No one expects their home to burn down

My home in the Pacific Palisades before and after the fires (2025).

Even when many other fires have happened in your state, you do not expect it to happen in your neighborhood. Even when large billows of smoke surround your neighborhood, you do not imagine what it would be like to walk through the ashes of your former home. No one expects their home to burn down, but when it does, grief slowly rolls in, and we have to learn how to live in the world without that thing that is a significant part of our lives.

As I grieve and many, many others grieve the loss of our homes, I am holding on to the memories of the little beautiful things that I will miss: a white clay imprint of the hand of my newborn daughter, a beautiful wedding dress I have folded in a box, the art on my walls that had become as familiar as best friends, a silly Schitt's Creek coffee mug that says, “I'm Trying Very Hard Not To Connect With People Right Now,” books that were an alter to my world of ideas, the softest pillow ever on my bed (but where did I buy it? why can’t I remember?), the tattered blue bathrobe wrapped in fond memories, a no-name perfume from many, many years ago I bought in Paris, ornate Christmas ornaments collected from my mother, and the smell. You know the one! When you come home, that wonderful smell of being home? Oh, I will miss that. There are the essentials, too - like what you miss right away because you need them, such as clothes, shoes, food, toiletries, and a sense of safety. In our grief, the brain must re-adjust and re-learn to live in the absence of all these things as basic and as random as they may be. We have to re-program our GPS in our cars and in our heads to go somewhere else besides “home.” We have to replace the autofill on our phones and computers with new information. We must figure out how to get home and send things home without going home and without there being a home.

View from my porch.

Tuesday, January 7^th, 2025 was a beautiful day in LA. It was windy, but it was still sunny and in the low sixties in the Palisades. I had received a warning text the night before from the LA Fire Department that the winds would be extreme, and we should be on high alert. I was in a Zoom meeting when my daughter called me from school.

“Mom, the Palisades are on fire. You need to leave.”

“What"? Sweetie, what do you mean?”

“Someone’s house burned down at school. Everyone is worried.”

I muted my Zoom meeting and opened my front door to see if I could see or hear anything. There were clouds of smoke. Actually, I take that back. There were enormous clouds of smoke. I had never seen that much smoke.

“Are you safe?” I asked my daughter.

“Yes, Santa Monica is fine. Our school is fine, but you should go.”

I remembered how bad the smoke smelled in 2021 when there was a fire in the mountains near our home. At the time, I lived in the Palisades Highlands, which seemed more dangerous because trees and brush surrounded us. I watched the fire from our window across the mountain on the hiking trail that I frequented. We did not have to evacuate. The firefighters reassured us that it would most likely not jump over the road to us, but they asked us to have a bag packed just in case. The smoke was bad. We kept our windows and doors shut throughout the house, but it still seeped in and got into everything. We invested in an air purifier. I remember debating whether we should have a Hepa filter or not. We settled on the Coway Airmega with Hepa, and to this day, I recommend it. As scary as that was, I thought when we sold that house and moved into the Palisades Alphabet Streets 3 years ago, we would be much more safe. The Highlands were becoming a hotbed of fire-related problems, and I thought the Palisades flats would be better.

Now, on January 7^th, 2025, I felt worried. The smoke was close. My neighbors were scurrying about. They were putting things in their cars, running in and out of their houses, and pulling their garbage cans off the street. At the same time, there were workers trimming trees down the street as if nothing was happening, and the garbage trucks were still picking up the garbage per usual.

I yelled across the street to my neighbor’s adult son who was packing his parent’s car, “Do you think we should evacuate?”

The smoke kept getting worse.

He turned to look at me with a bit of sadness in his eyes or at least as if he knew something I didn’t. He said, “I am not sure, but I had to evacuate from the Palisades Marquez area just now, and I think we should get out of here just to be safe. If we don’t, I think we will get stuck in some bad traffic.”

I could not quite comprehend what he was saying. Leave because of traffic or leave because our homes are in trouble? I watched as his parents put files in their car. I think my nervous system was starting to get activated, and yet I probably appeared overly calm considering what was happening.

“Hmm, maybe we should go east on Sunset just because the smoke looks like it is coming from Temescal Canyon, right?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I think so. West of Temescal is shut down.”

My phone rings. It’s a friend. He asks me if I have evacuated yet. I act as if nothing is wrong.

“Why? Have you heard something?”

“The news! It says the Palisades are on fire, so…. you should evacuate.”

