Community

Photo courtesy of Penticton Western News

I’m going to try not to make this one about guilt, because it isn’t. It’s about appreciation and perspective. Gratitude and love. I don’t know why I go to shame first – guilt that I haven’t done right or done enough – but I’ll try my best to leave it here.

We are home. And for those I haven’t informed of that yet, I’m sorry (hahaha there’s the guilt again - I tried…). Although the Bald Range fire is still raging and all of those firefighting heroes are still battling, we were lucky enough to return to our property, along with our Peachland neighbours that live along this north edge of the fire.

I know others have not been so lucky.

For us, that sentiment extends beyond this fire – beyond the outcomes of this particular tragedy. So many “tragedies” have seemed relevant to us over the past few years. So many losses. So many “near misses” for us.

But I can say this. We ARE lucky and we know it. And it’s not just because we have had the outcomes in life that have seemed impossible – that next to others have seemed almost unfair.

We are lucky because we are loved.

This has been weighing on me lately. Not the being loved part. That’s the light. That’s the buoyancy in our lives. What’s weighing on me is my inability to acknowledge it properly. And, most recently, my lack of “effort” to do so.

But this fire and the evacuation of the past week has reminded me just how deeply grateful I am, and how much I’ve needed to say it out loud again.

Community: what an absolutely beautiful thing it can be. And our community is truly one of the best there is.

Social media is tricky – it’s a volatile beast at times, welcoming both beauty and backlash, harmony and dissonance. It’s an opportunity for expression, but in a country where free speech is still (sometimes) valued, all voices are heard. And so they should be. It’s often our responsibility to manage how our reactions to difference are played out, and not to micromanage diversity of perspective.

But what I do love is to hear voices of appreciation, kindness and love. During this time of uncertainty, particularly for our community, I heard it all. But what resonated so much with me were the words recognizing just how kind and caring our community has been. Taking in stray animals, watching out for each other – businesses offering meals to those working so hard to protect us, and to families displaced. Neighbours checking on each other, feeding pets, bringing treats, giving up their space and their time to offer a little comfort and care.

Man, we have experienced so much of this over the years. There is so much good in the world, and sometimes it takes some bad in the background to draw attention to it – contrast to bring forward color and light.

I went to my Dad’s surprise birthday party last night in HIS community – a community that has done more for us over the years than I can ever truly appreciate – and I felt a sense of discomfort knowing that there were faces in the crowd that have likely thought more about us, about our struggles and journey, then I’ll ever know. And I’ll never be able to thank them. Not really. Not appropriately.

When Violet went through treatment the first time there was an entirely different energy around things. There was collaboration and collective experience – the community was involved and I, in turn, involved them. I used my writing both to process my pain and to keep everyone wrapped up in our story, relevant to the experience, up to date on our progress.

But the second time has been so very, very different. It’s ironic, really, in this circumstance. Relapse is such a different beast. It’s harder, scarier, uglier, and despite that (or maybe because of it), it is so much more isolating.

But this is by choice. It was for me, anyway. It is not because people care less, or because it matters less, or because it’s “old news”. It’s because the second time around doesn’t have a “protocol” in every sense of the word. It’s a “shit, what do we do now?” attitude that radiates through everything – an emotional, psychological scrambling that doesn’t have answers. And because of this, because I myself had no idea what to do, I went inward. I detracted from community because, perhaps, I didn’t want to drag them through the unknown, without any answers myself.

I’ve watched, over the past week, my friends and neighbours suffer. And if I’m honest, I know that they suffered with the uncertainty of this fire in ways that we didn’t. Yes, it was terrifying to be evacuated in the middle of the night, knowing a fire of that magnitude was exploding in size so close to our doorstep. But we had been through this before. We were evacuated last year at this time, and it was fine. We were evacuated in an ambulance five years prior and didn’t see our home for a year – and it was fine. Fine enough, anyway. Because we are still here, and our home  - our family - is still standing.

What I have been thinking constantly about lately is this: certainty doesn’t come from outcomes. It doesn’t come from without. It doesn’t come from experts or data or authorities. You can’t have enough information or experiences to ensure that the next outcome will be the same as the last. Certainty is an inside game. It’s when an individual takes in enough information that they feel is relevant, whatever that is, from whatever sources they decide to get it, and they decide what they believe. They know it. They feel it. They don’t need further feedback to validate their belief – it’s just true, to them.

The fire is still raging, the smoke still spilling up and over the mountain ridge, but I know…I know… it will be alright. There’s no absolute evidence of that fact. Winds shift, lightning strikes, systems fail, but at some point we have to just decide that no further feedback is needed. We are going with this truth and that’s that. Until it’s not, this is truth.

For me, I had a different threshold of truth than some of my neighbours not because they had more or less data or more or less reason to know it would be ok – but simply because I felt it. And, for me, that’s been life – since May 31, 2021, finding the feeling of “ok” has been my life’s work.

And that, in summary, is why I have not been writing – publicly, anyway. I’ve had to use all of my effort to find that feeling of “ok” – to hold it delicately, like a baby bird, and nurture it with everything I’ve got. Not let any feedback influence that delicate balance and not let in any noise that could distract me from hearing that inner voice that says, “everything is alright. Trust it. Know it. Hear it.”

I am a person that cares deeply about others, about their perspectives, about relating to their experiences. But because of that, how others think and feel has the power to influence me a great deal. And, right or wrong, ethical or otherwise, I have had to tune it all out for a time, to gain solid ground, and to hold that space for my family through something impossible to truly share. And that’s been hard for me – not being able to share this. Knowing that there are so many people out there that care that I can’t truly share this with, and that is has, in turn, alienated us in many ways from our world – our community.

But it has brought so much joy to my heart to see how the community continues to take care of each other. As hard as it has been for us to be in a position of needing rather than giving, everything has a season, and I know it. I know that for those that have lost so much in this fire, the community will come together to lift them up and pull them through, because that’s what they do. And then they will have their season again, too, when they have rebuilt from the ash and another is in need. Back and forth, up and down, in and out.

But I just want to say thank you – thank you to everyone that is taking care of each other and reminding us all how wonderful of a place this is to live, how incredibly lucky we are to have each other, and that this, too, is an opportunity for love and light and communion.