Confidence is key to high performance. For women in the fire service, confidence can be elusive, but it is essential if we are to thrive (and not simply survive) on the fire ground.  Confidence gets ladders up.  Confidence tears doors down.  We need it to be our best, but ample obstacles exist.  It is challenging […]

We are still doing it.  After all the critical incident stress debriefings, suicide prevention workshops, and unacceptably high number of firefighter suicides, (3 in one year on my dept.), we are still shutting people down who try to speak about calls and the sorrow they bring.   In the past two weeks I have heard […]

Many years ago I was in Israel visiting an archaeological museum perched high upon a dusty hill. There I came upon something that took me by surprise: dozens upon dozens of stone sarcophagi (carved and inscribed coffins) covered in images of women warriors fighting men in battle.  The women rode on horseback and fought with […]

My officer and I are rescue divers and awhile ago we pulled a person from a lake.  (I’m being vague for privacy’s sake.)  The call came in for a possible suicide attempt.  The lake was large and dark.  It was at night and we couldn’t see anyone.  Resources were called in.  Police and Fire were […]

The messages we receive have a great impact on our lives and performance.   They influence us on the conscious level of our mind and the subconscious level as well.  As women firefighters, it pays to ask, “What messages are we receiving”overtly or subliminally?   Men grow up receiving certain messages from the time they […]

Extrication is like yoga.   I remember my first day of extrication training in the academy. It was the zenith of summer in South Florida, and I thought I was working in purgatory. The sun was drilling us, and the tools felt like blocks of steel. Just to lift the Jaws and place them where […]

Men are built for power and women are built for endurance.   Women’s bodies have evolved over a hundred thousand years to build and sustain life. For millenia, women have been building babies in their wombs and nursing them in their arms through hostile conditions, without medication, health care, half the food we have now, […]

It feels like dark days. We recently lost a fellow firefighter/pilot, one of our brothers has been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, there’s been the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas fertilizer fire. Innocents and rescuers have died in meaningless acts of violence, natural and man-made. So what do we do?   The only thing […]

Welcome to my cyber domain where I shall write about fire, rescue, love, adventure and an eclectic cornucopia of books.  I have the great honor of being a rescuer (firefighter/paramedic and special ops flight medic) with one of the greatest fire departments in the world (Miami Dade Fire Rescue!), as well as a passionate lover […]