Caroline Allen's Blog - Posts Tagged "climate-change"
Diary of a Wildfire Evacuee
(I was in the middle of launching my novel Water when I was suddenly evacuated from my home in the epicenter of some of the worst wildfires in rural Oregon. This is my diary.)
September 8, 2020
3 p.m.
I’m sitting at my desk in my home office working on a client project. Outside the window, fat dramatic of burnt orange and deep purple float on the horizon. Earlier I’d been outside filming the shift from blue sky to lavender and burnt citrus cloud cover. It looks beautiful and scary and other-worldly. I’m not overly worried. We’ve had this in the past, smoke from a nearby forest fire floating over our homes. We are 30 miles from Portland, Oregon, and 50 miles from Mt. Hood in a town known for its river, hydroelectric dam, and miles of forests, farmland and Christmas tree growers. I assume the fire is the one they’ve reported on Mt. Hood and that’s far away, so I go back to writing the back of the book text for a book client. I feel confident the firefighters are getting it under control. Besides, since a fire five years earlier, I’m signed up to receive text alerts and none have come through. There are three levels to a fire evacuation, yellow, green, and red. Level 1, yellow, requires one pack a bag. Level 2, green, is a notice to be prepared to go. And finally, Level 3, red, is an order to “Go Now.” I haven’t even received a Level 1 alert. So I keep working.
3:30 p.m.
Out the office window, there’s a striking intensity to the heavy dark and red clouds. I think: Should I really be just sitting here working? In the living room, I plop on the sofa and casually look through hotels that will take pets, just in case. I don’t have family nearby, and with a 100 lb hyper Lab mix, I don’t want to overwhelm my friends. At any rate, many of them live nearby, and if I’m going to be evacuated, they’re going to be evacuated.
3:45 p.m.
My neighbor texts me frantically that the fire is close. I start to get scared. But we haven’t received any alerts! I’m renting a small house on 80 acres and have a yurt art studio 300 feet further into the woods. My neighbor and his wife have a beautiful house and horse property, and have to think of moving large animals. I live alone.
I find on my phone that there’s another fire, that these ominous clouds marching across the horizon aren’t from Mt. Hood, but from something much closer, a blaze they’re calling the Riverside Fire.
5 p.m.
I spend over an hour trying to find a place to board my cats. Nothing is available. I figure I will keep my dogs with me, and find a hotel. I sob to one vet tech, and slam the phone down on another. I think of my own vet. They’re eight miles away, and I know on one level they’re the best bet because they know my cats and on another, that they too may be evacuated. I just cannot conceive of bringing two dogs and two cats with me in my small car and trying to find a hotel. It feels too overwhelming. Outside the sky is worsening, the air is thickening, it’s getting harder to breathe. Still no level 1 alerts.
On the phone with my vet, a staff member tells me they close at 5 p.m. I look at the clock. It’s 5. They’ll open again tomorrow at 8 a.m.
“So, if I’m evacuated, I’ll just sit with four animals in my car in your parking lot all night.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Look, this is an emergency. You guys need to change your policy and step up.” She keeps getting off the phone to go ask someone else. I’m standing up, bent over my phone, tense.
“OK, if you come now, I’ll wait,” she says. Later, I’ll learn that they end up remaining open to wait for many people in the same predicament as me.
5:05 p.m.
Luckily my cats are in the house. Usually they’re roaming the acreage, dragging newly killed wild rabbits half their size in to lay at my feet like some prize. I run to get their carriers out of the closet, stuff them inside, and rush them into the car. Still, there have been no alerts, so I figure I have the time to drive the eight miles into town, drop the cats off, and come home, pack a bag, prepare my dogs, and wait for the alerts. Meanwhile, my sister Whatsapp from Costa Rica. I quickly send her a picture of the sky.
“Evacuate,” she cries.
“I haven’t received any alerts.”
“Get out of there,” she wails.
I get on the road with the cats, and as soon as I turn onto the highway, I realize I’m in trouble. The usually empty road is backed up for miles with trucks and horse trailers, people trying to move their livestock and horses.
5:35 p.m.
I still haven’t reached the vet. I’m only halfway there. Miles in front of me and miles behind me are cars, trucks, campers, trailers. Police scream by in the other direction, sirens blaring. This is a sleepy town, population 3,000. I’ve never seen anything like it. I realize with horror that I may not be able to get back to get my dogs. Everything is changing so fast, and I can’t think. I decide to make a U-turn and speed home. The sky is so black now it’s like it’s the middle of the night. I’m using my wipers to move ash off the windshield.
