Resilience In The Face of Disaster
Survival, healing, and thriving after the unthinkable happens
I recently spent the weekend with my daughter. We went to the oldest European-founded city in the U.S., St. Augustine. We petted capybaras at the Capybara Cafe and ate delicious fresh foods. We walked all around the ancient town.
At my age, it’s natural to start to thinking “Did my life mean anything or did I just tread water, follow along with the crowd, and bide my time?”
As we drove home across our adopted home state of Florida, I said “Bal (that’s her nickname), I never thought about it this way before, but I’m doing my fifth career and I’ve been successful in my previous ones, even the ones that were in male-dominated fields. I think …”
“Mom,” she said in her firm, assured tone, “I tell everyone about you, how many different things you’ve done.”
This is the child who loved to kick my chin and giggle when I knelt to tie her shoes. I weaned her at 12 months because with her tiny, sharp baby teeth, she had begun to chew a hole in my left breast, chortling joyfully when I cried out in pain.
Bal, aka Meredith, used to go to work with me at Beyond Shelter and not only got an early education in bad bosses, office politics, and economic devastation, she resourcefully used her volunteer office work experience to obtain her own diverse jobs: she’s been a server, bartender, fast-food and sit-down restaurant manager, “essential worker” scheduling mortgage closings during the 2020 pandemic, and is currently working in America’s favorite industry: insurance.
Meredith knows only limited things about my upbringing. She remembers my fearsome grandmother, Nana, only as a little old lady who lived at California’s first specialized home for people with Alzheimer’s disease, Camelot Care. Her grandfather, my Dad, died when she was very little. She never really knew one of her uncles, my brother Danny, who died of HIV/AIDS in a prison halfway house, also when she was very young. Obviously she never knew her maternal grandmother, my mother Sterling, who died when I was three months old. She didn’t know her great-grandmother, Grandma Mary, the miracle woman who came to the U.S. from Berdichev, Ukraine, learned English, and had a pharmacy in Hell’s Kitchen before becoming the first female pharmacist licensed in California. Meredith asks sometimes about Bampy, my beloved grandfather, who died when I was age 13 and I tell her what I can.
I am a fifth-generation Southern California native forced to flee my home state in 2020 due to escalating adverse conditions for anyone who wasn’t already rich, or already poor and on aid.
This place colored all of my science fiction. My fiction writing which represents an actual body of work — was always about two things: So Cal as a place and time, and what it means to be human — past, present, and future. I was mentored by James P. Blaylock, who together with his best friend Tim Powers, were both mentored by Philip K. Dick. All of those men were from Santa Ana and/or Orange (where I went to graduate school).
I still regard Southern California as my home. It is where I lived, except for summers in Milwaukee, for all of my first 58 years. It is where I attended school from kindergarten through graduate school. It is where I was married. It was where the orange grove where I first grew up was located, which later became a trailer park. It is where my elementary schools were.
Where I stood on the playground next to the rocket fuel plant [that gave six out of twenty girls in my class cervical cancer at young ages, and untold numbers of other cancers and illnesses to others] —
…and watched the giant Lodgepole pines on Rim of the World explode with blasts audible a dozen miles away on the valley floor, and looked with wonder at the huge embers slowly descending on our upturned faces like huge fiery black bats until our teachers realized the danger and rushed us inside…
If you’re not from Southern California — even if you’ve just visited — you can’t understand how bad the January 2025 fires are, how unprecedented they are, how unimaginable the devastation is.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the Los Angeles area are now experiencing the fear, shock, and devastation that those of us in Southwest Florida have experienced over the past few years in the wake of four of the worst hurricanes in recorded history. They are finding out what people experienced when fires rushed through Australia in the 2019–2020 fire season. They are in the same position as Canadians in 2022 and 2023, with huge fires burning through every Canadian province, destroying at least half of Jasper, Alberta as well as many other smaller communities. Over 16 million hectares of Canada burned in 2023.
The massive fires which are currently devastating huge sections of the Los Angeles basin are unprecedented in my lifetime. If you live in another area and think what’s happened in Pacific Palisades, Altadena (where normal people live), or any of the other five areas which are burning are somehow the responsibility of any individual (i.e. “arson”), this is the same as thinking somebody caused a 20-foot storm surge in a 150 mph hurricane. Or a ship capsizing which caused a huge tsunami.
In the past six months, North Carolina lost over 120,000 dwellings because of Hurricane Helene. After making it through Hurricane Ian, our community of 11,000 people lost 700 homes due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, only two weeks later. Not only has none of this been reported nationally in a comprehensible way, even the Los Angeles fires which are burning through the city aren’t presented accurately or coherently.
