Bunny Keterman -Paradise Fire, Case Worker, Chronic Fatigue and other Absurdities

Bunny Keterman has worked as a firefighter, worked with child protective services and survived the Paradise fire but lost her home,

She has PTSD.

She also has fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.

But she strongly believes that people do have a choice in how you think and act even in the most horrible of situations.

LINKS: Bunny's blog, which chronicles the above is called the absurdess

You can find my books on amazon: JanReaJohnson

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:02] Jan: Are you looking for an inspiring listen, something to motivate you? You've come to the right place. I'm Dan Johnson, your host. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where we have conversations with ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. Women telling their stories and sharing their passions. Motivating. Inspiring, compelling.

[00:28] Bunny: If I was going to pass on any tool to people and trying to help them, this is the one tool I would pass on to people.

You do have a choice in how you think and act.

[00:35] Bunny: Even in the most horrible of situations you do have a choice.

[00:43] Jan: Hello and welcome to Women of the Northwest. Thank you for joining us. Today, PTSD, post-traumatic stress is more common than you may think. More often, it is associated with soldiers and triggers from war. But it can also come from any trauma related event where a sight, a sound, a situation can trigger the same trauma that happened originally. Not only does today's guest regularly experience PTSDs from being in the Paradise Fire and from her job with Child Protective Service, she also has fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. But my guest doesn't let these things stop her. She has learned strategies for success. She writes a blog on which she chronicles these challenges. Meet my guest, Bunny Kitterman, and let's listen as she shares about these things which bombard her and ways to live life to the fullest in spite of them.

[01:39] Jan: Welcome to women of the Northwest. This is Jan Johnson, your host.

[01:42] Jan: And I'm here today with Bunny Keterman.

[01:44] Jan: Welcome, Bunny.

[01:46] Bunny: Thank you.

[01:46] Jan: Thank you, Jan. Bunny's had some hard things happen in her life. She was in the Paradise Fire, and I think I know it was a while ago, but there's so many things and experiences that went along with that. And so tell us a little bit about how that was for you.

[02:05] Jan: How was it before?

[02:06] Bunny: How was it before?

[02:08] Bunny: I was living in Magalia, which is.

[02:10] Bunny: Right next to paradise, on a quiet.

[02:12] Bunny: Cul de sac, surrounded by nature and trees and the deer and the quail.

[02:17] Bunny: And because of my stressful job as a Child Protective Services social worker, it was my escape and my sanctuary and.

[02:23] Bunny: My safety, and it was my forever.

[02:26] Bunny: Home and I loved it there. And I was in nature and it was quiet, but then I was ten.

[02:32] Bunny: Minutes from the grocery store and shopping, so it was like a perfect combination.

[02:36] Bunny: Of everything that I needed and wanted in my life.

[02:40] Jan: Sounds like it was a beautiful place.

[02:43] Bunny: It was.

[02:43] Jan: It was probably a good place to go walking and yeah, walking. Listen to birds and yep.

[02:49] Bunny: Love watching the birds and hearing them.

[02:51] Bunny: And just being surrounded by nature. And it was quiet. It was so quiet.

[02:55] Jan: Yeah. Quite as nice, isn't it?

[02:56] Bunny: Yeah, it is.

[02:57] Jan: Especially when you have a job that's stressful.

[02:59] Bunny: Yeah.

[03:00] Jan: And then, Bunny, you have a blog, right?

[03:03] Bunny: I do.

[03:03] Jan: What's the name of it?

[03:04] Bunny: It's called the absurdist.com.

[03:06] Jan: Okay, so some of the blogs that you have on there talk about this experience and whatever. Would you like to read a little bit of?

[03:14] Bunny: Sure, I can read.

[03:15] Bunny: This is from one of the stories that's called The Wind and the angel.

[03:19] Bunny: And this was written August 5, 2022.

