OUR FAMILY’S FIRE STORY : Founders Statement
The flames took our house one morning in September. I remember the smell of smoke and the way it clung to my mom’s clothes. Within hours, everything I'd grown up with, except the clothes I was wearing, was gone.
Years later, I stood before the scorched skeleton of the Village School in the Pacific Palisades, feeling a burn in my throat from the pervasive stench of burning chemicals that emanated from the site. The one remaining brick wall had a sign with the slogan “This is Childhood” gleaming and jarringly pristine under a bright blue sky. After a quick tour through by the National Guard, I left the site of the fire and made my way to the office park where the Village School was now currently operating.
I was in LA to give journals to survivors of the Palisades fire through the Fire Journal Project, an initiative I started after my own total-loss house fire many years ago. I’d already dropped off dozens of journals to the counselor of another local high school, as I had done many times over the previous 7 years, because generally schools prefer to keep interactions to a minimum, and the counselors know which kids will benefit most from the journals.
But today, the leaders of the Village school community leadership had asked me to speak directly with students, face-to-face.
What could I say to these kids? My grief felt too small, too private. They had lost not only their homes, but their schools, their playgrounds, their soccer fields, libraries, synagogues, grocery stores and so much more. The day following our fire, I went to my soccer game and was met with bags of clothes, boxes of books, and a handmade quilt from members of my community. But in the Palisades, the whole community had burned. The kids saw destruction everywhere and their losses were replayed over and over again in the media.
Back at the office park, I hauled boxes of journals through the sterile fluorescent hallways. Upon arrival that morning, I moved between makeshift classrooms, heard a range of stories and saw a range of reactions. I told each group about my house fire and asked them to share anything they’d like with me. I expected questions about my experience, but the students were more interested in sharing theirs. They told me about losing stuffed animals, rescuing a pet, and getting to spend the night with a grandparent whose home was spared. I couldn’t help but get emotional listening to them. These conversations were a healthy way to start processing what had happened.
I was impressed they were so able to share about their experiences, since I had not wanted to talk about mine. My way of dealing with the fire was to simply pretend that it hadn’t happened, because talking about it with friends made me want to cry, which felt like admitting how much it hurt. I told the kids that, for me, my journal was a safe place to privately vent the overwhelming feelings of anger and grief that come with fire loss. During fires, dealing with the physical losses is so urgent that dealing with the emotional losses can often be delayed. The feelings can arise at odd times, and my journal was always there to receive them.
“I know that everyone says it’s going to be okay and it will be someday, but not right
now.” I said. “And that is completely okay.”
The kids listened eagerly, reaching for the journals before I was even done speaking.
“How long did it take to get over it?” one boy asked.
I felt my chest tighten. No one had ever asked me this directly. The answer caught in my throat. I thought, You never really get over it; you just move forward. But then I paused. I’d never seen it before, but at that moment it became clear that The Fire Journal Project and focusing on helping others, had been the key to my recovery. I shared this realization with him.
He nodded, like that was enough and then asked “Can I help?”
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
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 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.
- Samantha Grant Wiesler (mom to Silver, Evie, and West Wiesler) in 2019