A Love Letter to Los Angeles
From an Angelena Whose Heart is Bleeding for You
I live and breathe for our beloved City of Angels—the majestic wilderness, sublime sunsets, diverse communities, breathtaking ocean, and enchantment that only LA uniquely offers.
This is a place where creatives thrive and the arts bloom in all of their transcendent forms. Where many of us come for a fresh start, a new way of life more aligned with our deeper yearnings, a place for our authentic selves to run free and dreams to come true. A place of magic and mysticism, synchronicity, and endless summers. A place where nature meets one of the greatest cities in the world, and you can surf, ski, and hike all in one day.
This city invited me to change my life, step into a new career, and form the most beautiful community imaginable when I moved from the east coast in 2017.
Video highlights from past hikes in Paseo Miramar, located in the Pacific Palisades, which is now incinerated. Music: Yann Tiersen, Penn ar Roc’h.
For as long as I live, there will never be anything that compares to getting in my car and driving up the PCH—windows down, ocean breeze calling, scent of the sea, taste of salty air, sunshine on my cheeks, music loud, soaking in the splendor of our coastline. Mesmerized by it all.
Nothing like hiking Paseo Miramar, with its panoramic views, wild and craggy canyons, scented wildflowers, groves of old oaks, hummingbirds swarming, quails scurrying, birds singing, and bunnies hopping. The marine layer rolling in, surrounding us in a cocoon of whispery clouds and mist. Only the sounds of crickets, birdsong, and the wind. Witnessing the supermoons rising, doing hikes solo and with friends, it will never cease to take my breath away. This vast, exquisite beauty. Such a special, soulful place. Like heaven on earth.
There are countless apocalyptic images and videos revealing the horrific and catastrophic wildfires that are leveling communities, scorching our sacred wilderness and wildlife, and bringing cataclysmic destruction and suffering.
I wanted to convey in this note the beauty of this magical place that I have been honored to call home for 7+ years, while carrying grief on a cellular level and a shattered heart for all those who have lost homes, businesses, communities, and loved ones. This calamitous scale of loss and devastation is difficult to put into words.
I’ve witnessed an outpouring of support, care, and community here unlike anything before since the fires began. Angelenos are fiercely loyal to one another and to our beloved LA. It overwhelms me and gives me hope. Fire fighters, first responders, and forest service workers are real-life superheroes! I am in awe. Thousands of people are banding together to donate, volunteer, and offer help in myriad forms. The helpers are everywhere. Makes me proud to be an Angelena.
I only came to appreciate after moving here that, rather than the urban sprawl some attribute to LA, it is actually a series of dispersed cities—each one full of beautiful, diverse people, arts, nature, parks, and other unique qualities, like distinct personalities. There is truly something for everyone here, which makes LA all the more special.
Pacific Palisades and Altadena are known to be especially tightly knit communities, each with its own extensive history spanning over 100 years, plus the indigenous communities that inhabited these lands. Altadena has been home to generations of Black families, beginning when other cities discriminated against them, making this loss especially profound.
To see these communities leveled like war zones is overwhelming. We are collectively mourning the deaths of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. For it is like a death — what has been will be no more, even if we do rebuild. Imagining all of the lives that have called these places home—babies’ first steps, love stories, businesses launched, losses, joys, and pains of each intricate web of a human life lived here. All of the physical touchstones—family heirlooms, artwork, musical instruments, photographs, recipes, letters, entire homes—linked to these sacred memories now burned to the ground. What persists is the healing force of community, love, care, and the extensive roots anchored here. For our sense of home is something that we carry in our bones.
We have also lost our innocence. There had been a sense of safety in the city, that while wildfires have been an ongoing issue, they had not previously burned down urban areas. The climate crisis is spiraling out of control—2024 was the hottest year on record and also the first year with an average temperature exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level (a threshold set by the Paris Agreement to significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change). Top scientists unanimously agree that climate change has significantly worsened the frequency and severity of wildfires. I studied these issues 15 years ago while working at the White House, and the predictions then were dire. It is horrific to live through them now coming true.
My place in Venice is thankfully safe, and I left Thursday pre-sunrise (in a wave of “flight mode”, like the character Anxiety in Inside Out 2) to stay with family in NorCal. I am one of the lucky ones. So many people lost everything. And the catastrophic infernos continue to blaze, scorching over 30,000 acres and counting.
In 2017, when I moved from DC to LA, I was navigating the ashes of leaving my career in federal service after Trump was elected and of finalizing a divorce. Everything integral to my identity—my home, marriage, and career—had metaphorically burned down. In my move to LA, a city that has always made my cells dance since my first visit 25 years ago, I experienced a transformative phoenix rising out of those ashes. This Substack account (and my IG account, Moonlight_Musings_) are inspired by Mizuta Masahide’s Haiku, “Since my house burned down, I now own a better view, of the rising moon.” (Shortened to, “Barn’s burnt down, now I can see the moon.”) I am certain that it is only because of the way LA held and inspired me that I went through such metamorphic changes to create a life here that I deeply love. I am infinitely grateful to you, LA.
It is too soon (for me at least) to be talking about what may come of this level of destruction and devastation while the fires rage on. I am not into toxic positivity, saying we’ll be better or stronger for this, finding silver linings. For now, tending to safety, support, care, community, and our tender hearts shattered with grief is my priority. I do innately know, however, that first we grieve, then we rise.
Wishing you safety, sending immense love to LA—my heart is bleeding for you.
Please consider donating to LAFD Foundation, World Central Kitchen, and other good causes, and hug your loved ones extra tight. This can all be so fleeting.
Would love to hear your love letters to LA in the comments!
For more on Grief, see my prior Substack post:
