I'm excited to start our podcast.
Super excited! I've been waiting for this day for a while.
Me too. It's funny how sometimes it takes a while to get to the thing that you actually want to do, but when it is actually time, two things feel so great.
I know, I can't believe that just leads me to thinking about how we met two years ago, and you're being my mentor, and actually getting me to a place where I could rest and sleep in between shifts and actually show up with more energy. So that was the start of our foundation of friendship. And look at us now doing a podcast together.
I love how life works sometimes.
It's nice being with somebody else who's passionate about mental health, and wanting to discover the reality of the world out there that we can face when we actually lower down our mask and show up as who we are.
And it's so hard. There's there are so many things in life that I feel like are directly against us doing that, especially being women in these fields. Like we're expected to show up and be a certain thing, and that thing isn't always ourselves.
Exactly. I don't know if it was this way for you, but right from the first day, day one of being a firefighter, I felt this pressure to be better than everybody else. I had to work twice as hard to get half the respect. Is that something that you felt on your journey?
Definitely. There were times that I felt that way until I realized this might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, how am I actually creating that story for myself and choosing that as my reality versus I can just show up as myself and do a great job, and that is exactly what I need to do.
Tell me more about that. When you said manifest your own energy. What does that mean to you?
Oh man. Manifest. Manifesting your own reality. I see it as which is so funny too, because in these male dominated fields, that's a topic of conversation that really isn't often spoken about.
Right? Or spoken about or.
Never spoken about. But I see creating your own reality as, this awareness that you have of the stories you tell yourself and the stories, it could be the truth. You know, I grew up as the oldest of ten kids. That is a truth in my reality. But another aspect of that was that I am always responsible for taking care of people.
So that was a story I was telling myself. And until I became more aware of, is this actually something I'm choosing, or is it something that I've just always told myself? Yeah, that is that is a creating of your own reality. So I feel like women in male dominated fields, most of us, there are very few that I haven't heard that I got to show up and manage this pressure of working 2 or 3 times as hard as the guys to be respected.
When women in these fields, like, actually care a lot about the job anyway, so they naturally work really hard. But I haven't heard a woman in a male dominated field say like, yeah, I started and I just decided like I was going to do my best and that was going to be good enough. That's that's so uncommon. And so I think that there is this expectation that we aren't going to be expected.
We aren't going to be respected. We aren't going to be seen for all we bring. And that gives us this motivation to push, push, push, push, push and to put on capes and masks and all these things that we show up to be something, and it ends up becoming so far from who we truly are. And then you add things like sleep deprivation and hormone health and all these other challenges that you face in these fields, and suddenly you don't recognize yourself.
Absolutely. And that you just summarized my whole journey of my career. And it's interesting how you brought up hormones, because that's something we don't speak about in the fire service. And just the reality of the fact that being a female right off the bat in these high stress careers and affect on our nervous system, which in turn affects our brain health and our hormone health, and we're finding that women in the fire service and battalion fields tend to have perimenopause at a younger rate.
They already, as women, we sleep lighter than men. And then you add shift work on top of that. You had motherhood, becoming a mother and then getting up throughout the night. Now you're doing that on duty and in your personal life. I'm curious what kind of affect specifically with sleep, do you think was the biggest impact or the pivoting moment for you to realize we had a problem in our sleep, and that's when you started the sleep study that you did?
Well, for me, I kind of have to go back to back a little bit in my story because I started out as a coach, like most of my career, was as an entrepreneur and a coach. So, I had had some pretty severe health issues and after this massive turning point and suddenly having my health back, I decided that it was time for a career change.
One in which I would have to be a health advocate. And I also wanted to help others. So when I was exposed to firefighting, I thought like, this is it. This is amazing. I have amazing insurance and I would be able to train hard and protect my health and also help others like how could it be more perfect.
And time off? Sure. Personal life and traveling the world.
Exactly. We both love.
To do so. That leaves time for personal life.
So, because I had had lost my health prior to becoming a firefighter and knew what it felt like to have to just dump money into feeling better and into doctors and into really specific health protocols. When I became a firefighter, I knew that, like, health was, health was such an important aspect for me to focus on, and I probably would have to put a little bit more emphasis in recovery than the average firefighter.