I run into the house and grab the leashes, leash the dogs and get them into the car. They won’t fit with the cats. I take one cat out of a carrier and stuff her in with the other. They protest with hissing and scratching. I throw the other carrier into the house. I decide to leave the front door unlocked. I have no idea why. I run around the house. I need to take something with me, but what? Sweatpants? A sweater? Dog treats? My passport? My sleeping bag? These are the only things I can think of. My mind is blank. I jump into the car. As I’m driving up my long gravel driveway, the only alert I am to receive bings on the phone.
Level 3: Go Now!
If I’d waited, I’d be in traffic when the alert came through. The fire, or roadblocks might have stopped me from getting back to my dogs. I pet Baby beside me. She isn’t really my dog. My best friend died suddenly 10 days ago, and the police asked me to pick up her Corgi. I’m weepy.
The vet calls. “Where are you?”
“On my way. Please wait. Please.”
6:25 p.m.
I drop my cats off at the vet. I drive for 20 minutes along the highway out of town, the road toward Portland. I’m just so glad to get out from under that ominous, other-worldly cloud of smoke. I pull over to use my phone to find a hotel for me and two dogs.
I’ve lived in Tokyo, London, Boston and Seattle, and assumed until I moved to rural Oregon that most hotels didn’t take dogs. But I soon learned that in Oregon, animals are a big part of life. By the fifth call, I start to panic. Rooms are being snapped up faster than I can dial. First the closest towns nearby, then the next towns after that, then the next, and the next, and finally I’m calling Southeastern Portland, and finally north Portland, toward the border with Washington State. A clerk at Best Western Hotels say she has a room but can I wait, she’s very busy with people coming in the door.
“No,” I scream. I’ll take whatever room you have for me and two dogs, and I have my credit card ready. Book it for a week.”
She books it. I get my hotel room.
September 10, 2020
I last three days with two dogs in a hotel room and an air quality index in the 400s. To borrow a phrase, “I can’t breathe” in more ways that one. The grit and smoke in the air, even this far north, sticks in the back of your throat. I feel the toxins in my gut, and feel sick all the time.
The outpouring of support during those three days is nothing short of miraculous. The way Oregonians come together will stay with me for years. People send me gift cards. Best Western hotel waives my pet fees and lowers my room rate. Everywhere people step up, offering food and clothing and shelter to people all over the state.
Still I have to leave. I’m close to Interstate 5, which goes north to south along the entire U.S. West Coast. All I can think of is that I want to get on I5 to go as far north as I can get to get out from under this suffocating cloud. I call a friend in Seattle and ask her if she can put out word for me. I need a place to myself to manage the dogs. Atlas, the lab mix, is used to running wild on 80 acres, and is going stir crazy.
With minutes, someone responds. They have a rental on Whidbey Island, 230 miles north of Portland, 20 miles north of Seattle. The tenant moved out early. I can have it for free until October 1st. I call the owner and she offers to bring over an air mattress and sheets. I thank her for her kindness (In the States, rentals are often unfurnished.)
The night before I leave is sleepless. My friends are dispersed, all of them evacuated to different areas, and it feels somehow like I’m abandoning them by driving so far north. This fire, all of the fires dotting the West Coast, they seem like monsters to me and burn up my dreams.
Then there are my cats. Already, the vet has had to evacuate all of the animals they’re boarding, and they’re now in a dojo in Damascus, Oregon. All night I toss and turn. The woman who owns the rental doesn’t want to have the cats, and to go get them means braving Portland traffic at a time when everyone is frantically escaping the fires. I’m terrified I’ll be stuck, terrified the fires will worsen; already they’re creeping toward SE Portland. Fire lodges in a primal fear place in the body, it erodes one’s sense of safety and one’s mental health. I meditate and meditate and keep getting the message: The cats are in the best possible hands.
All over Oregon, people are stepping up to save the animals - livestock, horses, pets, wild animals. On social media, people post offers to go into the fire with a trailer and pickup and rescue horses or a lone cow. It’s this level of commitment to animals that reassures me.
As I drive north on I5, for the three plus hours it takes to get to Seattle, I realize there’s another reason I’m making this journey. Once a journalist in Tokyo, London, and Seattle, and now a novelist tucked far away from the world, I need to see the magnitude of the events taking place.
Thick heavy, back-of-the-throat smoke follows me for about an hour and a half. It decreases by a good 60 percent after that, but still the landscape is enveloped in white mist. Worse, the once green drive toward Seattle is now yellow and withered. I’ve made this drive dozens and dozens of times, and I can’t recognize the landscape. It is so dry. Seattle is called The Emerald City because it’s always been so green, because of the rain. But now it is yellow. This shocks me almost as much as the fires.
