Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

In the Wake of Hurricanes: Helpers, Heroes, and Heartache

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 7 • Episode 56

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Hurricane Heartache to Helper Hero: Unveiling the Strength Within Your Community

Feeling battered by the news cycle of extreme weather? This episode of Living Lucky® with Jason & Jana Banana is your beacon of hope! We're diving deep into the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the path of Hurricane Milton, uncovering the heartwarming stories of resilience and unity that emerge even amidst devastation.

Here's what you'll discover:

  • The Power of "We Over Me": Witness the incredible spirit of communities coming together to support each other in the face of disaster.
  • Finding Helpers When You Need Them Most: Learn Mr. Rogers' secret to navigating crisis – look for the helpers!
  • Unleashing Your Inner Hero: Be inspired by a young woman's story, proving that strength comes in all shapes and sizes.
  • Rebuilding When the Dust Settles: Get a raw and honest look at the challenges and triumphs of post-hurricane recovery.
  • Living Lucky® in the Eye of the Storm: Discover a unique perspective on extreme weather that complements science with a touch of spirituality.
  • Building a Weatherproof Community: Learn practical tips on fostering resilience and positivity in your neighborhood before disaster strikes.

This episode is more than just a weather report; it's a call to action! We'll challenge you to:

  • Reflect on your own preparedness.
  • Embrace a "Living Lucky®" mindset.
  • Strengthen your community bonds.

Remember, you are not alone! By sharing these powerful stories, we want to inspire you to be a beacon of hope in your own community.

Listen to this episode and discover the strength that lies within you and your neighbors. Together, we can weather any storm!

#LivingLucky #HurricaneRelief #CommunityStrength #Resilience #MrRogers

P.S. Facing Milton this week? We've got you covered! This episode is packed with practical tips and a powerful dose of inspiration to help you navigate the challenges ahead.

Hurricane Relief, Community Resilience, Natural Disasters, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, Florida, Disaster Relief, Help, Volunteerism, Inspiration, Post-Hurricane Recovery, Resilience, Hope, Unity, Compassion, Community Spirit, Natural Disasters Impact, Extreme Weather, Humanitarian Aid, Jason Shelfer, Jana Banana, Podcast, Positivity Coaches, Ashvi

For mind-blowing inspirational content, join us on Living Lucky TV and on Living Lucky TV Live where you become part of the show at EtherealTV.net

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®. Good morning. We're Jana Shelfer and Jason Shelfer and we are Living Lucky®. You are too. Jason went to St Pete over the weekend.

Jason Shelfer:

I did.

Jana Shelfer:

And he did some Hurricane Helene cleanup.

Jason Shelfer:

Hurricane Helene relief and cleanup.

Jana Shelfer:

After seeing your videos and your pictures, I will never make fun of Weather Woodies again. I take everything I said back.

Jason Shelfer:

Well, I love that you want to take it back.

Jana Shelfer:

Shame on me.

Jason Shelfer:

I also believe that we do have to keep our sense of humor. I know, I know.

Jana Shelfer:

But what I saw in the photos and in the videos and in the people that you were helping there is devastation.

Jason Shelfer:

And that's one of the things that we see on the news right, and it's very fear-based and destruction-oriented. However, being down there with the people that were, living it.

Jana Shelfer:

You said they were in good spirits.

Jason Shelfer:

I mean, it was incredible, and now I don't know what it was like directly after the hurricane. And I didn't ask, because you don't take someone that's in good spirits and is in rebuild hey, let me just pull you down and has momentum and say what was it like right after the storm? Like a news reporter would, because they want that. They want that emotion and that feeling and that they want the regression. Yeah, you're right, because you have to pay to get back out of that regression the regression.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, you're right, because you have to pay to get back out of that regression, like we pay with our time and our investments or our money, and the news wants that. But what I experienced was this community of togetherness and oneness, like people were. There were trucks of people just volunteering. I got goosebumps right now Bringing hot meals.

