Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future

Ep #198: Christopher Wesley: How Do You Survive after Losing Everything?

• Beate Chelette • Episode 198

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What happens when life strips away everything — your home, your art, your sense of self?

In this episode of The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, I speak with Christopher Wesley, a storyteller and transformation coach who lost everything in the Altadena fire. But instead of letting tragedy define him, he used it to rebuild his identity and purpose from the ground up. 

If you have had an event where you felt as if your world was falling apart, this conversation will give you ideas to reframe what “loss” really means—and how to find freedom in what’s left. Christopher shares his storytelling blueprint and how he is transforming this catastrophe into his future opportunity.

👉 Learn more about Christopher’s work: https://www.christopherjwesley.com/ 
🎧 Watch now and rediscover what real resilience feels like.
➡️ Subscribe for more conversations with visionary thinkers redefining success, growth, and leadership.
💬 Share this episode with someone who’s ready to turn their breakdown into a breakthrough.


Other Resources Mentioned:   LinkedIn | Instagram



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Christopher J Wesley:

Was it feel like to lose everything. It's like losing myself like everything. It feels like having been subjected to violence. The things that we lost, I feel like I lost them through an act of violence. You can't buy something that is going to take the place of that relationship,

BEATE CHELETTE:

I can't go in there and buy a bunch of pearls, and then it expected to have the same energetic vibration as my grandmother's pearls.

Christopher J Wesley:

I lost all my journals, all of my sketchbooks. Lost the guitar. It was literally the difference when I was 14 between me being a responsible, happy, adult and committing. I cannot let this event win. I cannot let this be the thing that brings me down.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I'm going to ask you the question everybody's asked me, What does it feel like to lose everything?

Christopher J Wesley:

It's like losing myself like everything, like my entire it's not like I didn't lose my entire identity, but I lost foundational pieces of it. Enough of the foundational pieces that I have to figure out what pieces are broken and missing and figure out how to replace and regenerate those so it I feel like an incomplete puzzle now, yeah.

BEATE CHELETTE:

And for our listener, you know, Christopher Wesley is in the same boat as I am. He is also and Christopher, are we fire survivors or are we fire victims? Have you figured that

Christopher J Wesley:

one out yet? I try and use the word survivor more than victim, but I feel sometimes like a victim. It's a role that I have to actively try and narrate in my mind to keep me from like going down a dark hole you lost your

BEATE CHELETTE:

house in the Altadena fire, and we lost our house in the Pacific Palisades fire. So we are brother and sister in this catastrophic event, and when we prepared for the show you and I had some conversations about that. It a catastrophic event does something to a person. Can you put that in words for our audience?

Christopher J Wesley:

It feels like having been subjected to violence, like the things that we lost, I feel like I lost them through an act of violence. Is probably the best way to explain it, that sense of trauma, that sense of not feeling that safety and security that I used to have, both in being at home, but also in possessions like I don't buy a lot of things anymore, is there's a part of me that says, What's the point? Do I even want this? Do I care about this?

BEATE CHELETTE:

You know, I have these things. I lost all my jewelry. My mother had just given me all the family jewelry, and I really long for a nice necklace, because I and then every time I go in a jewelry store, I look at the stuff, and then I get really upset, and then I can't do it, and then I run out. How do you experience this, this idea of because we have a right, as per our insurance, at least to some degree, to replace some of the things that we have lost? How do you handle that.

