Like many people in the world who’ve been blessed enough to have spent time there, Maui and its people, and Hawaii in general, has been on my mind a lot lately. To call the devastation and destruction of the wildfire there—which was exacerbated by lack of human preparedness and greed as much as it was by human-made climate change—heartbreaking is an understatement. So many lives lost, so many homes lost, so much history destroyed. The recovery will be long and difficult, with climate disaster vultures already diving in to exploit the suffering of the people of Maui in order to profit. Sigh
I have to admit that even I, in my hyper-paranoid state over potential climate disasters, would not have thought in a million years that Hawaii would have been the site of the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over 100 years. So the shock of this disaster, to be honest, has numbed me a bit. I spent lots of time in Hawaii as a kid (albeit on Oahu, not Maui) and my godmother lives in Maui (in Kahului, thankfully) and I stayed there for a couple weeks after my daughter Naima died, to rest and try to heal. It is a beautiful place, to be sure, like every place in Hawaii. It’s so hard to imagine that such a tropical, green place (though Lahaina is one of the dryer areas of the island in general) could become a wildfire inferno. Just goes to show that Mother Nature has many difficult surprises in store for us as this manmade shit show called climate change continues to evolve.
While I struggle a bit to feel deep into my own sadness for Hawaii during this time, I definitely feel the sadness of friends and acquaintances, some of whom have much closer connections to Maui than I do: family ties, fondness ties, spiritual ties. One of my long-time Buddhist teachers, who has family in Hawaii, told me of the historic temples that had burned down in the fire. Oddly, my empathic sadness for others’ grief is stronger than my own.
Sometimes this is true even when climate catastrophe hits closer to home, like during the historic wildfires here in California in 2020, which turned the sky above my home orange for days and kept us indoors with hastily bought air purifiers on and made me wish there were N95 masks for dogs too, so that I could feel better taking my pup out for potty walks. I don’t feel like I got very emotional during those times either, but it’s not because I don’t have any feelings about all of these disastrous events.
I think the reason I don’t tend to get very emotional during climate catastrophes (and granted, I’ve been fortunate to only feel the indirect effects of them, and not be on the frontlines, which is an entirely different and intense trauma experience) is because I’m literally writing about how the climate crisis (albeit a future version of it) is affecting the characters in my novel each day. Even when there isn’t a major climate disaster in the news or in my home state of California, I am thinking about climate change, wondering how it will affect not just me but my characters—who, let’s face it, are just aspects / versions of me and my loved ones, set in a near-future fictional world.
I think this helps me process these emotions in an ongoing, daily way. Having a Patreon page where I can write about these things regularly also helps. Basically, writing about this ever-evolving reality-horror show helps. It’s therapeutic, or at least gives me a way to process the thoughts, fears, hopes, desires, anxieties I have about climate and our changing world in a way that I have some control over.
So if you’re feeling scared or sad or anxious or worried about climate, I encourage you to write about it. Doesn’t have to be in any kind of public forum. It can be in a journal or in a notebook or on the notes app of your phone. Let your brain turn the thoughts around and look at them, put them down in a piece of paper or on a screen outside of your body, as this quote so eloquently puts it. Not only might this help you feel a little bit more grounded and calm about what’s happening in the world, it might also help you get more clear on how you might want to take action to do something about this crisis. I credit my novel, in part, for helping me decide that I wanted to start working as a nonprofit staffer (instead of a consultant) again, and now I’m at one of the most well-respected environmental/ climate justice organizations in the country.
Try it, if you feel like it. Because what’s happening right now is overwhelming and scary, yes, but there are ways that we can shift our lives to adapt and even try to move things in a different direction. And that is a good thing.
Rona Fernandez 