It is only hours later, when I’m waiting for the ferry to Whidbey Island at Mulkiteo, 22 miles north of Seattle, that I start to begin to glimpse a hint of blue sky behind what could be mistaken for fog. The island itself is misty but relatively clear, but this will change over the next two days as winds blow the smoke over Whidbey, and far into Canada. Still, the air quality index is 150 here, 189 in Seattle, 470 in Portland, and off the charts in my small town.
September 13, 2020
Over three days on Whidbey Island, I’ll hear that our sleepy town of Estacada makes national news on CNN as the epicenter of the Riverside Fire. I’ll watch fire maps as the fire inches closer and closer to the dojo in Damascas and my cats. I’ll watch a video of a house close to mine going up in flames. I’ll hear conflicting reports about the destruction of my own home. I see post after post about rural vigilantes with guns roaming around to protect houses from looters, and they’re shooting at innocents. I wonder again what the hell I’m doing living in this country.
I live in a rental and am not attached to most physical things. As an expat for years, I often had little more than a suitcase. I am not horribly worried about my house burning. I do have a yurt art studio 300 feet further into the woods, and am grief-stricken with the possible loss of hundreds of paintings, easels, and art supplies it’s taken me years to collect.
And of course we are all mourning the loss of the forest, and of the animals who live there. This is a mourning that is primal, a reaction that still searches for words.
6 p.m.
A friend from a nearby town sends me pictures. For some reason, she risked danger to drive to my house, taking backroads to get around the roadblocks.
“Your house and yurt are still there!” she tells me. She’s scared, though, and wants to get out quickly. The air is unbreathable.
“Don’t put yourself in danger,” I cry.
I’m grateful, but I know when they allow us to come home, we’ll all be returning to a pit of smoke damage. And it’s hard to be too happy as I watch dozens of my neighbors’ houses burn to the ground.
I sit on the blow up mattress, and prepare to launch my next novel. Twenty years ago, a book series downloaded into my psyche called The Elemental Journey Series, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Ether. Water is set to come out in October. It’s all about one woman’s search for purpose in a world falling apart due to climate change.
I think we all know we’re going to see more crises like these. Scientists have been warning about “compound disasters” for years, the convergence of extreme events as a direct result of climate change. It’s happening now.
My friends and I question what we can do. I was called to write novels about it. Most of us have spent the past few years preparing by getting healthy, working out, eating organic and often vegan, doing yoga, meditating, quitting drinking and smoking. At least if we’re healthy, we can be of more use during a crisis. I know my own health craze has helped me maintain my sanity through all of this in ways that would’ve been impossible just a few years ago. In our work as coaches and healers, artists and writers, we directly address the issues of climate change and finding purpose. We’re activists. We’re fighting for changing outdated systems. We’re growing our own food.
If there is no way around the continuation of such dramatic events, of pandemics, and forest fires, of flooding and earthquakes, what can we do? We can, of course, vote for more aware politicians, that’s a given. But we can also opt for presence. We can focus our energies on physical and emotional presence. We can face what is.
September 8, 2020
3 p.m.
I’m sitting at my desk in my home office working on a client project. Outside the window, fat dramatic of burnt orange and deep purple float on the horizon. Earlier I’d been outside filming the shift from blue sky to lavender and burnt citrus cloud cover. It looks beautiful and scary and other-worldly. I’m not overly worried. We’ve had this in the past, smoke from a nearby forest fire floating over our homes. We are 30 miles from Portland, Oregon, and 50 miles from Mt. Hood in a town known for its river, hydroelectric dam, and miles of forests, farmland and Christmas tree growers. I assume the fire is the one they’ve reported on Mt. Hood and that’s far away, so I go back to writing the back of the book text for a book client. I feel confident the firefighters are getting it under control. Besides, since a fire five years earlier, I’m signed up to receive text alerts and none have come through. There are three levels to a fire evacuation, yellow, green, and red. Level 1, yellow, requires one pack a bag. Level 2, green, is a notice to be prepared to go. And finally, Level 3, red, is an order to “Go Now.” I haven’t even received a Level 1 alert. So I keep working.
3:30 p.m.
Out the office window, there’s a striking intensity to the heavy dark and red clouds. I think: Should I really be just sitting here working? In the living room, I plop on the sofa and casually look through hotels that will take pets, just in case. I don’t have family nearby, and with a 100 lb hyper Lab mix, I don’t want to overwhelm my friends. At any rate, many of them live nearby, and if I’m going to be evacuated, they’re going to be evacuated.
3:45 p.m.
My neighbor texts me frantically that the fire is close. I start to get scared. But we haven’t received any alerts! I’m renting a small house on 80 acres and have a yurt art studio 300 feet further into the woods. My neighbor and his wife have a beautiful house and horse property, and have to think of moving large animals. I live alone.
