Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images

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IV and Elle are both heartful, silly, dedicated, gracious, abundantly generous, and deeply beloved community members and talented artists. I am proud to call them my friends. These two gems are in need of significant support to recover from the total loss of their home in the wake of Hurricane Helene. They were loving stewards of their downtown Marshall, NC home that offered such special respite for many amidst life’s immensities.

Marshall, NC has long been a cherished, charming, close-knit small town of local artists and deeply caring people. In a matter of moments, it was thoroughly destroyed by Hurricane Helene, wrecking every structure and leaving toxic mud and sludge to coat every beloved corner. There is no infrastructure in Western North Carolina to prepare for or deal with the aftermath of such an unfathomable flood. Neighbors are using every shred of their energy and skill to secure each other's safety amidst horrifying destruction and cataclysmic loss.

We need your help.

As a couple, IV and Elle practice community care in every pocket of their lives, and invite us all to embody more joy, depth, and fullness in ours. Their artistry guides our community to be in relationship with grief, personal transformation, identity, and belonging. Their art keeps everyone in mind. Their home served us all by immersing us in creative magic, restorative quiet, playful connection, and intentionally curated beauty. IV poured his heart and hard work into intentionally creating a home of their own, and every detail was a labor and expression of personal healing and reclamation, resulting in a space that had something genuine and unique to offer for everyone who shared time there. Elle lost a large portion of her work and supplies in the ground floor studio of their home, along with countless irreplaceable art, belongings, and instruments.

Please help their lights keep shining throughout our resilient, devastated community and beyond. May they both be sustained as they support their community through direct relief and recovery work in Marshall, while navigating the reality of losing their home and all it held.

Funds support basic needs supplies, home furnishings and personal belongings, temporary housing, relocation costs, transportation costs, and the myriad of costs associated with surviving and rebuilding.

Please share widely and give anything you can.

We want IV and Elle to know they are cared for through this excruciating time.

A letter from IV and Elle:

Three years ago I moved into my house on Main Street in Marshall, North Carolina. After seven years of living in Western North Carolina, I finally decorated the walls and curated a home. Not just inside of the four walls, but within downtown Marshall and the Cherokee land it resides on. My home was the heart that witnessed me through moments of deep joy and silliness, held me through pain and gut grief. I healed from top surgery in the big bed upstairs that my dog crawled under every night to sleep.

The town of Marshall facilitated the forging of some of my deepest bonds. I met my chosen family in the renovated church that our friends made into a home. My girlfriend, Elle, and I had our first date across the bridge on the island that consisted of the old high school turned artist studios and public park.

It was into this space that my girlfriend moved in with me to build a life together. We watched it all get ripped away from us when hurricane Helene turned the river into 30 feet of raging water that decimated the place we call home.

The water came over the tracks while I was sleeping. I never saw it coming. Even after watching the island flood the day before, what was to come was unfathomable. Never before in recorded Marshall history had the river flooded high enough to hit the porch of our home. So when it came lapping at our doorstep, Elle and I knocked on the window of our neighbors in the church and we all made our exodus.

With two dogs in tow, the four of us bushwhacked through the cliff side forest behind our houses and scrambled up the mountain until we were safe on the top of Hill Street overlooking downtown. The Main Street strip had flooded up to the second stories of the buildings closest to the tracks. Directly across the road, both our home and the church were also flooding into the first stories.

Our hearts broke as we witnessed everything get swallowed. We watched in horror as a silo, an industrial propane tank, the roof of the historical train depot, and a piano all rushed down the river in front of us. Even still, nothing could have prepared me for what we saw the next day when we waded through the muck to rescue Elle’s cat from our flooded home.

We had to go in through the back door because the water was still blocking access to the porch. The yard was thick with the fine, toxic silt that had settled from the receding flood waters. The door was jammed with muck and debris piled against it from the inside. I forced it open with my shoulder and my jaw dropped at the view. The inside of our house looked like the inside of a snow globe someone shook everything loose from. Rearranged and covered in an icky layer of slippery mud.