[03:22] Bunny: I still have tears in my eyes as I write this today. It was a calm morning, sunny, not too hot, pleasant. I was just sitting and reading different interesting articles about health in the moment, enjoying my day, having just finished my coffee. And then suddenly a soft but enveloping wind seemed to come up from the ground and it swirled around and the trees gently swayed and their leaves fluttered. And then the panic rose in my chest and the breath caught in my throat. I resisted the urge to hyperventilate, taking measured, calm, deep breaths as I closed my front door as to not hear and feel this, what should have been thought of as a pleasant breeze. I stood by the front door and rested my hands on nearby counters because I felt lightheaded, and I was suddenly disassociating. I turned around to sit down and was dizzy. I sat on the couch and I cried. A calm, plaintive cry. 

I have cried after the fire, and more recently I have cried a lot. But that has been more of the gut- wrenching, sobbing flood of tears. This is the first time in three years and nine months since the fire that I have cried like this. This cry was just about sadness, a simple sadness for my losses. 

Since the fire, I have been lost, befuddled, exhausted, overwhelmed, frustrated, beat down, heartbroken bereft and rageful. Rageful towards the people. Pacific Gas and Electric or PG and E, who had plans to turn off the power of the Day of the Fire because of the predicted high winds but chose for some profoundly idiotic reason not to, which then collided. With their other idiotic choice of not fixing a well-known decrepit electrical tower that finally failed and sparked the sparks to be found by the winds to then be turned into flames. The flames to be driven toward my town. Magalia and paradise were the town and my home. And if all but a few of my belongings were consumed along with everyone else's, and 85 people experienced the ultimate loss their lives on the day of the inferno. 

As I was putting the final items in my car and I was getting ready to go back into the house to get my Bengal cat Cuco, I remember vividly, very vividly. I can see myself being there as I write this, standing on my front porch and suddenly hearing what sounded like rain falling on the roof of my house and in the yard. And my heart leapt with a feeling of joy and I thought, it's a miracle. It's raining. It can help quell the fire. But upon closer inspection, I saw that the rain was actually pine needles, tiny pieces of leaf litter, and other bits of forest floor that had been swept up into the atmosphere and then forcefully dumped back down, not unlike rain. 

And because I used to be a firefighter, loving the irony here, I knew that what was happening. Intense, fierce forest fires can create their own weather systems that pick up debris from the ground, launch it up into the atmosphere, and then the debris rains down in front of the fire's path. I already knew from seeing the terrible plume of smoke in the distance from my kitchen window that morning and then driving to the top of my street to get a better look and hearing that far off jet engine sound, which is what ferocious forest fires sound like. Something I also knew for my training, that it was time to grab what I could and evacuate.

It was terrible having that tiny moment of joy, thinking it was raining, to the plummeting despair of knowing the fire was coming to consume my house and all of my belongings. So I went inside and Cuco went calmly into his carrier, something he had never done before, but he knew too and I loaded him in the car as I was locking the door to my house. Even at that time, knowing it was.

A futile gesture, as if I could lock out the fire the last thing I wanted, the last thing was to grab from my house was a wooden and metal angel I had hanging on the wall of my porch. She is embellished with tin roses, a twisted wire for a halo dowels for arms and legs, and her body is arched in what looks like blissful freeing flight. She currently resides on the wall of my home with her pre fire Magalia dirt still on her. 

And that is the thing about living with PTSD suddenly, not unlike that wind that came that day of the fire and the wind that just came now like a very much uninvited guest, that is how things can trigger my PTSD. Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, I am just minding my own business, living my new life, not thinking about the fire. And then suddenly, I am transported to a moment I wish I had never happened in my life, and I feel completely out of control and at the mercy of forces outside of myself. There are many things to hate about having PTSD, but this being taken out of the moment of my present life is definitely at the top of my list. But I said living with PTSD because that is what I'm intentionally doing, living every day. I choose to move beyond the tragedy. I choose to no longer call past events for my life.

 And there are others, as I already had PTSD before the fire for my job as a child abuse investigator, I no longer call these past events problems or issues, but I'm choosing to call them interesting life experiences. I intentionally look around and see the beauty that still exists in my life. I count my blessings, I practice my gratitude. And I have never have to look too far to find the irony and absurdity that is my companion and provides me with much mirth and deep laughter on a daily basis. And so I sit here today crying on and off in sadness for my losses, for myself, tears raining down like the leaf debris that was not the rain. And these tears, though, unlike the debris, are a good thing as they release my sorrow and quell my pain.