I find on my phone that there’s another fire, that these ominous clouds marching across the horizon aren’t from Mt. Hood, but from something much closer, a blaze they’re calling the Riverside Fire.
5 p.m.
I spend over an hour trying to find a place to board my cats. Nothing is available. I figure I will keep my dogs with me, and find a hotel. I sob to one vet tech, and slam the phone down on another. I think of my own vet. They’re eight miles away, and I know on one level they’re the best bet because they know my cats and on another, that they too may be evacuated. I just cannot conceive of bringing two dogs and two cats with me in my small car and trying to find a hotel. It feels too overwhelming. Outside the sky is worsening, the air is thickening, it’s getting harder to breathe. Still no level 1 alerts.
On the phone with my vet, a staff member tells me they close at 5 p.m. I look at the clock. It’s 5. They’ll open again tomorrow at 8 a.m.
“So, if I’m evacuated, I’ll just sit with four animals in my car in your parking lot all night.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Look, this is an emergency. You guys need to change your policy and step up.” She keeps getting off the phone to go ask someone else. I’m standing up, bent over my phone, tense.
“OK, if you come now, I’ll wait,” she says. Later, I’ll learn that they end up remaining open to wait for many people in the same predicament as me.
5:05 p.m.
Luckily my cats are in the house. Usually they’re roaming the acreage, dragging newly killed wild rabbits half their size in to lay at my feet like some prize. I run to get their carriers out of the closet, stuff them inside, and rush them into the car. Still, there have been no alerts, so I figure I have the time to drive the eight miles into town, drop the cats off, and come home, pack a bag, prepare my dogs, and wait for the alerts. Meanwhile, my sister Whatsapp from Costa Rica. I quickly send her a picture of the sky.
“Evacuate,” she cries.
“I haven’t received any alerts.”
“Get out of there,” she wails.
I get on the road with the cats, and as soon as I turn onto the highway, I realize I’m in trouble. The usually empty road is backed up for miles with trucks and horse trailers, people trying to move their livestock and horses.
5:35 p.m.
I still haven’t reached the vet. I’m only halfway there. Miles in front of me and miles behind me are cars, trucks, campers, trailers. Police scream by in the other direction, sirens blaring. This is a sleepy town, population 3,000. I’ve never seen anything like it. I realize with horror that I may not be able to get back to get my dogs. Everything is changing so fast, and I can’t think. I decide to make a U-turn and speed home. The sky is so black now it’s like it’s the middle of the night. I’m using my wipers to move ash off the windshield.
I run into the house and grab the leashes, leash the dogs and get them into the car. They won’t fit with the cats. I take one cat out of a carrier and stuff her in with the other. They protest with hissing and scratching. I throw the other carrier into the house. I decide to leave the front door unlocked. I have no idea why. I run around the house. I need to take something with me, but what? Sweatpants? A sweater? Dog treats? My passport? My sleeping bag? These are the only things I can think of. My mind is blank. I jump into the car. As I’m driving up my long gravel driveway, the only alert I am to receive bings on the phone.
Level 3: Go Now!
If I’d waited, I’d be in traffic when the alert came through. The fire, or roadblocks might have stopped me from getting back to my dogs. I pet Baby beside me. She isn’t really my dog. My best friend died suddenly 10 days ago, and the police asked me to pick up her Corgi. I’m weepy.
The vet calls. “Where are you?”
“On my way. Please wait. Please.”
6:25 p.m.
I drop my cats off at the vet. I drive for 20 minutes along the highway out of town, the road toward Portland. I’m just so glad to get out from under that ominous, other-worldly cloud of smoke. I pull over to use my phone to find a hotel for me and two dogs.
I’ve lived in Tokyo, London, Boston and Seattle, and assumed until I moved to rural Oregon that most hotels didn’t take dogs. But I soon learned that in Oregon, animals are a big part of life. By the fifth call, I start to panic. Rooms are being snapped up faster than I can dial. First the closest towns nearby, then the next towns after that, then the next, and the next, and finally I’m calling Southeastern Portland, and finally north Portland, toward the border with Washington State. A clerk at Best Western Hotels say she has a room but can I wait, she’s very busy with people coming in the door.
“No,” I scream. I’ll take whatever room you have for me and two dogs, and I have my credit card ready. Book it for a week.”
She books it. I get my hotel room.
September 10, 2020
I last three days with two dogs in a hotel room and an air quality index in the 400s. To borrow a phrase, “I can’t breathe” in more ways that one. The grit and smoke in the air, even this far north, sticks in the back of your throat. I feel the toxins in my gut, and feel sick all the time.
