One Year
thinking about the Palisades & Eaton Fires
Time feels like it has been frozen for me since January 6th, 2025. It was my first day back in the clinic after taking a couple weeks off as I always do for the holidays. My boyfriend Justin had gone up to Northern California to stay with his parents for a few days after New Years and I had just spent the first few days of the year re-organizing my closet. Justin had one more week off of work and we had planned to spend my days off from work organizing our storage unit and to have some nice days together. At the end of my clinic shift on Monday the 6th, around 9pm I saw a patient of mine had posted a story online, I was eating a very late dinner in the back room at Poke and read “from the City of Los Angeles: There is an expected destructive, widespread, and potentially life-threatening windstorm starting Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon in the City of Los Angeles. Wind gusts are expected to be 50-80mph and reach 80-100 mph in certain areas. Red flag fire weather conditions will likely continue until Friday.” This obviously made me panic. I mostly was thinking about how my dog hates the wind- she is terrified of it and I thought that it would be a day or two of her spending the day pacing around the house. I had no idea.
I remember waking up and I told Justin to take our dog to the park because she probably wouldn’t get any time outside time because of how windy it was going to be for a few days. For some reason at the park she threw up, something she never does (ominous) and it was already incredibly windy. We went into the bedroom and I put on one of my dogs favorite albums, Alien Observer by Grouper and we all tried to relax on the bed. The rest of the day is a blur after that only fragments.
The Palisades, Pacific Palisades- is my hometown, the house I grew up in we had to sell, but it is still where my Dad lives and somehow where I still spent a lot of time prior to the fires. It was where I went and ran a lot of errands: dry cleaners, the cobbler. Sometimes going to the grocery store there or driving to Malibu for a fun longer drive. I moved back to LA in 2017 to continue acupuncture school which I started in New York in 2016, after going back to school to get my associates degree in January of 2015. When we moved back a sweet friend and fellow acupuncturist Care Motika who had a beautiful clinic here in LA called Window to The Sky, who now is living abroad, referred me for a job working for an acupuncturist in the Palisades. Steps from my elementary school, blocks from my childhood home! Around the corner from Ronnys Market! Where he would dangle snake gummy worms for you to pull from a spatula- a playful joke! Where I would get a samosa some days and a pink Sobe drink! It was wild to be working steps from all of these memories and a pocket of the Palisades I hadn’t spent time in a long time, even though my Dad’s apartment is very close by. I am indebted for the time I was given to retrace my steps there and for my time working for Toni, of Yin Yang Dermatology. Where I got to spend time learning and cooking Chinese herbs. The clinic she had was so incredibly unique her own decoction machines which are very rare for a sole practitioner to have, and I was lucky enough to work there. The clinic and that whole block and all the homes including the one I grew up in are gone.
Back to January 7th.
I remember spending a good portion of the earlier part of the day on FaceTime with my dad trying to get to him to stay in close with me. He is really good at ignoring my calls, and I was very worried with everything going on that he would not communicate with me.
I remember my Dad telling me that he didn’t have time to talk to me, I convinced him to keep me on FaceTime while he worked. We did that for maybe an hour. I remember telling him to pack a bag and go. I later found out the truth that had he even wanted to leave at that part of the day, he would have never made it out of his apartment because of traffic. His street was grid locked and couldn’t even get out.
As things progressed with more terror in the day and things started to feel worse I started to pack our things. I am a collector of everything: books, postcards, vintage t-shirts etc. I started to pack most importantly my photos. Then all my postcards, my jewelry etc. I would start to pack things and then I would find something like India’s baby teeth (my dog) and then get side tracked and sit down and become frozen by what was going on and would have lay down for a while. Then maybe a text would come through or something on the news would jolt me and I would start packing again.
As things got worse I started to call my dad which felt like every few minutes. I distinctly remember it being later in the afternoon, I was already sobbing I think telling him he needed to leave. In my father’s fashion to calm himself he was reading. At this point he had already lost internet. (I distinctly remember the sound of TV news being off and him quietly reading with his glasses off).
From my memory, I called my aunt, my dad’s sister to tell him he had to leave and she had to force him to get out.. At this point all I remember is calling my dad and that the power had already gone out and that he was having trouble getting out of his building’s garage. I was freaking out. I thought he was going to come to my apartment, thinking we were in a safe zone, but he went to a hotel in Santa Monica instead. My dad told me that as he drove away out of the Palisades that Temescal Canyon on both sides was completely engulfed in flames. As it was getting dark things were starting to feel worse at our place, being only a few miles away from the Palisades. I went into overdrive and continued to pack and pack and pack. Justin told me I had packed too much and that we probably had to leave soon.
