Tag: Coping with grief

LA residents are still battling toxic hazards a year after historic wildfires

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ALTADENA, Calif. — ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) — “DANGER: Lead Work Area” reads a sign on a front door of an Altadena home. “May damage fertility or the unborn child. Causes damage to the central nervous system.”

Block after block there are reminders that contaminants still linger.

House cleaners, hazardous waste workers and homeowners alike come and go wearing masks, respirators, gloves and hazmat suits as they wipe, vacuum and power-wash homes that weren’t burnt to ash.

It’s been a year of heartbreak and worry since the most destructive wildfires in the Los Angeles area’s history scorched neighborhoods and displaced tens of thousands of people. Two wind-whipped blazes that ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 31 people and destroyed nearly 17,000 structures, including homes, schools, businesses and places of worship. Rebuilding will take years.

The disaster has brought another wave of trauma for people afraid of what still lurks inside their homes.

Indoor air quality after wildfires remains understudied, and scientists still don’t know the long-term health impacts of exposure to massive urban fires like last year’s in Los Angeles. But some chemicals released are known to be linked to heart disease and lung issues, and exposure to minerals like magnetite has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Ash in the area is a toxic soup of incinerated cars, electronics, paints, furniture and every other kind of personal belonging. It can contain pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead or other heavy metals.

Many with homes still standing are now living with the hazards left by the fires.

Nina and Billy Malone considered their home of 20 years a safe haven before smoke, ash and soot seeped inside, leaving behind harmful levels of lead even after professional cleaning. Recent testing found the toxin is still on the wooden floors of their living room and bedroom.

They were forced to move back home in August anyway, after insurance cut off their rental assistance.

Since then, Nina wakes up almost daily with a sore throat and headaches. Billy had to get an inhaler for his worsening wheezing and congestion. And their bedroom, Nina said, smells “like an ashtray has been sitting around for a long time.” She worries most about exposure to unregulated contaminants that insurance companies aren’t required to test.

“I don’t feel comfortable in the space,” said Nina, whose neighbors’ homes burned down across the street.

They’re not alone.

According to a report released in November by the Eaton Fire Residents United, a volunteer group formed by residents, six out of 10 homes damaged from smoke from the Eaton Fire still have dangerous levels of cancer-causing asbestos, brain-damaging lead or both. That’s based on self-submitted data from 50 homeowners who have cleaned their homes, with 78% hiring professional cleaners.

Of the 50 homes, 63% have lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard, according to the report. The average lead levels were almost 60 times higher than the EPA’s rule.

Even after fires were extinguished, volatile organic compounds from smoke, some known to cause cancer, lingered inside of people’s homes, according to a recent study. To mitigate these risks, residents returning home should ventilate and filter indoor air by opening windows or running high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifiers with charcoal filters.

Zoe Gonzalez Izquierdo said she can’t get her insurance company to pay for an adequate cleanup of her family’s Altadena home, which tested positive for dangerous levels of lead and other toxic compounds.

“They can’t just send a company that’s not certified to just wipe things down so that then we can go back to a still contaminated home,” Gonzalez said, who has children ages 2 and 4.

Experts believe the lead, which can linger in dust on floors and windowsills, comes from burned lead paint. The University of Southern California reported that more than 70% of homes within the Eaton Fire were built before 1979, when lead paint was common.

“For individuals that are pregnant, for young children, it’s particularly important that we do everything we can to eliminate exposure to lead,” said pediatrician Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and a member of the climate group Science Moms.

The same goes for asbestos, she added, because there is no safe level of exposure.

People who lived in the Pacific Palisades, which was also scorched, face similar challenges.

Residents are at the mercy of their insurance companies, who decide on what they cover and how much. It’s a grueling, constant battle for many. The state’s insurer of last resort, known as the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, has been scrutinized for years over its handling of fire damage claims.

Homeowners want state agencies to enforce a requirement that insurance companies return a property to pre-fire condition.

Julie Lawson won’t take any risks. Her family paid about $7,000 out of pocket to test the soil in their Altadena home, even though their insurance company had already agreed to pay to replace the grass in their front yard. They planned to test for contaminants again once they finished remediating the inside, the process of making a home contaminant-free after a fire. If insurance won’t cover it, they’ll pay for it themselves.

Even if their home is livable again, they still face other losses — including equity and the community they once had.

“We have to live in the scar,” she said. “We’re all still really struggling.”

They will be living in a construction zone for years. “This isn’t over for us.”

Annie Barbour with the nonprofit United Policyholders has been helping people navigate the challenges, which include insurance companies resisting to pay for contamination testing and industrial hygienists disagreeing on what to test for.

She sees the mental health toll it’s having on people — and as a survivor herself of the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Northern California, she understands it.

Many were at first joyful to see their houses still standing.

“But they’ve been in their own special kind of hell ever since,” Barbour said.

Now residents like the Malones are inspecting their belongings, one by one, fearing they may have absorbed toxins.

Boxes, bags and bins stuffed with clothes, chinaware and everything in between fill the couple’s car, basement, garage and home.

They have been painstakingly going through their things, assessing what they think can be adequately cleaned. In the process, Nina is cleaning cabinets, drawers, floors and still finding soot and ash. She wears gloves and a respirator, or sometimes just an N-95 mask.

Their insurance won’t pay to retest their home, Billy said, so they’re considering paying the $10,000 themselves. And if results show there’s still contamination, their insurance company told them they will only pay to clean up toxins that are federally regulated, like lead and asbestos.

“I don’t know how you fight that,” said Nina, who is considering therapy to cope with her anxiety. “How do you find that argument to compel an insurance company to pay for something to make yourself safe?”

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AP staff writer Alex Veiga contributed to this report.

———

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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January 4, 2026
How horses at the Spirit Horse Ranch help Maui wildfire survivors process their grief

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KANAIO, Hawaii (AP) — Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Depression. Overwhelmed.

Janice Dapitan began her second counseling session by writing those words on a whiteboard, reflecting what she felt in that moment. The day fire destroyed her hometown of Lahaina — and the struggles that have followed for nearly a year — still haunted her.

The fire killed her uncle. It burned the homes of seven family members. Her daughter narrowly escaped the blaze with her two children, but lost her house and moved to Las Vegas. The house Dapitan shares with her husband, Kalani, survived, but now it overlooks the burn zone. The view is a painful, constant reminder that the life they’d known is gone.

“There are so many triggers,” she said on a blustery July day. Her long black braids fell over a tank top with the word “Lahaina” printed in gold. “We can be okay today, and tomorrow it could be different. Everything is uncertain. Every day is a different challenge. We want to stay joyful, but it’s a process.”

