18/02/2026
Watching 30 Years of Dreams Burn đĽ
I have been super quiet on social. Not because I am taking time off, but because I have been grappling with what matters. How to restore faith in day-to-day existence after watching 30 years of hard work and many resources get wiped out in 1 hour and 30 minutes?
We started the year setting goals with our kids - big calendar, their first ever goals session with us, we toasted to them, celebrated them and read them out to each other at the big table on our stoep.
A few days later, I was standing at that same table watering our roof after evacuating our home from a wild mountain fire.
Our children are 5 and 8.
Their goals werenât about things.
They were about more time with us.
Getting better at a sport they love.
Doing things that bring joy.
Then the fire came.
Within 10 metres of our bedroom window.
Both cars packed with what mattered most.
The kids and dogs sent to safety.
My husband and dad fighting flames bigger than our house. My mom and aunt packing up the house next door.
I stood crying under a burnt-orange sky, watering our roof as flames moved closer, soot falling around me.
With the grace of God and some miracles, the fire stopped in our back garden. However, 120 hectares of land are completely burnt.
I donât mean superficial burn, I mean black, black land straight out of a moonscape scene.
The next day we walked for hours looking for injured animals. A little buck was found with burnt feet, she had to be put down as she would not recover. Sheâs called Sunny âď¸ by my daughter. She symbolises the level of loss, destruction, absolute devastation.
We lost 30 hectares of vines - years of work, years before those vines yield again if ever.
120 hectares of biodynamic, organic land burned.
Trees planted 30 years ago.
An incredible ecosystem in balance - gone in 90 minutes.
It messes with you. It makes you question your purpose on everything. It makes your question the value of everything (the stuff I didnt put in the car - do we need it?!). It makes your question what is important? What we save in a time of crisis. What we would miss if it was all gone.
You can build for decades and watch it disappear in an hour.
You start asking: what am I doing this all for?
Walking the land now, there isnât a single leaf.
Not a patch of green.
No movement. No life.
And then, in the middle of the blackened field, I saw colour.
A protea.
Once tall and full and beautiful.
Burnt â but not finished.
She had already dropped her seeds.
Already beginning again.
She can't change the past, but she can start getting ready for the future or she can lie down and surrender. Life is not predictable. Life is not kind. Life is not controllable. But you can decide, like the protea how to rise from the ashes. How to respond to hard situations. How will you show up after being stripped of everything.
I donât have a cohesive lesson.
Only this: perspective isnât found in January goals.
Sometimes it arrives in the form of children's goals or in the form of a burnt Proteas orange â reminding you what truly matters, before the world has to do it for you.
PS. Incredibly grateful to the people who helped fight fires in the Cape Winelands this year, including the men in my life, the Drakenstein Farm Watch and the Drakenstein Municipality. You saved our houses, our farm animals and the people. Drakenstein Local Municipality DFW Fire & Rescue NPC - donate to them if you can â¨