Jana Shelfer:

You get goosies for every podcast. We do Every podcast. I think that your spirit guides come in and give you goosies.

Jason Shelfer:

I think they do too, because I feel like this is something that we love doing and it's something it's one of the times where we really we have these deep conversations a lot throughout the day, but when we're sharing it, yes, and I love sharing the things that we talk about on a regular basis with our community and the people that want to live that better life.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, I didn't mean to derail you.

Jason Shelfer:

People were coming through in trucks, like all kinds of pickup trucks, a lot of Toyotas, and they would have the backs full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot meals, water, gatorade. And just being there to lend a hand and lend a smile, lend an encouraging word, you went with your group of friends. Yeah, we had 10 people.

Jana Shelfer:

And yet you said there was just a random stranger that ended up in your group.

Jason Shelfer:

Oh my gosh.

Jana Shelfer:

And you had no idea who this person was. And all of a sudden you were looking around, you're like I don't know who this girl is.

Jason Shelfer:

First, of all, she was Okay. She had to be. She was probably I'm going to guess, because I'm horrible with age but 19 or 20. Okay, maybe in college or something down there. And she shows up and she looks and I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all, but she just looks like a scarecrow, like she's thin. She looks like a twig, like any kind of manual labor is going to break her in half.

Jana Shelfer:

And if you see the pictures, so just to kind of fill in the gaps here, the pictures there's like washers and dryers and appliances and drywall and boards. Six to eight feet high outside that are all stacked all along the road for miles that need to be loaded into trucks and loaded away.

Jason Shelfer:

And we are.

Jason Shelfer:

I mean, we were workhorses yesterday from sunup to sundown Right, and she showed up and she's like, put me to work, and it was just it was wonderful, cause I was like and when you don't, a lot of times we don't step into something new because we're worried about who are we going to meet, how are they going to respond? How, what are they going to think about me? And if, when you don't know anyone and you're just walking up and you seem frail, like it's, it could be a dangerous situation, but it's a but. She showed up and she said how can I be of help, how can I serve here? And it was just stepped right in and she worked her tail off the whole time. Oh, that's awesome and I didn't doubt she was going to, but it was like you just don't expect like you expect groups to get together beforehand and I don't expect to see a singular person going out and saying how can I be here for this group of people that's already serving?

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, you know, Mr Rogers, I say this every time we talk about tragedies, but Mr Rogers always says you know, when there is some sort of life altering event, look for the helpers, look for the helpers and it's. You came home yesterday saying that exact same thing, like it was really amazing you drove three hours to help and traffic was.

Jason Shelfer:

It wouldn't have been three hours, but traffic was horrible, yeah, and it might be because of this new hurricane coming in.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, and so that takes me to the next thing is that it really shows people's grit and resilience, because it feels like in some of these areas. I think you said Cedar Key. Yeah, right up in the Gulf you know they had a hurricane a couple of years ago that just wiped out their community. They've been rebuilding and then this Hurricane, Helene comes through, wipes them out again. And now we see today on the news that we have another hurricane, Hurricane Milton, that is headed right for Florida.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and you look at a place like Asheville or Atlanta or some of these places that were really hit hard by Helene and we're getting a visual picture of that on the news and you think of like a small town like Cedar Key that just gets decimated. Yes, I mean all of their businesses, some of their homes, all these things get taken out. They spend two years getting like built back up, have that momentum and they're like it's go time, it's time to get back to our lives, and this hurricane Helene comes in and just wipes it all out. And then you look 15 days later or 10 days later and it's like there's another one named Milton.

Jana Shelfer:

That's coming right at us who names these anyway. I mean, have you ever met a Helene in your life?

Jason Shelfer:

Well, Gertrude is naming them Aunt Gertrude.

Jana Shelfer:

I mean, I've met a Helen, but never a Helene Helene.

Jason Shelfer:

She's French.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, and now. Milton.

