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 […]

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. […]

“What a profound thing it is to call for help. How astounding, the number of people fate allows to float through this life never once confronting their own mortality. One of the benefits of the fire and rescue business, if you will have it, is a near-constant sense of vulnerability. A recognition that at the […]

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 […]

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 […]

  The other day someone asked me, “What is Triple F?”  It”s really quite simple.  Triple F is a group for women striving to succeed in a man’s world.  Traditionally, firefighting has been a man’s world and it still is.  Over 96% of the fire service is male and the numbers are not really budging.  […]

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 […]