[08:59] Jan: Just wow. So much in grieving. And I think there's a lot of things that happen to us that we don't realize are grieving things until maybe some of those triggers or something. You go, oh yeah, there's loss and there's anger and there's sadness and there's.

[09:24] Bunny: The loss of the life you thought you would have. I mean, there's a lot to think about. I noticed that as you get farther from an incident and you get more and more perspective looking upon it, then there's more and more things that you see. It's the forest for the trees.

When it first happens, you're too close to it. So as time passes, you're getting more and more perspective on it, good and bad.

[09:44] Jan: That had to been incredibly panicking just to think, where am I going to go? What am I going to do? Were you, because you had been a firefighter, able to help in some ways with this?

[09:57] Bunny: You mean as far as evacuation?

[09:58] Jan: As far as the evacuations and things.

[10:00] Bunny: It was really interesting.

[10:01] Bunny: I saw the cloud, which I said to my cat, Cuckoo, I'm like, oh.

[10:05] Bunny: Look at that interesting cloud.

[10:06] Bunny: And then I walk closer to my window. I'm like, oh, that's not a cloud. I also tend to know things. I have some type of perception where I know things.

[10:15] Bunny: And I had known since that spring.

[10:16] Bunny: That I was going to be losing my house in a fire.

[10:18] Bunny: But that was it.

[10:19] Bunny: No more knowledge of when or how or why or like, should I sell this and move somewhere else? But then that house burns down, right? It's just a knowledge. I have knowledge about things. So between that and my training as a firefighter, when I saw the plume of smoke, then went to check it out and heard that the jet engine sound, which is a horrible thing to hear coming from a forest, I knew it was time to leave.

[10:37] Bunny: So I went home. I said, Cuckoo, we're going to have to leave. But I'm a very calm person. I calmly just start grabbing and packing things and essentials that I could think of. And then on the way out, grabbing little pictures or decorative plates off the wall and stuffing them under the seat of my car. And it was just someone else next door. He was also evacuating. And because I saw what I saw, I left a lot earlier.So I only drove through the midnight black smoke, which was very incredible.

I was not one of the people to have to drive through the flames, thankfully.

[11:07] Jan: Oh, my gosh. I can't even imagine.

[11:10] Bunny: Everyone has their own perception and stuff. It's just hard for me to fathom people saw and saw what I saw and heard what I heard and chose to wait it out, because some people did. I know. I heard people say that, that they just chose to wait it out, which makes me just so incredibly sad.

[11:24] Jan: Do you think part of that is just denial? That anything was really that had to.

[11:28] Bunny: Be yes, and we've done evacuations before. Standby evacuations, and yes, it gets tiresome, and was a clue that PG and E didn't turn off the power. So maybe it's not that bad.

When we did not receive any evacuation warning, maybe people were waiting for that.

[11:48] Jan: To see if it's really real, come that close to me, and that's going.

[11:51] Bunny: To be but I think it has everything, one, to do with the knowledge that this was going to happen to me. And absolutely 100% my firefighter training, that absolutely had a reason why I saw what I saw and I got out.

[12:01] Jan: And I guess if you think about the paths of your life and the fact that you were a firefighter and how that helped you in this time and situation, even in some measure, to be like that is just wow.

[12:18] Bunny: Yeah.

[12:20] Jan: So let's talk about PTSD just a little bit.

[12:22] Bunny: Okay.

[12:22] Jan: I know there are things that just randomly trigger, right?

[12:28] Bunny: Yeah.

[12:29] Bunny: So I have things that can be from my job as a child abuse investigator or things from the fire. So I have a large list of things that can be triggering to me.

[12:38] Jan: And then when that does it, does it just freeze you for a time period? Describe what that's like.

[12:45] Bunny: So, for me, and everyone has a different response to their own trauma because there's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Those are usually the reactions that we get to our trauma. I'm calm in the moment, and even though internally I feel like one, it's like being punched in the gut with.

