Hurricane Katrina: How Tragedy Shaped My Creativity

I was in sixth grade when Hurricane Katrina hit. I had just started at a new school, joined the dance team, and begun to make new friends. Within days, all of that was swept away.

In the eyes of a child, reality feels permanent. Your house will always be there. Your school will always be there. Your friends will always be there. But Katrina shattered that illusion in an instant. The history I thought I was building — the community I thought I belonged to — disappeared overnight. At an age when my world should have been about routines and small beginnings, I was forced to create a new reality from scratch.

We ended up in Natchez, Mississippi. At first, it felt like exile. But slowly, it became a lifeline. That school prioritized the arts in ways I had never experienced before. I sat at a piano for the first time in music class. I danced in a studio small enough for everyone to be seen, where kindness was stitched into the walls. And even on the softball field — where our team lost every single game — I learned the essence of resilience. You keep showing up, even when the odds are stacked against you.

At the same time, I was traveling back to New Orleans every other weekend to visit my father. That dual reality shaped me. Mississippi gave me possibility; New Orleans showed me devastation. FEMA trailers lined the streets. Homes sat gutted and broken. Friends and neighbors were gone. The refrain I heard most often was, “I’m not coming back.”

But my block told a different story. Every family on my street did come back. Even those whose houses were destroyed found a way to rebuild. That was a blessing, and I don’t take it lightly. But I also knew that wasn’t true everywhere. Many people never returned, and the city has never been the same.

What did return — slowly, unevenly — was culture. Over time, you could feel the city’s heartbeat growing louder again. Music spilling from porches, murals covering walls, theater groups creating in borrowed spaces. New Orleans has always been a cultural hub, but after Katrina, it felt different. There was urgency. Appreciation. People held tighter to the small rituals of everyday life. Creativity wasn’t extra anymore; it was survival.

That shift happened in me, too. Before Katrina, dance and music had felt like activities — things you did because they were on the schedule. After Katrina, they became lifelines. They were the only way I knew to process grief and fear, the only way I could release what I didn’t have words for. And when I came home for good, the city met me with opportunities to keep expressing. I found myself pulled into after-school rehearsals at NOCCA, into community theater productions, into the swirl of New Orleans’ music and even its film scene. At the time, it didn’t feel like a career path — it felt like breathing. It felt like the only way forward.

Those experiences — the piano keys, the dance floors, the late nights at rehearsals — became the foundation of my creative life. They weren’t about achievement; they were about survival and belonging. They taught me that art isn’t just something you create for show. It’s something you lean on when everything else is stripped away.

Twenty years later, Katrina still shapes how I see myself as a creative. It showed me that tragedy can clear space for new beginnings, that communities can bloom again even after devastation, and that sometimes the most powerful art grows out of grief. New Orleans could have given up. I could have given up. But instead, both of us rebuilt — not the same as before, but alive, resilient, and creating.