Hey y’all!
This blog is my public love letter, primary resource, and journal on life in Western North Carolina — particularly the Swannanoa Valley and Asheville (but I adventure out too). I’m proud to be Palestinian-American, Muslim, and North Carolinian. I consider myself “from North Carolina” rather than from a particular city because I’ve lived significant portions of my life in Raleigh, rural Eastern North Carolina (Colerain, Ahoskie, Windsor, Lake Mattamuskeet), on the coast (Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Wanchese), and here in WNC (Asheville, Swannanoa). I’m a former high school English teacher and now work full-time in movement organizing. I call Swannanoa home where I live with my husband and three young kids.
Blog Roadmap and Housekeeping (more about me below)
- No AI Writing Here – I write all of my posts, captions, etc. Although I’m trained as an English teacher, I’m more relaxed in this format of writing (and out of practice and a busy mom with little time for deep editing).
- Unless noted otherwise, I take all of my own photos and videos. Please do not reuse without asking permission.
- My main priority in making recommendations is to build community and keep artists and small businesses thriving. If I ever do paid promotional work, I will make it obvious and I will always be honest. (P.S. Most of my TikTok videos get flagged as paid promo but they’re not.)
- Life in WNC is expensive! The shop tab has links to some side hustles, like TikTok Shop videos of products I use in my house.
@rundainwnc Thursday thoughts w/Runda 👋🏽 #828isgreat #wnc #westernnorthcarolina #westernnc #contentcreator ♬ original sound – Runda in WNC
What’s up with the WNC recommendations?
In July of 2025, I started a new TikTok account after having been on the app but not posting anything for years. Growing up, I had always been good at computers, social media, technology, etc. and I felt like I had gotten behind on the times. I decided to start posting videos to learn about how to use the platform better but didn’t have a ‘niche’ that I was going for.
I noticed that my local following was growing and folks enjoyed hearing my recommendations on things to do, places to eat, and stories of life in Western North Carolina (WNC). The majority of my content is created for folks who live here (but is helpful for visitors, too!). I’ve heard from commenters that my videos have helped folks feel less isolated, encouraged them to leave their houses more and to try new things.
And if I’m being very honest, I think I need this outlet too. Not only as a way to feed my creativity and love of writing, storytelling, and community but also to heal my relationship with my home after Hurricane Helene. Living in Swannanoa during the hurricane was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Due to the upheaval and uncertainty in our lives, I had to take my kids to Raleigh for ten months while my husband stayed in town (we traveled back and forth almost every weekend). I’m glad to be home (more on the hurricane below) and posting videos/writing/connecting with y’all has helped me turn fear and heartache back into joy again.
Hurricane Helene
The Early Impact
On September 25, 2024, I received a message from the school system saying that school would be closed for Thursday and Friday due to the weather. I was shocked! All I had heard was that we would have some heavy storms. To cancel Friday before Thursday had even happened seemed odd. My husband asked if we needed anything from the grocery and I said “just grab a gallon of milk”.
What happened next was unbelievable. Rain poured from the sky filling up the small creek next to our home. Still, we didn’t think anything of it – we had had heavy rain before and the creek had never risen above the bank by much. We slept.
The details and the time between events feels so fuzzy these days but I remember waking up and looking out the window to see water everywhere. The rain was coming down so hard that it was difficult to see but the road was covered, trees were down, and the water was close to taking our animals and cars.
Left: Facebook post of one of our sheep that had floated miles away and was found under an underpass.
My husband sprung into action, moving the cars as high up as possible and trying to save the animals. We have three kids and the youngest was not even two. The kids and I watched from the window in horror as the entire chicken coop floated away. My husband waded through chest deep water to try and save the goats and sheep. One misstep and he would have been gone too. He carried them one by one, as many as he could, to safety. But many were swept away in the flood waters and died. Some we found via Facebook posts days later miles away from our home.
The rain continued to pour. There was no electricity, no running water, no phone service to know if our friends and family were alive or dead. We ate what we had. The rain continued to pour and we slept. The next morning, the emergency alerts on our phones starting going off around 5 AM with an evacuation order. It was terrifying. I looked outside and how could we have evacuated? The rain was pouring so hard we would surely have wrecked the car soon after leaving the house.
We continued about our day, trying to keep the kids busy and figure out what to do. The rain calmed and my husband was able to get out and into town through a back entrance. He was shocked at what he saw – powerlines smashed to the ground, people wandering the roads looking for food, his workplace covered in mud, houses that had flooded to their roof, cars overturned, trailers in the middle of the road…He emptied the freezers and coolers at the store and took the food to the kind folks in front of Blunt Pretzel so that it could be cooked and served.
The Following Year
The year after the hurricane was a blur. You can find more stories in my posts, but I’ll summarize it like this: In order to be able to get back to work and keep the kids in school, I went to Raleigh for the rest of the school year. My husband and I drove countless times back and forth across the state. He repaired the store and our property. I kept life as normal as possible for our kids and continued working at my job. We moved five times: to a basement apartment in Durham (a kind family who had lived through Hurricane Katrina hosted us for free), then to a furnished basement apartment in Raleigh, then to a regular apartment on a 6 month lease, the price got hiked up and we moved to another apartment, and then finally back home to Swannanoa in the summer of 2025. (I am tired. I hate moving.)
