Wildfire, Trauma & Healing: Finding Gifts in the Worst Year with Daral Boles

Trauma therapist and author Daral Boles shares her extraordinary true story of surviving the longest-running wildfire in Portuguese history — while working as the mental health lead at a remote retreat centre in the mountains of Portugal.In this deeply personal conversation, Daral explores how she processed her own trauma through therapeutic writing, what resilience actually looks like from the inside, and why healing after devastation isn't about positive thinking — it's about doing the work to find meaning in what you never would have chosen.She also introduces her memoir, *The Serra is Burning*, a powerful account of fire, loss, and personal transformation that readers are using as a mirror for their own hardest chapters. Whether you're recovering from burnout, loss, illness, or a life that looks nothing like you planned, this episode will help you see that what the fire takes and what the fire gives can exist at the same time.