Christopher J Wesley:

I remind myself, like I have the initial reaction, which is usually visceral. I see something, and it's there's that reaction that I used to have it, and it was taken from me when I can get on the other side of that is it's quite often a process to get to the other side of it. It's not something that happens in just a minute or two. Sometimes it's a couple hours, depending on how meaningful The thing is that I lost. But we have relationships with these things, and no matter what anyone says about it's an inanimate object. The there are things that were burned that we have relationships with it beyond, like the utility of it. They meant something to us. And that part we can't replace. You can't buy something that is going to take the place of that relationship, or that can just step in and be that thing that you got from your mother, truly,

BEATE CHELETTE:

or grandmother's pearls, right? Grandmother's, yeah, I mean, I can't go in there and buy a bunch of pearls and then it expected to have the same energetic vibration as my grandmother's pearls, pearls really had. So do you. Think this is us surviving, or are we transforming? And definitely

Christopher J Wesley:

transforming? Yeah, there's def, yeah, there's survival in it. It's not clearly defined difference in identity on mornings like this morning, when I read Edison will put lines underground that they're going to charge us $10,000 extra to do this. When I times like that, I feel like I'm surviving, and I have to use my mindfulness techniques and change the narrative around that, around my role in it, to transform because at least for me, I cannot let this I cannot let this event win. I cannot let this be the thing that brings me down.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I want to go back to when this happened. You said, you know, like we were not there. And I think in in some beautiful grace of God that we were spared the trauma of seeing it all burn. You were there. So you have a different trauma than I do take us through these crazy 15 minutes that made all the difference in your life.

Christopher J Wesley:

So it was about 830 at night, my wife and I had we were sitting in the living room streaming a show. I don't even remember what it was. All I know is, yeah, we finished the show. We're getting ready to go to bed. You know, she went to her office, and I went back to the bedroom. And normally, I don't have my phone with me, or I don't pay attention to it. Just before I was getting ready for bed, I'd say, Well, let me just check my messages. Check the messages. A couple friends had texted asking if we were okay with the fire. And I don't remember exactly what the text was, but it made me go immediately to the front of the house, like this point I'm in the back in our bedroom, walked all the way to the front of the house and standing in the living room two feet away from where I was just watching TV. I look out the window and I can see the glow. I'm at that point. I'm guessing it's maybe, maybe two miles away. At that point, it was I didn't deliberate. I immediately called Pat. Said, We need my wife, Pat, and so we got to get out of here. We got to pack stuff. And my first thing I got was the fire safe. And then grabbed our wedding photo from off the mantle. And she was grabbing her stuff. We were kind of doing our own thing, grabbing things. She was packing her car. I was packing my car. After we got about two trips in, we paused enough to notice the house to the right of us. They were evacuating as well. But there's a woman that lives across the street from us that's, I want to say, in her 70s or 80s, so we always look out for each other. So my wife went across the street to make sure that she was evacuating, because we didn't see any evidence that she was I went to our next door neighbors to the left of us. Didn't see them actively evacuating. Knock on the front door, no one answered. Went to rent their rental they had someone renting the back house. Went back there, he didn't answer. That's why, then came back to our house, made two more trips, packing the car. And amidst all of this, we were dealing with the hurricane force winds, so the wind was kicking all things around. There was always the feeling of threat that it was going to bring a tree down, either on top of us or on top of our cars. After we finished packing the cars, I asked my wife if she wanted to follow me or me follow her. I made a determination where we would like Ron rendezvous, if we got separated, that was down in about South South, past South Lake area. She wanted to follow me. So we I took us down the street, first cross street. I looked down it before committing. I didn't know, you know, whether there were trees that were down there was I still had a question whether the winds were carrying embers over our head and starting fires on the potential escape routes. So every time before heading south, I would always check the street, and then we headed south and just kind of meandered our way down, sometimes having to drive around obstacles, around trees that had fallen on the way down, I was calling people that other people I knew in Altadena to make sure they were evacuating my head. Was on the phone with one of our friends. They live in South Pasadena. They offered for us to stay the night at their house. So we wound up. We drove down there that night and spent the night there not, not really sure what was happening. About 6am the next morning, we were getting calls from the fire detect or the alarm company, uh, telling us the smoke alarm was going off. At that point, I still was hopeful. I having been around wildfires before. You know, we will not close to us, but when the air is really bad, you can still smell the smoke in the house. So that was what I was. That was my initial thought that the it was just really smoky. We found out about six hours later that the house had burned down.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I know what this feels like, unfortunately, and the impact that this has on your personal life, the way you feel, your trust, the grief you feel, is so overwhelming that you don't even know. I mean, in my case, you know, I my brain was trying to find an event to compare it to, and there just wasn't any.

