Months after the Eaton Fire, Natalie Bowker still makes regular visits to the cleared lot where her family’s home once stood. Even with the destruction of her Altadena neighborhood all around, the view of the San Gabriel Mountains is breathtaking.
Bowker, a self-described “tree hugger,” said she returns to the site to feel the energy of her old home.
“It’s a lot better seeing the [empty] lot rather than everything destroyed,” Bowker said.
Bowker and her family fled the neighborhood hours before fire took the house. As a certified hypnotherapist, she’s doing the best she can to manage their collective grief. After the fire, she also began offering regular, free group sessions for other wildfire survivors on Zoom.
Bowker joins a growing number of local mental health professionals who have added free services to address the needs of fire survivors, finding ways to support their community while also grappling with their own trauma and loss.
Therapist Gabby Raices leads a free grief circle every other week in Pasadena, which she co-founded and advertised shortly after the wildfire.
“It was just supposed to be a one-day thing, just to see who came,” Raices said. “It was a big mixture of people. People who had lost their homes, people who hadn’t. Families, married couples. That first group was all different; it was just people who came across this post.”
Since then, it’s whittled down to about half a dozen or so regulars and the occasional first timer.
For a couple of hours, talk turns to some of the things they have all experienced over these last several months since the fire largely destroyed their community.
Melissa Lopez, who co-founded the grief circle with Raices, lost her home in central Altadena. But helping facilitate free mental health services for fire survivors is no panacea for a therapist who’s endured trauma herself. She’d endlessly ruminate about the night of the fire, replaying terrifying memories and experiencing debilitating bouts of anxiety.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been such a crier. I feel like I cried a lot, all the time,” said Lopez. “And PTSD really [messed] with my appetite. It’s part of my politics to combat fatphobia, but I lost like 40 pounds.”
A seasoned therapist, Lopez found the grief circle and one-on-one therapy extremely helpful in the weeks after the fire.
“I think one of the things that felt powerful for me was hearing a lot of people say, ‘I feel like I can just be sad here. I feel like I can just grieve here.’ Because the world has moved on,” she said. “It was nice to hear folks talking about how in the group, they could just be sad or angry or let themselves feel grief.”
Recently, however, Lopez has stepped away from the grief circle. It was hard to relate to other participants who were mostly white homeowners who could afford to rebuild. Less privileged survivors — people without the money to rebuild, or renters like Lopez, or who are Black, Latino or undocumented — just weren’t showing up.
“I know there’s a lot of people who are working two or three job jobs, there was no time off for PTSD,” explains Lopez. “These free resources are great, but if you can’t go on a Saturday, or whenever the event is being held, you are out of luck.”
To help fill that gap, Los Angeles County recently expanded a range of free post-wildfire resources at Alta Loma Park in Altadena, including on-site county mental health clinicians. Another effort spearheaded by State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Alhambra, aims to address the mental health of kids.
Other free, virtual group sessions are popping up on Zoom, in backyards, and elsewhere. All these services are vitally needed, therapist Jane Murphy said.
“It’s a turning point in everybody’s life that has been through the fires. It’s a collective turning point with people having to make decisions about what they do in the next phase of their lives, and it’s powerful,” Murphy said.
At 94 years old, Murphy still sees clients from a cozy office in the warm, rambling Altadena home that she and her late husband bought 64 years ago. She also grieves over all that’s been lost in her community.
“I’m using my journal. I’m doing my walks. I’m talking to people in the devastated places if they’re there. [I’m] praying for people that have been devastated. I’m walking through the death space,” she said.
Murphy said there are plenty of people still not addressing the signs of trauma or PTSD. That includes two of her sons, Justin and Stephen, who, for hours, battled flames that would otherwise have consumed the house.
But avoiding that trauma can have consequences, Bowker said.
“The only way out of any kind of trauma is to go back into it, unfortunately,” she said. “So, no matter how painful it is, you have to walk through it to get out of it.”
On one recent visit, Bowker lingered at the cleared lot where her home once stood.
“I want to go talk to my tomato plant,” she said.
“Look at the hills, they’re blooming again,” she continued, gesturing toward the luminous San Gabriel Mountains.
“It just gives [me] hope that we will bloom again, maybe not in the same exact way, but I think maybe even better. I think we will come out even better.”
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