But after my training year, I'm out there on the line doing the job. The thing, you know, as a new firefighter, they you get station that really busy houses most of the time. So probably nine months into being on the line, I was starting to really see the effects of the sleep diet. And, for me, my baseline is is pretty optimistic as a person.
And so I was stunned when I would come home and I'd see dishes in the sink or on the counter and suddenly my like, I was just triggered and my husband and I would have the most.
Stupid arguments about nothing. Just because I felt like, that sleep that was unconsciously to me, changing the way that I saw life. And so it made like these dishes being in this thing somehow a weird, like, threat or a hurdle to me. Like being able to relax and.
Like, it sounds like it kept you in that fight or flight.
Yeah.
That we need so much for our job.
And that's so weird, right? That something as small as that can do it, but it really shows how much sleep that changes our brain and changes the way that we see things. And so, for me, I didn't take a cue of, that something needed to shift. I needed to find solutions until it really started impacting my, my marriage, because I just kept hearing people say, oh, it's just the way that it is.
Like, oh, we just we'll sleep when we're dead. Like, oh, that's just the job. And I was like, walking around wondering, like, how do people just expect feeling horrible all the time, you know?
And that's our baseline and it's our baseline.
And it's it was so befuddling to me because after losing my health and getting it that like feeling, being healthy feels great.
So I only just now discovered that at almost 40 years old, so.
And so many firefighters walk around not healthy like even if they look super fat and lean and can do the job like their health is eroding from the job and sleep. That is like the foundation of that. So for me, choosing to invest back into my health and recovery was really focusing on sleep. And I had heard quote like sleep is the greatest performance enhancing drug that's underutilized or that, you know, sleep is the foundation of every other aspect of human biology.
And I knew that one. I wouldn't be the best firefighter I could be without dying in my sleep. And then two, I wouldn't want to be married to me if I was seeing my partner respect react really the way that I was reacting. And so that was my big I need something to change, I need shift, I need to find solutions.
So it's crazy that that problem actually ended up being the trigger point to so many things in my life. Like my relationship with you starting and you having a similar need to. I have to get my sleep. Like I can't go anymore.
Yeah, I can't keep going at this pace. Yeah. Kill me.
Yeah, exactly. And I think many of us have that realization. But for others, it's their spouse, you know, saying, like, I'm dumb. I can't do this anymore.
That's interesting. You bring that point up because studies have proved that, it takes a spouse or a significant others and your relationship to really reflect where your mental health stability is. It really takes being open to that input and that feedback in return. And for women, this is a deep down desire. When you want to improve your sleep, improve your health, improve your relationships, and all that starts with you accepting that you need to change and that's something that is so unique to being a woman in the service.
When you look at this statistics, males go to treatment because somebody tells them they have to or else they're given an ultimatum. But for a woman, the ultimatum we carry every day with us where if we don't improve and learn how to sleep, the ultimate reality is we will die sooner. We are already shortening our lives by the career we're choosing, and then we're adding a career long sleep deficit.
On top of that, we're just asking to die at a young age.
Which, if you do the math, is a 2448 schedule. The lack of sleep over a 2025 year career adds up to three years worth of sleep left in that time, which is absolutely crazy. If you think the the allostatic load of that has to be so profound and is the reason why we only last out of our career 7 to 10 years.
And I sometimes optimistic for people there, you know, people who retire in six months, a year later, they're gone. I just I just heard the story last shift. So I'm retired and a year later he's on a beach in Florida and rejoicing, enjoying his retirement. And then he had a heart attack, and passed away so that that burden, is, was really heavy on me.
The more I got into the research, and heard the stories of how many of my coworkers were just miserable and it, like, lit this fire under me that I needed to find solutions for myself. And, like, I can't help but share that information with other people. So.
That's a valuable part of the whole journey.
Self. Yeah. And, and I think for women also, like, we don't like feeling bad, you know, there's no ego associated with like, oh, I only got five hours of sleep and I'm still getting in my workout like.