Janice Dapitan, left, cries during an interview with husband Kalani, right, following an equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

One year after the Maui fires, thousands of residents share Dapitan’s struggle. They grieve the losses of loved ones and generational homes. They are haunted by their traumatic escapes and even by the guilt of surviving. They’ve endured months of instability — switching hotel rooms, schools and jobs. An estimated 1,500 families have left Maui, forced to start over thousands of miles from home.

But lately, Dapitan has enjoyed some relief, thanks to an equine-assisted therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch in Maui’s rural upcountry, an hour’s drive from Lahaina.

“The connection with the horses is different than connecting with machines or humans,” said Dapitan. “It’s almost like instant healing.”

After large-scale disasters, restoring a community’s mental wellness is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, experts say. And just as constructing an entire town can take years, so can healing its residents.

“We can be so focused on the bricks-and-mortar rebuild — because that’s challenging enough as it is — that we don’t create space for that healing,” said Jolie Wills, a cognitive scientist who led the mental health response for the Red Cross after the 2010 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.

While some survivors need professional support to overcome their trauma, a lot of recovery can happen outside of a clinic’s walls. Maui residents have leaned on programs that help them reconnect — to themselves, their community, land and culture.

Horses to process trauma

After writing down her words, Dapitan sat on a folding chair inside a horse corral. A few feet away, Maverick, a 22-year-old Tennessee Walker rolled in the dirt.

Janice Dapitan brushes a horse named Maverick during a philanthropy-supported equine therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The program’s founder, Paige DePonte, sat in front of her and began a technique called brainspotting. She moved a small wand in front of Dapitan’s eyes to stimulate certain eye movements believed to help the brain process trauma. Later, Dapitan approached Maverick. She brushed his dark mane. After leading him once around the corral, she stopped, rested her arms over his back, and began to cry.

“He just lets you lean on him,” she said. “I can feel myself healing because somebody is at least letting me lean on them.”

For her husband Kalani, the ranch’s quiet isolation, tucked on a hillside overlooking Maui’s south coast, gives him space to process what has happened. “Before we even met the horses, I was in tears,” he said. “The peacefulness really breaks your walls down.”

Kalani Dapitan talks to a horse named Missy during a philanthropy-supported equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Equine-assisted therapy participants don’t typically ride horses, but the animals’ presence alone can soothe people as they face their trauma. They might brush, walk and even talk to the animals, or the horses might just be nearby as facilitators take them through other methods of counseling or psychotherapy.

“Horses are incredible healers,” said DePonte, who started the program on her family’s cattle ranch in 2021 after observing the transformational effect the animals had on her own trauma recovery. “They are in a place of coherence all the time, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday.”

The program, now supported by grants from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Maui United Way, and other private donors, has provided more than 1,300 sessions for impacted residents.

Dapitan had already begun therapy before the fire to recover from a previous trauma, but she said time at the ranch feels different. “I think I got the most out of the horses in two days versus the year that I’ve been having regular counseling.”

Healing through connection

Holistic programs like these have helped meet the overwhelming need for support services after the Aug. 8, 2023 fire that killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.

On top of the harrowing experiences of losing homes and loved ones, survivors are stressed and exhausted from the volatility of daily life — moving hotel rooms, changing schools, losing income.

“It’s been a pretty significant impact on people’s mental health,” said Tia Hartsock, director of Hawaii’s office of wellness and resilience. “Navigating bureaucratic systems while in a traumatic response has been very challenging.”

Kalani Dapitan reaches to pet a horse named Missy during an equine therapy session at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

In a Hawaii Department of Health survey of affected families two months after the fire, almost three-quarters of respondents said at least one person in their household had felt nervous, anxious or depressed in the preceding two weeks. At the six-month anniversary, more than half of survivors and one-third of all Maui residents surveyed by the University of Hawaii reported feeling depressive symptoms.

That’s expected after a disaster of such scale, said Wills, calling it “very normal reactions to a very abnormal situation.”

Providers, nonprofits, philanthropic groups and the government collaborated to reduce barriers to mental health treatment, like paying for people’s therapy sessions and staffing shelters and FEMA events with mental health practitioners.

But they knew residents also needed other options. “Clinical support wasn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone,” said Justina Acevedo-Cross, senior program manager at the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Numerous public and private funders are supporting programs that re-engage residents with land and people, which Hartsock calls “unbelievably helpful in the healing.”

Several are rooted in Native Hawaiian healing practices. Cultural practitioners with the organization Hui Ho’omalu offer lomilomi, or Hawaiian massage. Those sessions typically lead into kukakuka, or deep conversation, with Native Hawaiians trained in mental health support.

Impacted families also maintain taro patches, restore native plants and take cultural classes on protected land stewarded by the organization Ka’ehu. Aviva Libitsky and her son Nakana, 7, volunteer there at least once a week, scooping invasive snails out of kalo pools and cleaning litter from the shoreline.

Libitsky felt anxious for months after fleeing the Lahaina fire and losing the home she’d lived in since 2010. Working on the land calms her. “It helps you channel that frenetic energy and put it toward something useful.”

The Spirit Horse Ranch founder Paige DePonte walks with Maverick, one of the horses at her equine-assisted trauma-informed care facility, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

She and Nakana recently learned how to weave bracelets from the leaves of hala trees at one of Ka’ehu’s cultural workshops. They’ve gone to Spirit Horse Ranch, too. “We just focus on new opportunities, creating new memories.”

A new wave of need

As Maui enters its second year of recovery, providers are preparing for a new wave of people to seek help.

The last families are moving out of hotels and into the interim housing meant to carry them over until Lahaina rebuilds. That sudden stillness can trigger bigger emotions, said Acevedo-Cross. “They’re able to feel a bit more.”

Many who weren’t directly affected by the fires are now experiencing its impacts, as rents skyrocket, tourism jobs disappear, and friends and family move away.

For some, healing won’t come until Lahaina is rebuilt and the community can return home.

Janice Dapitan, right, wipes away tears during a session, part of a philanthropy-supported equine therapy program, with Paige DePonte as a horse named Maverick stands nearby at the Spirit Horse Ranch, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Kula, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

“We don’t have a hometown anymore,” said Kalani Dapitan. He misses his friends and family, and most of all his daughter. He worries constantly about what will happen to Lahaina, especially as a Native Hawaiian. “We’re unsure of our future, how our cultural aspect is going to pan out.”

With so much still uncertain, time at Spirit Horse Ranch helps the Dapitans stay present.

At the end of her session, Janice returned to the whiteboard to write the words that summed up her feelings. “Relaxed,” she wrote, and looked up. “That’s all.”

_____________

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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August 8, 2024
How horses at the Spirit Horse Ranch help Maui wildfire survivors process their grief

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KANAIO, Hawaii — Fear. Anxiety. Anger. Depression. Overwhelmed.