“Well, I do see smoke, but some workers are trimming the trees just down the street, and they don’t seem worried.”

In a calm but matter-of-fact way, he just said, “I think you should get your dogs, get in the car, and head in the opposite direction of the smoke. Call me back when you’re in the car.” He hangs up.

My daughter calls again from school.

“Mom, this is urgent,” she said, “You need to evacuate. Can you grab some stuff from my room?”

I reassure her that I am leaving and will call her back. I had forgotten all about my Zoom meeting on my computer. Had it only been a few minutes? I told them I needed to go because of the smoke outside and would follow up with them later.

Everything about those last few moments, from when I packed our overnight bags to when I left the house plays out in slow motion in my head.

Why did I decide to take that sweatshirt and not the one I actually like? Why did I not take a jacket or my daughter’s artwork? Why did I take a toothbrush and not my jewelry? Why did I not at least grab a shelf of books or our birth certificates? Why did I take my cup of coffee with me when I left?

I slowly see each bad decision unfold as my hands pick out clothes and leave out others. I just casually make decisions about the most important things as if none of this is real and will certainly be over in a few hours. This is just a fire drill, I think. With a couple of small bags, I grab my dogs, jump in my car, and drive to my cousin’s apartment in West Hollywood.

Three hours later, I am with my daughter and my dogs watching the fires on the news. My alarm company calls.

“Hello, is this Kendall?”

“Yes, what is it? Is everything okay?”

“Your smoke alarm is going off in your kitchen.”

“No. That can’t be right.”

“We need to call 911.”

“Are you sure? The firefighters are very busy. Could it just be smoke?”

“We are calling 911, thank you.” They hang up.

I went on my Ring App, but it was completely offline. My breath began to speed up. I texted my neighbor and told her my fire alarm was going off. She said she was sorry and that she had also evacuated, but why didn’t she say, “I am sure it is nothing” or “Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution”? I went on the Next-Door App and the Citizen App, but there was just confusion there. Everyone was trying to get information like me, but no one knew anything. Then, it hit me. My house could be burning down.

As I watched the news, I could only see fire everywhere. Everything in my neighborhood seemed to be burning. I had lived in 3 different houses in the Palisades for over the last 16 years. My daughter’s elementary school was burning, our beloved grocery store was burning, our favorite restaurant was burning, and oh wait, is that my friend’s apartment building burning? What is happening? My mind literally could not make sense of what I was seeing.

I texted my neighbor again. “Have you heard anything? Please let me know.”

She said, “I heard our street was completely gone.”

“Where did you hear that?”

She said someone had posted a video of what she thinks is our street. She sent me a link. I looked at it over and over again. Where are the street signs? How can they tell? Nothing is recognizable because nothing is there.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, my little house could still be standing. You never know, I thought. I held on to that tiny possibility for two whole days until a friend of mine was finally able to get access to my street. After he looked through the rubble, he called me.

“I am so sorry to tell you there is nothing left. Do you want to Facetime?”

Before and After photos of My Free Little Library in the Palisades.

All I could see was my little free library standing in front of what was once my house. Everything else was decimated. I had just put that blue wooden box full of books there a few months earlier. My neighbors loved it. We had been exchanging books non-stop. Every time I looked inside, there was a new stack of books. I felt happy to see it standing - almost proud. I focused on that little blue box for the rest of the day since everything else was black-and-white ash.

I wanted to share my story with you because I do believe there is healing through narrative writing, and I am grateful Substack is here for that reason. Sharing our stories can help with trauma and trauma recovery.¹ When we recount a traumatic event, we remember details we had forgotten, and we can re-read our stories and think of advice we might want to share with ourselves as one would a friend. Writing helps us see things we haven’t seen before, and the process can help the mind re-adjust and learn how to live in the world without something or someone or someplace you once called home.

Thank you for letting me share! Although my home is gone, I am safe and with my loved ones. I hope you are safe and with your loved ones too. Thank you to all who have reached out to us. Your messages are so thoughtful and loving. With grief comes gratitude for all the kindness and warmth we have received since this tragedy. Sending out love to everyone.

1. Sloan, D. M., Sawyer, A. T., Lowmaster, S. E., Wernick, J., & Marx, B. P. (2015). Efficacy of Narrative Writing as an Intervention for PTSD: Does the Evidence Support Its Use? Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy : On the Cutting Edge of Modern Developments in Psychotherapy, 45(4), 215–225.