What do you do when everything you’ve built is reduced to ash? When the walls that held your memories collapse, the photographs, the keepsakes, and the familiar home scents vanish into smoke? Where do you turn when your life story has been rewritten overnight? This is the reality for thousands of our neighbors in Los Angeles who return to charred remains, sifting through soot for something that survived. My heart aches for the families watching their homes disappear, for the firefighters battling exhaustion, and for the land itself, scarred and blackened with smoke.
In California, fires are no longer rare catastrophes; they are seasonal, relentless, fueled by a changing climate and a world teetering on the edge of transformation. What we face is more than destruction; it is an existential reckoning. How do we tend to the soul of a world in flames? How do we grieve, rebuild, and move forward when nothing feels certain?
Beneath the devastation, something endures.
C. G Jung understood this rhythm of destruction and renewal, writing, “What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.” Above ground, all appears lost—the structures of our lives, the identities we carefully construct, the land that once held our stories. Yet below, beneath the seen and the spoken, the rhizome of the soul persists. Unseen yet unbroken, it waits in the dark soil of the unconscious, holding the memory of life, the impulse to regenerate.
I have encountered this truth in my own life. At ten years old, I stood in the wreckage of Hurricane Gilbert, my childhood home, transfigured into something unrecognizable. Years later, I walked through the wreckage of 9/11 in New York, the air thick with grief and disbelief. In the aftermath of the Thomas Fire in Santa Barbara, I saw the same truth written into the earth itself—ash-covered hills, then, in time, the first green shoot piercing through the soot. Life persists. Even in the void left by devastation, something stirs.
At Pacifica Graduate Institute, we engage with these archetypal patterns, this interplay of destruction and renewal. Depth psychology teaches us that healing is not found in rushing to rebuild but in descending—into the ashes, into the silence, into the depths of what remains. Only by listening to the soul’s quiet urgings can we emerge, not as we were, but as something renewed. I offer four considerations to help you to begin again:
- Root Yourself in the Present
Ask yourself, what is alive around me right now? The rustling leaves, the pulse in your fingertips, the inhale that anchors you to this moment. The soul does not demand solutions; it calls for presence. Let yourself be held by and in the now - Say Yes to What Nourishes You
Ask yourself, what does my soul need in this moment? Rest, if that is what you need. Let stillness be your refuge. Light a candle in the dark, not for clarity but for warmth. Sit beside running water to listen to its quiet perseverance. These are not trivial acts; they are invitations to the soul, a way of whispering, I am listening. - Release What No Longer Serves You
Ask yourself, what can I let go of right now? Like trees shedding leaves in winter, release what cannot withstand the fire—guilt, expectations, the pressure to have answers. Healing is not found in holding tighter but making space for what wants to grow. - Trust the Process of Becoming
Ask yourself, what small step can I take toward renewal today? The fires will come again. Loss will remake us. Yet the rhizome remains. Beneath the ashes, beneath the sorrow, your soul holds the quiet memory of renewal. Trust its wisdom. Even now, it is leading you forward.
If you feel called to heal, help, or bring hope, consider deepening your journey at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Our creative learning programs and research in the fields of psychology and mythological studies, framed in the traditions of depth psychology are rooted in the understanding that transformation emerges from the depths. We invite you to join a community dedicated to restoring wholeness—to ourselves, others, and the world. Learn more at Home – Pacifica Graduate Institute.