The outpouring of support during those three days is nothing short of miraculous. The way Oregonians come together will stay with me for years. People send me gift cards. Best Western hotel waives my pet fees and lowers my room rate. Everywhere people step up, offering food and clothing and shelter to people all over the state.
Still I have to leave. I’m close to Interstate 5, which goes north to south along the entire U.S. West Coast. All I can think of is that I want to get on I5 to go as far north as I can get to get out from under this suffocating cloud. I call a friend in Seattle and ask her if she can put out word for me. I need a place to myself to manage the dogs. Atlas, the lab mix, is used to running wild on 80 acres, and is going stir crazy.
With minutes, someone responds. They have a rental on Whidbey Island, 230 miles north of Portland, 20 miles north of Seattle. The tenant moved out early. I can have it for free until October 1st. I call the owner and she offers to bring over an air mattress and sheets. I thank her for her kindness (In the States, rentals are often unfurnished.)
The night before I leave is sleepless. My friends are dispersed, all of them evacuated to different areas, and it feels somehow like I’m abandoning them by driving so far north. This fire, all of the fires dotting the West Coast, they seem like monsters to me and burn up my dreams.
Then there are my cats. Already, the vet has had to evacuate all of the animals they’re boarding, and they’re now in a dojo in Damascus, Oregon. All night I toss and turn. The woman who owns the rental doesn’t want to have the cats, and to go get them means braving Portland traffic at a time when everyone is frantically escaping the fires. I’m terrified I’ll be stuck, terrified the fires will worsen; already they’re creeping toward SE Portland. Fire lodges in a primal fear place in the body, it erodes one’s sense of safety and one’s mental health. I meditate and meditate and keep getting the message: The cats are in the best possible hands.
All over Oregon, people are stepping up to save the animals - livestock, horses, pets, wild animals. On social media, people post offers to go into the fire with a trailer and pickup and rescue horses or a lone cow. It’s this level of commitment to animals that reassures me.
As I drive north on I5, for the three plus hours it takes to get to Seattle, I realize there’s another reason I’m making this journey. Once a journalist in Tokyo, London, and Seattle, and now a novelist tucked far away from the world, I need to see the magnitude of the events taking place.
Thick heavy, back-of-the-throat smoke follows me for about an hour and a half. It decreases by a good 60 percent after that, but still the landscape is enveloped in white mist. Worse, the once green drive toward Seattle is now yellow and withered. I’ve made this drive dozens and dozens of times, and I can’t recognize the landscape. It is so dry. Seattle is called The Emerald City because it’s always been so green, because of the rain. But now it is yellow. This shocks me almost as much as the fires.
It is only hours later, when I’m waiting for the ferry to Whidbey Island at Mulkiteo, 22 miles north of Seattle, that I start to begin to glimpse a hint of blue sky behind what could be mistaken for fog. The island itself is misty but relatively clear, but this will change over the next two days as winds blow the smoke over Whidbey, and far into Canada. Still, the air quality index is 150 here, 189 in Seattle, 470 in Portland, and off the charts in my small town.
September 13, 2020
Over three days on Whidbey Island, I’ll hear that our sleepy town of Estacada makes national news on CNN as the epicenter of the Riverside Fire. I’ll watch fire maps as the fire inches closer and closer to the dojo in Damascas and my cats. I’ll watch a video of a house close to mine going up in flames. I’ll hear conflicting reports about the destruction of my own home. I see post after post about rural vigilantes with guns roaming around to protect houses from looters, and they’re shooting at innocents. I wonder again what the hell I’m doing living in this country.
I live in a rental and am not attached to most physical things. As an expat for years, I often had little more than a suitcase. I am not horribly worried about my house burning. I do have a yurt art studio 300 feet further into the woods, and am grief-stricken with the possible loss of hundreds of paintings, easels, and art supplies it’s taken me years to collect.
And of course we are all mourning the loss of the forest, and of the animals who live there. This is a mourning that is primal, a reaction that still searches for words.
6 p.m.
A friend from a nearby town sends me pictures. For some reason, she risked danger to drive to my house, taking backroads to get around the roadblocks.
“Your house and yurt are still there!” she tells me. She’s scared, though, and wants to get out quickly. The air is unbreathable.
“Don’t put yourself in danger,” I cry.
I’m grateful, but I know when they allow us to come home, we’ll all be returning to a pit of smoke damage. And it’s hard to be too happy as I watch dozens of my neighbors’ houses burn to the ground.
I sit on the blow up mattress, and prepare to launch my next novel. Twenty years ago, a book series downloaded into my psyche called The Elemental Journey Series, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Ether. Water is set to come out in October. It’s all about one woman’s search for purpose in a world falling apart due to climate change.
