[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTKxSptcTjQ&list=PLQIikebAPmLVG5K5SiFWKd8p62FwKQ2KE&index=1[/youtube]
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Kristen Moeller writes a blog called, Walking Through Fire which is about the Denver forest fires in 2012 to which she lost her all of her earthly possessions and home.
On that fateful day, the home owners in her area were all warned to evacuate. As she was packing up her belongings, it didn’t occur to her that she would actually lose her home and everything inside.
Kristen tells us that it started like any other day, working from home, having her coffee from her favorite chair by the window. She noticed smoke that grew as the time in the day passed. There wasn’t much information at the time and it was actually online communities that got most of the residents out of there and out of harms way. The whole day was very surreal.
She and her husband were prepared for a fire, having upgraded their home with fire retardant materials and clearing out trees surrounding their home, to no avail. “This type of fire was moving so fast, burning so hot … it didn’t matter, none of that mattered,” Kristen explains.
That day, Kristen’s husband was out of town, but fortunately she had friends over who told her that it was time to go. Kristen was in denial, but complied. She filled her car with her animals, her computers, her wedding album and a few other possessions. She had no idea it would be the last time she would see her home. It wasn’t until two days later that she found out that her home was lost.
Looking back, Kristen doesn’t think she would’ve taken anything different, though she regrets not having enough time to grab a few other items. In her book, she describes an evacuation exercise to help people prepare by knowing what to take with them.
Until they actually physically saw the home, she and her husband had doubts that their home was truly gone. She talks about the fact that there isn’t a lot of resources out there for people who are grieving the loss of a home. “When everything that is physical that you’ve loved is lost and is gone, it’s devastating. In my life, it was my biggest loss that I’ve ever experienced.”
Kristen talks about how she grieved and overcame losing of her home. “I needed to throw myself into the grief process. I just absolutely let myself have it and let myself not have to be any other way than I was. And that was a true gift.” Kristen gave herself a loose time frame to heal–a year and wrote about her feelings during that time.
In an excerpt from her book, Kristen wrote: ‘This particular post will not be about seeing the gift, or the phoenix rising from the ashes, or the love that surrounds us, or how lucky I am to be alive. I know all of those things. I have seen gifts, experienced the love and have had extreme moments of beauty. We are blessed by our community and have experienced an outpouring of support, but right now I need to write about the fear and despair that grips me and later I’ll talk about the life.’ Kristen is such a beautiful writer and writes in a poetically raw manner.
In the interview, she goes on into detail about her experience of walking the land post fire and her thoughts and feelings about that time. She talks about the process of mourning and the cycle of healing. She gives advice to people who want to help others who have lost something so big. Kristen talks about going through the stress and strain as a couple and how they were able to come together instead of let their tragedy rip them apart.
To learn more about Kristen Moeller, visit her website: http://kristenmoeller.com/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristenmoellerfanpage
And on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristenmoeller
Stay tuned to www.KirstyTV.com for more exclusive and uplifting interviews. We will be sharing inspirational stories from everyday people, celebrities and experts every week. You can also subscribe to the KirstyTV Talk Show Podcast on iTunes.