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THE NARRATIVE ARC

How Pivotal Life Moments Can Arise From Mother Nature’s Fury

Earthquakes, tsunami warnings, and hurricanes, oh my!

Toya Qualls-Barnette
The Narrative Arc
Published in
5 min readDec 14, 2024

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Stylish woman with a shocked expression.
Photo by Анна Хазова: (pexels)

I was sitting at my desk in shock after receiving the emergency alert on my phone, mesmerized by the yellow flash of a tsunami warning for California. My first thought; it was a mistake or the work of a sick hacker who infiltrated the emergency broadcast system to pull a diabolical prank.

This is the deadliest residual effect of living in the digital era. Everything is suspect, even the truth.

I took a screen shot for posterity, sent it to my peeps. This was a first. Since I live in the South Bay, I wasn’t as alarmed as I imagined folks near the quake’s epicenter, off the coast near Petrolia in Humboldt County — 270 miles north of San Francisco, but I still felt a tinge of unease like the 5.3 million Californians who received the frightening text.

The warning canceled an hour later. I wondered about the ripple effect of multiple streams of human adrenalin raining down on the universe after Mother Nature wielded her holiday cheer.

Was the election not enough? All this swirling haphazard energy is building to a crescendo. It’s about to blow all over America’s white picket fences. Hold on to your…

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The Narrative Arc
The Narrative Arc

Published in The Narrative Arc

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Toya Qualls-Barnette
Toya Qualls-Barnette

Written by Toya Qualls-Barnette

Writing about the impact of relationships |Contributor to Chicken Soup for the Soul| Dreamer | Mother| HSP in drag

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