The adrenaline dump when I get the trigger. If you could see what's going on inside of me, you'd be going, oh, my God. But anybody walking by me, if I'm in the grocery store, I'm out in the community, no one would know that this stuff is happening within me, which we all can picture the veteran from.

the war who drops to the ground When he hears car backfire. Right?

[13:19] Jan: Right.

[13:20] Bunny: That's not me. But internally, it could be this terrible thing going on, but externally, I just don't show up. But that's me. And then I tend to do the.

[13:29] Bunny: Freeze thing, which is the disassociation which is something I actually probably learned from because I have childhood abuse, sexual and emotional abuse, that I learn how to survive.

And so my brain goes into two different places.

I have my emotional place, what's going on inside, and then I have my intellectual place of how am I going to get through this moment? And that's what drives me. But I'm emotionally disassociated, so it's like being numb and floaty, but I'm still moving. Like no one would know that that's going on.

[14:00] Jan: I have things that trigger to me, it's like a freeze until I can kind of get past whatever it is that's taken back to that thing that I did not want to remember.

[14:15] Bunny: Yeah. And there are times where I have the interesting thing about being a firefighter is that for the first year after the fire, whenever I saw fire engines, I wasn't triggered.

And I just really kept thinking, this.

Is because I used to be a firefighter.

And as a woman firefighter, let me tell you what an Empowering thing that was back in the mid ninety s. To be only 2% of the force nationally, to be a woman fighter, that was some kick ***, badass, awesome stuff.

And it was very empowering. And I think that I carried that with me for a year.

So I was so grateful because you would think fire engines would be such a huge trigger.

Then after a year, unfortunately, that went away.

Now, fire engines can be a trigger. If it's one I start to get.

A little bit of anxiety, but it goes by and I'm fine.

So when I go to the local parades where they always have the fire engines, I just know this is coming. I will sit there and sob and bawl because of them going by with.

Their lights and their sirens. So if it's anymore, if it's a couple, then I'm going to be bawling. Yeah.

[15:08] Jan: How did you get into being a firefighter?

[15:11] Bunny: I'd been doing social service because my bachelor's was in behavioral science and psychology. Knowing I really didn't want to stay in the field, I took a class to be on the emergency Response team in the county, and it was taught by firefighters. And EMT is like, oh, this is.

Cool, I want to do this.

I went to EMT school, and then I worked as a seasonal firefighter for two eight month seasons in Southern California. When I lived in Southern California.

[15:34] Jan: Yeah.

[15:35] Bunny: And it was awesome.

[15:36] Jan: Yeah.

[15:37] Bunny: It's cool to be a hero, like a CPS worker. You're not a hero.

[15:41] Jan: Maybe for some kids. So tell us a little bit about being a CPS worker. What was your role?

[15:52] Bunny: So as a CPS worker in the county that I worked in, I pretty much I did everything except the back end, which would be adoptions.

So I did emergency response, which is.

Either taking the reports of abuse or neglect or going out and investigating the.

[16:05] Bunny: Reports of abuse or neglect, placing children into protective custody. I was deputized in the county, which in California, there's only one county now that's deputized, so we don't need law.

Enforcement unless it was a safety issue, then I didn't need them. So removing children from their home, often by myself, with parents freaking out and then continuing my investigation, writing a massive amount of court reports, going to court.

And then carrying ongoing cases, helping with family reunification or making the decision that based on the evidence and the time passed and the people not doing well in their services, that they're not going to be able to get their kids back making that recommendation, and then I would pass the case on at that point. I also was a field instructor for MSW, master of Social Work students, as well as a mentor for AmeriCorps, people wishing to thinking maybe that they wanted to come into social services, to the local family resource center. Then I was attached to that, giving referrals that CPS was not going to investigate. But it looked like family could use some help. So we offer family voluntary services so that they do not get involved with CPS. So I did a lot of things in my 13 year, seven month career at CPS. I did a lot of different things.

[17:20] Jan: Wore a lot of hats on that.

[17:22] Bunny: Yeah, very much so.

