It’s so easy to lose yourself, becoming buried in the BS of our daily lives, trying to climb some imaginary ladder of success not even knowing where that might lead. ____ Who’s definition of success are you even climbing towards? What if that ideological epitome of success that society has engrained in us is […]

We are experiencing a time of great turmoil right now; destruction, chaos and pain. It’s exhausting and overwhelming. But it is also an opportunity. Because the possibility exists for the inconsequential, the small and mundane desires that no longer serve us, to be swept aside as deep, consequential energies rise to the surface.   Questions […]

There is a darkness in the world and we have the privilege and the burden of bearing witness to it. With our profession and a continual exposure to death, pain, and cruelty, it is natural to sometimes feel traumatized ourselves. This is normal if we are healthy, compassionate beings and not psychopaths. But the feeling […]

  The fire service abounds in physical courage. Firefighters will walk into burning buildings, dive into frigid waters, and enter crack houses in the dead of night. Courage is a given. The physical kind, that is. We don’t even think about it much; it’s such a day to day part of our job. Toxic spills? […]

I took a yoga class the other day for the first time in a long while. My back has been bothering me and my achilles feels like it’s about to pop (done that before and don’t ever want to go through that again), so I told myself I was really going to take it easy. […]

It’s Sunday morning in Dade County, Florida. I’m working on Engine 66 and so far, before noon, we’ve run on a woman suffering from delirium tremens due to alcohol withdrawal, a “male having a breakdown”, threatening to kill himself and his wife, and a sweet 93 year old lady born in 1921. So much for […]

Triple F is a mindset.  An attitude.  It’s a determination to forge our mind, body, and spirit into an indomitable flame. Indomitable means “impossible to subdue or defeat” and flame is pure energy and light, so I find indomitable flame an inspiring metaphor for human potential.  To become this indomitable flame means taking the path less […]

On a recent shift it seemed like 90% of the calls we ran stemmed from emotional pain.  Some patients made themselves physically sick with it while others let their pain morph into such complete destructiveness that they endangered themselves and took the life of an innocent.  In Fire and EMS we witness intense suffering and […]