Janice Dapitan began her second counseling session by writing those words on a whiteboard, reflecting what she felt in that moment. The day fire destroyed her hometown of Lahaina — and the struggles that have followed for nearly a year — still haunted her.

The fire killed her uncle. It burned the homes of seven family members. Her daughter narrowly escaped the blaze with her two children, but lost her house and moved to Las Vegas. The house Dapitan shares with her husband, Kalani, survived, but now it overlooks the burn zone. The view is a painful, constant reminder that the life they’d known is gone.

“There are so many triggers,” she said on a blustery July day. Her long black braids fell over a tank top with the word “Lahaina” printed in gold. “We can be okay today, and tomorrow it could be different. Everything is uncertain. Every day is a different challenge. We want to stay joyful, but it’s a process.”

One year after the Maui fires, thousands of residents share Dapitan’s struggle. They grieve the losses of loved ones and generational homes. They are haunted by their traumatic escapes and even by the guilt of surviving. They’ve endured months of instability — switching hotel rooms, schools and jobs. An estimated 1,500 families have left Maui, forced to start over thousands of miles from home.

But lately, Dapitan has enjoyed some relief, thanks to an equine-assisted therapy program at the Spirit Horse Ranch in Maui’s rural upcountry, an hour’s drive from Lahaina.

“The connection with the horses is different than connecting with machines or humans,” said Dapitan. “It’s almost like instant healing.”

After large-scale disasters, restoring a community’s mental wellness is as important as rebuilding infrastructure, experts say. And just as constructing an entire town can take years, so can healing its residents.

“We can be so focused on the bricks-and-mortar rebuild — because that’s challenging enough as it is — that we don’t create space for that healing,” said Jolie Wills, a cognitive scientist who led the mental health response for the Red Cross after the 2010 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.

While some survivors need professional support to overcome their trauma, a lot of recovery can happen outside of a clinic’s walls. Maui residents have leaned on programs that help them reconnect — to themselves, their community, land and culture.

After writing down her words, Dapitan sat on a folding chair inside a horse corral. A few feet away, Maverick, a 22-year-old Tennessee Walker rolled in the dirt.

The program’s founder, Paige DePonte, sat in front of her and began a technique called brainspotting. She moved a small wand in front of Dapitan’s eyes to stimulate certain eye movements believed to help the brain process trauma. Later, Dapitan approached Maverick. She brushed his dark mane. After leading him once around the corral, she stopped, rested her arms over his back, and began to cry.

“He just lets you lean on him,” she said. “I can feel myself healing because somebody is at least letting me lean on them.”

For her husband Kalani, the ranch’s quiet isolation, tucked on a hillside overlooking Maui’s south coast, gives him space to process what has happened. “Before we even met the horses, I was in tears,” he said. “The peacefulness really breaks your walls down.”

Equine-assisted therapy participants don’t typically ride horses, but the animals’ presence alone can soothe people as they face their trauma. They might brush, walk and even talk to the animals, or the horses might just be nearby as facilitators take them through other methods of counseling or psychotherapy.

“Horses are incredible healers,” said DePonte, who started the program on her family’s cattle ranch in 2021 after observing the transformational effect the animals had on her own trauma recovery. “They are in a place of coherence all the time, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday.”

The program, now supported by grants from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Maui United Way, and other private donors, has provided more than 1,300 sessions for impacted residents.

Dapitan had already begun therapy before the fire to recover from a previous trauma, but she said time at the ranch feels different. “I think I got the most out of the horses in two days versus the year that I’ve been having regular counseling.”

Holistic programs like these have helped meet the overwhelming need for support services after the Aug. 8, 2023 fire that killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.

On top of the harrowing experiences of losing homes and loved ones, survivors are stressed and exhausted from the volatility of daily life — moving hotel rooms, changing schools, losing income.

“It’s been a pretty significant impact on people’s mental health,” said Tia Hartsock, director of Hawaii’s office of wellness and resilience. “Navigating bureaucratic systems while in a traumatic response has been very challenging.”

In a Hawaii Department of Health survey of affected families two months after the fire, almost three-quarters of respondents said at least one person in their household had felt nervous, anxious or depressed in the preceding two weeks. At the six-month anniversary, more than half of survivors and one-third of all Maui residents surveyed by the University of Hawaii reported feeling depressive symptoms.

That’s expected after a disaster of such scale, said Wills, calling it “very normal reactions to a very abnormal situation.”

Providers, nonprofits, philanthropic groups and the government collaborated to reduce barriers to mental health treatment, like paying for people’s therapy sessions and staffing shelters and FEMA events with mental health practitioners.

But they knew residents also needed other options. “Clinical support wasn’t necessarily going to be right for everyone,” said Justina Acevedo-Cross, senior program manager at the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Numerous public and private funders are supporting programs that re-engage residents with land and people, which Hartsock calls “unbelievably helpful in the healing.”

Several are rooted in Native Hawaiian healing practices. Cultural practitioners with the organization Hui Ho’omalu offer lomilomi, or Hawaiian massage. Those sessions typically lead into kukakuka, or deep conversation, with Native Hawaiians trained in mental health support.

Impacted families also maintain taro patches, restore native plants and take cultural classes on protected land stewarded by the organization Ka’ehu. Aviva Libitsky and her son Nakana, 7, volunteer there at least once a week, scooping invasive snails out of kalo pools and cleaning litter from the shoreline.

Libitsky felt anxious for months after fleeing the Lahaina fire and losing the home she’d lived in since 2010. Working on the land calms her. “It helps you channel that frenetic energy and put it toward something useful.”

She and Nakana recently learned how to weave bracelets from the leaves of hala trees at one of Ka’ehu’s cultural workshops. They’ve gone to Spirit Horse Ranch, too. “We just focus on new opportunities, creating new memories.”

As Maui enters its second year of recovery, providers are preparing for a new wave of people to seek help.

The last families are moving out of hotels and into the interim housing meant to carry them over until Lahaina rebuilds. That sudden stillness can trigger bigger emotions, said Acevedo-Cross. “They’re able to feel a bit more.”

Many who weren’t directly affected by the fires are now experiencing its impacts, as rents skyrocket, tourism jobs disappear, and friends and family move away.

For some, healing won’t come until Lahaina is rebuilt and the community can return home.

“We don’t have a hometown anymore,” said Kalani Dapitan. He misses his friends and family, and most of all his daughter. He worries constantly about what will happen to Lahaina, especially as a Native Hawaiian. “We’re unsure of our future, how our cultural aspect is going to pan out.”

With so much still uncertain, time at Spirit Horse Ranch helps the Dapitans stay present.