I think we all know we’re going to see more crises like these. Scientists have been warning about “compound disasters” for years, the convergence of extreme events as a direct result of climate change. It’s happening now.
My friends and I question what we can do. I was called to write novels about it. Most of us have spent the past few years preparing by getting healthy, working out, eating organic and often vegan, doing yoga, meditating, quitting drinking and smoking. At least if we’re healthy, we can be of more use during a crisis. I know my own health craze has helped me maintain my sanity through all of this in ways that would’ve been impossible just a few years ago. In our work as coaches and healers, artists and writers, we directly address the issues of climate change and finding purpose. We’re activists. We’re fighting for changing outdated systems. We’re growing our own food.
If there is no way around the continuation of such dramatic events, of pandemics, and forest fires, of flooding and earthquakes, what can we do? We can, of course, vote for more aware politicians, that’s a given. But we can also opt for presence. We can focus our energies on physical and emotional presence. We can face what is.
Art is our Activism
"Pandemic, death of a friend, wildfires, elections -- let nothing stop you in the pursuit of your creative purpose. Art is activism!"
In the past few months, like everyone else globally, I’ve been sideswiped by the pandemic. Isolation from friends, the lack of external entertainment, the fear of death, the fact that the people we usually rely on for emotional support do not have it to give -- it’s been trying for all of us.
Then my best friend died, suddenly. Not of COVID, but of natural causes in her horse barn, next to her beloved Arabian. I took in her corgi. Then a few days later, the entire West Coast of the US went up in flames, including the area where we live. I was evacuated with four animals for two weeks (see earlier blog: Diary of a Wildfire Evacuee).
In the middle of all of this, I was preparing to launch my fourth novel, Water. I’d spent four intense years writing it. I’d revised it six times from start to finish. I’d had my editor look at it in November, revised it again, had her copy edit it in June, and then did another full revision. The night before it was meant to go to the page designer, I realized it needed one more full rewrite, which I did. I’d commissioned the cover. I’d sought out pictures of tarot cards to adorn each chapter. I’d commissioned two, then three book trailers. If you haven’t published before, you have no idea the amount of intense detail that goes on for many months prior to publication. Finishing writing the book is just the beginning.
The sudden evacuation happened just as I was getting ready to upload the book to Amazon, and establish a marketing push to get the book out there.
Even at home, such a task is time-consuming and exhausting. I found myself on an island I didn’t know, evacuated to a cabin without WiFi, sitting in my car with two dogs at an internet cafe, paying people on Fiverr to do all of the work for me. It was a logistical juggling act, and one made even harder by a mind befuddled by wildfires burning down forests, and houses, and communities of animals, plants, and humans.
Why not just postpone the novel launch? It’s a legitimate question. Why not wait until the fires are over, until I am home (unless, of course, my house had burned down, which I didn’t know for a long time during evacuation)? Why not get settled, then publish your novel? My answer: We have no time to wait! It’s now or never. We have to step up.
Writing is my activism. I’m also a visual artist. Art is my activism. It isn’t something you put off. It’s what makes the difference in a world out of balance.
Global warming, rampant depression, higher suicide rates, deaths due to a mishandled pandemic -- this is all because our world is out of balance. Our relationship with the earth is out of balance. I address these issues in my novels. My art is not separate from what’s going on in the world. My art is my passionate plea for humanity, and for myself, to wake up and make a difference. My art is my activism.
As a book coach and creativity coach for 20 years, I see how fear has shut down creatives across the globe.
Are you a creative? A writer, artist, dancer, musician, maker? Are you not doing your work because of all of the chaos? You are needed now more than ever. Our creative spirit is an antidote to the destruction. Tired, upset, losing it? Use that in your writing and your art. Step up! We need all creative hands on deck. Now! You are the answer.
In the past few months, like everyone else globally, I’ve been sideswiped by the pandemic. Isolation from friends, the lack of external entertainment, the fear of death, the fact that the people we usually rely on for emotional support do not have it to give -- it’s been trying for all of us.
Then my best friend died, suddenly. Not of COVID, but of natural causes in her horse barn, next to her beloved Arabian. I took in her corgi. Then a few days later, the entire West Coast of the US went up in flames, including the area where we live. I was evacuated with four animals for two weeks (see earlier blog: Diary of a Wildfire Evacuee).
In the middle of all of this, I was preparing to launch my fourth novel, Water. I’d spent four intense years writing it. I’d revised it six times from start to finish. I’d had my editor look at it in November, revised it again, had her copy edit it in June, and then did another full revision. The night before it was meant to go to the page designer, I realized it needed one more full rewrite, which I did. I’d commissioned the cover. I’d sought out pictures of tarot cards to adorn each chapter. I’d commissioned two, then three book trailers. If you haven’t published before, you have no idea the amount of intense detail that goes on for many months prior to publication. Finishing writing the book is just the beginning.