Christopher J Wesley:

It felt just can't think of one either. No, right

BEATE CHELETTE:

now, I want to talk about storytelling, because you are a storyteller. Tell us a little bit about what you do with storytelling professionally? And then how are you using what happened to you to help other people in their storytelling now,

Christopher J Wesley:

so professionally, I write fiction. The best way to describe it is a game of thrones meets the modern entertainment industry, as if told by Alfred Hitchcock. In that world, my protagonists are always regular people forced to do extraordinary things, and I drew on my training as a storyteller. I spent about four years with a private storytelling mentor the initial days, right after the fire, we wound up in Rancho Cucamonga, which, for those that know the lay don't know the lay of the land. We're about two hours away, depending on traffic from where the our home had burned, and before the fires, there was a housing shortage. So my initial thought was, I have no time to feel the things I'm feeling right now. I have to, like, take care of all these things, and I have obligations and responsibilities I need to meet, but I also have to figure out, how do we get into a place like now before everyone else gets out of shock too, and we can't find a place to live. So we immediately started just traveling back, back and forth, trying to find an apartment. And my wife would be in the passenger seat, looking up listings, and she'd find a listing. I'd put it in Google Maps and drive there. I don't know how many places we went to, but we were, we were blessed to find the place that we finally did. But like the Yeah, initially, the storytelling was that, for me, it was at the beginning, right after this, right after the inciting incident, the protagonist is always trying to solve. He's trying all these different things, and he's going to fail, he's going to make a lot of mistakes. So that helped me take action, because I understood that me making mistakes and not being perfect was okay. What was that? What was necessary was that I start taking action like now.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So you're the protagonist in your own story, and you're not just do you consciously acknowledge that, but you also adapt the trades and give yourself permission to be the person you normally write about. How beautiful is

Christopher J Wesley:

that? Yeah, I wouldn't have chosen it since it happened.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yeah, no, it certainly isn't. And you also said you are an artist that you know, not just did you lose all your journals and the pieces you wrote, you lost a lot more than that, all your art.

Christopher J Wesley:

Yeah, I lost all of my artworks, including sketches from high school, some pieces that were created during some of the hardest parts of my life that had like, very, very significant meaning to me. I lost the guitar. Also a musician, I lost the guitar. It was literally the difference when I was 14 between me being a. A responsible, happy adult and committing suicide. I lost all my journals, all of my sketchbooks. I had a studio in the home, a recording studio. Lost all that, all the gear. I mean, there's so many things. The list just goes on on and on.

BEATE CHELETTE:

You work as a transformation coach through storytelling. So how has this now affected the way you show up? And I want to add one more element that you had shared with me, which both of us share, is how other people show up. So now we are in this catastrophic event that you have no control over you're doing the things that you need to do the protagonist in your story, just making the impossible happen as quickly as you can. But then other people show up for you, and then you somehow need to incorporate in your work. Tell me that story. So,

Christopher J Wesley:

yeah, it does depend on where the person is at that I'm coaching, but understanding story helps me, helps me understand where they are in that journey. I typically in storytelling, we always hear about the hero's journey, and that is just one of six character archetypes. So like I understood that what I was going through here, this was not the hero's journey. And that comprehension helped me position myself, I guess, in my mind, where I what I needed to do, so depending on where the person is at in their life, helps me determine, you know, is this the hero's journey, or is this, say, a maiden's journey? It's a king or queen arc. And from there, I help get a sense of where they're at, where they're coming from, where they're trying to go and then coach them through using basically storytelling aspects to help them, like, get to the next thing. Because sometimes, like immediately after the fire, finding a place to live, that was just the next thing. I had no capacity for anything beyond just finding a place to live. So for clients, it is sometimes is simple as they just have to get to that next thing. If they lost the job, you know, what is the most critical thing that needs to happen? Do you actually you have to find a job like right now? Or do you have some Do you have resources that give you time and space to recraft what direction you want to go in.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Did you recraft the direction you went in? Yes. How does that feel now 10 months after all of this happened,