[17:23] Jan: Did you feel like the help that you gave kids overrode some of the distress of the job or I've known.

[17:33] Bunny: Since I was young that I was called to serve people. And so that was very much on the forefront of my mind that I was going to give the best service and help people the best way I could. And people always think about the kids.

And obviously it was about the kids. And I work with kids, but a majority of my work was actually done with the parents. Not that I didn't help kids, because.

[17:50] Jan: I did the kids was the instigator of getting to the right, but the.

[17:54] Bunny: Most of my time was spent working with the parents. And I just feel like because I have such a large amount of compassion and I'm able to meet the client where they're at and I believe in good practice and research that I was able to help people.

But also because I came with my own mental health issues, but my mental health issues that I had examined and didn't play out through my clients.

But because I had a shared perspective with their difficulties, I was able to help them at a deeper level than maybe CPS workers who come in without that experience or CPS workers who come.

[18:28] Bunny: In who have not dealt with their own issues and tend to rub them off onto the clients, which is extremely unhealthy and, yeah, a terrible thing to witness. So it was just my perspective and my compassion toward people. I think I was really and this is feedback from my clients that I did help a lot of people.

[18:45] Bunny: Even if it was not returning their children to them, I would see them in the community. They would still come up and give me hugs. What does that say? I treated them as fellow humans with a great amount of compassion and informed.

Them every step of the way, instead of being paternalistic, which so many workers did, where they would just not explain things and tell the clients what to do.

All along, it was, what do you want to do? And these are your choices, and this Is what will lead.

If you make this choice, this will happen. If you make this choice, this will happen. So what do you want to do? Let's make a nice informed decision about this.

[19:17] Jan: So you manage to go at your job without judgment?

[19:23] Bunny: No, you can't have judgment that's check it at the door, save it for another.

[19:27] Jan: Because if you have you can't help people.

[19:31] Bunny: You have to meet them where they're at. Yeah.

[19:35] Jan: And what's good for the levels of what is acceptable may not be totally what you think they should be, but they still may be what is possible.

[19:47] Bunny: Right, exactly.

[19:49] Jan: With people where they're at. Right.

[19:51] Bunny: Yeah. Because even though they should be, we all know, performing at a higher level to be able to take care of their children in a healthy way, you.

[19:59] Bunny: Can't force them to get there. And if they're not there, then you.

[20:01] Bunny: Have to give them the baby steps to get there. And sometimes they'll never reach that level, which is when they don't get their kids back. But you just meet them where they're.

[20:09] Bunny: At, and maybe you can move them.

[20:10] Bunny: Along that path, and they do get there.

[20:12] Jan: Or give them some strategies or tools to work with.

[20:16] Bunny: And having realistic expectations, if you're asking them to do things which you know are not possible for them, you're already setting them up for failure.  Again, can you baby step them into these directions with some really incredible support and understanding and compassion? Patience. Patience. Capital P. 

[20:34] Jan: And getting back up and going again the next day. So from the PTSD, from your job, was that because of the difficulty of your clients or because of your work situation?

[20:51] Bunny: So the biggest part of my CPS PTSD is what I call bureaucratic trauma. So this comes from there is a lot of research about the field as.

[21:01] Bunny: Social workers, what we should do for the clients, what the agency should do for us, because we're seeing trauma every single day. Yes, we are.

So it was definitely the bureaucracy, because bureaucracy and the supervisors and everybody else.

They're supposed to know better. Because we have research that backs all this. We know what good practices, we know what the research says. So we should do better by the workers, and we should do better by the clients. But then they don't. And not that some people don't.

There are some fantastic supervisors, some fantastic programs. There was some great research based stuff that we did.

, but the majority of the system is just so broken and so denying. Because think of it, if the county had to acknowledge our trauma, then they would have to allow for it and put extra money and extra time into It, which in the long run, you want to keep us around. You spend a lot of money on training us.

Let's go ahead and do that. But they just wouldn't want to do that, so they just forced more work on us. So the hugest part of my PTSD.Is what I call the bureaucratic trauma. But who likes to see kids being abused and neglected? I mean, I always think that war.

