Our Family’s Fire Story
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 daughters Silver and Evie, 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 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 at that time, 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 donated to them following our fire 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 we 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. The following year, when the 2018 wildfires tore through both Northern and Southern California, we were ready to actively reach out to communities to deliver journals.
Since that time, we’ve delivered journals to thousands of kids in dozens of classrooms in California - not just the kids who lost their homes, but all the kids who requested journals - because all the kids in these communities have been affected by the losses and everyone can benefit from journaling about what happened.
Through our own personal experience with a house fire, 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. The girls hope is that these Fire Journals help in some small way.
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.