How would you manage if you
were evacuated from your home because of a wildfire and your community burned to the ground?
It’s almost un-imaginable to those of us in the UK but for Paula James Martinez, her husband and 7 year old daughter, it happened in early January when the Eaton fire ripped through her local town of Altadena, destroying homes and businesses and leaving many of her friends homeless.
A British-born writer and filmmaker who also runs Mother Lovers, a non-profit raising awareness about maternal health, she’s spent the time since helping her community work out what to do next.
The US news cycle has been moving so fast and so loud since the fires that it’s almost as if they didn’t happen. But they did. This conversation with Paula took place at the end of January and we were tempted to ask her if we could re-record it. But then we listened to it again and there’s so much in it that\\s inspiring for us all to hear. Powerful, crazy white men might be driving the news narrative.
But the stories we most need to hear are the ones on the ground, in places where real people live real lives where every small thing you do matters.
So whenever you’re listening to this, in early 2025 or a year’s time, here it is, in its original form, an emotional and very worthwhile conversation with Paula about what people do when the unimaginable happens.