Help Shawna & Marcus Rebuild in Altadena

Friends, we've struggled with a lot the last 48 hours but sitting down to write this may be the hardest of it all.

As many of you already know, in the early hours of Wednesday, January 8, sometime around 4am, Marcus and I, along with everyone on our block of about 40 homes, along with more than 1,000 of our neighbors and too many of our friends, lost everything in the Eaton Fire. Today, as the adrenaline wanes and the horror and grief sets in, we’re still just trying to make sense of this new reality.

We were the lucky ones in that we chose to leave early and made it out with our lives and our fur family, Spike, Puddin' and Panda, when not all of our neighbors were so fortunate. Had we waited for the Emergency Evacuation Order, we may be dead considering it came in after our entire neighborhood of hundreds of homes was already ablaze and we likely would have died in our car trying to get out.

When we left we believed we'd be back in a week or so to deal with the fallout of smoke and ash because our area has never burned. We left with not much more than the clothes on our back, some of our important documents, the few photos we could quickly pull from frames, pet supplies, and some of our prescription drugs. When we say we lost everything, we really lost everything – from Marcus' extensive pop culture collections to our deceased grandmother's and mother's jewelry, to the entire collection of baking supplies for my cottage bakery and irreplaceable art – it's all gone.

Our home was a historic Janes Cottage that was celebrating 100 years which we have been stewards of for the last 15. We had just completed an extensive historically sensitive renovation after gaining enough equity that we could finally afford to do the work we'd had to put off for years.

Like many others we work from home so we lost our offices Wednesday morning too. Marcus has been working in the video games industry for decades and cannot even consider getting back to work without replacing all of the equipment he lost that insurance does not cover.

I am deeply committed to our community and through all of this I have continued continued to run critical comms through the incredibly active Altadena neighborhood groups I have built and nurtured and through my Beautiful Altadena newsletters to ensure everyone in Altadena has the critical info they need to navigate this absolute nightmare.

All of this comes on the heels of us just having begun to recover from the total loss of both of our businesses during the pandemic which pushed us to the brink of bankruptcy.

The magnitude and extent of the destruction is beyond words and photos. We shared some videos of our home and our neighborhood before and after. It's hard to watch and even harder to comprehend. (Warning: apologies for some choice language and stress bickering)

As much as it pains me to ask for help (anyone who knows me knows I'm not someone who does well with that!) we have to humble ourselves and accept that we need it.

While we are insured, our insurance is only going to cover the replacement of a fraction of our lives and it's not going to be enough for us to rebuild another home. There is also the stark reality that we'll need to continue paying our mortgage and property taxes for the at least two years we're going to be displaced before we can rebuild. It's going to be months of clean up and environmental mitigation before we can even begin that process.

We are raising funds to help cover immediate expenses like covering our mortgage and taxes in the short term while we wait for insurance funds to replacing all of Marcus' expensive equipment to get back to work and building the fund we're going to need to rebuild our home and our lives.

Read more of our story – including some of our unique personal challenges since Marcus is managing Stage IV cancer and an existing heart condition through all of this – in The Guardian story.

We know so many are in need like us. Thanks for reading this far and considering making a direct donation to a family like ours who have been absolutely devastated by this catastrophe and could use all the help we can get.

Every contribution, no matter how small, add up and make a difference. If you are not in the position to donate, please consider sharing this with your network.

With gratitude,

shawna & marcus xx