Genocide, and child abuse are the worst things you can witness. And when a parent is doing heinous things against a child, or allowing heinous things to happen, or just because their mental functioning, because of their intelligence or their mental health issues or both. Their substance abuse, or all three aren't there, to see what happens to those kids is just so incredibly tragic. So, yeah, that obviously has to be.

A part of my PTSD, but it is not the largest part. It's severe trauma.

[22:31] Jan: But I would guess that some of watching kids in those types of abusive situations had to have triggered some things from your childhood as well.

 Absolutely. And I knew that coming into CPS, and I'd had therapy around that, and I got so adept at, like, even if something was happening between me and an administrator, I could root it back to my childhood. Like, well, my mother ignored me. So now here's the supervisor.

I'm standing here with an emergency response that we need to have, like, yes.

 Are we going to go? What are we going to do? Who's going to do this? And being ignored, that triggered right into what happened in my childhood. And I knew that it was happening right in front of me, which in some ways a benefit, because then I wasn't going off the rails, or like.

Why is this happening? Or, why am I confused? Like, I knew exactly why I was being triggered.

[23:14] Jan: Right. And then you can departmentalize compartmentalize, which.

[23:19] Bunny: I'm a pro at that, I'll tell you.

[23:23] Jan: So you call yourself an advocate for mental health?

[23:26] Bunny: I do. So my blog is not only my stories, most of which because life is very absurd, and I do love to write funny things, and I think I'm a very funny writer. I agree. Thank you.

My stories are either from my profession, my life, and so I have those.

Of course, there's some darker stuff, like the one that I wrote, but there's also resources for my professional and personal experience as a social worker to help people with depression.

PTSD, I also have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue because apparently life thought that I just didn't have quite enough.

 So I have quite the plethora of things that I can have fun dealing with. So my website is there to help people with resources and tools to get through life when life offers you these interesting things to deal with so you can have a hopefully more productive and happier life and have some self- awareness. So my blog of dishes aren't my stories. It's resources to help people as well.

[24:21] Jan: And I'll put a link to that in the show with that as well. What is it like living with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue?

[24:29] Bunny: Yeah, and I've lived with it for 25 years, and when it was first diagnosed, that's when we didn't believe in it. I'm just a crazy woman, So it was not believed, and you didn't see the ads for it on TV. I'd just been really tired. Pain is I have a really high tolerance for pain, so pain can be a part of it, but it's the chronic fatigue, the soul sucking fatigue that comes with it. And I was actually diagnosed by a Rheumatologist who told me he didn't believe in it, but when I got the paper records, he actually diagnosed me with it, which was kind of a ***** move, but at least I finally like, okay, yes, I know what this is. It's not going to kill me.

But it took me seven years from the onset of my symptoms to actual diagnosis and me thinking at some point maybe I had MS or I was going to die. Lab results showed that I wasn't going to die.

So some point I just like, okay well, this is my new life with no energy.

This is my new normal. This is the life I've been given. What am I going to do with this?

And so I just figured out I have no more energy than I did initially back when I was actually on

Social Security disability for a couple of years.

I have no more energy. It's just that I know how to manage it, and I just accept it.

Accept is such a huge part of this instead of fighting it or being bitter or angry about it. It is what it is.

[25:40] Jan: Which how does that work for you?

[25:43] Bunny: Yeah, how does that doesn't work? I don't want to be I'm not a bitter or angry person.

[25:47] Jan: So with all these things that have gone on with how could you sum up your philosophy of life?

[25:53] Bunny: My philosophy of life basically is this.

Is the life I was given, so what am I going to do with it?

And I choose to be a more positive person. And obviously, I know life is not great through what I've been through.

I love history, studying history. Humans are terrible to each other. What I saw as a CPS social worker, I know it's not all rosy. I don't have rose colored glasses, but I choose to look past that stuff.

And look at how awesome life is. And how beautiful it is and how absurd and fantastic. And I practice my gratitude and count my blessings every day.

