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Chronic stress impairs executive functioning and can make recovery tasks feel overwhelming.

Financial strain and bureaucratic delays compound trauma exposure.

Long-term community-driven recovery depends on trust, transparency, social support, and sustained funding.

I’m a psychologist and an accidental disaster mental health specialist. Like many of us in this field, I arrived sideways through lived experience—in response to pressing needs in my community after megafire devastation and people with glassy, stunned eyes asking, “What now?”

The first year after a disaster has an urgent and galvanizing energy. There are declarations and promises and cameras and headlines. Compassionate volunteers and generous donations flow in, and the very best of humanity emerges. Mutual aid blossoms, and neighbors help neighbors get needs met with swift creativity. In the disaster field, we call this the “heroic” and “honeymoon” phases. They are deeply beautiful in the face of tragedy and sorrow.

Inevitably, media attention wanes and moves to the next crisis. The casseroles and supportive texts slow. Life continues, but the survivor’s world is still in shambles. What happens when the adrenaline burns off, financial and bureaucratic realities hit, and profound grief settles in?

Make no mistake, there is much hope and heart. Permits are pulled, and progress is a visible beacon of hope. Schools reopen, there are rebuilds and ribbon cuttings, and the steady hum of neighbors refusing to give up on their communities. Yet, a bone-weary exhaustion co-exists that surprises people. Survivors often ask me, “Why am I struggling more now? Shouldn’t I be feeling better?” This is not a failure of resilience.

This is the settling and disillusionment phase.

Displacement stretches beyond what survivors can initially allow themselves to imagine. Sentiments of institutional betrayal arise, and survivors often feel abandoned in........

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