On Endings and Beginnings

one foot in front of the other.

Feb 23, 2025

Hi, everyone. It’s been a while—a while I hadn’t intended. I have started this many times. I have stopped this many times. I have tried to write about something else entirely. It doesn’t matter. Language, even though it is one of my favorite things, can sometimes be limited. It falls short—not because of what it is, but because the experience it tries to translate is too big to materialize. It is also my own slow process: I like to let things linger as long as possible, as if they are not on paper, the experience is still somehow unshaped, unreal—floating in some space between myself and the world.

Altadena burned to the ground. It burned like a massive ocean wave moving too deep onto the shore—without hesitation, without much warning, without asking for permission. It burned really close to me. It destroyed the neighborhood where I had found refuge and a sense of home for the first time in my 14 years of living in this town. My daughter was the pivotal force that brought me to Altadena, as children often are. They lead us to places we knew we were searching for but didn’t know how to find. Around 6 years ago, I was looking for a school for her—a little bit like this, a little bit like that—and what I found was much more than a school: a place surrounded by mountains, with a community of open arms, a family of strangers who somehow felt like friends, and, finally, a deep exhalation of being just outside the intensity that Los Angeles can sometimes carry in its collective psyche.

Quiet morning hikes at Eaton Canyon. Meeting friends for lunch at the local café. Going to the library after school pick-up. Marveling at the mountains from the car ride every morning. There wasn’t a single day they went unnoticed. Without saying a word, they made me stop in the middle of my busy, chaotic days as a working mom and look up—just look at them. The mountains holding Altadena, as if they were holding me too. And they did. They held me for years. They helped me put down roots, to feel the weight of my body occupying this place, this land. Finally.

The thing about a climate change tragedy is that your life can look completely different in an instant. I’m beyond grateful that I didn’t lose my home or business, as so many friends and neighbors did. The devastation of losing a home—on top of your workplace and possibly your children’s school—is beyond words. When you have little kids, so much of your life revolves around their school that losing it felt like something was ripped away from us—so abruptly, so violently—that it left us frozen.

Psychologist Pauline Boss developed a theory called “Ambiguous Loss,” which also gives shape to this feeling that pervades climate crisis tragedies. She defines it as:

“A feeling of profound loss or sadness that lacks closure or resolution.”

She writes:

“Ambiguous loss makes us feel incompetent. It erodes our sense of mastery and destroys our belief in the world as a fair, orderly, and manageable place. But if we learn to cope with uncertainty, we must realize that there are differing views of the world, even when that world is less challenged by ambiguity… If we are to turn the corner and cope with uncertain losses, we must first temper our hunger for mastery. This is the paradox.”

Tempering my hunger for mastery: Yes! The more we move forward, the more we realize how much we don’t know. The more we have to dance with uncertainty. I think by now, we’re tired of knowing that. And yet, we continue to discover what we’re capable of—even in impossible circumstances.

Since that day, it feels like a lifetime has passed—and also just a second. We landed from Brazil the morning of the fires, unaware. Rushing from the airport to get to our house—only to leave immediately because of the air, which wasn’t really air anymore. It was a gray and brown thing, heavy and blinding. Scared and confused, a few hours later, we heard the school was gone. Then maybe not entirely. It’s funny how information downloads—slowly, internally and externally—like drips of a harsh truth too incomprehensible for the human mind. What do you mean the school is gone? It was just there yesterday. Just last month when we left for the holidays. It was there when Gala presented her art project. When we worked in the garden with other parents. When I dropped her off late, and she was upset at me. It was there when I saw her little face emerging from the classroom at pick-up time. It was there when we had family movie nights on the grass. Teacher conferences. Celebrations. When we ran into parents who became friends. It was there when she bravely walked in on her first day of kindergarten. It was there when she learned to write. To read. To build long-lasting friendships. To value her teachers. And now, it’s gone? It’s too big for the brain to process. It doesn’t fit. For days—I mean d-a-y-s—I squeezed the information into little pieces, adding to the weight of countless families and friends who lost everything. And, I just stayed as quiet as possible; that was all I could do. To stay in silence.

And here I am, more than one month later, walking as if my shoes are full of mud. But still walking. Gaining strength after watching others, who lost it all, still walking. Still imagining. Life is asking me to hold grief and impermanence in my hands. To carry it with me. To carry it for my daughter and her loss. To find ways to help her, to help us, make sense of what it means to have something one day and, the next, not anymore—or at least, not as it used to be. To be forced to say goodbye, even if in a different way. To change. To begin again.

I’m still gathering pieces. I’m still crying tears out of nowhere—and I’m not surprised. The past six years have been a school in grief. In heartbreaks. In loss. In beauty. In connection. In friendship. In presence. All of it. Since my dad’s cancer journey and death, followed by my brother’s cancer, then my own breast cancer diagnosis—surgeries, treatments—in the middle of a pandemic, while the world crumbles under genocides and fascism. All I seem to be doing is falling apart and coming back together. Every time I gather the pieces, I find a new version of myself. And yet, deep inside, something remains steady. Something reliable. Something that isn’t desperate, isn’t scared, isn’t hiding. Something that simply observes. Observes while I fear, while I cry and grieve. While I dream. While I learn to let go. While I start over, again and again. Observes while I tell my child, “We are okay. You are okay.” Observes while I put one foot in front of the other.

With love,

Mariana

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Pauline Boss interview on On Being Podcast is one of my favorite ever and here’s her book on Ambiguous Loss

When are we going to have the courage to stop climate change?

Pico Iyer, who is a beautiful writer, also went through the loss of his home to a fire in Santa Barbara, he just came out with a book called Aflame and here’s an interview with him.

With everything that is going on, listening to this felt as a nice back rub.

And, all of this, also made me more sure of this:Doing Nothing With Your Favorite People Is Really, Really Good for You