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How to Find Hope After the Fire
The struggles remain long after the news cycle ends
When I was five years old, an arsonist torched my family home.
We were away on vacation when my mom and older sister crept into my room to wake me up with the news. “Everything is gone, Sarah,” they wailed. And everything was gone — the memories, history, and security of my young life erased overnight. I didn’t fully comprehend what had occurred, but after, a fear of destructive fire firmly ingrained itself in my psyche.
Our burned-down family home made the front page of The Baltimore Sun and our now-defunct hometown paper, The Columbia Flier. The Washington Post published a small feature on our family. Throughout my entire elementary school career, older kids referred to me as “the girl whose house burned down.”
Fire has licked the corners of my life in adulthood, too. In 2012, just before I moved back to L.A. for a second time, the Waldo Canyon Fire ripped through and destroyed a Colorado Springs neighborhood two minutes from where I live now.
Although I haven’t lived in L.A. for a decade, I’ve lost count of the number of friends who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades Fires. My favorite stops on the PCH and my favorite hiking trails have been reduced to ash, the Eagle Rock house I called home…
