I am home now and words just cannot express what my Mom and sister have been through.

They have lost almost everything they owned including the roof over their heads. Cost to repair is estimated to be around $50,000 per home, some more, some less. Very, very few people had flood insurance and for those that did, only the structure was covered and not the contents.

It absolutely broke my heart to see my 72 year old mother picking through her ravaged home and cradling items given to her by friends and family knowing that most were going into the trash. For her sanity, and mine, I made her stay at friends where we made her useful trying to save all her photos. She knows things are gone now but she didn't have to watch the last of her possessions going into trash bags. She had just moved here from South Africa, most of her stuff was still unpacked in moving boxes. She'd weeded out everything before moving here, keeping only her most precious and sentimental items and now even those are gone.

We did manage to save most of the clothes. They were rushed soaking wet to a local laundromat who washed and dried everything for a price. Some dry clean only clothes were ruined but the majority was saved. We also saved all her jewelry. She cried and cried when I gave her her mothers wedding ring. For a while I scared myself, as I threw out a couple of cosmetic bags without opening them as they were filled with flood water and then I knew I would never find them as there were over 100 black trash bags. I prayed as hard as I could that that ring was not in one of those bags!!

The looting was very minimal but some stuff left outside to dry was stolen including computers, cameras, flatware and some linen. The irony is that while those items weren't covered by insurance for flood damage, they will be covered by homeowners insurance for theft. Go figure.

My mother's car has been written off. It is fully covered by insurance less her deductible so my cousin is looking for a new car for her.

I managed to hold it together while in TN but haven't stopped crying since I got home. My life has been irrevocably changed by my experience, family is the most important thing in my life now, everything else is just stuff!

I wrote an email as part of a fundraising proposal and want to share excerpts of it with you all...

When you view the picture above, look beyond the pile of rubble and trash to someone's life.

This pile of trash contains the entire lives of my mother, and my sister.

Their single story home was submerged in a mixture of flood water and sewer backflow during the Nashville flood that occurred last weekend. They have lost everything that was below the water line as flood insurance was denied them and all the others effected by the overflowing river as supposedly they were not in a flood plain.

My mother and sister had just moved in one month ago and now everything they own, including the walls and doors of their home are in that trash pile. Everything from toilet paper to Knick-Knacks collected over a lifetime, little gifts their grandchildren, nieces and nephews made, scrapbooks put together by my great grandparents, their beds, furniture, tv and clothing, every pair of shoes other than the ones they were wearing, the stories of their lives are in that pile.

Up and down the streets of River Plantation this story is repeated over and over again. In isolated areas around Nashville the story repeats itself yet again. In total, 2000 families lost everything they owned or their livelihoods in this devastating natural disaster.

Total strangers came from all over to help start cleaning the mess, a 4 yr old little boy gave my sister his piggy bank filled with coins, a 10 yr old made 100 sandwiches and cookies and handed them out to everyone sweating in the hot sun to clean up what was left of their lives. Total strangers helped with whatever needed getting done. Mothers pushing strollers filled with bottles of ice water for anyone who needed. Stories like this were commonplace.

The way the community came together in support was incredible. I hope that we, both as individuals and as a community, can come together to help them rebuild their lives.

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I have more pictures, they say a picture speaks a thousand words. All the pictures in the world cannot tell the story.

Only those of you unfortunate enough to have experienced this can truely understand.

In the meantime I thank you all for your prayers and positive thoughts.

PS. On the way home, my purse was stolen from the back of my chair in the restaurant we stopped to have lunch in - the icing on the cake. The silver lining is that I am dealing with it as a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things although my sister did curse the thief and made us all at least laugh for a minute : may all their teeth rot and fall out except for one and from that one may they have eternal toothache.