A Personal –Professional Experience of Losing My Home to Wildfire: Linking Personal Experience with the Professional Literature

This article reports on the author ’s personal–professional experience of losing a home to wildfire. The article is presented as a self-conducted narrative case study. The author used for narrative raw data 400,076 words from her blog-text that covered the period from the evening of the fire (June, 28, 2012) through 2 year and 3  months post-fire (September, 2014). Thirteen themes were selected based on frequency (>10  %, n = 7) and salience (n = 6). The results echo the extant literature on disaster recovery. The themes greater than 10 % included: the presence of and guilt induced by victim blaming; the overwhelming emotional and logistical aspects of property loss; concerns about both economic and financi al issues; a need for understanding a “normal” recovery trajectory; interconnections of community and individual recovery; forced redefinition of the self and the importance of recognizing closure as elusive and multifaceted. Themes selected for salience included the importance of privacy; the d ifficulty of rapid schema development; lack of knowledge as to how to engage in ritual greetings; the negative effects of disclosure on others; the importance of having a federal disaster declaration; and that anniversary date anticipation exceeded the anniversary itself. The author concludes that r esilience and psychological equilibrium are attainable, particularly with counselling and social support. The author also calls for more research on “normal” reco...
Source: Clinical Social Work Journal - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research