosity of spirit, time and resources. I am inspired and grateful.”

As the hard work of restoration continues, may our government, including our policy-makers, find the wisdom and the resources to do its part from front to back.

May the outpouring of personal love and care eventually become greater than the storm.

May we all send our thoughts with blessings and care to Asheville and to all who suffered the ravages of Helene.

Donations for Asheville recovery efforts may be sent to:

BeLoved Asheville

Samaritan’s Purse

Asheville Dream Center

MANNA Food Bank

Operation Airdrop

Global Empowerment Mission

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue

Asheville Humane Society

Forsyth Humane

World Central Kitchen

Baptists on Mission

Hope Mill, Inc.

JAARS

Hearts With Hands

Haywood Christian Ministry

Diaper Bank: Babies Need Bottoms

Foothills Food Hub

Partnership For Appalachian Girls’ Education (PAGE)

Community Housing Coalition Of Madison County

United Way Of Asheville & Buncombe County

Wine to Water

Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry

Homeward Bound WNC

Mountain Projects

WNC Regional Livestock Center

American Red Cross Of North Carolina

Americares Emergency Response Team

Salvation Army Of The Carolinas

North Carolina Community Foundation

Foster Family Alliance Of North Carolina

Team Rubicon

Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+)

Water Mission

Mercy Chefs

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