Jason Shelfer:

Milton, milton, berle, milton.

Jana Shelfer:

That's an old name Milton. I know.

Jason Shelfer:

I feel like my granddad probably had a lot of friends, like a couple friends named Milton.

Jana Shelfer:

I've never met a baby named Milton. Baby Milton Meet Milton. Meet Milton Milton.

Jason Shelfer:

Unless it's like Milton III.

Jana Shelfer:

Junior. Milton III Junior. That's right. Oh anyway, I'm really proud of you though. Because, you know, you showed me the pictures and the video and I opted not to go, and it wasn't because I didn't want to help, I really did.

Jason Shelfer:

I don't think it would have been a good environment for you.

Jana Shelfer:

And that's what I had decided is it was already.

Jason Shelfer:

You know, you see the pictures on the news and you think Ooh, and then I thought well, what if I can't get around very well, frustrated to no end, which makes me think of people that are in the areas using wheelchairs or using any type of mobility assisted devices, because I mean, there were mounds, like seven and eight-foot mounds of sand in the road that they had moved out of the way Uh-huh.

Jana Shelfer:

You said a 70-year-old man was just out on his.

Jason Shelfer:

Well, the house we were working on belonged to a 70-year-old man and really all he could do I think he was just emotionally and mentally drained from it was sit out next to the road and look at all of his things that were being pulled out of his house. Oh man, and he sat there in a lawn chair under an umbrella and was just kind of in it Said goodbye to them. Yeah.

Jana Shelfer:

You said there was mold in the walls. Yeah, and you had to knock down some walls because they were so full of water.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, we knocked down everything below five feet in the house, like everything down to the studs, like carpet, tile, bathrooms pretty much anything in a bathroom had to come out. But if you think of bathrooms, all the counters are low, you've got the sink, you've got the tub. On either side of that tub typically is a wall where there's going to be drywall or sheetrock or something that's on the side, and so when that salt water comes through and then when that or that, oh yeah, you don't even think of it.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes, it's. It's not like it's bath water or rain water.

Jason Shelfer:

Even this is sludge that comes through and it's carrying everything that it's picked up like as it comes across. And just think, if another hurricane comes through, it's now going to be carrying all the debris that we can, and the next couple actually the next 24 to 48 hours before Milton comes in. So we are recording this on Sunday. So that's so, Milton is scheduled to be here on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, but it's already started raining.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, it's been raining all day.

Jana Shelfer:

It's already started raining, so I feel like you could smell it.

Jason Shelfer:

So that's one thing that the pictures and I wait, you could smell everything in the area, so what? Is what when you say smell, smell it, because I'm always intrigued by smells I love smell you like you've got a nose like a hawk. I know you smell everything. What's it smell like? What is that? I know, did you have spinach for lunch?

Jana Shelfer:

yeah, like I take off my bra and I'm like oh, what's that smell like?

Jason Shelfer:

I take off my shoes and she's like put those back on because I can smell them I know, sometimes I'm in bed, I'm like, did you just take?

Jason Shelfer:

did you just take your shoes off? So imagine all this. So one of the things that I can really relate to is when I would go to the beach as a child yeah, and we would go to the local oyster house oh, and you could, like they would. There would just be mounds of these oyster shells sitting out in the sun or sitting out in the heat and you could just smell it and it was like it wasn't bothersome but it wasn't pleasant, but you could like just walking down the street.

Jason Shelfer:

It's like shellfish smell everywhere smelled like it was a kind of a rotting um shell of some type of like there was a putridity I don't know if that's not a word, it might be.

Jana Shelfer:

It is now.

Jason Shelfer:

You said it's so fluid once you put it out there, it becomes a word. Yeah, especially if you put it out there on a podcast.

Jana Shelfer:

It was very. There was a putridity about it.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, I'm going to have to Google putridity when I get up. We've said it now four times Putridity Now, at least four times.

