Free tools & further reading
Everything on this page is free. Some of it is the beginning of the work. Some of it is for the moments when the work has to wait.
The free intro sheet
A one-page introduction to the four stages and the Fire Statement. Enough to know if this is your work, before you spend anything on it.
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Write your Fire Statement
One sentence. Plain words. What actually happened, without softening it. Not what it means yet. Not what you are going to do about it. Just what it is.
Which layer are you naming?
Big fires stack in three layers. Most people can name the first one on demand and have never said the third one out loud.
Nothing you write here leaves your device. It is not saved, and it is not sent anywhere.
The identity layer is the one the sentence is usually for. You can start higher and come down.
The acute-fire fast path
For the first days and weeks, when insight is not the point and survival is. Four things, in order.
01 · Safety
If you are unsafe, stop and call a crisis line. The work waits.
02 · Body
Water. One meal. Sleep, even badly. The body is stage one.
03 · One person
Tell one person what is actually happening. Not everyone. One.
04 · One sentence
Write your Fire Statement. Do not solve it. Just name it.
In crisis? Go to the Care page first.
A field guide to other fires
Eight common kinds of fire. Yours may be more than one. Naming which fires you are in is the first act of the Burning.
01
Grief fire
The person, the future with them, both at once.
02
Health fire
A body that stopped being the one you knew.
03
Love fire
A relationship that ended, or should have.
04
Work fire
The job, the role, the identity attached to it.
05
Money fire
The stability that was underneath everything else.
06
Faith fire
The story about the world that stopped holding.
07
Family fire
The rupture that changes who calls whom.
08
Self fire
The version of you that has to be let go of.
Articles
Essay
Back Is the Direction the Fire Came From
Everyone tells you to bounce back. Sometimes there is nothing to go back to.
4 min read
Essay
Three Tells That Something Has Actually Ended
The skill is not decisiveness or courage. It is recognition, and it is early.
4 min read
Essay
Your Plan Is Not an Experiment
Five specifications separate a real test from a decision you have already made.
4 min read
Sources
Tedeschi and Calhoun, Posttraumatic Growth
Foundational framework for growth after adversity.
George Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness
Grief resilience and the myth of universal stages.
Dan McAdams, Narrative identity
How the story we tell about a rupture shapes who we become after it.
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Trauma-informed understanding of what the body carries.
Full bibliography appears in the book.