GULFPORT — Defeated, they shuffled into the room and collapsed into a circle of folding chairs. A consultant offered donuts. A man with a ponytail released the leash of a three-legged Dalmatian.

Some of the 10 people gathered Monday evening knew each other. Most of them were strangers united by storms.

“Good evening everyone!” Mark Sieg, 50, called just after 6 p.m.: “Welcome to the first hurricane trauma group in Gulfport history. I hope we can help each other heal.”

A woman took yarn from her bag and started knitting. The lady next to him lifted her glasses to wipe her tears. A pale woman leaned against her husband.

“The mayor gave us this space for as long as we needed it,” Sieg said. “This will take some time. And I’ll try not to get emotional…”

He stopped and looked at his wife, who was looking at her lap. “There’s no easy way to do this,” he said. “I still have a beautiful family, but…”

Sieg has been a therapist for 25 years. He has worked with Afghanistan war veterans, Pulse nightclub massacre survivors, prisoners, and people struggling with addiction. From his office on 49th Street S, he advises long-term clients who have been hit by back-to-back hurricanes.

According to him, everyone in Tampa Bay was traumatized. Even people who had lost nothing had, in a sense, lost something: football fields, pubs, offices, shops, communities, towns; sense of security. Many of the beaches, which were sacred places for people, were still inaccessible.

A month after Hurricane Helene destroyed his Gulfport home, and weeks after Hurricane Milton claimed the new house he was renting, Sieg set aside a small room among the dog parks, took out a notice in the town newspaper, and offered free therapy as long as people stayed. I need this.

“You still see everything lining the streets. “Pain and loss are everywhere,” Sieg told the first group. “It’s like 1,000 paper cuts you’ve endured and still can’t avoid. And it’s not going away anytime soon. A year? Or two?”

He asked her to raise her hands: “Did the hurricane make you suffer?”

“Which one?” asked a man with glasses.

Sieg nodded. “See? You even have to ask that… What is the meaning? That’s what we have to figure out. Without meaning, you will despair. Despair is meaningless suffering.”

A woman in a turquoise dress raised her hand. “Can we turn off the lights please?”

“Signal for soft jazz,” the ponytailed man said.

“Where are the martinis?” asked the crocheting woman.

Sieg smiled. “It’s okay to laugh here,” he said. “Humor is the absence of terror.”

“Good,” said the woman. “I’m tired of crying.”

• • •

For 90 minutes, they shared stories of horror and devastation. They talked about the family they had to take care of, the children who couldn’t come to take care of them, black mold, and insurance. Should I stay? How can I go?

A red-haired woman spoke first. The 69-year-old moved to Gulfport in 1993. Toured Helene with her two pets. “Thirty minutes later I heard the freight train and my PTSD was triggered,” he shared.

He couldn’t call his family in Michigan. “They worry too much.” His best friend in California can’t understand this. “He’s never been caught in a hurricane.” So he wandered around his house, listening to the sound of boards being ripped off the roof, until he panicked so much that he had to talk to someone.

He called a former student who participated in the war. “And he stayed on the phone with me for two hours until the line went dead,” she said.

He ventured out at dawn.

“My neighbor’s screened porch had broken off and was tapping on my kitchen window like a skeletal hand. “I tore it up.”

It felt good to be angry.

When her phone worked again, she called her doctor and did something she had never done before. “I asked for a sedative,” he said. “He told me to come for counseling. That’s why I’m here.” He lowered his head and said slowly: “I’m still shaking a little.”

“You’re safe here,” Sieg said.

• • •

A woman with curly white hair said she was lucky. When he came home after Helene, he saw that there was half a meter of water in his house, the refrigerator was overturned, and the walls and floor were covered with mud. None of his neighbors could help. All of them were under water.

“But people I didn’t know came and tore everything down. A snowbird offered me a place to stay with my dog ​​and two cats. “All my walls have already collapsed.”

He had to throw away many of his antiques. “My daughter already said she didn’t want it.”

He was still waiting to hear how much the insurance would pay, and he was still hoping to save the foundation of the house. “They ripped out the floors to remove the black mold and found it was asbestos that I needed to get rid of. There’s one more thing on top of everything else,” he said.

