The Landscape
Eastern Carteret County is a coastal region defined by its beauty, its isolation, and its fierce resilience. Over generations, tightly woven kinship networks have sustained life here. That closeness, rooted in deep bonding social capital, has helped these communities survive storms, economic shifts, and social change.
But surviving does not mean thriving. Underneath its justifiably proud culture, this place is also shaped by collective grief: the erosion of commercial fishing and related industries, the outmigration of people in search of opportunity and affordable housing, and the added strains brought by climate change, intergenerational trauma, and economic precarity. And layered on top were fractures between neighboring communities, particularly along racial and geographic lines, with a long, shared history of being overlooked or misunderstood by institutions “from off.”
Even naming the collective grief beneath the surface and its impacts above the surface was a challenge. Despite a suicide rate 50% greater than the state average and drug overdoses 200% greater than the state average, the topic of mental health was not just unspoken – discussing it was explicitly taboo.
When Hurricane Florence struck in 2018, followed closely by Hurricanes Michael and Dorian, the underlying socio-economic divides were laid bare, and the mental health challenges became even more visible. Yet the longstanding habit of relying almost exclusively on close-knit local and family connections made it difficult for these communities to connect with or trust those outside their community – at a time when outside aid was needed most. The existing social fabric, while strong, was stretched thin. At least five widely known deaths resulted as mental health plummeted. The community supports weren’t able to respond to this scale of need: not physically, not relationally, and not mentally.
In many ways, suffering in Eastern Carteret had become not only normalized, but almost revered – a kind of cultural glue. Endurance was a badge of belonging. Struggle was familiar, and those who shared it were trustworthy. Suffering was often left to God or buffered by relational norms that discouraged honest discussion. This wasn’t apathy; it was a survival response, passed down through generations who had learned to endure. But over time, the cost of not naming this collective suffering was adding up, as was apparent when, in late 2018, I seeded what would become an ongoing and evolving look at what lay beneath the surface.
The Invitation
My entry into community development work in eastern Carteret County NC came through an invitation (of sorts). My husband was the town manager of the area’s only municipality and someone with generational roots in the region. Our colleagues at the UNC School of Government were aware that he and I were discussing how to build better connections between Eastern Carteret communities and surfaced a potential opportunity for funding. I saw how that opportunity could support deepening connections between the 16 unincorporated areas and the town and reached out to local institutional and community leaders. Together, we co-created an initial grant proposal which went on to be fully funded by Z Smith Reynolds Foundation.
Eventually, I stepped into the role of project co-lead. It was not a clean or comfortable role – I was “from off,” connected to institutional power through marriage, and holding expertise among folks inclined to view expertise with suspicion. And ultimately, I was supporting an effort that threatened to surface pain and challenge long-held patterns of power. But in all this discomfort, I offered something the community needed: a persistent convener, skilled in facilitation, committed to building something that might encourage healing.
The Work
We didn’t need to form an organization. We needed a container – something light, flexible, and capable of holding difference without collapsing under it. We needed to create a space in which healing could take root. But to speak too openly about healing, or to suggest new ways of moving forward, could feel disloyal, or even dangerous. As pain had become a shared language, relief could be mistaken for erasure.
My role was to help shape a container that could allow this gradual healing to take root, without letting contextual forces and cultural entropy engulf it.
I co-designed the approach, facilitated early rhythms, helped the group start to surface what had long gone unspoken, and modeled trauma-aware facilitation. I brought in outside support to provide resilience education and build cross-cultural competency. I provided leadership development coaching for community members, ensuring locals were able to step into leadership for the latter half of this effort and into other positions throughout the community.
This wasn’t loud leadership. It was the kind that works in the background: observing, protecting, inviting, and listening. The kind that doesn’t need to be visible to be felt.
The Shifts
There were no grand announcements or institutional mandates during my tenure. But there were and continue to be signals that something took root.
Leaders began naming trauma, not as pathology, but as shared reality. Conversations slowed. People listened differently. There was more honesty, more nuance, more capacity to hold discomfort without breaking trust.
And perhaps most powerfully, new patterns of connection began to emerge – not in straight lines, but in spirals, overlaps, and unexpected partnerships.
Something has shifted in the way people see each other, and in what they now imagine might be possible. Individuals have taken their learning and stepped into positions of leadership. Salty and stoic community members are starting to explicitly name their collective traumas.
“Connections we make in ECC just spiral off in so many different directions and result in so many different things. And it’s not just connecting to work on a linear process. It flowers out in all different directions. I’ve definitely appreciated the value of the connections and connecting with people in different circles… I think that is more powerful than I ever acknowledged it can be.”
— ECC participant
Throughout my engagement with this effort, my attention was on equipping community leaders to do the type of work I had done – to see the complexity and lean into it with systems thinking, empathy, and skill.
Being able to time when and how to hand off so that others can step up and into the lead is tricky. It was imperative that I left the project early enough for it to take on a life of its own. But the temptation to stay long enough to see what I planted bear obvious fruit was great. How can I tell if my effort was worth it?
Well, I’ve heard tell that the phrase “mental health” has been stated in a public forum where it was once taboo. That salty characters are starting to embrace the notion of trauma. And there was a recent invitation to engage Black commercial fishermen in a panel discussion held within a community that previously self-proclaimed itself a “sundown town.”
But for me personally, a particularly satisfying success indicator is hearing my co-leads share how much they learned through our work together and observing how they apply what they’ve learned in subsequent community engagement efforts.
For example, my co-lead Justin Wallace brought ECC into relationship with Coastal Carolina Riverwatch, with the North River Community Resiliency Project. And my co-lead Barbara Garrity-Blake has fostered network leadership development among NC commercial fishermen.
The Learning
It’s not just within Eastern Carteret where growth took place. Even though I entered into this effort as a seasoned leader and facilitator of collaboration, this experience gave me a chance to grow, too.
I’ve worked in complex systems for years. I know how to attune to what’s below the surface. But this work showed me viscerally just how intelligent and ferocious collective defense can be. (To be clear, the emotional snarls weren’t dysfunction. They were survival.)
Even when you bring presence with care, it can still be received as threat. That doesn’t mean the work shouldn’t happen. It means the system is speaking. My job was not to enable unhealthy community patterns or seek my own acceptance, but to focus on supporting the emergence of a shared container, working with respect, and offering what was needed, without demanding to be received. At times this meant consciously and explicitly running against the grain in ways that challenged my own sense of belonging.
But ultimately, standing up tall and offering another way of being in community attracted those who also sought something more – who wanted to help their communities heal. And in that space, I felt not only like I belonged, but the opportunity for us all to thrive. I am grateful to the people of ECC – for helping me learn lessons and for being willing to learn from me.