It is unprecedented, and it is apocalyptic.
You will be watching these disasters on your phone as they get closer and closer and finally, your phone won’t work, and the disaster will happen to you.
Disasters always happen to other people and it is always their fault
Bruce and I, fully-vaccinated, caught COVID while evacuated for Hurricane Milton. I’m recovering, but he is still suffering after-effects. Right now, as I write, he has spent over three hours on the phone with multiple medical providers and insurance representatives to obtain essential medical imaging for an appointment for which he has already waited weeks. Will he get it on time? (no).
The U.S. is sick. Physically — literally — with 75% of adults who are obese or overweight, 30% suffering from a chronic illness, and serious considerations about long-term effects of the COVID-19 virus and vaccines — the country is in trouble. Not just a few people, not individuals who are lazy and dumb, everyone.
This nation has an appalling healthcare system which has turbocharged not just turbo cancers in recent years, but also prescription drugs with ever-escalating prices and ever-escalating side effects … of course, requiring what — another prescription? Of course!
We received an appropriate insurance payment to repair our home after Hurricane Ian in 2022 … eight months after filing the claim. We were lucky. Our insurance company was the same one that was featured on 60 Minutes for providing $15,000 to a man whose home had over $280,000 worth of damage, including a giant hole in the roof, following the same storm.
I’m supposedly a “Boomer,” responsible for all of the economic and social devastation the U.S. has undergone throughout my lifetime.
Well. Cool. Repeat that one over and over; it’s been heavily featured in the media over the past two decades. In reality, I’m the one who has only a small teacher retirement pension thanks to full-time faculty who ensured that I would have no courses to teach for the semester I’d finally get seniority preference for classes, and they would receive extra overload classes so they could retire at full-time salary plus overtime. I already cashed in my earlier 401K from being a nonprofit executive to pay for legal costs after my baby Anthony died in 2005 and I was falsely accused of causing his death.
Surviving Massive Upheavals
I’ve been through what the people in Pacific Palisades and Altadena are going through — starting at 3 months of age when my grandmother kidnapped me from my father and mother’s house in Hollywood — seven times. I initiated two of my career changes by choice, but the other three? These were essential, as if I hadn’t done it, my other choices would have been homelessness or living in my car.
I am 10 out of 10 on the ACES scale but I am 62 years old, about to turn 63, and not only do I not misuse any substance, I am one of the 4.3% of U.S. residents my age or older who take no prescription drugs, I am in the top 5% in fitness for my age and gender. My resting heart rate averages 53, and my VO2 Max is 40. My BMI is normal and this is not without daily, intensive effort.
Years ago when I learned what ACES were (adverse childhood experiences), I realized that I had much more in common with the needy homeless mothers I worked with at Beyond Shelter or Family Service than I did with wealthy board members or privileged co-workers. Some things that happened to me, like being raped instead of sent on to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar or to the Iowa Writers Workshop as a younger version of the appalling Joyce Carol Oates, were common experiences among homeless and very poor women. The rape crisis group taught me how horribly others who were less privileged than me had been treated — and continue to be.
I have empathy for those suffering in the apocalyptic Los Angeles fires. This terrible city, this sin-filled city, this evil and beautiful city, is my city. The people I love, the experiences I treasure from L.A. have nothing to do with the rich, famous, or powerful. They’re with my grandma Mary at Farmer’s Market, they’re hiking in the backcountry with my dog Badger, and they’re eating real food in Boyle Heights, Monterey Park, and the San Fernando Valley. They’re teaching amazing students at the “high school from Hell” (referring to the outdated, poorly-maintained classrooms) at Los Angeles Pierce College.
While I was living in Woodland Hills, there were terrible fires, and Pierce College’s stables took in many horses, along with mules, pigs, and chickens. I let my guard down and slept with my estranged boyfriend Alan Rodgers which resulted in an unexpected late pregnancy and the birth of my son Anthony (Lali) who died at age 6 months after his father put him down in an unsafe location with his bottle.
This is the only way I can express this, and I’m sorry — it sounds ignoble and mean but it’s the only way I can say it — Alan wasn’t as good a writer as I ever was, and even he said, “You can publish in places I never could.” Which is true, and I also finished two contracted media tie-in books for him; at least I knew I was getting the payment even if his name was on the books.
