From the Ashes

We can RISE UP

and be forever changed.

We can once again find strength with newness

and be more than we were before

with someone standing at the ready to offer help in understanding all that fire and devastation can do to a person in the moment of trying, dying, and witnessing.

From the heat, the anger, the moments of fire and change, we can find power, strength and HOPE

if we but are open to it.

Anger is that way at times, it can be a good thing; or it can rage like a wildfire out of control and devastate.

Anger like fire can burn it clean,

or can move to wildness that is hard to contain, with no resources or not enough to put it out;

leaving destruction in its path and destruction in the aftermath.

It becomes difficult to imagine that one can rise after and from the ashes to wholeness

yet differently and changed forever.

On small scales within individuals we are seeing it now, to big extremes we are watching it now.

Fires out of control in emotions and fears that are taking hold across our world.

To true fires of Colorado, and fears of the Badlands of South Dakota and those who say that any minute they will just blow; with just the right spark, just a moment of lightning and all will go in flames.

Where are the resources?

Where are the first responders to come from for the next big disasters and fires out of control?

Who is attending to the ones who now are exhausted and traumatized from all they have witnessed and done for so many?

We now know that these are the very firefighters that lay on an interstate to sleep between shifts as they did not want to go home.

Their dedication and passion, along with adrenalin kept them at the scene, wanting to control this fire.

Who was caring for them; providing supportive interventions and is now?

Who is standing for our first responders I keep wondering to be sure that they rise from the ashes intact; and are able to balance their profession and home life with all that they do.

...

Yet the same is said of so many in the world now; we watch and hear of so much in the professional arenas, with budget cuts, with the ability to attend conferences being stopped secondary to funds no longer available and the need to do more with less in this time.

Caregivers at home, going and doing and constantly running on empty.

Yet in this political year of elections, decisions and campaigns of talking and finding dirt on another; words and sentences taken and twisted and turned and leaving one to hold their heads in their hands and wondering if they will live from pay check to pay check;

while moral is at an all time low,

and soldiers return home wounded or in flag draped coffins,

who is noticing the fires raging within and around our lands.

Post Traumatic Stress is abounding in numbers never seen before.

7.7 million are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder each year PTSD;

and yet only 18% of those diagnosed are returning from war!

Just imagine how many are "undiagnosed" and out there fighting fires, in Uniform as EMS, Police, Therapists, helping professions, personal caregivers, disabled, and just folks trying to put out the fires in their own lives!

How many have the knowledge that one can rise from the ashes with a re-birth stronger than ever before, with hope and strength of a phoenix and the power to be more than they ever were before...

Will we run out of first responders as we see more and more lands ignite as folks in the Mid-West now begging for rain and bans on having a cook out, or lighting a smoke in South Dakota, or fear of riding a Motor Cycle in the Badlands because of the fear of a spark setting off a wildfire that will not be able to be contained?

Have you ever wondered if an evacuation plan has been thought about in some of these areas, and what a volunteer fire department consists of?

Is it 3 people? 17?

And how long does it take for help to arrive when battling more acres than one can fathom and to the cost of how many lives and trees and history ablaze?

Hearts of loss and grief and emotions that run wild as fires,

Yet it is often like the Phoenix who rises after the ashes that we never think of when it comes to self, of others. 

It is time, past time

that we look beyond the fire, the words of others that are turned and twisted to fit agendas and inflame.

It is past time that we offer, provide support, guidance, hope and motivation

to and for those on the front lines of doing for so many; those who are in the trenches of life

and train the next set of those who will be needing to stand.

For those who have stood in the past;

and find others to do what they can for others

in order to bring back unity for all.

In a world that at times seems to have lost

its way among the smoke.

As we rise

from the ashes

and the words that harm, while accepting responsiblity for our brothers and sisters

who stand.

Walk in Beauty

DRSES