KANAIO, Hawaii — Fear. Anger. Depression. Overwhelm.
Janice Dapitan began her second counseling session by writing those words on a whiteboard, expressing what she was feeling at that moment. The day her hometown of Lahaina was destroyed by fire—and the struggles that followed for nearly a year—still haunt her.
The fire killed her uncle. The homes of seven family members were destroyed. Her daughter narrowly escaped the fire with her two children, but lost her home and moved to Las Vegas. The house Dapitan shares with her husband, Kalani, survived, but now overlooks the fire zone. The view is a painful, constant reminder that the life they knew is over.
“There are so many triggers,” she said on a breezy July day, her long black braids draped over a tank top with the word “Lahaina” emblazoned in gold. “Today could be good, tomorrow could be different. Everything is uncertain. Every day is a different challenge. We want to stay cheerful, but it’s a process.”
One year after the fires on Maui, thousands of residents share dapitan’s battle. They mourn the loss of loved ones and generational homes. They are haunted by their traumatic escapes and even by the guilt of survival. They have endured months of instability—changing hotel rooms, schools, and jobs. An estimated 1,500 families have left Maui, forced to start over thousands of miles from home.
But lately, Dapitan has found some relief thanks to an equine therapy program at Spirit Horse Ranch in Maui’s rural interior, an hour’s drive from Lahaina.
“The connection with the horses is different than the connection with machines or people,” Dapitan said. “It’s almost like instant healing.”
After large-scale disasters, restoring a community’s mental health is just as important as rebuilding infrastructure, experts say. And just as it can take years to build an entire city, it can take years for its residents to heal, too.
“We can be so focused on rebuilding with bricks and mortar — because that’s challenging enough — that we don’t create space for that healing,” said Jolie Wills, a cognitive scientist who led mental health services for the Red Cross after the 2010 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.
While some survivors need professional support to overcome their trauma, much healing can happen outside the walls of a clinic. Maui residents have relied on programs that help them reconnect with themselves, their community, land, and culture.
After writing her words, Dapitan sat down on a folding chair in a horse stable. A few yards away, Maverick, a 22-year-old Tennessee Walker, rolled around in the sand.
The program’s founder, Paige DePonte, sat down in front of her and began a technique called brainspotting. She waved a small wand in front of Dapitan’s eyes to stimulate certain eye movements that were thought to help the brain process trauma. Later, Dapitan approached Maverick. She stroked his dark mane. After leading him once around the enclosure, she stopped, put her arms behind his back, and began to cry.
“He just lets you lean on him,” she said. “I feel myself healing because at least someone lets me lean on him.”
For her husband, Kalani, the quiet seclusion of the ranch, tucked into a hillside overlooking Maui’s southern shore, has given him space to process what happened. “Before we even saw the horses, I was in tears,” he said. “The quiet really breaks down your walls.”
Participants in equine therapy don’t usually ride horses, but the presence of the animals alone can help people calm down as they face their trauma. They can brush, walk, and even talk to the animals, or the horses can simply be nearby while handlers guide them through other methods of counseling or psychotherapy.
“Horses are incredible healers,” said DePonte, who started the program on her family’s cattle ranch in 2021 after seeing the animals’ transformative effect on her own trauma recovery. “They’re in a state of coherence all the time, not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about yesterday.”
The program, now supported by grants from the Hawaii Community Foundation, Maui United Way and other private donors, has provided more than 1,300 sessions to affected residents.
Dapitan had already begun therapy before the fire to recover from an earlier trauma, but she said the time at the ranch feels different. “I think I got the most out of the horses in two days, compared to the year I’ve had regular therapy.”
Holistic programs like these have helped meet the overwhelming need for support services following the August 8, 2023 fire. at least 102 people killed and 12,000 people displaced.
On top of the horrific experiences of losing homes and loved ones, survivors are stressed and exhausted by the volatility of everyday life — moving hotel rooms, changing schools, loss of income.
“It’s had a significant impact on people’s mental health,” said Tia Hartsock, director of Hawaii’s office of wellness and resilience. “Navigating bureaucratic systems during a traumatic response has been a challenge.”
In a Hawaii Department of Health survey of affected families two months after the fire, nearly three-quarters of respondents reported that at least one person in their household had felt nervous, anxious, or depressed in the previous two weeks. By the six-month anniversary, more than half of survivors and a third of all Maui residents surveyed by the University of Hawaii reported having depressive symptoms.
That’s to be expected after a disaster of this magnitude, said Wills, who called them “very normal responses to a very abnormal situation.”
Healthcare providers, nonprofits, philanthropic groups, and government agencies worked together to reduce barriers to mental health care, such as paying for therapy sessions and staffing shelters and FEMA events with mental health professionals.
But they knew residents needed other options, too. “Clinical support wasn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all option,” said Justina Acevedo-Cross, senior program manager at the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Numerous public and private funders support programs that reengage residents with the land and people, which Hartsock calls “incredibly helpful in the healing process.”
Several are rooted in Native Hawaiian healing practices. Cultural practitioners from the organization Hui Ho’omalu offer lomilomi, or Hawaiian massage. Those sessions typically lead to kukakuka, or deep conversation, with Native Hawaiians trained in mental health counseling.
Affected families also maintain taro patches, restore native plants and attend cultural classes on protected land managed by the Ka’ehu organization. Aviva Libitsky and her son Nakana, 7, volunteer there at least once a week, scooping invasive snails from kalo pools and cleaning up litter from the shoreline.
Libitsky felt anxious for months after fleeing the Lahaina fire and losing the home she had lived in since 2010. Working the land calms her. “It helps you channel that frantic energy and put it into something useful.”
She and Nakana recently learned how to weave bracelets from hala tree leaves at one of Ka’ehu’s cultural workshops. They also visited Spirit Horse Ranch. “We’re just focused on new opportunities, creating new memories.”
As Maui enters its second year of recovery, health care providers are preparing for a new wave of people seeking help.
The last families are moving out of hotels and into temporary housing that will help them until Lahaina can be rebuilt. That sudden silence can bring out bigger emotions, Acevedo-Cross said. “They can feel a little bit more.”
Many who were not directly affected by the fires are now feeling the effects as rental prices are skyrocketingJobs in the tourism sector are disappearing and friends and family are moving away.
For some, healing will not come until Lahaina is rebuilt and the community can return home.
“We don’t have a hometown anymore,” Kalani Dapitan said. He misses his friends and family, and especially his daughter. He constantly worries about what will happen to Lahaina, especially as a Native Hawaiian. “We’re uncertain about our future, how our cultural aspect is going to develop.”
With so much uncertainty, time at Spirit Horse Ranch helps Dapitans stay present.
At the end of her session, Janice returned to the whiteboard to write the words that summed up her feelings. “Relax,” she wrote, and looked up. “That’s it.”
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