Jana Shelfer:

Now it's like that, okay, so it kind of had a rotten, so you've got the mold Oyster smell with mold mildew mold and a little bit of salt water yes, all that together and like and maybe like I've been at the beach working and sweating and I might need a shower, and I've got a gangrene sore or something. Yeah, oh, a gangrene sore.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, oh, you just took it to a whole new level well, cause you get hit by there like you can open the pull up a carpet, car carpet, carpet and this water that's been sitting under there for a little bit, um, is gonna smell way different than it's like opening a box of fart it's just a fart and a gangrene sore are two totally different things. Well, it depends on how long that part's been brewing and and I hate to take this into the potty.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, I'm not going to let him go any further you can keep listening. I promise to keep this classy. We won't go any further there, but it was a bad smell, so you had to wear masks.

Jason Shelfer:

We did, we wore masks and then also, just with all the drywall, dust and the things that were flying around, you didn't want to suck all that into your lungs just because I don't know what happens. I'm not a doctor.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, let me ask you this Was there water and electricity and bathrooms facilities there?

Jason Shelfer:

were not. So some houses did still have plumbing and water and most of them all the electricity was cut off. I didn't see any electricity on the blocks that we were working. They may or may not have had it. So I mean, think about this.

Jana Shelfer:

I mean, we don't think about the problems it causes until you go through it, and then you're like, oh, like, oh man, I need electricity in order to do that.

Jason Shelfer:

I would have shown up with a, with our um, our circular saw. However, I didn't.

Jana Shelfer:

I don't have a generator so they're like so three, how are you gonna use that?

Jason Shelfer:

generators and we were running off of generators. The neighbors had generators, so lots, lots of generators that were put to use, and it was just a constant.

Jana Shelfer:

You know, every hurricane I always say, oh, maybe we should go buy a generator.

Jason Shelfer:

I think one time we did.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, I don't know what happened to it. We don't have it now.

Jason Shelfer:

I think I ended up selling it on Facebook Marketplace or something like that.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, I think you're right.

Jason Shelfer:

I feel like there was a hurricane back. I forget the year, but I feel like I might've gone out and gotten one or two generators. You did, and I was like we didn't have room for them. Yeah, we didn't have room for well and we didn't get hit that hard.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, I think it was. I think the people came up from St Pete to stay here and it totally missed us. Oh, maybe, like it was supposed to be coming right at us and then it totally missed us. We had some exchange students so that the whole world was looking at our house at any rate I feel like this milton that's coming, baby milton.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, it's not a baby, it's grandpa milton. He's growing big he's category three, right now that's the thing is, he just keeps picking up steam, and I thought that hurricane helene would have taken some. And I'm not a weather person, obviously, but when a hurricane comes through, I feel like a lot of the heat would get sucked out of the ocean or out of the Gulf, yeah, and it makes it tamer.

Jana Shelfer:

We're going to have to ask our number one fan, sheila, because I feel like she is a meteorologist in one of her past lives.

Jason Shelfer:

And we could go to our number two and three fans.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, amy, sweezy Amy.

Jason Shelfer:

Sweezy and Tom Sorrell.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, yes, yes, Okay. So we have a lot of weather people that listen to this podcast, and I really. My next question is why are we having such extreme weather patterns?

Jason Shelfer:

well, we know that it's not because of science or global warming okay, now you're starting, you're, you're going down a rabbit hole it's just god we won't, we won't even go there, we won't even go there, oh, okay.

Jana Shelfer:

Well, if you are listening to this, be thinking of us this week, because Florida.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and keep yourself safe.

Jana Shelfer:

Keep yourself safe and keep your neighbors in touch.

Jason Shelfer:

And recognize that there's always something you can do and there's always a way to become more of a community, like we don't have to wait for a hurricane to be a community. But sometimes that's what shakes us up just enough to make that change. And other than that, keep Living Lucky®.

Jana Shelfer:

Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at www. LivingLucky. com.