At a certain point shortly after it went dark, Justin had come back inside from looking outside of our apartment on the street and came in and very definitively said, “We are leaving”. Luckily I didn’t see until days later (on video) of what he saw and how close the flames were to our place. We started to pack up the car, tape our windows, turn off the gas furnace and get in the car. I walked through each room of our apartment and prayed that it would be here when we came back.
As we turned of our alley onto the street out of our apartment we saw a guy out jogging, like the entire neighborhood right next to us wasn’t burning to the ground.
We left around 9 PM and started to head South. We got in-n-out and drove to Justin’s grandmas apartment in the South bay. I remember writing my best friend from childhood an email to say I was thinking of her and the Palisades. I don’t remember much else besides weeping to Hana Stretton’s Come Home as we drove.
January 8th: I remember the next day as things progressed and we were down in the South Bay, Justin drove back to get some more of our things, and get my Mom.
That evening the fire sparked in Runyon Canyon in Hollywood. I thought that we were going to lose Poke my friend Russell’s clinic, where I practice. Everything felt so insane. Thankfully the winds were not what they were the day before and it was put out quickly. We kept glued to the app Watch Duty as every other Angeleno was especially watching Mandeville Canyon. At some point maybe that Friday or Saturday I realized I hadn’t changed clothes once and as I went to shower I realized I had on bike shorts under my sweatpants. Somehow I didn’t even know what clothing was on my body that entire week.
On the 12th we drove back to LA. A friend let us stay in her home that was close to the clinic so that I could get to work easier for a few days and not have to commute all the way from the South Bay. It was such a needed reprieve. My friend Vanessa described that the change of scenery to move locations in the midst of all the trauma and chaos would be helpful. A few days later as we left my friend’s house we learned David Lynch died and I cried all the way to the clinic. We were evacuated in South bay until mid February.
At the very end of January, while still evacuated, Justin took my Mom for a follow up appointment for a breast biopsy. At the end of 2024 my Mom had her yearly mammogram. I remember the moment exactly when she called me to tell me that they found something in her mammogram- she however was not worried at all. I was having a really good day- I was already on break from the clinic for the holidays I was in the middle of doing a little bit of yoga/ stretching and my mom called and said that the mammogram needed to have a further biopsy just to be sure. I remember feeling terrible knowing that this was probably not a good thing. I did a pretty good job of shelving it because of the time right before Christmas it would have to wait until the new year. And because of the fires everything was delayed even further. They wouldn’t tell her what the results were on the phone, probably procedural but also probably not good. We were still evacuated and we couldn’t leave my dog alone so Justin took her to the appointment. I was going to join the appointment via speaker phone. Justin called me after they started and I missed the beginning of the appointment, but the first thing I heard was that my mom had breast cancer, triple negative- the most aggressive kind. Everything already felt truly insane so somehow this made sense with everything else that didn’t make sense. It is hard thinking that is how 2025 started. The Palisades & Eaton fires, the loss of the Palisades, my dad’s home & my mom’s diagnosis together. My dad’s apartment didn’t burn down, but a year later he is still displaced & not home. I worry about the cleaning of the debris and what it means for the homes that did survive in the Palisades and Altadena. I am thinking of everyone that I grew up with that lost their homes and all their memories and their photos and all of it. I am thinking of friends that I know that also lost their homes in Altadena. And everyone whose lives were also completely upended by the fires.
A patient of mine texted me a few days ago something that someone said to her, “2026 please be gentle”.
That is what I am hoping for this year. I am hoping for a less tumultuous year. A year with less tragedy and pure survival.
During the Summer most days when not in the clinic are spent at the beach in the Palisades or further up in Malibu. This is my favorite time of the year. This past year they were spent at chemo and taking care of my mom. This past year was the wildest ride.
Here are a few photos that we took on December 31st, 2024 on New Years Eve our tradition of catching the Sunset at Will Rogers, because Justin headed up north it was the last time we were in the Palisades before everything.
Fantastic storytelling. Thank you. May your 2026 be nourishing.
Sending you a gentle hug 🐚💓