At the end of her session, Janice returned to the whiteboard to write the words that summed up her feelings. “Relaxed,” she wrote, and looked up. “That’s all.”

_____________

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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August 7, 2024
Taylor Swift fan dies at Rio concert as fans complain about high temperatures and lack of water

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RIO DE JANEIRO — A 23-year-old Taylor Swift fan died at the singer’s Eras Tour concert in Rio de Janeiro Friday night, according to a statement from the show’s organizers in Brazil. Both fans and politicians reacted to the news with outrage.

The cause of death for Ana Clara Benevides Machado has not yet been announced. The office of Rio’s public prosecutor opened a criminal investigation and said Benevides body was being examined.

But concert-goers complained they were not allowed to take water into Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium despite soaring temperatures, and federal authorities announced that free water would be made available at all future concerts.

In a handwritten note shared on her social media, Swift said she had a “shattered heart.”

“There’s very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young,” the singer wrote of the young woman.

The show’s organizer, Time4Fun, said on Instagram that paramedics attended to Benevides after she reported feeling unwell. She was taken to a first-aid center and then to a hospital, where she died an hour later, the statement from the Brazilian live entertainment company said.

Fans who attended the Friday show said they were not allowed to bring water bottles into the stadium even though Rio and most of Brazil have had record-breaking temperatures this week amid a dangerous and lasting heat wave. The daytime high in Rio on Friday was 39.1 degrees Celsius (102.4 degrees Fahrenheit), but it felt much hotter.

Apparent temperature — a combination of temperature and humidity — hit 59 C (138 F) Friday morning in Rio, the highest index ever recorded there.

Elizabeth Morin, 26, who recently moved to Rio from Los Angeles, described “sauna-like” conditions inside the stadium.

“It was extremely hot. My hair got so wet from sweat as soon as I came in,” she said. “There was a point at which I had to check my breathing to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out.”

Morin said she drank plenty of water but saw “a good amount of people looking distressed” and others “yelling for water.” She said she was able to get water from the sidelines of the area she was standing in, but that water was a lot harder to access from other parts of the stadium, “especially if you were concerned about losing your specific position.”

During the show, Swift paused her performance and asked from the stage for water to be brought to a group of people who had successfully caught the singer’s attention, according to Morin.

“They were holding up their phones saying ‘We need water,’” she recalled.

Justice Minister Flávio Dino said on X that the ministry would implement “emergency rules” in response to the situation. He later announced that “water bottles for personal use, in suitable material, will be allowed” at concerts and other events and that show producers must provide free and easily accessible drinking water.

Swift has two more shows scheduled in Rio, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. State prosecutors said in a statement they would “monitor measures that seek to avoid new problems and guarantee the protection of the health of the public.”

Before the show, Benevides posted a video of herself on Instgram wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt and waiting in line to enter the stadium while seeking shade under an umbrella. Like her, thousands of fans waited hours in the sun before being allowed inside.

She told her followers while fanning her face that she’d arrived at 11 a.m. — the show began around 7:30 p.m. — and was “still in the mess.”

Benevides’ friend, Daniele Menin, who attended the concert with her, told online news site G1 that her friend passed out at the beginning of the concert, as Swift performed her second song, “Cruel Summer.”

“We always said that when (Taylor Swift) came to Brazil we would find a way to go. The ticket was very expensive, but we still found a way”, Menin told G1.

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said on X the “loss of a young woman’s life … is unacceptable.”

While authorities are investigating the circumstances of the death, Paes wrote, the municipality will demand Saturday that the show’s production company provide new water distribution points, more brigades and ambulances, and advance entrance to the show by one hour.

“I’m not going to be able to speak about this from stage because I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it,” she wrote. “I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends.”

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November 18, 2023
Maui town ravaged by fire will ‘rise again,’ Hawaii governor says of long recovery ahead

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LAHAINA, Hawaii — Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said Friday that what’s rebuilt from the ashes of the devastating wildfires on Maui will be determined by the people.

“Lahaina will rise again,” Green said during a livestreamed evening address from Honolulu. The seaside town will be rebuilt as a living memorial to those lost — a number that increased by three on Friday to 114 — while preserving and protecting Native Hawaiian culture, he said.

His wife, Jaime Kanani Green, stood next to him and cried as she described Lahaina as a vibrant community rich in history and culture.

“Tragically it took less than a single day for us to lose Lahaina in the deadliest fire our country has seen in more than a century,” she said.

Native Hawaiians and others from Lahaina said earlier Friday they worry Hawaii’s governor is moving too quickly to rebuild what was lost while the grief is still raw.

“The fire occurred only 10 days ago, and many people are still in shock and mourning,” Tiare Lawrence, who grew up in Lahaina, said at an emotional news conference organized by community activists.

They called on Green to give residents time to grieve, provide community leaders with recovery decision-making roles and comply with open-records laws amid distrust in the government response to the disaster.

In Green’s address, he attempted to allay their concerns, while noting that rebuilding will take years of work and billions of dollars.

“Let me be clear,” he said. “Lahaina belongs to its people and we are committed to rebuilding and restoring it the way they want.”

Earlier this week, Green said he would announce details of a moratorium on land transactions in Lahaina to prevent people from falling victim to land grabs. But his Friday address didn’t provide details, other than saying he directed the state attorney general to “impose enhanced criminal penalties on anyone who tries to take advantage of victims by acquiring property in the affected areas.”

Since the flames consumed much of Lahaina, locals have feared a rebuilt town could become even more oriented toward wealthy visitors.

“The governor should not rush to rebuild the community without first giving people time to heal, especially without including the community itself in the planning,” Lawrence said. “Fast-track development cannot come at the cost of community control.”

The coalition of activists, under the umbrella of a group calling itself “Na Ohana o Lele: Lahaina,” were especially concerned about the impact of development on the environment and noted how mismanagement of resources — particularly land and water — contributed to the quick spread of the fire.

There was no word Friday on who would replace the Maui Emergency Management Agency administrator who abruptly resigned after defending a decision not to sound outdoor sirens during the fire.

Herman Andaya had said this week that he had no regrets about not deploying the system because he feared it could have caused people to go “mauka,” a Hawaiian term that can mean toward the mountains or inland.

“If that was the case, then they would have gone into the fire,” Andaya explained. He stepped down Thursday, a day later.

Andaya’s resignation letter was brief and had no mention of the health reasons that county officials cited for his resignation.

“I appreciated the opportunity to head this agency for the last 6 years,” he wrote. “I have enjoyed working for the agency and am grateful for the support provided me during my tenure as administrator.”

The county released Andaya’s resignation letter Friday after The Associated Press requested a copy.

