How is it possible that 25 years have passed since our house fire?

I shared the story here a couple years ago, but since today is the 25th “anniversary” (if you will) I wanted to share it again. Because in many ways, this is when my anxiety issues really began to appear. I can’t blame the fire for causing my anxiety–I’m hard-wired that way–but it certainly didn’t help, either.

I will say this: in spite of the distance between us — my parents in NJ, my sister in NY, my brother in California and us out here in Michigan … we couldn’t be closer and we all say that the fire made our already-close family even closer. Really, family is everything …