The sudden evacuation happened just as I was getting ready to upload the book to Amazon, and establish a marketing push to get the book out there.
Even at home, such a task is time-consuming and exhausting. I found myself on an island I didn’t know, evacuated to a cabin without WiFi, sitting in my car with two dogs at an internet cafe, paying people on Fiverr to do all of the work for me. It was a logistical juggling act, and one made even harder by a mind befuddled by wildfires burning down forests, and houses, and communities of animals, plants, and humans.
Why not just postpone the novel launch? It’s a legitimate question. Why not wait until the fires are over, until I am home (unless, of course, my house had burned down, which I didn’t know for a long time during evacuation)? Why not get settled, then publish your novel? My answer: We have no time to wait! It’s now or never. We have to step up.
Writing is my activism. I’m also a visual artist. Art is my activism. It isn’t something you put off. It’s what makes the difference in a world out of balance.
Global warming, rampant depression, higher suicide rates, deaths due to a mishandled pandemic -- this is all because our world is out of balance. Our relationship with the earth is out of balance. I address these issues in my novels. My art is not separate from what’s going on in the world. My art is my passionate plea for humanity, and for myself, to wake up and make a difference. My art is my activism.
As a book coach and creativity coach for 20 years, I see how fear has shut down creatives across the globe.
Are you a creative? A writer, artist, dancer, musician, maker? Are you not doing your work because of all of the chaos? You are needed now more than ever. Our creative spirit is an antidote to the destruction. Tired, upset, losing it? Use that in your writing and your art. Step up! We need all creative hands on deck. Now! You are the answer.
Banking on Spirit: Healing Our Relationship with Money
How do we heal our relationship with money?
I’m not just talking about making more money or acquiring more possessions? I’m talking about healing our integrity with money. I’m talking about healing our relationship with the earth.
In my most recently released fourth novel, Water, I wrote a scene about a woman in a pub burning money. She does this as a joke, as an experiment to see how others will react. And react they do — no one is left unaffected. From the waitress to the drunk at the bar, each person is traumatized by watching a $20 bill burn.
We are addicted to money, obsessed with money, desperate for money, clinging to money. We marry for it, divorce for it, kill for it, steal for it.
While the world goes down with a global pandemic, while the forests go up in flames, while we poison our waters, we’re still obsessed with money and possessions. Or we’re desperate to make our rent or mortgage, to buy food, and pay the bills because our very existence depends on the existence or lack of small rectangular pieces of paper.
Why is that? What is going on? Is there another way to approach this?
About a decade ago, I decided to heal my relationship with money. For a few years, I read books and listened to podcasts but nothing stuck. As an indie novelist and visual artist, I’ve always struggled with money. Year after year I’d start and not finish a money journal where I’d look at my relationship with money through the history of my poverty-riddled family. Nothing seemed to change for me.
It was in my mid-50s that I decided to take it seriously. A friend leant me Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover CDs. I was also working with a therapist. I took the whole healing my money situation on as a project, I:
looked my debt in the face, every debt, every interest charge. I cried.
created a budget and began to stick to it.
started paying down my credit card debts and it started to work.
Explored how money was fitting into my core values.
began to heal lessons I learned about money from poverty-stricken ancestors
decluttered my house.
made a massive mistake, and with the fear surrounding the pandemic and loss of income went into debt again, but caught myself sort of in time.
Read woo woo books on money, Love Money, Money Loves You and The Soul of Money.
As my path to healing around money continues, I’ve learned a few basic things.
First, the healing is a mixture of spiritual (woo woo) healing, emotional healing, and very practical action steps. None of these things will work without the others.
Secondly, It’s actually not really about money at all. It’s about abundance. What do you really want and need for a good life? For me, it’s been more about what I don’t need. It’s been about getting rid of, letting go of, living with much much less. Which leads to the final and most important thing that I learned.
It’s not about money at all. It’s about the abundance we feel in our spirits, and it’s about the healing of the earth.
No amount of money can make up for a starving spirit. I know it’s a pandemic and we’ve just come out of a tough political situation, but even with that, do you feel joy every day? Do you feel a love for yourself and the earth? Are you excited to be alive?
No amount of money can fill you up. You have to fill the spirit. This is true abundance. What profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?
Then there’s the healing of the earth. What difference does cash make if we can’t breathe clean air, eat clean food, drink clean water?
I was looking for images to illustrate this blog, and found many like this one — a plant growing from a pile of money. The message, I’m sure, is “You can make your money grow.” For me, I’d like to flip that message, “Let’s invest in making the earth grow, in healing our planet, or at the very least, leaving it alone to heal itself.”