The decision to not use the sirens, coupled with water shortages that hampered firefighters and an escape route clogged with vehicles that were overrun by flames, has brought intense criticism.

While crews sifted through ashes and rubble in Lahaina, scenes of normalcy continued in other parts of Maui, even if the tragedy hung heavy over the island.

Off the coast of Kihei on Friday morning, a holiday marking Hawaii’s statehood, paddlers in outrigger canoes glided through Maalaea Bay about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Lahaina. Fishermen cast their lines from knee-deep water. And beachgoers strolled along the sand.

Green reiterated a plea for visitors not to go to West Maui. “However, all other areas of Maui and the rest of Hawaii are safe and open to visitors and continue to welcome and encourage travel to our beautiful state, which will support the local economy and speed the recovery of those who have already suffered so much,” he said.

More than 60% of the disaster area had been searched, Green said Friday, adding that he expects the number of dead to increase each day of the search.

Six forensic anthropologists with the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency are assisting in gathering and identifying human remains, the Pentagon said in a statement Friday. The group is experienced in verifying DNA from long-lost service members, many of whom died as long ago as World War II.

The lack of sirens has emerged as a potential misstep, part of a series of communication issues that added to the chaos, according to reporting by The Associated Press.

Hawaii has what it touts as the largest system of outdoor alert sirens in the world, created after a 1946 tsunami that killed more than 150 on the Big Island. Its website says they may be used to alert for fires.

Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez said earlier Thursday that an outside organization will conduct “an impartial, independent” review of the government’s response.

The cause of the wildfires is under investigation. But Hawaii is increasingly at risk from disasters, with wildfire rising fastest, according to an AP analysis of FEMA records.

“We will get to the bottom of exactly how the fire started, how our emergency procedures and protocols need to be strengthened, how we can improve our defenses to protect us in the future,” Green said.

Corrine Hussey Nobriga said it was hard to lay blame for a tragedy that took everyone by surprise, even if some of her neighbors raised questions about the absence of sirens and inadequate evacuation routes.

The fire moved quickly through her neighborhood, though her home was spared.

“One minute we saw the fire over there,” she said, pointing toward faraway hills, “and the next minute it’s consuming all these houses.”

Authorities hope to empty crowded, uncomfortable group shelters by early next week, said Brad Kieserman, vice president for disaster operations with the American Red Cross. Hotels also are available for eligible evacuees who have been sleeping in cars or camping in parking lots, he said.

Contracts with the hotels will last for at least seven months but could easily be extended, he said. Service providers at the properties will offer meals, counseling, financial assistance and other disaster aid.

The governor has said at least 1,000 hotel rooms will be set aside. In addition, Airbnb said its nonprofit wing will provide properties for 1,000 people.

Ernesto and Adoracion Garcia, who moved from the Philippines a decade ago, joined a dozen other relatives in two time-share apartments at the Hyatt Regency in Kaanapali after being left homeless by the fire.

They were thankful that they would no longer be staying at shelters, after fleeing the flames.

Green, who was an emergency room doctor before becoming governor, described meeting survivors. He said one woman was seven months pregnant and told him she’s not sure how she’ll make it to her next medical appointment.

“Tears in her eyes,” Green recalled, “she told me she intends to name her baby Faith.”

___

Kelleher reported from Honolulu and Weber from Los Angeles. Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire; Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island; Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C.; and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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August 19, 2023
Music Review: Jess Williamson’s ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’ spans the American west and human heart

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Jess Williamson’s fifth solo album “Time Ain’t Accidental” takes place on a lyrical road trip that unpacks America, its western landscapes, reckless storms and evanescent roots, transforming country music’s legacy into her own search for redemption, wr…

ByAMANCAI BIRABEN Associated Press

This cover image released by Mexican Summer shows “Time Ain’t Accidental” by Jess Williamson. (Mexican Summer via AP)

The Associated Press

“Time Ain’t Accidental” by Jess Williamson (Mexican Summer)

Jess Williamson’s fifth solo album “Time Ain’t Accidental” incarnates 2023 through a lyrical road trip that unpacks America, its western landscapes, reckless storms and evanescent roots, transforming country music’s legacy into her own search for redemption.

Merging the grit of heartbreak with the lyricism of repair, Williamson’s voice ranges like tobacco smoke ascending into electric sunrises that beam into the full moon as mellow acoustics, brass, beats and sonic twists ground the soundscapes of the winding path. Her lyrics question genres, like the lies behind her dubious love song “now that the love is gone” and they argue with classic norms of the country song, “I’m not a good woman if I leave or if I stay” and her transitions play on each other, “Whatcha take me for?” as she answers “Take me for a ride.”

Love is both a delusion and a cure as her lyrics trace her roots in Texas, reinvention in California and all the pitstops in between. It slowly slips away in “A Few Seasons,” an ode to its loss. It’s “as pure as the universe, honest as an ashtray” in “Hunter,” her anthem for self-possession. Later, in “Roads,” she feels a hurricane in her heart, hail storm in her head, a tornado blowing through her bones for her lover.

Her sense of self wanders from wondering if she’s “a one-time dream or a country queen” in “Topanga Two Step” and how she compares to the “women in boots, with their long hair in tassels” in “God in Everything.” Williamson roves between her wanting to leave LA, where she could “start a garden with the landlord” in “Chasing Spirits” and being “kept between the bridal and being built to run” in “I’d Come to Your Call.” Time wavers between the one sun and one moon at her fountain of her youth in “Tobacco Two Step” and the days before her broken heart when she read her lover “Raymond Carver by the pool bar like a lady” in “Time Ain’t Accidental.”

She’s at her best when the rich details of her past morph into the surrounding terrains, metaphors like the stormy weather of love that fade into waterways of searching for closure. Mapping her heart along the desert zephyrs, country stores and two-step bars, Williamson ventures through heartache in all its pain and glory.

___

More AP music reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/music-reviews

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June 9, 2023
Couple killed at Texas mall shooting along with 3-year-old son had ‘perfect synergy’

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DALLAS — Kyu Cho had a generous spirit and joyous belly laugh that delighted his friends. His wife, Cindy Cho, was quieter, described by those who knew her as sweet and kind. Together, the parents of two young sons complemented each other perfectly, strong in their faith and devoted to family and friends.

“That’s what I keep hearing in my head when I think of them: Just Kyu laughing so deeply and Cindy just kind of shaking her head and laughing along,” said their friend, Phyllis Myung. “Every interaction I ever had with them, we were always laughing so hard.”

Cindy and Kyu grew up in Texas. They met while pursuing their careers as young adults in Boston — her as a dentist, him as an attorney. Wanting to be near their families, they decided it was time to return to Texas when they started a family of their own.

