Hi, I’m Alisha.
On the evening of May 16th, 2016, I nearly died in an apartment fire in Paris.
I was nineteen years old, an American living in France, with all sorts of plans for my future. That evening, a fire broke out in my building, and when I tried to escape down the stairs, I found myself trapped by thick smoke. Firefighters eventually rescued me through a window, and I was rushed to the hospital with severe burns to my hands and legs.
I spent the following weeks in a Paris burn unit, undergoing skin graft surgeries, painful bandage changes, and learning how to walk again. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was to be alive, or how brave I'd been, and although I knew they meant well, I didn't feel particularly brave. I was frightened, in pain, and struggling to come to terms with a life that suddenly looked nothing like the one I'd imagined.
What I didn't realize then was that surviving the fire would be the easy part compared to figuring out how to live afterward. I spent years trying to get back to the person I'd been before, until I began to question why I felt I had to overcome everything to prove that my life was still worth something.
Nearly ten years later, I'm still living with the physical limitations left by my burns, but I've also built a life here in France with my husband and our two children. I'm currently writing Unsurviving, a literary memoir about everything that happened, the beliefs I had to unlearn, and what it means to embrace a life you never would have chosen.
I'm sharing my story because I know how lonely it can feel when life takes an unexpected turn, and I hope that somewhere in mine, you'll find something that speaks to yours.
Writing my Book
I'm now finalizing my memoir for publication after ten long years of healing and trying to figure out how to live without a survivor's manual. What I initially thought would be a straightforward story about surviving a fire turned into something much more personal. As I began writing about my recovery, I started to recognize just how much the wounds I'd carried since childhood had shaped the way I responded to what happened to me.
I think we'd all like to believe we can come through life's hardest experiences with barely a scar to show. While that was physically impossible for me, I still held on to the idea that one day I'd somehow find my way back to a more whole version of the person I'd been before. Instead, much of my twenties became a long process of confronting the beliefs I'd held about myself since childhood and learning that perhaps I wasn't meant to go back to being that person at all.
In Unsurviving, I explore how the fire forced me to confront parts of my past I'd never fully understood, the many ways I struggled to move forward, and what it eventually took to make peace with a life I never would have chosen for myself.
If this sounds like a book you’d love to read, I’d love to have you on my pre-launch list, so that when it comes out, you’ll be the first to know!
Want to dive deeper in your own life?
How do you cope?
We all respond differently when life takes an unexpected turn. Some of us throw ourselves into keeping busy, others try desperately to get things back to the way they were, and some of us aren't quite sure where to begin.
That's why I've put together a short, free quiz to help you reflect on where you are right now, what might be holding you back, and what you may need as you find your footing again.