Below is an excerpt from ‘Trusting the Dawn: How to Choose Freedom and Joy After Trauma’, by Mary Firestone. Sounds True, August 2022. Reprinted with permission. Chapter 1: My Story

The months leading up to the Montecito mudslide of January 2018 had been unsettling for me. I felt almost crazy with uncertainty, so much so that I sought the advice of a psychic, something I had done only for fun before. I was desperately grasping for someone to tell me that everything was going to be okay. The Owl, as she called herself, made it even worse by telling me the coming months would be full of chaos. As she mused about why my soul had chosen this, I felt my internal panic bubble even higher.

My then husband, Napper, and I had recently bought a dreamy white farmhouse in Montecito. Our son had an enchanted oak forest to play in, and a baby sister was on the way. Old rose bushes pumped out fragrant, brightly hued blooms. We were just minutes from the celebrated Montecito Union public school, the beach, and Oprah Winfrey. What could go wrong with her as your neighbor? We were thrilled to be home.

And then, in early December, the Thomas Fire broke out.  Newly pregnant, I was all for heeding the evacuation orders sent out as the sky went hazy gray-orange, the air became dangerous to breathe, and white ash dusted our cars and brick patio. We fled north to an Airbnb in Paso Robles and then eventually flew back east to ride out the seemingly endless season of this devastating fire. In early January 2018, the fire was mostly contained, so we returned home.We had only slept in the new house twice before the fire evacuation.

The night of the mudslide started out calm and almost balmy. A mandatory evacuation order went out because of forecasted rain, but it didn’t include us. After dinner, I told Napper to put a couple of green moving bins in front of the doors in case any water might leak in. “Debris flow” sounded trivial. We weren’t concerned.

As I got into bed for the fourth time in that bedroom, I had the overwhelm-ing feeling that I really didn’t like the room. It was, by all accounts, beautiful.It had been one of the home’s main selling points. After reading a few pages of the intense book on karma for a spiritual book club my sister, Lucy, and I had formed with a few friends, I switched out the light and fell asleep.

For no reason that I am aware of, I woke up at 4 a.m. and jumped out of bed. We hadn’t installed curtains in the bedroom, so I had a clear view of an orange glow up the hillside. It was one of the most eerily beautiful skies I’d ever seen, but far too early to be caused by the sunrise.

That glow turned out to be a massive gas line explosion. In its faint light, I saw the entire mountain coming at us. This tidal wave of mud, furniture, trees, and buildings was approaching our glass French doors a tan incredible speed.

I screamed, “Oh my God, it’s the mudslide! Get Ever!” Napper leapt out of bed and ran toward our son’s room. I tried to follow him. I couldn’t. Mud obliterated the doors and came crashing in. Mud up to my waist, filled with broken glass, pieces of furniture, rocks, branches. I had no choice. I had to turn around and run.

The sound of mud clearing a mountainside is deafening. (Most survivors of the mudslide continue to react strongly to loud noises.) Even as I ran for safety, I screamed for Napper and Ever, but no sound that came from me could make it past the sound of the world around me collapsing. Even as I watched the part of the house I thought contained my husband and son get swept away toward the ocean, I kept screaming for them.

Then, everything got quiet. The orangey pink light from the explosion up the hill didn’t last long, but the sky did stay light long enough for me to see and assess the severity of the destruction all around me. In place of the trees and foliage that had surrounded our house were muddy heaps of rubble, a lone shoe, some dishes. My kitchen table had exploded out of the kitchen, the wall having given way as if it were cardboard; the table lay outside splintered in pieces, half buried in mud.

“Hello! Anybody there? Help! I need help!” I shouted from my perch on the bathroom countertop, with the mud, filth, and debris filling the room to the window, threatening the few free feet where I was crouched.

There was no response.

A neighbor’s home was in view, but it was badly damaged, with mud sprayed all over the side and a caved-in wall. There were no signs of life outside my window.

From the orange clock that remained on the bathroom counter, I could see that it was about 5 a.m. when I was left in darkness on my tiny sliver of countertop, wet and cold with wintry rain, covered with mud from the waist down, and hunched in a ball, praying for the dawn to come so that I could see again.

I could feel myself dissociating, numbing out. My thoughts raced. Please, oh please, let us be saved. Please let Napper and Ever be safe. Please let the baby in my belly be okay. Please let my family be okay. Maybe we should move to a re-mote island. Oh, but what about hurricanes? I remembered reading that book on karma before falling asleep.What is my karma, anyway, if this moment right now is where I ended up? Thank God I ate so much dessert last night; at least I’m not hungry.

In the space between these racing thoughts, I experienced flashes that seemed like a dream of connection with something greater than myself and the physical world: soothing light, colors, and images that gave me the sense there was a loving presence with me. A window into the sacred opened just enough for me to peek through. These glimpses both calmed and thrilled me.

After hours of darkness, I saw a flashing light bouncing off the garage. I swung myself over the mud to the windowsill, squatted inside it, and yelled for help. I got a faint reply from a couple hundred yards away: “I’m from the fire department, but I can’t get to you. I’ll be back when it’s light out.” When it’s light out?! Despair . . . and relief that someone knew I was alive and whereI was as the hours ticked on.

And then, mercifully, dawn broke.

It wasn’t a beautiful dawn. The harsh, steely light only revealed how truly stuck I was. I swung myself over the mud to the windowsill again and screamed for Napper and Ever. I tried not to imagine what could have happened.

And then, just as I started to swing back inside, I heard a faint “Babe? Mary?”

Then, Ever’s little voice: “Mommy? Mommy, where are you?”

It was the greatest relief I have ever known. They were alive! We were all alive! They sounded so far away. They’d had to creep out of their hideout in the upstairs bathroom to shout to me so I could hear them. Knowing they were so close and they were okay gave me a burst of hope, adrenaline, and will. Newly energized, I kept my mind busy by assessing and reassessing my surroundings, searching for a way out.