Breathe: A Reflection from a Lahaina Mama by Tiffany Somera, LMFT
Tiffany Somera shared a collection of family photos, precious keepsakes spared from the Lahaina wildfires. Tiffany shares how her family’s roots in Lahaina inspired her to be a founder and continued champion for addressing wellness for survivors.
June 2025. 2 years after the fires.
My maternal grandfather, my papang, Jaime Gazmen Azcueta, immigrated to the U.S. from Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, Philippines with his wife, Soledad Domingo Azcueta, and their four children in pursuit of a ‘better life’. In the 1970s, they arrived in Lāhaina, settling in Lāhaina Pump, a small yet diverse plantation community.
Lāhaina became home to many Filipinos, either as Sakadas (plantation workers) who arrived on Maui in the early 1900s or as their descendants. By the 1970s, significant employers included sugar and pineapple plantations, notably Pioneer Mill. My great-grandfather and grandfather, like numerous other Filipino immigrants, labored tirelessly in the Lahaina fields for meager wages, enduring brutal, long days under the scorching sun. Life centered on this arduous work, and community support was vital for survival.
Papang used to tell us stories about his early years living in Lahaina Pump. “Life was simple but hard”, he would tell me. The houses were small and crowded, and there wasn’t much money, but he never complained. What mattered most to him was raising his family the best he can, with the resources that were available at the time. Everyone leaned on each other—relatives and neighbors alike. Aunties helped raise the children, uncles shared food from their gardens or the ocean, and no one ever went hungry if someone else had something to share. They cooked big meals together, ‘talk story’ and long nights of gambling, playing pepito or mahjong. These were just a few little things they found joy in. Papang always said that in Lahaina Pump, it wasn’t money or comfort that helped them survive—it was family. They endured hardship through togetherness.
Fast forward to August 08, 2023– "Tiff, there's a fire...the whole town is gone. We're taking the kids and evacuating...call you when I can." My
mom's frantic words before she hung up the phone began the longest five days of my life. I didn't know where my son was; he was with my parents for summer break when the fires happened. Nothing prepares a mother for the kind of fear that sets in when your child’s whereabouts are unknown. Lahaina suffered immense loss. Historic sites and entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash. Loved ones vanished in the flames and smoke. As Filipinos, many of us were scattered across islands and states, but we felt the rupture in our bones. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing—cousins checking in, elders recounting the panic, friends trying to locate missing loved ones. We were hundreds of miles away, but our hearts were still there. We always would be.
I didn’t set out to become a founder. There was no strategic plan, no grand vision mapped out on a whiteboard. What I had was grief—raw and relentless—and a deep knowing that if we didn’t show up for each other, we’d be forgotten. That is how Kaibigan ng Lāhaina came to life. In the days that followed, I watched how quickly systems failed our people. How the news spoke of Lāhaina but erased the stories of the immigrant workers who fed the town, cleaned its hotels, and quietly made life livable for others. I witnessed the layers of colonial neglect—the slow aid, the miscommunication, the cultural disconnect. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the numerous family members who were now houseless, the children whose schools were gone, the undocumented families afraid to ask for help.
So we started with a group chat. We asked: What do we need? Who do we know? Who needs to be a part of the table? How do we take care of each other? That became Kaibigan ng Lāhaina—not a nonprofit born out of paperwork, but out of necessity. “Kaibigan” means friend, and that’s what we committed to be: friends or homies to each other in the deepest, most culturally-rooted, most Lāhaina sense. We were organizers, visionaries, manong/manang, parents, and cousins—all weaving together care, advocacy, and truth-telling in the aftermath of trauma. “We just do”, was the only answer.
Being part of KNL while grieving is a specific kind of heartbreak. There were nights I cried after Zoom meetings, days when I couldn’t look at another GoFundMe on the Maui Strong page or listen to another survivor’s story without breaking. Before landing on Maui from Seattle, where I was at the time, I recall feeling a profound physical and emotional grief. The weight was unbearable, but so was the silence if we didn’t do this work. I held pain in one hand and purpose in the other, knowing that both were sacred.
The trauma isn’t over. Many of our families still haven’t returned home to Lāhaina. The fires didn’t just take buildings—they scorched our sense of safety, our sense of belonging, our trust in institutions, our histories. And yet, from the ashes, I’ve witnessed the beauty of shared humanity—again and again. In every meal drop-off, every mutual aid list, every candle lit at a vigil, we have reclaimed our dignity.
Founding Kaibigan ng Lāhaina wasn’t just about creating something new. It was about re-membering who we’ve always been, just like our immigrant ancestors before us: a community who survives, who cares, who cooks for a village, who sings through sorrow, who builds even while burning. We are still here. And we will keep showing up—for each other, for Lāhaina, for every story that deserves to be held with tenderness and truth. As a mother, I carry my papang’s strength with me, and though we’re rebuilding from loss, I’m teaching my child and future generations that just like in Lahaina Pump, our love, resilience, and family will always be the foundation of our new beginning.