We want to feel good and.
We have no ego around, you know, just having to grin and bear it. So I think that our tolerance for feeling terrible all the time is also lower. And so perhaps this issue hasn't come up so much because we still are at, what, 3%, 3 or 4% nationwide for women in fire EMS is higher. But, EMS is a lot of the 1212 and sleep debt is still associated with that, but it's a smidgen different when you're responding at night.
So 24 hour.
Shifts where exactly you're at.
The will of whatever calls coming.
Next? Yeah. So, for me, I had this amazing truck trainer and he worked at the busiest station in Portland and would tell us these stories of working, you know, and having eight, nine, ten, 11 calls after midnight. And I just it just broke my heart that this amazing, kind, empowering human being was on this journey to like a health crisis because of this sleep debt.
And so that was that was a large part of my full send the first year, probably of implementation started off with me, but I don't know, it's probably five months in when I started taking clients, you being one of my first because I just, I could bring my coaching background into it and also help, help people where they were at with a lot of the tools that I had already been using.
Plus the sleep.
The accountability portion of the program that you ran was the biggest part for me. That was the biggest change that led to my own sleep recovery and being able to regulate my own rest and digest system. That accountability and knowing that one, you've already experienced the benefits of it. So it's possible. And then to having that gentle community and reminder that, hey, we're in this together.
And it's possible if you stick with it. That was definitely, for me, the strongest part of your program, because that is what we lacked in the fire service. We show up every single shift, and we're there to respond to whoever needs us, and we're the first one to volunteer to help anyone out. But we are the last person to show up ourselves, and we need the reminder.
We need the check ins. So that is such a valuable part of the journey is finding the community and developing those friendships that are going to help push you. Yeah.
And like, another point of that is the fire service. I think is having to evolve. First response in general is having to morph so fast because of the demand on the system. And, you know, I, I entered the fire service in Covid like smack in the middle of Covid. So for me, the the call volume and the demand, that was all I knew.
But I was I kept hearing stories of these firefighters saying that call volume had doubled and tripled over two years at their stations.
That was the same with Vancouver. We look at our statistics and sense Covid. Yeah, our numbers have just tripled.
I mean, and I think that's true for the hospital system, for EMS, first responders, ambulance services. And so when the demand increases disproportionately from, what we're currently able to shoulder, like something's going to break, right? If it if it can't keep bending, it's just going to break.
On a supply and demand. And the demand is just increasing. However, we are the supply. Yeah. And we are on our body. We're putting all that extra stress and it's shortening our careers.
Yeah. So that that's an interesting that's an interesting concept that, we haven't had defined these solutions prior to this. Yes. Before we still had interruptions at night to our sleep, but it wasn't. It might have been 1 to 3 times a night. Was pretty busy. 11 in a night that that's not what the norm was in the past.
And so now with cities, cities budgets haven't changed. So the demand is still this high, but they're not adding extra stations. They're not adding more of us boots on the ground.
They can't afford more personnel.
They can't afford more personnel. And even with like health and wellness program teams, sometimes it's hard to integrate those into your normal everyday life. And so it really leaves us with having the responsibility ourselves to be our own advocate and find the solutions that are going to work best for us. And it's unfortunate that, like, one size can't fit all what you choose to integrate into your life is going to be very different than what I need to choose to integrate into my life, for my mental health, for my brain health, for physical health, for sleep health, for spiritual health, all these aspects.
And I think we as a type, first responders tend to be the people that joke like we're like, oh, how can I help you? Oh, how can I help you? Let me show up for you and thank you.
I have another.
Yes. And we fill up our time and our bucket and our backpacks with busyness, helping other people. And it's so hard to recognize how much we actually need help ourselves.
Absolutely. I recognize that at the peak of taking over time and mandatory shifts and moving and helping my friends out, I had all this output, and I never once even thought of the effect on my own personal health and my overall health. So mental, physical, spiritual well-being, that was so impactful when I realized what kind of self-care am I actually doing?