Christopher J Wesley:

sometimes good, sometimes resentment.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yeah, I feel the same way. I think that the deep grieving definitely has gotten better, like there's more moments of happiness, or where you can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then a moment later, you're just smacked into the ground and you

Christopher J Wesley:

Yeah, can't handle, I think, and that's one of the things that I bring to clients, is the understanding that this is none of this is linear. It is absolutely messy and giving space for them to feel what they need to feel. Because I did take the time myself to feel what I needed to feel but I did. So after the critical things like this has to happen, we have to find a place to live. It's like right now, I know people that live 20 miles away, and it's difficult for them to get back to anything they need to do here. I didn't want that. So take care of the most critical thing. And then after that I was I gave myself the space to feel what I was feeling during the critical time. I was paying attention to what my wife was feeling, so I was kind of taking care of her more so than me at that point, or taking care of her and us.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yeah, I feel the same way I felt that my husband took it a lot harder than I did, and there was just no room for me to to give in to that. And then once I felt he was stable,

Christopher J Wesley:

then I crashed. There was a movie that stood where there was a quote, and I don't remember what movie it was, and someone asked this older gentleman, is like, actually, I don't remember the gentleman or the husband or the wife. But someone asked one of the couple like, What is your secret to success? And the answer was, we only crash one at a time, something to that

BEATE CHELETTE:

effect, you know that that's actually true. Did you kind of like do that intuitively? And it just wasn't even a thought. Because.

Christopher J Wesley:

Of the way I grew up. I'm one of 10 children across five marriages. There were six in total, but one didn't produce children. It was be I always knew I wanted to be married. I'm different with about that. Like, I guess, as a male, by time I was like, mid teens, I understood that I wanted to be married. So I've always paid attention to what are the things that would help me succeed in being married once I found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So this was wisdom picked up along the way somewhere

BEATE CHELETTE:

that's beautiful. I love that. I want to shift this a little bit around the experience of receiving, yeah, because something tells me that in your work and through the storytelling, that a lot of your focus was before this on helping other people. Has that changed? Have you changed?

Christopher J Wesley:

Not in that one of my when life kicks me down, I've learned that part of my self care my is I build systems. And so I built a system around understanding, how do I take care of myself? What is I created archetypes for, like my resilience type, and by understanding those things, it, it, it's something I can keep going back to when I kind of forget, when something is bad enough that it causes me to kind of forget myself and that through that I understand my resilience. Archetype is, I call it spark Bringer. So I turn my tragedy into being able to hold space for other people. So there was always a part of me that that understood that by going through this and understanding that natural disasters are just going to keep happening and becoming more and more frequent, this gives me a special capacity to help other people, like shortly after this, or shortly after we got settled, I go into therapy, And the woman that was doing the counseling for me, she had never been through a wildfire, but she was, she lives in New Orleans, and had been through Katrina, so she was able to help me in a variety of ways that aren't, aren't specific to wildfires, but is specific to surviving natural disasters and navigating FEMA insurance companies and all of that.

BEATE CHELETTE:

How did you manage other people reaching out and wanting to help and support you? Was that easy or difficult? It was easy ish, that is a muscle that question easy ish,

Christopher J Wesley:

it's something it's a flaw in in myself that I'd recognized it some years ago. So it's a muscle that I had been developing over time to be able to accept because it for years, decades. I most of my life, I was not able to really accept help from other people. It was I'll figure out on my own and but I will take care of you. So I by the time this happened, I was in a position where I was able to accept people doing things for us and looking out for us, and to actually express the like if someone said I had someone that I didn't expect offer, well, we know that your Keurig had burned. So you know, we want to put a pool together and buy you a new Keurig for me to say, Yes, could you please? Was the work of years of effort prior,

BEATE CHELETTE:

amazing. You know, this is so interesting to me, that and I, and that's why I wanted to bring this up to help our audience. Like if you hear this story now of Christopher saying, well, his coffee maker, the correct burned, and somebody offers him to replace it, of course you're gonna say yes, because you had one. You loved it, it burned. Somebody wants to help you. Say yes. But the reality, I could have done that 10 years ago. I know it's like, what is it about this? So is this one of those lessons, or the learnings, or the gifts that comes out of this for you to accept more, definitely to expect more?