What do I mean when I say healing around money is all about the earth?
You see all these social media ads for coaches: Make Six Figures Overnight. What good is it if all of our food is poisoned because we’re poisoning the earth? These are supposed to be caring coaches. Why are they just trying to manifest more money? Why aren’t we trying to manifest what’s so much more valuable, the healing of the soul, the healing of the planet?
I’ve seen so many people, even spiritual people, use visualizations to try to manifest “things”. Why aren’t we using our visualization to manifest spiritual healing for all sentient beings?
When we talk about healing our relationship with money, I believe it does begin with very practical steps surrounding our cash and debt. I also believe to truly heal around money, it has to involve understanding the fundamentals about the abundance of our spirits and the health of the planet. Or, truly, what the hell is it all for?
I’m a metaphysical coach and a book coach, contact me at info@carolineallen.com.
I’m not just talking about making more money or acquiring more possessions? I’m talking about healing our integrity with money. I’m talking about healing our relationship with the earth.
In my most recently released fourth novel, Water, I wrote a scene about a woman in a pub burning money. She does this as a joke, as an experiment to see how others will react. And react they do — no one is left unaffected. From the waitress to the drunk at the bar, each person is traumatized by watching a $20 bill burn.
We are addicted to money, obsessed with money, desperate for money, clinging to money. We marry for it, divorce for it, kill for it, steal for it.
While the world goes down with a global pandemic, while the forests go up in flames, while we poison our waters, we’re still obsessed with money and possessions. Or we’re desperate to make our rent or mortgage, to buy food, and pay the bills because our very existence depends on the existence or lack of small rectangular pieces of paper.
Why is that? What is going on? Is there another way to approach this?
About a decade ago, I decided to heal my relationship with money. For a few years, I read books and listened to podcasts but nothing stuck. As an indie novelist and visual artist, I’ve always struggled with money. Year after year I’d start and not finish a money journal where I’d look at my relationship with money through the history of my poverty-riddled family. Nothing seemed to change for me.
It was in my mid-50s that I decided to take it seriously. A friend leant me Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover CDs. I was also working with a therapist. I took the whole healing my money situation on as a project, I:
looked my debt in the face, every debt, every interest charge. I cried.
created a budget and began to stick to it.
started paying down my credit card debts and it started to work.
Explored how money was fitting into my core values.
began to heal lessons I learned about money from poverty-stricken ancestors
decluttered my house.
made a massive mistake, and with the fear surrounding the pandemic and loss of income went into debt again, but caught myself sort of in time.
Read woo woo books on money, Love Money, Money Loves You and The Soul of Money.
As my path to healing around money continues, I’ve learned a few basic things.
First, the healing is a mixture of spiritual (woo woo) healing, emotional healing, and very practical action steps. None of these things will work without the others.
Secondly, It’s actually not really about money at all. It’s about abundance. What do you really want and need for a good life? For me, it’s been more about what I don’t need. It’s been about getting rid of, letting go of, living with much much less. Which leads to the final and most important thing that I learned.
It’s not about money at all. It’s about the abundance we feel in our spirits, and it’s about the healing of the earth.
No amount of money can make up for a starving spirit. I know it’s a pandemic and we’ve just come out of a tough political situation, but even with that, do you feel joy every day? Do you feel a love for yourself and the earth? Are you excited to be alive?
No amount of money can fill you up. You have to fill the spirit. This is true abundance. What profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?
Then there’s the healing of the earth. What difference does cash make if we can’t breathe clean air, eat clean food, drink clean water?
I was looking for images to illustrate this blog, and found many like this one — a plant growing from a pile of money. The message, I’m sure, is “You can make your money grow.” For me, I’d like to flip that message, “Let’s invest in making the earth grow, in healing our planet, or at the very least, leaving it alone to heal itself.”
What do I mean when I say healing around money is all about the earth?
You see all these social media ads for coaches: Make Six Figures Overnight. What good is it if all of our food is poisoned because we’re poisoning the earth? These are supposed to be caring coaches. Why are they just trying to manifest more money? Why aren’t we trying to manifest what’s so much more valuable, the healing of the soul, the healing of the planet?
I’ve seen so many people, even spiritual people, use visualizations to try to manifest “things”. Why aren’t we using our visualization to manifest spiritual healing for all sentient beings?
When we talk about healing our relationship with money, I believe it does begin with very practical steps surrounding our cash and debt. I also believe to truly heal around money, it has to involve understanding the fundamentals about the abundance of our spirits and the health of the planet. Or, truly, what the hell is it all for?
I’m a metaphysical coach and a book coach, contact me at info@carolineallen.com.
