This piece is being published in collaboration with Truthout.
Like millions of Texans who lost power and water for days during last year’s Winter Storm Uri, Houston native and writer Willow Curry found herself making preparations ahead of last week’s freeze. She filled up containers with water and stocked up on non-perishable foods—hard lessons learned from last year’s statewide blackout, which led to at least 246 deaths, and perhaps as many as 700.
Curry grew up in the city’s historically Black Kashmere Gardens neighborhood, whose residents have contracted cancer at disproportionate rates due to industrial rail-related creosote contamination. Curry, who was rescued alongside her two aunts from Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters in 2017, told Truthout and the Texas Observer that her experiences of prior climate-related traumas, including Harvey and Uri, heightened her sense of anxiety ahead of the recent freeze, especially as someone suffering from a neurological conversion disorder that manifests as diagnosed dystonia—her body’s response to the complex trauma of losing both her parents from cancer at a young age.