I don't look at what I've lost. I look at what I have. Even in the moment, if it's not very much whether that's energy or having a few items that I purchase after the fire, I'm grateful for what I have. And I've had a super interesting and fascinating life, so I cannot complain about that.

[26:41] Jan: What brings you the most joy?

[26:44] Bunny: So many things because I.

Am so in awe of life. Like just seeing a flower with cool colors and patterns, or the butterfly that floats by, or just realizing how vast everything is and that we're here at this moment.

I was a history teacher for a while, and I would say to my students, the only reason your butt is sitting in the seat is because your lineage went through floods and famines and saber tooth tiger attacks. And it took a lot for you to be here. Just contemplate that that we're sitting here in this moment, in this place, surrounded by these things.

If you just sit and contemplate that for a minute, that blows your mind, and it's pretty awesome to consider these things.

[27:28] Jan: Definitely is. Okay. Could I ask you to read one more of your blogs for us before we go?

[27:34] Bunny: Yeah.And I do like to read funny stuff so people can go into my blog to read.

There's a lot of funny stuff in there. But again, since this is more about the PTSD and dealing with that and what life is like, I wanted to read this one.

This is called Unreal and Lovely, and It was written on November 7, 2022.

[27:52] Bunny: Which was one day from the fourth anniversary of the fire. Part One unreality many things contributed to my feeling of unreality, of being unmoored, of being a stranger in my own life. It was the drive through the charred lunar landscape on the streets that were familiar yet not as the names of the streets remained the same. But the contents of those streets the houses, the trees, the simple daily activity and proofs of people's existence and the people themselves were missing, distilled into heaps of ashes, twisted holocausted metal and befallen blackened bricks. It was the loss of not just my town, my home, and 52 years of my belongings, but it was a loss of my routine, the loss of my future, as I thought it would be, and the loss of pieces of my sanity. It was because my entire actuality was picked up much in the way the windstorm that preceded the fire gathered up with force and swirled and scattered down anything loose in the environment before the fire then consumed it. What also contributed this sense of unreality was that life for most others around me just went on. It was like living on the border of two worlds, straddling them and not really being or belonging in either. Birthdays, work, vacations, planning for the holidays, mundane and boring things like chores and paying bills just went on for others because the fire did not happen to them. To be surrounded by ongoing life felt I could imagine what it would feel like to live in a snow globe, continuously being shaken by a mean and angry person. Inside my snow globe. It was not beautiful snow, but eye burning ashes, embers pieces of my burned life, swirling around and around dizzying exhausting and a bad dream from which I could not wake. Outside the snow globe was the rest of life going on its unaltered course. For most others, I could see life outside the snow globe and I knew it was there. But I was trapped inside, unable to reach the other side. My total life at the whims of the cruel part of the universe. Out of control, unmoored, untethered, unanchored, unhinged. Surrounded by seeming calm while a dark and ashy blizzard raged inside and immediately surrounding me. Reality and unreality had become spliced. And this was the new fabric of my life. I don't get to dawn a new coat made of warm, soft, beautiful fabric. I now have to wear this fabric interwoven, interwoven of life that has bifurcated one part going on uninterrupted and the other part that is my burnt, torn, melted, existent but nonexistent life that has become stitched into my body and my mind to never, ever fully leave me. A tattoo not of my choosing. I see things, but they are slightly out of focus. I hear things and suspect they are reaching my brain. But somewhere on their journey from the outside in, they have become jumbled and confused. I breathe and I move, but how can this be when part of me is dead? What compels me to move through the days? Muscle memory? The expectation of others acting like the draught of a ship pushing me along in the wake of their bow. But somehow I got up every day and I kept moving forward. Part Two lovely, unreality December 8 exactly one month since the fire. Gentle crunches on the ground. I hear tiny hooves walking determinedly. And then her lovely face comes into view between the charred, skeletal remains of a large shrub. Without hesitation, she continues to walk toward me in a graceful gate. Of all deer who are going about their daily life in a place that is familiar and safe, it is tempting to be pulled body, mind and soul into the unreality of the surroundings. All 150,000 decimated charred acres, the buzzing of chainsaws in the distance, finishing the work that the fire started, also adds to the unsettling nature of the moment. But the deer continues to walk toward me. She pauses and smells in my direction. Smells around her flicks her ears and then continues on, closer, looking at me very intently, ears forward, altering her head level with and below her body. Hello, I say. What you doing, pretty girl? I ask her if she likes the carrots, since they seem to be untouched for my visit two days prior, and I ask her where her people are. She moves forward and stops at the area of the food and where the food and water are laid out. A mere 6ft from where I'm sitting in my car with the door open, the same place the winter food was placed in years past before the fire. As if in answer to my query, she picks up and nibbles a carrot crunching contentedly. I eat my peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, and she eats the carrots and birdseed, calming, moving around to find the choicest bits of food, often with her back to me, her posture and demeanor consistently calm, she clearly trusts me. Before the fire, we had the type of relationship with our wildlife that was coexistent and respectful. We could easily be 15ft away without them moving off. I could even drive slowly through our cul de sac, roll down my window and say hi to the birds and deer on the road. And they would look placidly at me and continue on with their business without being disturbed. But lingering too long or getting too close could make them nervous. So I was mindful of being a calm presence, but also of moving on and letting them have their space. But this day, being in the close proximity of and conversing with this lovely dear about what had befallen us was different. Our closest did not bother her, nor did my conversing with her. Even as we finished our meals and I moved around my former home, she remained on the property, calmly gazing around, coming back to be closer to me. When I sat in the car again, she remained for about 30 minutes. This was also very unreal, sharing this space with another being, a being who had experienced the same devastation I had, a devastation that we both survived and were both forever altered by. I felt a deep bond, a kinship with this fellow creature. Just being in each other's presence, we understood each other, and I felt like we needed each other in this unreal yet most real of moments. However, in this moment, I actually felt present, attached, calm, centered, grounded. It is not that my fellow humans did not give me comfort during that time, but a lot of it felt fleeting, and it was tinged with and driven by others anxiety, as if people did not know how to act in my presence, perhaps fearful my unfortunate luck would rub off onto them. But this dear, lovely, as I came to call her, could just be with me, and she was exactly what I needed, and I sense she needed the same for me. It was an unreal beautiful, magical gift inside of an unreal horrific nightmarish tragedy. It was a surreal moment I was very willing to have in my life, and for which, almost four years later, I am still profoundly grateful. As she moved up after our time together, I said, I love you. Her tiny hoods clapped on the uncharged street as she walked calmly back into the fire scarred force, back into our unreal real world.