“Still, I feel lucky.”

• • •

The crocheting woman sighed. She is an 85-year-old retired prison nurse.

These hurricanes were the first hurricanes she survived without her husband. “We have been married for 43 years and I took care of him for six months. But he has Parkinson’s disease. It continued to fall. I couldn’t help him anymore.”

She wasn’t allowed to weather the storm at the nursing home, so she drove six cramped hours to a friend’s house in The Villages.

Now he said: “I looked at him in the chair in that house and said, ‘I wish that were me.’ It would be so much easier if someone could take care of me.

Their children are not ready to help. “I can’t blame them. They have lives. But it’s a bitch. He bit his lip. “I wish it were all over. I’m tired.”

“You are strong,” Sieg said. “We’re glad you’re here.”

The woman said there were too many FEMA forms. Her husband was always interested in insurance. Can’t figure out how to file a claim. “I have dyslexia, which makes this even more impossible,” he said. “Since the storms, I don’t even have a printer or a computer anymore.”

The ponytailed man bowed. “I don’t have a chainsaw and I don’t have a hammer. “But I do the paperwork really well,” he said. “I can help you.”

The woman looked at him in surprise. “Well, I can knit something for you.”

• • •

“I am a zombie. I cry every day. “I don’t think I feel the full impact of what happened yet,” said the woman in the turquoise dress.

He didn’t lose much. His dog and roommate were fine. However, his brother’s house was flooded. “And he’s a hoarder,” she said. “He brought all his ruined belongings to my yard.”

His friend told him to call the police. “But my mother made me promise on her deathbed that I would take care of my little brother,” the woman said. “I’ve felt suicidal for the last few weeks. ‘How would I do this?’ not. but ‘What’s the point?’”

He can’t even imagine walking away. “This is my home,” he said, “my life.”

He rubbed his hands, then looked up. “The reason I came here is: I don’t want to do this alone. The woman I’m staying with nothing bothers her. But I can’t keep it all inside. I think it’s really important that we find strength for each other.

• • •

When the pale woman spoke, no one could hear her. He straightened up, apologized, and tried again.

“We lost all our belongings,” he said. “But my biggest thing is that I lost my sense of security.”

He can’t focus, he can’t work. “I lost all sense of normalcy,” he told the group. “Everyone here was very nice but…”

The horror began years ago, her husband said, when the Unnamed storm pushed three inches of water into their home and his wife got out of bed and was electrocuted. Bought a building to renovate, then went bankrupt during Covid.

“I kept telling him I would keep him safe. “But in Helene, the water came up to our shoulders,” he said. “When Milton came, I knew we had to run.” He bowed his head. His wife rubbed his shoulder.

“If I can’t give him a place where he feels safe,” he said, “he’ll leave.”

• • •

The therapist explained that complex trauma can occur in many forms.

He smells the salty sewage water still climbing up Helene’s house, feels it swelling first around his feet, then his legs, sees his wife and daughter trudging downstream, terrified.

“’Get out of the house!’ I shout. We’re going to die!’” he told the group. “We’re up to our necks in water and I’m holding our dog over my head like Simba in The Lion King.”

The air conditioning unit caught fire and burned what was left of their home. Waves crushed Jeep and Mini Cooper. While Milton was being evacuated to Ocala for south St. They rented a house in St. Petersburg. But when they returned, this place was also under water.

“I’m a 50-year-old man living out of a garbage bag,” Sieg said.

Try to find at least enough meaning to alleviate the despair, he urged the group. “What we lost are actually just items. “We’re all still here.”

No one wanted to go back home or to where they had been staying since the storms.

Only one person did not speak. “Jenni,” Sieg said to his wife. “Do you want to share?” He nodded.

“He’s still struggling,” he said. “I guess we all are.”

How can I join?

Gulfport Counseling Center offers free support groups for Pinellas County residents following hurricanes. Sessions will be held on Monday, November 4 at 6 p.m. and Tuesday, November 5 at 7 p.m. at the city’s arts center, 2726 54th St. Contact S. Mark Sieg at 727-251-2319 or visit: Gulfport Counseling Center.