One thing Alan did, after moving to Los Angeles, was write an endless series of apocalyptic stories in which fire engulfed the city. Some of these are pretty famous and adopted in Lovecraft anthologies. Alan was a bestselling horror novelist and the former editor of Night Cry and assistant editor of Twilight Zone magazine. A rejection card from him was what convinced me to stop writing after I graduated from the Clarion Science Fiction Writers workshop at MSU in 1984. Little did I know I’d end up meeting him and falling in love after I started writing again after Meredith was born.
He visualized the gigantic sprawling city burning in this exact way. Will demons emerge? Will souls hatch like butterflies from cocoons to stop the ever advancing devastation?
The demons are inside us. And outside, as well.
Evil is Real
Whether you call it by the name of the Devil, or you call it by the name of Satan, or any other name that evil has been, is, or will be called —
We as humans can never stop disasters. The only things we have within our control are our own selves, and really — only in the moment. This still doesn’t mean we have no responsibility. But I think — it does mean that blaming others for harm done to them is absolutely the wrong way to think and be.
They call the Devil the great liar. So what else would we call the lies we have been told all our lives?
Many of us love the great comedian George Carlin, because he made us laugh and told so many uncomfortable truths. Many of us love the great comedian Bill Hicks for the same reasons. We don’t have today’s versions of George or Bill; although there are certainly many funny truth-tellers, including Lee Camp, who have been censored away from their audiences.
From Homogenized and Sanitized to AI
My mother Sterling Sturtevant worked for two of the most innovative animation studios, UPA and Playhouse Pictures. She also started her career working at Disney, and left that job for UPA with her friend Bill Melendez because of how poorly young women and Mexican men were treated. I was always told that my mother — who redesigned Mr. Magoo — was never allowed to draw anything while at Disney and was relegated to making and serving coffee, and Mr. Melendez was similarly ordered around and prohibited from creative work. Disney pay was so poor — then and now — that it was almost like taking vows to a penitent order to work for them.
I’m still working and creating, even though yesterday I was weeping, not just because L.A. is burning, but because it’s so hard. Working so many hours, trying to take care of Bruce, trying to make ends meet.
I told Bruce, “I was working full-time plus and taking care of Meredith when I started writing again, and somehow I managed to set a schedule where I wrote from 5:30 to 7:30 every morning.” This enabled me to complete my early short fiction, which I was then able to publish in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and others, and then I made my first major voluntary career change to become a college teacher and writer.
I can’t do that now. It is too difficult, at my age, to perform at that level and still take care of my physical, mental, and emotional health and work the amount of hours I must to keep money coming in. I used to work the kind of hours billionaires state that they do (70–80 a week) but I was neglecting my health.
It’s the Devil.
The Devil creates the truisms which we’re taught, which keep us in these psychologically, emotionally, and physically destructive patterns. U.S. leaders are hobnobbing pleasantly at the funeral of recently deceased past President Jimmy Carter. How many people, even on Medium and Substack where discussion is supported and encouraged, are writing about how evil Trump supporters are and how they must be ostracized, and the opposite version?
The Devil tells us that we have the horrific and heinous slurge that passes for “entertainment” these days because it’s “what makes money” and “what the public wants”. This same evil force has already torched the homes of the people who’ve propped up these lies all these years.
The constant wars that the U.S. has fomented or exploited over the past 200 years benefited a few in the short-term as they destroyed homes, lives, men, women, and children — still ongoing. The Devil creates pretexts for these conflicts.
I’ve often wondered why our own U.S. government would pay people (poorly, and most in international locations) to verbally abuse and attack its own citizens who express a desire for peace, help and relief for the homeless and poor, or even just something like a decent, basic minimum wage.
The answer is, our government is evil.
What Conspiracy Theory Do You Believe in?
The one I believe in is that the Devil sits in the White House and in any position of power in the U.S., and just about anywhere in this country or around the world, where equity, justice, respect, and a care for what is said and done each day, fails to prevail.
I just watched a video where California’s governor was confronted by a devastated mother who says her son’s school has burned down. He lies to her and says he is “On the phone with the President getting help.” When she comes closer and can see he hasn’t been on the phone, he repeats the lies and tries to run away.
Here’s your takeaway, from someone who has reinvented herself five times and who has survived seven different apocalyptic life events, and preserved her health as a 10–10 ACES survivor.
Resilience isn’t about controlling the Devil or voting for his other form that wears a different colored tie or a skirt instead of trousers. It isn’t about cutting relatives or friends out of your life because they have different opinions. It is not about condoning the destruction of others’ lives and homes or looking the other way, as has happened with so many millions of Americans regarding Israel and Ukraine. Vietnam happened when I was a little kid; can we not learn the lessons from these horrors over 50 years later?
