Well, hello everybody and Happy New Year! I am clearly a little late on my wishes for the new year. I woke up this morning and… well, I guess that is enough to be grateful for right there, that I woke up this morning! In any case, I woke up feeling a lift from the holiday and winter blues that plagued me for the past month or so on the tail end of a 2023 that brought me a lot of pain and loss.

But I felt hopeful, and anxious in a good way today, for the future, ready to start something new in the new year. I can’t begin to tell you how happy that feeling alone makes me.

Never take feeling good about life and about yourself and your potential lightly. It is literally everything!

I got my coffee, let the dogs out and sat down to my computer and looked at the date. January 17th, 2024. In a split second, the next thought in my mind was 4:31 AM. Funny how fast one’s mind puts memories together. I pulled up my computer and looked up the day. I snapped a picture of what I was staring at on my computer, the 10 freeway damage that shut down a big city for weeks. It was 30 years ago today at precisely 4:31 AM that I woke up with a bang and a jolt and when I tried to step out of bed was thrown into the wall barely able to stand up. Grabbed the door frame and held on for a 40 second wild ride!

I believed at that moment, once I realized what was happening, and with the two distinctly separate earthquakes overlapping, first one loud bang and 11 seconds later another loud bang, that I was about to meet my maker. I wondered what it would be like “on the other side of the veil”. For 40 seconds I had time to ponder and go from fright to resignation as I watched the walls of my townhouse in my upstairs bedroom sway violently.

And then just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Here’s the thing, my townhouse building was built on earthquake safety rollers. I did not know that at the time, but I was safer than I knew. However, my mind believed I was about to die for 40 seconds. I did not try to cling to life. There was nothing to cling to but the door frame I was holding on to. It was out of my control. So, my body reacted and went into shock at that time. My nerves were shattered. My thoughts went numb. The sun came up later to show a house were all my belongings were strewn everywhere, in shambles, broken, the indoor trees tipped over and the dirt was flung everywhere. My furniture was now on the other side of the room!

My memories to this day carry a much-diluted version of the emotion that event brought, a jumpiness at loud noises and an inability to overcome clutter where that had never been an issue in my life before. What this tells me is that the mind experiences its own reality in some ways and records the effects of the physical reality of an event in unusual ways, i.e. my inability to organize anything since that day. Clutter, much like my entire living space looked that morning 30 years ago, where there had once been order. Overcoming that part is still to this day, a work in progress.

In the months and years that followed, my cats would jump off a cat tree and send it rocking slightly to where it bumps the wall and I jump out of my skin! More recently, over the past 10 years, the neighbors’ obsession with illegal fireworks where I live has people all around here setting off these canon-like loud bangs and I feel as though I am in a war zone and am being punched in the gut from inside out. The sudden loud noises are hard to tolerate. But it is all improving with much effort on my part.

Loud bangs still jar my nerves a bit and leave me shaking for a minute, not hours. Nothing unmanageable and yet there is still a little scar there from that morning at 4:31 AM. I have also finally begun to learn to reorganize parts of my life and belongings without panicking.

The effects that earthquake left on me is a testament to how powerful the mind is.

Thankfully, as powerful as it is to experience an impact and have our brains record it in our bodies, memories and actions, our minds can also reverse and heal these effects. So, if nothing else let my experience of the Northridge Earthquake 30 years ago and the journey that has now greatly lessened the fear and impact it originally left in me, bring you hope. I am greatly improved and continuing the journey back to me.

Yes, our minds are amazing things!

As a fun side note, I had 6 cats at the time. Their reaction to the bang and the violent swaying of the quake sent them running in different directions. One pressed up against the wall behind the bed and stayed there for hours. Two opened dresser drawers and crawled in and hid under my clothes. The other three ran downstairs and hid under the couch, which was the only thing in the house downstairs that did not literally change sides of the room that day!

As for the 3 cats hiding under the couch, 2 had been arch enemies who got into constant spats and scratching fits with each other every time they passed by one another. They followed each other down the stairs and hid together under that couch for 7 HOURS, pressed up against each other, cheek to cheek the entire time.

From that day on, they never left each other’s side, not to eat, or sleep, or sit in the window…. had to be touching each other at all times, until the end of their lives, years later.

So, even in dark, frightening or difficult desperate times, there is a silver lining in the dark clouds. What the mind can create or react to, it can also reverse and heal from! There is always hope!

*Credit for the photo showing within my photo was by David Butow.