The couple and their sons — 6-year-old William and 3-year-old James — were not far from their Dallas home when a gunman opened fire at an outdoor mall as they shopped earlier this month in the suburb of Allen. Kyu, 37, Cindy, 35, and James were among the eight people killed that sunny Saturday afternoon. The family’s only survivor was William, who was wounded.

Those killed represented a multicultural cross-section of the increasingly diverse area. Authorities haven’t yet established the motive of the gunman, who was killed by a police officer, but have said he was a neo-Nazi who left a trail of online posts describing his white supremacist and misogynistic views.

The tragedy that befell the Cho family touched so many that a GoFundMe page quickly raised over $1.8 million for before being closed. With William home from the hospital, family members said in a statement that they are focused on making sure he “leads a happy, healthy life with his extended family who love him dearly.”

Cindy and Kyu, who met through their Boston church, “really, really wanted to have kids,” Myung said.

“It was a common thing to see one of them holding one of the kids at our church,” said Myung, who worshipped with them in Boston. “They were really ready to be parents.”

Thomas Huang, another friend from their church, said the phrase that always came to mind when he’d see Kyu and Cindy together was “relationship goals.”

“Even though Cindy was definitely a little bit more on the introverted side and Kyu was more extroverted, they kind of had this balance where it was like this perfect synergy of that energy,” Huang said.

For instance, he said, Kyu was more into dancing than his wife, but at their wedding, she worked to get people on the dance floor.

“She really made an effort to dance and kind of get people into it because she knew that Kyu loved to dance and wanted to get everyone involved and get everyone excited about it,” Huang said.

Both “had incredible strength,” he said, and were like older siblings to many.

“Everywhere they’ve gone, every stage of their lives, they’ve just impacted people in such deep and profound ways,” Huang said.

Kyu, who worked as an immigration attorney at Porter Legal Group, was born in South Korea and raised in Dallas, according to the law firm’s website, which said he had “a deep pride, respect, and appreciation for the American Dream.”

He graduated with his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2007, then graduated in 2010 from the Ave Maria School of Law in Florida, the website said.

Cindy, who grew up in College Station and Houston, graduated with her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas in 2009, then graduated in 2013 from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Dentistry.

The dentistry school’s dean, Dr. Peter M. Loomer, said Cindy — whose name was Cindy Kang before she married, the name she went by when practicing dentistry — was “a kind and caring student, always doing the best to help improve the health and lives of her patients.”

A Facebook post from Thrive Dental and Orthodontics, where she worked, said she was “the sweetest, most beautiful soul with the kindest heart.”

Growing up, Cindy loved reading and was serious-minded when she needed to be, said David Kim, whose family went to the same Korean church as her family in College Station. He said the families stayed close even when Cindy’s family moved to Houston, where they’d still meet up for outings to places like the old AstroWorld amusement park.

“She’s just a sweet soul,” Kim said.

Kyu was not only skilled in the art of tae kwon do but also could play everything from classical music to Coldplay on the piano, his friends said. Friend Young Min Kim said he was someone who could talk to anyone.

Adam Dame, Kyu’s roommate all four years at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said he knew within a week or two of meeting that he’d “hit the roommate lottery.” Kyu, he said, had an “infectious, big laugh.”

“I always wanted to make him laugh because I just loved hearing it,” Dame said. “He filled you with a lot of joy.”

Myung said both Kyu and Cindy worked to make sure people felt “included and cared for and seen.” She said that as she grieves, she comforts herself with the hope she will see her friends again in heaven.

“I think that’s the only thing that’s helping the grief, is to know that one day we’ll all be laughing together again,” Myung said.

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May 21, 2023
Catan board game creator, Klaus Teuber, dies at 70

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Klaus Teuber, creator of the hugely popular Catan board game in which players compete to build settlements on a fictional island, has died after a brief illness, according to a family statement. He was 70.

The board game, originally called The Settlers of Catan when introduced in 1995 and based on a set of hexagonal tiles, has sold tens of millions of copies and is available in more than 40 languages. It has spawned dozens of spinoffs and new editions, including electronic versions, not to mention products related to the game.

“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that the Teuber family announces their beloved husband and father Klaus Teuber passed away at the age of 70 on April 1, 2023 after a short and serious illness,” said the statement posted on the German-language Catan website. The family requested privacy.

A statement from the Catan studio team on social media noted that “While Klaus’ contributions to the board gaming industry are immeasurable, we will remember him most as a kind and selfless human being, an inspirational leader, and most importantly, as a friend.”

Teuber was born in June 1952 in the German town of Rai-Breitenbach. He was working as a dental technician in the 1980s outside the industrial city of Darmstadt when he took up designing board games in his basement, he told The New Yorker magazine in 2014. “I had many problems with the company and the profession,” he said. “I developed games to escape. This was my own world I created.”

In the multi-player game, competitors use five resources to build their colonies, or settlements: wool, grain, lumber, brick, and ore. Teuber never thought his game would become so successful; he finally left his dental technician job in 1998 “when I felt like Catan could feed me and my family,” he told the New Yorker. The game became a family business.

In the first five months of the pandemic in 2020, sales skyrocketed as people played games in quarantine, the company told NPR.

The Catan studio team urged those mourning Teuber to “honor Klaus’ memory by being kind to one another, pursuing your creative passions fearlessly, and enjoying a game with your loved ones.”

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April 6, 2023
A decade after Sandy Hook, grief remains but hope grows

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NEWTOWN, Conn. — They would have been 16 or 17 this year. High school juniors.

The children killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012 should have spent this year thinking about college, taking their SATs and getting their driver’s licenses. Maybe attending their first prom.

Instead, the families of the 20 students and six educators slain in the mass shooting will mark a decade without them Wednesday.

December is a difficult month for many in Newtown, the Connecticut suburb where holiday season joy is tempered by heartbreak around the anniversary of the nation’s worst grade school shooting.

For former Sandy Hook students who survived the massacre, guilt and anxiety can intensify. For the parents, it can mean renewed grief, even as they continue to fight on their lost children’s behalf.

In February, Sandy Hook families reached a $73 million settlement with the gunmaker Remington, which made the shooter’s rifle. Juries in Connecticut and Texas ordered the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $1.4 billion for promoting lies that the massacre was a hoax.

In mid-November, a memorial to the 26 victims opened near the new elementary school built to replace the one torn down after the shooting.

Ten years on, some victims’ relatives and survivors aren’t without hope for a brighter future.

ACTIVISM IN TRAGEDY’S AFTERMATH

After the massacre, Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden were among many victims’ relatives who turned to activism. They helped form Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group that works to prevent suicides and mass shootings.

Hockley, who lost her 6-year-old son, Dylan, and Barden, who lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, both find it difficult to believe their children have been gone for a decade.

