{"id":4266,"date":"2021-09-04T17:49:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-04T21:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/?p=4266"},"modified":"2026-08-07T16:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:50:16","slug":"the-sound-of-thunderstorms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/the-sound-of-thunderstorms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sound Of Thunderstorms"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-pm-slice=\"1 1 []\" data-en-clipboard=\"true\">I don\u2019t like looking back. Once we have learned the lessons of the past, it is best to let it go, be in the present, and create your future. Getting stuck in our stories is detrimental at best. But I noticed something that might well deserve a catalog of the past &#8211; thunderstorms. The sound of thunderstorms have mirrored the nature of my life since the day I was born. The sky became the backdrop of my life in caricature, played upon by the storms as they came, violent or gentle, discordant or sweet, acting out the feelings of my life stages as I experienced each stage on the ground below.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Induced a week early, I was encouraged into the world. Ever since that day, I tend to do everything a bit younger than most. I realize that doesn\u2019t bode well for my end, but I am sincerely trying to hold that off as long as possible. The night was clear enough to see a rare conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the dark and quiet sky. I went home to a mom and dad, an older sister of just 20 months, and a dresser drawer that would be my bed for the next few months. They promise they never shut the drawer. Sometimes I wonder, given how much I like to be cocooned as I listen to the rain play echos on the roof.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At three months old, I was a solid sleeper. Nothing could wake me, not even a tornado and a screaming toddler. Our home was a trailer perched on a hill amid a large piece of land, just north of the Alabama-Tennessee border where a local farmer was kind enough to rent us the space to park. From that hill, you could see the surrounding land rise and fall. It must have been a great view. The storms set in that day in an unusual way. Asleep in my dresser drawer, I was oblivious to the scene that played out around me. My parents watched the tornado touch down, driving towards our trailer, over the land and seemingly on a mission for us in particular. They scooped me from the drawer and laid me in the bottom of the bathtub, rain falling on the roof. They laid my sister of almost two years old next to me. She was now screaming in terror right next to my head. My mother crouched over the top of us both to protect us, and dad on top of us all to shield us. My sister screaming, the trailer rocking, rain beating down, me fast asleep and my parents watching out the bathroom window as the tornado approached. It topped the next hill over, about a hundred yards away, when it simply stopped, as if held back by the hand of God himself and dissipated into the air. Crisis averted, I was laid back into my dresser drawer to enjoy the rest of the storm, having never once awoken. Thunderstorms have always made me feel safe, and watched over. Maybe this is why.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We moved into a brick house straight away, and three years later, moved again into the first house I would remember in detail. The house in Orlando, Florida is where I would spend from three years old until I left for college at seventeen. It was a one story ranch, typical of central Florida, with orange trees in the front yard, a small rock garden with a half wall, and a back yard that seemed huge to me, full of oak trees dangling with Spanish moss. The yard was all thick-bladed Saint Augustine grass. From three years old, I would sit in the grass, or in the rock garden, losing track of time, eyes closed, feeling the grass on my toes, feeling the breeze, and listening to the wind move though the trees. I have no idea how I was not covered in bug bites. Nap time, a ritual I always protested, coincided with the daily convection storms. I would lay in my bed, looking up through the blinds above my head, and watch as the storms passed. These are the first thunderstorms I can remember. The storms were ever-present; a recurring visitor bringing a combination of fear as the thunder rattled the windows and lightening lit up the dark clouds, and a sense of awe and protection as the rain seemed to keep anything harmful away.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>My life growing up was just exactly that combination of feelings: awe, protection and fear. I found so much awe in the raw natural world, protection in my home and family, and fear from my seemingly complete inability to understand others. I was often in trouble. I never understood why. It was easier to play by myself, hidden away in my closet or in my room, free to get lost in my own world, than to interact with anyone else. They thought I was a strange child. They were right. After school, before my parents got home, most kids might watch TV or meet up with friends. I would meditate in the backyard or in my room. I didn\u2019t know that was what I was doing. I just wanted to be at peace, because I never was. Just like the thunderstorms, the very things that made me feel protected, made me feel afraid.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The thunderstorms, once I was older, became consolation. Thunder rolling in felt like God himself coming to offer presence and comfort. There always was, however, a bit of dark foreshadowing in those storms. Something comforting, and something disquieting. Such was the nature of my closest relationships back then &#8211; something good, and something not at all right.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Whatever you grow up with, you will assume that everyone grows up with the same situation. You will benchmark it as normal and acceptable. We all do. But my life growing up was, as is yours and everyone else\u2019s, so not normal. It was privileged, easy and joyous in some ways, while challenging and tragic in others. The tragic and challenging stuff was all on the inside, behind walls and doors, inside journal pages and closets. I guess that\u2019s why I don\u2019t like to look back, and I much prefer the outdoors. We all have our challenges, and tragedies, and our triumphs and joys. Making meaning of it all, and consciously creating more love than fear is what it\u2019s all about. For me, the thunderstorms were an escape. They were a sound scape so three dimensional that I could crawl inside them and let them carry me overhead of everything hard, for a little while.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I left home at seventeen to go to college, in the middle of the summer, in Gainesville, Florida. The daily afternoon thunderstorms in Gainesville made my head hurt. They were in and out of my awareness, soaking me as I walked home from campus, umbrella or not. They seemed to rage sometimes, and sometimes felt weak. They oscillated between the threat of tornadoes and rain-only presentations seemingly lacking for much in the way of intention. And so was my life. It was plenty active, and plenty interesting but doused of any fire, blanketed in overseers who oscillated themselves between the threat of drama and a serious lack of action.