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Today marks one year since the Eaton Fire.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether I wanted to write about it at all. Part of me wants to let the date pass quietly, like a storm that already moved through. Another part of me knows that silence can feel like erasure—like pretending nothing changed when, in reality, everything did.
So this is me choosing to acknowledge it.
A year ago, fire tore through my sense of normal. Not just physically, but emotionally, psychologically. There’s a before and an after now, whether I want there to be or not. That’s the thing about trauma—it redraws the map without asking for permission.
What I remember most isn’t just the fire itself. It’s the waiting. The not knowing. The adrenaline that kept me upright for days and then disappeared, leaving behind exhaustion so deep it felt cellular. It’s the way time slowed down and sped up at the same time. It’s how my body remembers things my mind sometimes tries to forget.
Anniversaries are strange like that. You can be doing “fine” all year, and then suddenly a date shows up on the calendar and your chest feels tight for no clear reason. Your patience is thinner. Your emotions louder. Your sleep a little off. It’s not dramatic—it’s memory, stored somewhere deeper than logic.
What the fire took is obvious in some ways. It took a sense of safety I didn’t realize I relied on. It took innocence—the belief that if you plan well enough, prepare enough, do everything “right,” you’ll be protected. It took ease. It took the illusion of control.
What it didn’t take might matter more.
It didn’t take my ability to rebuild—slowly, imperfectly, on my own timeline. It didn’t take my voice. It didn’t take my capacity for joy, even though joy looks different now. Quieter, maybe. More intentional. More earned.
It didn’t take my empathy. If anything, it sharpened it. I notice people differently now—the ones carrying invisible weight, the ones flinching at loud sounds, the ones who minimize what they went through because “others had it worse.” I know that language. I’ve used it. And I also know that pain doesn’t need to be ranked to be real.
A year later, I’m still learning how to live with what happened instead of trying to “get over it.” That phrase—get over it—feels absurd when something rewires you. This isn’t about getting over anything. It’s about integration. About letting the experience exist without letting it define me entirely.
If you’re reading this and you’re also coming up on an anniversary—fire, loss, illness, rupture—this is your permission slip to feel however you feel. You don’t owe anyone strength. You don’t owe anyone productivity. You don’t owe anyone a lesson learned neatly wrapped in a bow.
Sometimes surviving is the lesson.
Today, I’ll probably be a little quieter. Maybe more reflective. Maybe more emotional than I expect. Or maybe I’ll feel oddly normal. All of those things are allowed. Healing isn’t linear, and time doesn’t erase—it teaches you how to carry things differently.
One year later, I’m still here. And that matters.
