TEXAS – Angela Weddle was concerned when the February freeze hit San Antonio.

“The water pressure got very low and I made sure to run the water very low, [from] the minute I [knew] it was going to get below freezing,” Weddle says. “It just made it harder to wash dishes.”

While she prepared for the storm, her thoughts were with her mother, who has Raynaud’s disease, a vascular condition that can make the cold painful for her and sometimes even deadly.

Her mother lives in the same complex as she does, but Weddle can't move too much at the moment.

“But I couldn’t even go out in it, because I couldn’t find my cleats. I just had a spinal cord implanted,” Weddle says. “If I fall, I could damage that while I’m still on my six weeks out while it's healing.”

Weddle has lost count of the number of surgeries she’s undergone because of her cerebral palsy and autism, but that hasn’t hindered her from using her pen to illustrate intimate tales of her reality.

She does both digital and ink pen artwork and is currently doing animation with the aid of her iPad on issues that plague the Black community.

One of the experiences her art has captured in the past was Hurricane Katrina, and after the recent storm in Texas, she’s seen the carnage a natural disaster can leave a community with. 

“I already survived Hurricane Katrina, so I already had knowledge of living without power, and my mom did, and many other hurricanes,” Weddle says.

She's been purchasing winter clothes and gathering other supplies to prepare for the future. It’s the encounters with extreme storms that drive her to be proactive — not just herself or her mom, but for everyone at her complex.

“The whole area is elderly and disabled people. [They] already are the most vulnerable residents, low income, so, yes, that’s already on the back of your mind,” Weddle says.