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Graduate school took me to a new apartment, my first marriage and my first child. The bedroom window, and big sliding glass doors in the living room all looked out over a deeply forested area, covered in kudzu vines and ferns. When the thunderstorms came, as they often did, it looked like a rainforest. I could stare at it for hours. It was a peaceful place when it rained. I was otherwise head down and focused on the nonstop work of graduate school and new motherhood. Busy was good back then.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>My last year of graduate school saw us move to yet another apartment, this one on the third floor with the biggest view of sky you have ever seen. As storms approached, I could watch rotation begin in the clouds. The threat of tornadoes seemed even more present here. When I was inside with then doors closed, I couldn\u2019t hear the storms at all. It was a perfect analogy for my situation: busy and happily oblivious to the growing problems all around.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>After grad school it was off to a professorship in Cincinnati, Ohio. My house was as far away from town as I was from myself back then. I don\u2019t actually remember any thunderstorms at all, although they must have been there. I do remember lots of snow, and the arrival of my second child. Existential cracks began to show around this time that lead me to a new career in Washington, DC.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I was in a townhome for less than a year and then into another house. If I thought I was busy before, I had no idea. The world of defense technology is all encompassing. It\u2019s a lifestyle. Years flew by, and I can\u2019t remember a single thunderstorm. It seems that the farther away I am from myself, the less connected I am to the storms. They are somehow part of me, here to reflect the present state of my world, as confirmation, or as warning. I didn\u2019t notice the thunderstorms again until awakening turned to the kind of breakthrough that feels like breaking down and I found myself blissfully and intimidatingly on my own. Freedom felt amazing. My little apartment had a French door out to a little covered balcony overlooking a massive oak tree. Sometimes I would watch the thunderstorms from my living room, with the french door open so I could hear the thunder roll closer. I would sit on my little sofa and meditate on the sound, carried away again over all the hard stuff for a little while. This was my own personal ashram where I would find myself again. I painted, journaled, read books, made a hundred mistakes and figured out some pretty important stuff. The thunderstorms were there with me though it all, strong and assured, comforting yet stark in their realization.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>When self discovery had brought me to a better place, I found love again and moved to the small Virginia town of Purcellville. The house was large, old and heavy with stone. It felt grounded and safe and peaceful. Here, I raised my children and the thunderstorms presented themselves while I rested in our bedroom with windows on three sides. The storms felt safe again, and strong with an openness that spoke of possibilities. That was life for me there. Evolution towards my truth was swift and fully supported. Life became art and music and love and discovery. Our backyard was a sanctuary where I communed often with the trees and birds, and our dogs.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But time moves on and children grow up and makes lives for themselves. It was time to move on. We sold the house and moved into a nearby apartment in Leesburg, Virginia for just a few months. I grieved the end of my child-focused days, and the end of that phase of life. It was a strange grief that was part joy, part sadness, part openness and part uncertainty. Thunderstorms sounded different here. They were metallic and harsh and mechanical and strange. They didn\u2019t feel organic. That should have been a warning.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>With a lust for travel and freedom we bought a tour bus and spent a year on the road. The giant metal bus gave the thunderstorms another kind of sound entirely. I liked the muted echo of rain on the roof. Lightening was so much more present there where there was so much less roof to shield me. Overall, the storms felt adventurous, and a little scary, no matter where we were parked. It was a challenging time. We had sold or given away everything to find out who we really were and what was really important to us. It worked and quickly. It was time to find home.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We drove to Florida and began an exhaustive search for home. With lots of research and even more intuition, we found the town and the house that was meant for us and we settled down. It was within this sweet space that I noticed, at last, how the thunderstorms have been guiding me all along.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The thunderstorms have always been the external expression of my internal reality, if only I am willing to listen. Today, enveloped in the first place that really felt like home to me, the thunderstorms come almost daily. They are gentle, periodically exciting, never threatening, they provide so much rain like nourishment but never more than the ground can quickly use. They are refreshing, and somehow feel light to me, despite their impressive volume of water. They are predictable, and I am rarely caught in the deluge, but when I am, it\u2019s fun. Sometimes I dance, barefoot and free in the rain as it comes down. To let the rain wash over you is to know a kind of clean that goes straight down to your soul. The sound of thunderstorms, for me, is the sound of my own divine nature come to keep me close. They are as much a guide as the angels themselves, for nature is God experiencing itself. In being with the thunderstorms, I am one with my divine self. In being, I AM.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A personal memoir essay using thunderstorms as a recurring motif to recount the author&#8217;s early childhood\u2014her birth, a near-miss tornado, and formative years in Florida\u2014and how storms came to feel like safety and being watched over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[44,1419,864,540,1625,1926,1781,357,1005,1003,1481,944,934,1454,1460,1002,43,1929,1927,865,371,879,354,1006,355,1004,372,358,1589,1928],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary","tag-art","tag-business","tag-complete-connection","tag-connection","tag-consciousness","tag-consciousness-mastery","tag-couples","tag-cycle","tag-cycle-of-human-development","tag-finding-peace","tag-global-peace","tag-human-development","tag-kathryn-colleen","tag-lasting-peace","tag-lastingpeace-org","tag-life-optimization","tag-music","tag-personal","tag-podcasts","tag-purna-asatti","tag-religion","tag-roadmap","tag-seeing-yourself","tag-self-mastery","tag-self-development","tag-self-improvement","tag-spirituality","tag-stages","tag-understanding-people","tag-writing"],"acf":{"recommend_blurb":"For readers who enjoy reflective memoir, this lyrical essay weaves childhood memory and weather into a meditation on safety and belonging. A quiet, personal read rather than a how-to.","citation_snippet":"Dr. Kathryn Messegee (Kathryn Colleen), \"The Sound Of Thunderstorms,\" https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/the-sound-of-thunderstorms\/","topics":["essays"],"related_book":"","buy_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7431,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions\/7431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}