Resistance to Awareness of What "Is"

The one about the LA fires and missing home in a way I haven't in years.

It’s Wednesday evening and I can’t stop watching the footage of all the fires currently ablaze in LA. Along with all the destruction they’ve already caused, new fires continue popping up all over the city and my mind is literally BLOWN.

Logically, this does NOT make sense.

However, seeing it all up in flames makes me miss my home in a way I haven’t in years. It feels like the end of days in some ways, yet being far enough removed from it allows for a calmness that my close family members and friends still living there do not have the luxury of feeling at the moment and for them, I am worried.

Aside from the 2023 blizzard anomaly which gave me a hint of winter snow PTSD, forest fires in the mountains were (and still are) a huge threat, not only to human lives, pets and personal belongings, but to all the wildlife and beautiful critters that call it home as well. Californians are as aware of the threat of fires as we are of earthquakes, yet both are devastatingly real in a way that you don’t comprehend until you lose your entire life, metaphorically, in one fail swoop, and when the earthquake of 1994 hit, my family did. And then we rebuild and we move on, as with any other natural disaster, but those tragedies remain with you and within your nervous system for the rest of your life. Sure, we can joke about them after the fact, but years later, there is still a slight emotional trigger after surviving something so completely out of our control, not to mention, one that changed the entire trajectory of our lives without prompting.

I’ve been through multiple fire scares and near evacuations in the past 12 years while living on the mountain, but always remained lucky to have escaped tragedy. A more recent fire, close to my new house, which burned over 40k acres at the base of the mountain and moved quickly up towards Running Springs and Big Bear also had us worrying and wondering if we might have to flee or protect Le Dome in Lake Arrowhead, but luckily it was contained before it headed west. Although some houses did burn and people lost their belongings, the 40k acres the fire demolished was mostly landscape and tragically, the wildlife that resides within it.

Still, a fire doesn’t just “start”. Usually, it is revealed later, that someONE was behind it. Just saying…

As I write this, there are at least 7 large fires we know about… but many more random fires have started and called in by civilians, according to some reports.

Photo Source: BBC

Knowing we would have record-breaking winds overnight, I even took precautions last night before going to bed just in case. I grabbed the dog’s harnesses and leashes, a few jugs of water to keep nearby, and mentally jotted down a list of items I’d grab in case of an emergency evacuation. The low humidity, along with the high winds and trees touching power lines, always has me slightly paranoid about fires, even though NONE are happening near me at the moment… which again, has me suspicious about how the LA fires are starting, considering we have the same climate and winds at the moment.

I have always been afraid of fire. It might actually be my biggest fear… or one of them anyway, which may result from a vivid memory from childhood POV: sitting in the backseat of the car while my mom was driving on the freeway, fire blazing along the sides and it JUMPIN towards us, as if it were alive, landing on other side, looking for something else to latch onto and light.

Today, watching footage of people driving through Pacific Palisades and seeing house after house burned to the ground, along with commercial properties like businesses, restaurants and schools, is life altering. We’re used to worrying about places like Topanga Canyon and Malibu against fires, it comes with the territory because, like much of the mountain I just moved off of, it’s covered in brush and forestry and the fires lead to mudslides when the rains come. Growing up in SoCal, these are things you hear about every year and make you wonder why anyone ever buys property in Malibu. But have you seen Malibu? It’s incredibly gorgeous, so there’s that. But seeing houses on the sand, beachfront, literally: ocean, sand, house - BURNED - one after the next, is a sight that my brain cannot comprehend! Logically, there is little to no brush surrounding those homes so what is there to catch ablaze? Why does it seem, like dominoes, house after house, they all fall down?

Needless to say, I’m lacking motivation and inspiration to do much of anything but watch… watch as my home goes up in flames, worried about family and friends and wondering what will come of all of this?

We’ve lived through many catastrophic events in these last few years, but this seems different. I am not too much of a conspiracy theorist, but to be honest, most fires ARE INDEED started by a person. So what gives? It seems as though the world just continues to go more and more insane each day into 2025 and as much as I thought we left this nonsense in 2024, it seems the world, at large, has not done their healing work.

Aside from the these disasters syphoning all of my free attention at the moment, it feels like a distraction I’ve been seeking in a sense that as motivated and inspired to work as I was at the end of the year, just a few weeks ago, 2025 has brought an energetic quality that I can’t yet put my finger on, but that feels a bit frenetic, I guess. An energy that I don't want to play into, but one I want to run away from. I feel the need to rest a lot right now, as if to avoid it all until it goes away. In fact, I don’t feel like doing much of anything at all and I can’t tell if it’s a mental issue, in the sense that with the new year comes high hopes for immediate and positive change and a let down so intense that a reset is necessary to balance out and get back on track. Or maybe it’s the planet’s alignment and something to do with Pluto… or is it Jupiter? Or maybe it’s my continued mental capacity to get sucked back into my past and the sadness of the letting go and what feels like an utter inability to move on? Or maybe it’s what’s happening in politics right now? Or maybe it’s the energy of the world at large? Or maybe it’s just winter and it’s time to hibernate and doing anything else is literally going against all that is natural and good?

I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t like it. That’s the problem. I don’t like this feeling. It feels like a slump, a lump, a hump… a hint of depression, a sadness, a lack of hope, a defeating feeling and unfortunately when these overwhelming emotions fall upon us, it’s hard to remember that they’re temporary… that in a few days will usually be gone, IF we allow ourselves the time we need to rest and recover, something that is so hard to do in these times… but I am grateful that I have this time, this moment to do just that. I am safe and that’s enough for now.

Is this simply an awareness of my resistance to what is?

I’m not sure, but 2025 is definitely getting off to a rocky start.

xoxo …love, Maegan ♥️