What It Feels Like to Lose Your Home

After the Palisades Fire, I quickly learned about shock, unexpected generosity, and what it really means to let go and begin again.

- Suze Yalof Schwartz,Giulia Neri

When I found out my home had burned down in the Palisades Fire last January, I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just went quiet. You think you’ll react dramatically, but some moments are so big they don’t fit into your emotional vocabulary.

It was the third time we’d been evacuated since I moved to Los Angeles in 2010. I was at my office, 15 minutes away, when my husband called and said, “I think you should come home.” There was something urgent in his voice that made me leave right away. It seemed different from the other times.

On the way home, I saw a thick cloud of gray smoke rising over Will Rogers State Historic Park, less than a mile from my house. By the time I got to my backyard, the smoke was mesmerizing. I stood there staring up at the enormity, feeling so small, as it continued to grow and glow more and more orange. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was beautiful—before it got close enough to become ugly.

My coworker Jalina called to see if I needed help. Her father had lost his home in the Woolsey Fire, which devastated a nearby town in 2018. She asked if I wanted to talk to him. I said yes. Sometimes you need to borrow someone else’s clarity.

His voice was firm and his advice was blunt: “Take everything. You’ll be lucky if you get to unpack.”

The reality of my house being scorched to the earth became so real, it hit like a slap. I’d make sure I had things to unpack—where I’d be doing that unpacking, I had no way to know. I looked around at my beautiful, sweet, imperfect Spanish-style house from 1948. For the first time, I thought, “What if this is the last time I see these walls? What really matters? What should I take?”