Resilience is about the lessons we were taught growing up. It’s about focusing on our own health and well-being, which absolutely includes such concepts as discipline, honor, decency, honesty, hard work, caring, diligence, and holistic emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health.
Our forebears overcame unbelievable and apocalyptic events from a volcanic eruption 70,000 years ago that resulted in fewer than 10,000 humans being left alive to two world wars and pandemics that killed up to 90% or even 100% of some communities, like the bubonic plague, tuberculosis, and the 1918 flu.
They did this by working together. Men and women and even intersex people who have been with us since the beginning of time.
They did this by admitting they didn’t know everything. They did this by taking things one step at a time, one day at a time.
Above all, money doesn’t put out fires as a gentleman that I actually know of from my work in downtown L.A. learned three days ago.
It’s tempting to crow over the destruction of properties belonging to people like Wasserman.
I asked Bruce, “Do you suppose all of these thousands of people in such distress right now will see what they have in common with the poor families in Gaza running from evacuation zone to evacuation zone and being bombed and shot?”
Bruce said, “No.” For most, he’s probably right.
But he and I have made it through massive ACES and AAES (adverse adult experiences) both of us. Through three hurricanes, through the way I was treated at Saddleback (wonderfully after Lali’s death, horribly in 2019), through multiple crimes, through losses of homes (I left that one out! Nah, won’t re-add it).
The Healing Process
All I can say right now is — this is how you begin again, and you need to do it every day. If something horrible happens to you, regardless of whose fault it is, you need to take steps to heal, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. You’re not healing yourself by ruminating on causes. This is why the political and social situation in the U.S. is so corrosive.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s not going to put food in your mouth, a roof over your head, or give you a good life.
Your imagination and life has been stunted by … let’s call it the Devil … you think there’s only one way to proceed and the best way to proceed might be the opposite way from where you’re being pushed.
Who are your friends? Which family members can you trust? Which neighbors are there for you? Do you belong to a church that doesn’t have a pedophile priest or molesting pastor? Maybe they can help.
And if someone reaches out to you for help and you can do it? Do it!
Above all, stop thinking you are “better” than others or that any of the material things you possess, how much money you have, how “famous” you are, or how much prestige you have are important. You not only can take none of those things to the grave with you, you can’t eat them, you can’t stay warm with them, and you can’t face the wrath of nature with them.
When it comes time to rebuild, accept that you cannot recreate what was destroyed.
Choose wisely as you move forward. Keep your holistic well-being in mind — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Right now, I am working on my spiritual health. I must have an innately strong spirit, because I forgot one thing.
My mother Sterling died when I was three months old, and I was born three months premature. My “baby bracelet” looks like a baby’s ring, not a bracelet. I was told I looked like a “wizened old man” and I was in an incubator for two months before being allowed to go home and spend those precious four weeks, which of course I don’t remember, with my mother. Without knowing her except by blood and spirit, I’ve fought the same battles she did. And I’ve fought the same battles my grandma Mary, a woman in a man’s field, a young immigrant from a pogrom-ravaged city in Ukraine which was nearly razed and salted — did. My will to live, to thrive, to excel and embrace what I can do for myself — and others — is strong.
But why?
I’ve wondered all these years why Lali was born and why God called him home at such a young age. Maybe it’s that such things are part of our human journey. At the same time, we have a healthy path to follow, and so many diversions, detours, and deceptions that can keep us from it along the way.
Individually and collectively.
The Red City is burning.
I thought of one other thing that Bruce and I and others from our generation can be proud of. In the face of relentless negative messages that blame “Boomers” for the sorry state of the United States’ moral, physical, social, and intellectual decline, I can think of something our generation has accomplished for many millions of children and families.
Breaking the cycle of abuse. Just about every man I’ve ever been close to was abused physically and emotionally, and two even abused sexually, while growing up. I too, was abused.
But none of us, to my knowledge, passed this cycle of abuse on to our children.
We’re just now learning, we humans, and we are going through some powerful and daunting challenges and lessons right now — these are self-enforced challenges and lessons. Even if you think human-caused climate change “isn’t real,” there’s 8 billion people on this planet, environmental disasters are accelerating, and few people in the U.S. are healthy and happy. Few are happy in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan right now, either.
The Devil tells us all kinds of lies, all the time, and this one is so pernicious and corrosive. It’s the one that says we humans are doomed by our horrible natures to the absolute worst in every regard, especially the relentless pursuit of money, fame, and power.
If these men, and I, can break the cycle of abuse, we can put out the fires, rebuild, and use our resilient nature to solve the myriad problems and challenges humanity faces … and move forward.