On September 23rd, 2016, our family home was completely destroyed in a no-fault furnace fire in San Francisco. As active members of our community, we were lucky to be instantly flooded with donations that took care of all our basic needs and more - we are still eternally grateful for the support we received. Among the donations received were a couple of new journals for our two young daughters, and those journals proved to be an essential part of how they processed the many losses of our fire.

“Usually when you write something in a journal it feels good just to write it like you're saying it to somebody, because you’re ready to get it out, but you’re not exactly telling anyone. It’s like telling somebody, but you're not actually telling because you may want to keep it private.” - Evie, Age 6

“All of us lost our home in a fire and when we all wrote in our journals after the fire it really helped us, so we want to give out as many journals as we can so that we can help other kids too.” - Silver, Age 9

Nearly a year after our own fire, the wildfires in Sonoma County, just to our north, ravaged the land and devastated dozens of communities. Our family, like so many others, gathered donations and drove them north. Then, a few weeks later, my daughters, ages 6 and 9, came to me and said they wanted to do more. They suggested giving journals to the kids in Sonoma, since the journals that had been given to them had helped
them with their own hard feelings.

When I looked into it, I was not surprised to find that there's lots of research supporting the idea that writing and drawing about traumatic experiences can significantly reduce the long-term negative impacts of childhood trauma, so I helped the girls put up a GoFundMe page to raise the funds to buy the journals. Within a few months, the girls met their fundraising goal, and I began talking to officials from the Sonoma County Department of Education about getting the journals into the hands of as many kids as needed them.

Since that time, we’ve delivered journals to thousands of kids in dozens of classrooms in Sonoma - not just the kids who lost their homes, but all the kids in the schools who requested the journals - because all the kids in the region have been affected by this tragedy and everyone can benefit from journaling about what happened.

Now that the more recent 2018 wildfires have torn through both Northern and Southern California, we are actively reaching out to communities who could benefit from receiving free journals. If you know of anyone - adults or kids - who is recovering from a wildfire who would be interested in receiving journals, please get in touch via our ‘Request Journals’ contact page.

Through our own experiences, we found that losing your home in a fire leads to a very particular kind of grief, and connecting with others who are going or who have gone through the same kind of loss can really make you feel less alone. We hope that these Fire Journals can help in some small way. If you have received a journal and would be willing to share your story or any journal entries here, please get in touch with us as we’d love to hear from you.