“For me, Dylan is still this 6-year-old boy, forever frozen in time,” Hockley said. “This journey that we’ve been on the last 10 years, it doesn’t feel like a decade and it doesn’t feel like 10 years since I last held my son, either.”

A decade hasn’t diminished the disbelief Barden and his wife feel over Daniel’s death.

“Jackie and I still have moments where we just kind of look at each other, still wrapping our heads around the fact that our little 7-year-old boy was shot to death in his first grade classroom,” he said.

“I can’t help but wonder what he’d be like now at 17,” he said, repeating the number 17. “I just think he would be still a more mature version of the beautiful, sweet, compassionate, thoughtful, intelligent little boy that he was at 7. And it breaks my heart to think of the wonderful impact he would have had in these last 10 years and what he would have still yet to come, and it’s all been taken away from him.”

Sandy Hook Promise’s programs have been taught in more than 23,000 schools to over 18 million children and adults. Key components include education about the warning signs of potential school violence or self-harm and an anonymous tip system to report a classmate at risk for hurting others or themselves.

Hockley and Barden say they believe the educational programs and reporting system have prevented many suicides and stopped some school shootings.

“It’s a tremendous satisfaction and it’s a serious responsibility,” Barden said of the group’s work. “And it’s a gift in a way that we have built something that allows us this mechanism with which to honor our children by saving other children and by protecting other families from having to endure this pain.”

GROWING UP A SURVIVOR

Ashley Hubner was in her second grade classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary when the shooting happened. She and her classmates ran to the cubby area to hide. The school intercom system clicked on. Everyone could hear gunshots, screaming and crying.

When police arrived, she and her classmates didn’t want to open the door. They thought bad guys could be impersonating officers. They screamed “No!” The officers had to convince them they were actually police.

Ashley, now a 17-year-old senior at Newtown High School, developed post-traumatic stress disorder and has struggled with anxiety and depression, like other students who were there that day. Ashley said she always gets more emotional and irritable around the shooting anniversary.

“Even though it’s been 10 years, like this is still a problem that a lot of us still have to handle in our everyday lives and it still affects us greatly,” she said.

Adding to the grief is the fact that mass shootings keep happening, she said.

“We’ve had 10 years to change things and we’ve changed so little, and that’s just disgusting to me,” she said.

Ashley said there wasn’t much talk among her classmates yet about the anniversary.

“I feel like everyone just tries to pretend like everything is normal and then when it gets to that day, I’m sure people will reach out and I’ll reach out to people.”

Ashley wasn’t sure how she might mark the day. All town schools will be closed for staff development. She said she may make her first trip to the new memorial.

She said she has been happy with her senior year at Newtown High, calling it one of the best school years she’s had. She is looking forward to going to college.

“I’m really, really excited to leave,” she said. “Just like to get new experiences, grow up and move on with this chapter of my life, you know?”

LIGHT CONQUERING DARKNESS

St. Rose of Lima Church has been a gathering point for the Newtown community since the day of the shooting, when hundreds of people packed the Roman Catholic church and stood outside for a vigil. It has held a special Mass every Dec. 14 since.

Monsignor Robert Weiss still struggles with his own trauma. The church led the funerals for eight slain children. He hasn’t slept well ever since and becomes emotional easily. During Mass, he always keeps watch on the entrances, worried about a violent intruder.

“It’s a very difficult time for me having buried eight of those children,” he said of the anniversary. “It just brings back so many memories of true sadness.”

The anniversary Masses are hopeful, Weiss said, with a theme that light conquers darkness.

“The darkness of evil is not going to conquer good and we as a community have to work together to be sure that happens,” Weiss said. “We want to celebrate and remember the children and the families, and how it’s turned this tragedy into so many positive things to assist other people.”

2022 ‘TIPPING POINT’ IN GUN SAFETY

After Sandy Hook, there was frustration among many gun violence prevention advocates that nothing was being done to stop such massacres. The failure of a gun control bill in the months after Sandy Hook was another hard loss.

But U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said the shooting gave new energy to the movement, with numerous groups forming to demand action.

“In the 10 years leading up to Sandy Hook, the gun lobby controlled Washington. Anything they wanted they got,” said Murphy.

“After Sandy Hook happened, we started building what I would describe as the modern anti-gun violence movement,” he said. “During the next 10 years, there was essentially gridlock. The gun lobby no longer got what they wanted, but unfortunately in Washington we weren’t getting what we wanted either.”

After mass shootings last spring killed 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun control law in decades. The law expands background checks for younger gun buyers, boosts school mental health programs and promotes “red flag” laws to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed dangerous.

“I think this summer marked the tipping point, where finally the gun safety movement has more power than the gun lobby,” Murphy said.

“It’s going to be a hard December for those families, but I hope they know what a difference that they have made in the memory of their children in these 10 years.”

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December 13, 2022
Arizona farm gives refuge from pain, for man and beast alike

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CORNVILLE, Ariz. — The leader has the name of her dead baby spelled out in beads on her left wrist, and standing before her is a mother so grief-choked by her young son’s death that she flips on her side at one point in this creekside yoga class and sobs. In the next row, a woman whose daughter died by suicide goes through the poses next to a man with a tattoo of three little ducks, one for each of the children who was murdered.

Just beyond, in the fields of this sanctuary for the grieving, is a sheep whose babies were snatched by coyotes, a goat saved from slaughter and a horse that was badly mistreated carrying loads at the Grand Canyon.

Soon, the morning fog will lift and the chorus of cicadas will end the quiet. But for a moment, all is still, as if nature has paused to acknowledge this gathering of worldly suffering.

“There’s a comfort in knowing,” says Suzy Elghanayan, the mother whose young son died earlier this year of a seizure, “that we’re all in the same place that we never wanted to be.”

The world turns away from stories like theirs because it’s too hard to imagine burying a child. So mourning people from around the globe journey to this patch of farmland just outside the red rocks of Sedona.

There is no talk at Selah Carefarm of ending the pain of loss, just of building the emotional muscle to handle it.

Here, the names of the dead can be spoken and the agony of loss can be shown. No one turns away.

———

Joanne Cacciatore was a mother of three in a customer service job when her baby died during delivery.

Long after she closed the lid to the tiny pink casket, the grief consumed her. She’d sob for hours and withered to 90 lbs. She didn’t want to live. All she thought about was death.

“Every cell in my body aches,” she wrote in her journal a few months after the death in 1994. “I won’t smile as often as my old self. Smiling hurts now. Most everything hurts some days, even breathing.”

Cacciatore became consumed with understanding the abyss of heartache she inhabited. But counseling and bereavement groups were as disappointing as the body of research Cacciatore found on traumatic loss.