Christopher J Wesley:

Yeah, I would say yes, that's true, because I wouldn't have. Without having gone through this if someone had just given me a hypothetical, I don't know that I would have given the answer that I don't know that I would have, in my mind projected myself behaving the same as I did after having gone through this event.

BEATE CHELETTE:

No, it changed the way I give it, changed the way how I give it, changed the way how I respond to other people's personal disasters. It has changed how I accept things, what I allow and also what I ask for. So it's actually very liberating. How do you feel about this? Now

Christopher J Wesley:

I feel the same. It's forced me to grow in ways and areas that I wouldn't have chosen.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Neither you not. I know any of the 17,000 peoples whose structures burned would have would have chosen that. But what I like about our conversation today is that we, you know, we talk about something we both understand and we actively looking for the silver lining, the learning in what has happened to us, and then how do we transfer that in our work? So now, how has this affected how you work with people now today and talk to us a little bit more about how you can help people.

Christopher J Wesley:

I'm able to hold space much better, able to be more attentive to some of the nuances of different problems people are facing. I'm always creating systems. So one thing the easiest way to work with me, I provided a link to take the "Resilience Archetype Assessment," and after you get the assessment, you know you can download something that tells you more about your archetype and specifically how to withstand natural disasters had to come out on the other side, based on your archetype. And there's a there's a link on that PDF where you can book a out of possibilities. Call with me, and then we can go deeper into you know what it is you might need and how I might be able to help you,

BEATE CHELETTE:

beautiful and this is really for people that are experiencing personal catastrophes or natural catastrophes on any level. This is not just you have not have had to lose your house in a fire or been part of an earthquake or hurricane. There's all kinds of fires and hurricanes that don't include the actual natural catastrophe?

Christopher J Wesley:

Yeah, I've come across quite a few people. They were just laid off in the past two weeks.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yes, and that might be your natural catastrophe. In trying to figure this out, Christopher, this has been a really insightful and I feel deep conversation about talking about deep loss and resilience and transformation, and how we have this desire, or at least you have this desire, to turn this into something teachable, to help more people. How do you feel about what it's done to you? Are you better?

Christopher J Wesley:

Yes, because I feel I have to be I cannot allow myself or my I can't allow this to rob me of my future. Is, you know, the biggest thing I wanted, kind of like John Lennon when I got older, I wanted to be happy. And, you know, it's not something that happens on accident. I'm finding joy in life, and I did not want this fire to rob me of all my future joy. That's

BEATE CHELETTE:

beautiful, and that's a powerful place to stop our interview for today. Thank you so much for for doing this. I know as somebody who has to talk about this a lot because people want to hear about it, it is re traumatizing to do so. So I appreciate you allowing us or allowing me to take you there, and I thank you. And of course, you have a bright future ahead of you, because you are the one creating it. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it, and that is it for us, for today. If you know someone who is going through a personal catastrophe or a natural catastrophe. Please share this episode and help us get this word out to more people that are experiencing this deep sense of loss or loss of self. Thank you so much, and until next time and GOODBYE, that's it for this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, Founders of the Future, if you're done playing small and ready to build the future on your terms, subscribe, share and help us reach more Trailblazers like you, and if you're serious about creating, growing and scaling a business that's aligned with who you are, schedule your uncovery session at uncoverysession.com. Lead with vision. Move with purpose. Create your future.

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Beate Chelette

Host
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Christopher J Wesley

Guest

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