❤️🏠 The Lost Home Project

On January 8, La Cañada Flintridge resident Maya Brattkusv evacuated her California home, not knowing if she would return. 

As the Eaton fire engulfed her region, she was one of the lucky ones whose homes were spared by the flames. Many of her friends and family were not so lucky.

“For the first week or two, all I could do was just kind of doomscroll and watch the news and try [to] feed myself and just get through it,” Maya told the Outlook Valley Sun regarding the destruction. She donated to people’s GoFundMe pages and rebuilding efforts, but it didn’t feel like enough.

That’s when she turned to a hobby in which she’s always found solace—drawing.

✍️ Maya started by drawing her best friend’s home, which was lost in the fire. At first, she saw the hobby as a form of self-care and a way to keep herself distracted from doomscrolling all day. Drawing her friend’s home helped not only her own mental health, but gave her bestie a memento to remember her former residence. 

Maya shared that first drawing on Reddit and offered to draw anyone’s home lost in the fire for free. She was absolutley overwhelmed with the response.

100+ requests from grieving Californians came pouring in. And for the past three months, Maya has spent her days keeping the memories of lost homes and buildings alive. She lovingly calls her effort The Lost Home Project.

She’s even putting a book together of her pieces with stories of some of the properties.

• Her vision: “Communities [can] flip through and see their neighborhoods again and see the houses that they walked by every day, and their neighbors, and read the stories from their community.”

Big picture: Throughout the whole process, Maya has been most blown away by the strength and power of community. She told the Outlook Valley Sun: "At a time when everything seems so negative, chaotic and divided in our country, it gives me some hope that people are basically good and just want to help each other and be good neighbors.”