What I Learned When My House Burned Down

I had a post all ready for this month’s blog. Then I opened my friend’s newsletter. After I read something that I consider much more poignant and timely, I asked if I could share. Please welcome Barbara Nickless to The Stiletto Gang. ~ Donnell

Author Barbara Nickless

Friends have called to ask if I’ve been triggered by the fires in Los Angeles. In short, yes. It’s an unsettling fact that more people than ever live in fire-prone areas known as wildland urban interfaces. With L.A. on everyone’s mind, I want to share what I learned when my home of twenty-two years burned down in a wildfire.

When I lost my home in Colorado’s Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012, I went—in the space of hours—from being a middle-class, tax-paying suburbanite to one of the shell-shocked homeless. Overnight, I found myself needy, helpless and so bone-deep tired I suspected a solid year of sleep wouldn’t fix it. Like anyone grieving or in pain or simply raw from the public weight of it all, what I wanted was the one impossible thing: to go home.

I passed through the classic stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Some stages, like anger, were brief. Others lingered for years, depression and bargaining looping back in unwelcome refrains. Denial reappeared, too, a kid poking her tongue in the place where there used to be a tooth, surprised by the emptiness.

But tragedy’s sharp-edged gift is that it brings unexpected growth. Pain reshapes us, expanding our capacity for understanding and wisdom. Here are a few things I’ve learned—and am still learning—about loss.

1. Losing your home isn’t about karma or offending God or not packing well or living in the wrong place. It’s just life, and life is capricious.
2. Do your best to eat regularly. Exercise. Go to bed at a reasonable time. As soon as you can, resume your regular pleasures—TV shows, books, coffee with friends, NPR on the radio. If you don’t yet have a TV or books or a radio, go to a friend’s house.
3. When you start to run down that mental list of everything you lost, stop.
4. Take comfort in knowing you may go the rest of your life without having to purge your closets. In a land where public storage is a multi-billion-dollar business, this is no small thing.
5. When a friend complains about his junk drawer, smile and ask, “What’s a junk drawer?”
6. Aunt Matilda’s bean pot. You hated it. Now it’s gone. And you don’t even have to lie about it.
7. You have more friends than you realize. The ones who show up at the door of your hotel/rental/friend’s house/car (God bless you) with hiking boots or plates or a set of towels might not be the ones you expected. Tell them you love them.
8. In fact, tell all your friends you love them. Life is capricious (see above). Don’t wait.
9. You cared more about those stupid love letters and track ribbons and dorky high school pictures of yourself in big hair and platform shoes than you realized. That says wonderful things about your capacity for humor and self-love.
10. Your mother will forgive you for losing her mother’s pearls. Your father will forgive you for losing his WWII pilot’s jacket.
11. A home—not a house—is about emotional resiliency. Put your energy there. Have dinner with your family as often as you can. Kiss your loved ones morning and night. Listen to your kids when they want to talk. And if you are lucky enough to still have a mother, return her phone calls.
12. It’s okay that you’re not okay. One day you’ll catch yourself laughing, and you’ll realize you’ve made it through the worst.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost their homes in L.A. If you want to take action, here’s how you can help:

• Give to World Central Kitchen, which is providing meals to communities in Southern California.
• From the Red Cross: “Help people affected by wildfires in California in 2025 by visiting redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED CROSS (800-733-2767) or texting the word CAWILDFIRES to 90999 to make a donation.”

About Barbara’s latest release: 

The Drowning Game has been named Best Book of 2024 by WRBH Reading Radio. “Although a difficult decision with so many good books, the winner of the 2024 WRBH Writers’ Forum Book of the Year Award is Barbara Nickless for The Drowning Game.” A huge thank you to the Writers’ Forum on WRBH!

“Ms. Nickless continues to be one of our best action/mystery writers. Her deep dives into her subject matter and smooth narratives always guarantee a great experience. Following Nadia down the twists and turns of international industrial espionage and spy craft is a thrilling ride, made more enjoyable by the interior monologues and richly drawn characters. More, please.”

–Amazon Reviewer