So, she set out on twin paths for answers: Enrolling in college for the first time, focusing her studies on grief, and starting a support group and foundation for others like her.

Today, all these years after the death that set her on this journey, those academic and therapeutic pursuits have converged on the vegan farm, which opened five years ago. As plans for Selah took shape, Cacciatore was reminded of the two dogs who stayed by her side even when the depths of her sorrow were too much for many friends. So the farm is home to dozens of animals, many rescued from abuse and neglect, that are central to many visitors’ experience here.

While most who come to Selah take part in counseling sessions, Cacciatore believes visitors’ experiences with the animals can be just as transformative. Across the farm, stories repeat of someone washed over by a wave of grief only to find an animal seem to offer comfort – a donkey nestling its face in a crying woman’s shoulder or a horse pressing its head against a grieving heart.

“There’s a resonance,” Cacciatore says. “There’s a symbiosis,”

The 10-acre swath of valley feels something like a bohemian enclave crossed with a kibbutz. In the day, the sprawling expanse is baked in sun, all the way back to the creek at the farm’s border, where a family of otters comes to play. At night, under star-flecked skies of indigo, paths are lit by lanterns and strings of bulbs glow, and all is quiet but the gentle flow of spring water snaking through irrigation ditches.

It is an oasis, but a constantly changing one, reinvented by each new visitor leaving their imprint.

On one tree, the grieving tie strips of fabric that rain like multicolored tickertape, remnants of their loved one’s favorite shirts and socks and pillowcases. Nearby, little medallions stamped with the names of the dead twinkle in the breeze. And in a grotto beneath an ash tree, the brokenhearted have clipped prayer cards to the branches, left objects including a baseball and a toy truck, and painted dozens of stones memorializing someone gone too soon.

For Andy, “My Twin Forever.” For Monica, “Loved Forever.” For Jade, “Forever One Day Old.”

Memories of the dead are everywhere. The farm’s guest house was made possible by donors, just like everything else here, and names of their lost ones are on everything from benches to butterfly gardens.

———

After a few days here, many find the stories of their beloved have become so stitched into the farm’s fabric it makes hallowed ground of earth on which the dead never set foot.

For Liz Castleman, it is a place she has come to feel her son Charlie’s presence even more than home. A rock with a dinosaur painted on it honors him and a wooden bird soars with his name. Strawberries at the farm have even been forever rebranded as Charlieberries in recognition of his favorite fruit.

Few in Castleman’s life can bear to hear about her son anymore, three years after he died before even reaching his third birthday. When she first came to the farm, part of her wondered if Cacciatore might somehow have the power to bring Charlie back. In a way, she did. She’s returned five more times because here, people relish hearing of the whip-smart boy who made friends wherever he went, who’d do anything to earn a laugh, who was so outgoing in class a teacher dubbed him “Mayor of Babytown.”

“All of the old safe spaces are gone. The farm, it really is the one safe space,” says 46-year-old Castleman, whose son died while under anesthesia during an MRI, likely due to an underlying genetic disorder. “There’s something, I don’t know if it’s magical, but you know that anything you say is OK and anything you feel is OK. It’s just a complete bubble from the rest of the world.”

Many who come here have been frustrated by communities and counselors who tell them to move on from their loss. They’ve been pushed to be medicated or plied with platitudes that hurt more than help. Friends tell a grieving mom that God needed an angel or ask a brokenhearted spouse why he’s still wearing his wedding ring. Again and again, they’re told to forget and move on.

Here, though, visitors learn the void will be with them, some way or another, forever.

“I’m picturing my life with my grief always with me and how I’m going to live life with that grief,” says 58-year-old Elghanayan, struggling to imagine her years unfolding without her 20-year-old son Luca, the compassionate, rock-climbing, surfing, piano-playing aspiring scientist. “I have to figure out how to get up and breathe every day and take one step every day and pray my years go by swiftly.”

If it seems counterintuitive that coming to a place where every story is sad could actually uplift, Selah’s adherents point to their own experiences on the farm and the inching progress they’ve made.

Erik Denton, a 35-year-old repeat visitor to Selah, is certain he can’t ever get over the deaths of his three children last year, but he’s functioning again. He does the dishes and makes his bed. He doesn’t hole up alone for days at a time. He’s again able to talk about the children he loves: 3-year-old Joanna, the firecracker who climbed trees and helped friends; 2-year-old Terry, the mischief maker who seemed to think no one was watching; and 6-month-old Sierra, the silly girl who just had begun to ooh and aah.

Denton’s ex-girlfriend, the children’s mother, has been charged in their drownings in a bathtub and sometimes repeating the story or hearing another mourner’s tragedy becomes too much for him. But mostly, Denton feels as if he can connect with people here more than anywhere else.

“Even though we’re surrounded by so much pain, we’re together,” he says.

———

A sense of solidarity is inescapable at Selah. Guests eagerly trade stories of their lost loved ones. And when someone is hurting, human or animal, they can count on others being by their side.

This day, Cacciatore is shaken because Shirin, a chocolate brown sheep with a white stripe across her belly, has been growing sicker and can’t be coaxed to eat, not even her favorite cookies.

Shirin was rescued after her two babies were taken by coyotes. Her udders were full for lambs no longer around to feed. She remained so shaken by it all that no one could get close to her for weeks.

As Cacciatore awaits the veterinarian, she and a frequent farm guest, 57-year-old Jill Loforte Carroll, dote on the sheep. Cacciatore tries to coax Shirin to eat some leaves and Loforte Carroll cues a recording of “La Vie en Rose” sung by her daughter Sierra before the quietly observant, shyly funny 21-year-old died by suicide seven years ago.

For a moment, it’s just three mournful moms sharing a patch of field.

When the vet arrives, their fears are confirmed, and as injections to euthanize are given, Cacciatore massages the sheep, repeatedly cooing reassuring words as her tears fall to the dirt below.

“It’s OK, baby girl, it’s OK,” she says. “You’re the prettiest girl.”

By the time the vet looks up with a knowing nod, seven people crouch around Shirin, splayed across the field in such anguished drama it seems fit for a Renaissance painting. On a farm shaped by death, another has arrived, but those who gathered infused it with as much beauty and comfort as they could.

“It’s not our children,” Cacciatore says before burying Shirin beneath a hulking persimmon tree, “but it’s still hard.”

This is Cacciatore’s life now, one she never could have imagined before her own tragedy. She has a Ph.D. and a research professorship at Arizona State University. A book on loss, “Bearing the Unbearable,” was well received. A fiercely loyal following has found solace in her work and her counseling.

“I had a little girl who was born and who died, and it changed the trajectory of my life,” she says. “But I’d give it back in a minute just to have her back.”

———

Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky

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October 19, 2022