I am grateful.

I’m grateful to have a roof over my head.

On Monday I photographed two different stories related to the fires, one in Cattery and one in Wellwhich put me in a place of reflection and gratitude. Documenting the stories of people displaced from their homes is heartbreaking. You never know what happens to you on a daily basis, and sometimes it’s easy to take things for granted because they are routine and part of your daily life.

I think about the hectic pace of our lives in 2024. Our minds are busy dividing our time with things that require our attention like work, social media, emails, phone calls, family needs, bills and obligations of all kinds. It seems like it’s harder than ever to take a moment, breathe, and think about what we have in our lives and how lucky we are to have it.

When I walked into the kitchen of Jeannie and Lee Petrie in Kittery on Monday, the cold enveloped my body and the stench of smoke nestled in my clothes. The huge hole in the ceiling and soot-blackened walls came from a fire that they say probably started when someone put a piece of bread in the toaster because they were hungry. The charred toaster sat on the counter, surrounded by a bunch of blown insulation. What a mess.

The Petrie family has tried to maintain a sense of humor and a glimmer of hope. After all, no one died or was seriously injured, and they’ll probably be back in the house in about six months. They are grateful for the people in their lives, their friends, their neighbor who was the hero, and the community who showed them love and stood up for them.

More: Kittery family calls neighbor ‘heroes’ after house fire

Later Monday evening, I photographed a building in Wells that set off four alarms. Many people lost their homes. I arrived to see people hugging each other, some wrapped in blankets while others drank a beer and a cigarette while watching their belongings and places they slept each night go up in flames. Firefighters surrounded the structure and saturated it with water. A wooden skeleton remained on fire. Everything that was precious to them, like a family photo on the wall or the photo of their child on the refrigerator, is gone. Their clothes, legal papers, shoes, plants, pots and pans are destroyed.

These people’s lives were turned upside down in just a few minutes. Now they must literally rise from the ashes and restore meaning to their lives. They’re going to need help. They’re all part of a story and maybe a follow-up or two, and then we’ll move on to the next article. But they’ll have to keep going when they’re not making headlines.

More: Wells apartment complex fire leaves building ‘a total loss,’ residents displaced

I hope people don’t forget people who lost something in their lives. I hope we can show each other grace and empathy, and try to put ourselves in their shoes to see things more clearly so we can be more patient and understanding. Maybe it will make things less painful or easier to deal with one day at a time.

We are all in this together, and a fire or other devastating, life-changing event can happen to any of us at any time. When you think about any situation and say, “Wow, that could have been me” or “That could have happened to my family,” it might help us understand ourselves better. Maybe it can blur the hard lines we may have created between people we didn’t know existed.

Like I said, I’m grateful to have a roof over my head and I want to try to be grateful every day for the things I take for granted. It might be harder than you expected, but it’s worth a try.

Deb Cram is a photojournalist for Seacoast Media Group and the USA TODAY Network.

This article was originally published on the Portsmouth Herald: Deb Cram: Don’t forget the people who lost their homes to the fires