[34:51] Jan: Yeah.

[34:58] Bunny: So this again is back to the big question, which is, this is the life that you're given, so what are you going to do with it? This is the question I have asked myself time and again, and this is what makes me know every day that I have a choice in how I think about things and how I approach things. I can be bothered or serene. I can think bitter thoughts or know that I am blessed. I can be angry or peaceful and good humored. I can be broken and defeated or healed and triumphant, or I can be a victim or victorious. I have many tools in my life management toolbox, so I know that I have a choice in how to think and act.

 And if I was going to pass on any tool to people and trying to help them, this is the one tool I would pass on to people you do have a choice in how you think and act.

Even in the most horrible of situation you do have a choice. 

[35:53] Jan: Good word for any age.

[35:56] Bunny: Absolutely.

[35:57] Jan: Kids through 999.

[35:59] Bunny: Exactly. Yes.

[36:01] Jan: Well, thank you, Bonnie.

[36:03] Bunny: Oh, thank you, Jen. I really appreciate it. I so much appreciate this.

[36:07] Bunny: Thank you.

[36:12] Jan: I was so inspired by Bunny's outlook on life. We all have stuff, you know, those challenges which can overwhelm us. But as she says, we have a choice in how we see things. If you enjoyed this or any other of my podcast episodes, please take a minute to scroll down and rate it or leave a review. A word or two about what you enjoy about the episodes helps others decide to listen in writing. News book two of the Mercy series is now available on Amazon. It's called Windows of my heart. It delves into some daddy hurts, abuse and grieving, but it brings two hearts together. I hope to see you again next week.