The fridge was thrown on its back against the water closet and bathroom door, the coat rack with all our winter jackets soggy and pinned below it. Our 4 foot tall counters were wiped clean, everything now on the floor or in the living room. The couches all on their sides, the oriental cabinet with intricate pearl inlay splayed open spilling out its continents over my soul piano. The dark, wooden body of it laid in ruins, flat on its back like it had its legs kicked out from underneath. I felt my heart crush a little more as I stepped on the soundboard in order to rush up the stairs to find Charlie the cat.

With the help of our friends, we extracted the cat back out through the mud and up the cliff side. It was in the relief of finally having all of our family safe and dry that it hit me: in the course of two days, we lost our house and everything in it. My body felt the wreckage we had just crawled through and I realized this was only the beginning.

The next day as I walked through town with empty crates to carry out our salvageable belongings and a shovel to clear the mud, I openly wept taking in the destruction. A bulldozer had come through to clear a path through the street and people were already clearing out their destroyed ground floor businesses. I got to my porch and saw the door blocked by a foot of mud. Elle and our friend Cat, who was housing us, were dropping off survival supplies to our community and doing wellness checks while I started on the dirty work of shoveling out a path from the front door to the upstairs. In the silence of my mucking, I was crying when our friend came up the sidewalk to help me clear the way. From then on, I wasn’t alone anymore.

It took two days of frenzied salvaging to get out what we could from the hazardous muck while FEMA came through our houses checking for bodies. Two days of making life altering decisions and choosing what was worth saving and what had to be let go. The ushering of friends to not give up and throw everything away. The loss of furniture untouched by water damage but unable to be extracted due to their size and/or risk of absorbing the toxic muck blooms.

It was thanks to our friends getting dirty with us that we were able to save anything. When I had to climb through the window of our bathroom to retrieve Elle’s life saving medication, I lost my footing trying to get back out. The floor below threatened me with debris, broken glass, and sewage mixed mud. As I grappled at the window frame, a friend grabbed me by the arms, assured me he wasn’t going to let me fall and hoisted me back out and to safety.

Constantly throughout this process we were all hoisting each other both physically and emotionally. Witnessing the whole of our community come together in our collective time of need has been the silver lining to this storm. Recovering and rebuilding by and for and with each other. We all lost something, whether it be our homes, our jobs, our business or our places to gather, or most tragically the lives of loved ones. Amidst this chest cracking heartbreak, there is also the beauty of human nature coming together to wade through the thick waters.

It is in this spirit that Elle and I create this go fund me in the hopes of receiving support on our road to rebuilding the home that we lost. As we reach for things that were once there and are now not, we are realizing that we cannot restart on our own.

Through the efforts of grassroots organizing, Cat (who has been housing us) and I facilitated a mutual aid fund to help support people displaced by the floods. We raised over $15.5k of funds that went directly/has been allocated to the displaced and for the immediate survival needs of those affected by hurricane Helene. Those funds also are being allocated to clean up efforts so that the Cherokee land Marshall was built on can continue to be inhabitable after this disaster. Because of this fund, Elle and I were able to secure our safety and cover our immediate needs/bills.

It is because we have already received so much that we feel conflicted to ask you to continue contributing by donating to this go fund me set up to assist us in regaining what was lost and pay for relocation. We know the entirety of WNC is hurting right now. That there is more to a life than a house and the things inside of it. We ask you to continue donating to on the ground efforts going to help bring relief to everyone who is still actively struggling to survive in the wake of this climate change related natural disaster. And if you or a loved one have extra funds to give, our hearts are full of gratitude for every penny you send our way.

Elle and I thank you for taking the time to read this. Our animals thank you for the stability you have already provided us. And our family thanks you for helping us rebuild a life.

With love,

IV & Elle (and Basquiat the pup)

Those who become refugees in a natural disaster are tasked with navigating the intense emotional upheaval and trauma of crisis, all while having to try to rescue or replace everything they’ve held dear their whole lives. It cannot be done alone. Home becomes a series of acts of love. Let us, communities near and far, become the home for IV & Elle that they always shared with us in abundance.