And I took that moment to reflect and actually look at myself. And I realized, zero. I was putting nothing into my self-care of my routine. I was just showing up every day there to respond to whatever anyone else needed, and I'd forgotten how to actually put those practices into my everyday life. So what is something that you recommend for maybe some of our listeners as a quick tip or something for a quick bandaid kind of solution, is there anyone I know there's no size fits all.
No size fits.
All? Where's the first place to start? In my opinion? I would say by just looking at yourself and actually being honest about where you are, because you don't know where you can go until you know where you're at. It's true. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. Having that awareness. So I think first it's the willingness to take a hard look at your life. And we don't like doing that. No, we like this. We don't need help. We are the people who help.
Us, specially when we take a look at our lives. And like you said, wearing that badge of honor, that. Hey, I ran 11 calls last night and look at me. I'm functioning fine. Well, that's what we tell ourselves. And that's a lie. We continuously tell ourselves when. Yeah, we ran 11 calls last night. We're not functioning, okay. And our body is barely hanging on, and everyone around us hates us.
And you know what's crazy is that we expect that we should be okay. But, like, if you look at this logically, I think there's an average.
Person would say like, no, you like you've done.
Enough. It's time for you to go, like have some R&R.
Like chill out, lay down, which is a terrible word in our field. Just R&R, rest and relaxation. I don't even know that is.
I mean, most people know aside from let me take, an 11 day cruise and then I'm back to working the eight trades that it took for me to. Yeah, to take that time off. Yeah, exactly. And I think that part of so, so there's the willingness to look at ourselves. Right. And then the awareness of taking stock.
So I think the first when you take stock, the first thing to look at is what is your what is your greatest pain point? Because our bodies sends us signals. It gives us messages if we're willing to listen. And one thing that I have found working with first responders is that we have we're not military, right. But we put the pressure on ourselves to be like super tough.
And part of that super tough mentality, I think goes back to the concept of body hardening, where we deliberately disconnect from the messages that our body is sending us because we have a job to do, and we have a mission, and we have to, like, train as much as we can to perform that mission. And that we do need to be able to say mind over matter.
But that should be a response to the situation in front of us. That shouldn't be. It's super power.
It's a super power that you dig into and utilize when needed.
When you need.
It. Then we're supposed to tuck that super power right back into our, you know, our pocket. Again, it's.
Not a lifestyle.
It is not a lifestyle. And I think that's where we blend the lines in first responders worlds is it feels so good in your body. It it I describe it like a drug. It's a superpower. Being able to fully be there for everybody else and solve everybody's problems and be the hero. It's a superpower. It's addicting. You want that in your personal life and you begin to think that's normal.
And so you associate that as a normal place to be disconnected. Mind body is never connected.
Yes. And that also goes back to the creating our own reality because we're telling our stuff, the story of like, oh, this feels so good. Like I am creating so much worth.
And look at me go, I flipped five houses. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. While doing a career and single mom and everything. Right, let's just pack it on.
Right. And we completely have learned to ignore the signals of our body. Now, I will say that this isn't always a conscious, in the moment choice, even just for the job that, as you know from working in mental health and studying mental health, so much of that actually has to do with the conditioning and experiences of our childhood and the coping mechanisms.
But we we have learned to just survive. But we take those coping mechanisms and survival skills and make it a lifestyle. And in this job, it it serves us really well because we have to be able to flip those switches. But instead of flipping the switch, we just make it autopilot. So we have to look at the pain points first.
For some people, the pain point really is sleep. For some people, the pain point is exhausting all the time and fatigue and it leads to burnout for other people. You know, it's their relationships are starting to crumble and they feel like they don't know why. And so.
And for some people, it can be actual physical pain.
Yes, exactly. So there are all of these these pain points that different for everybody. But the very first one that comes to mind generally is the one that you should address first.
The one that hurts the most and yes, the one that needs the most attention for.
Exactly. And you know, with, with within coaching progress in one area of your life will be progress in every area of your life. So starting there and building momentum from there is just a win win, even if it's something small. And I think that self-care is such a weird phrase in these culture subcultures of society, like, you know, first responders.
And again, that idea of like being gritty and tough and all of this, but so we have to learn how to frame self-care differently. Like I'm taking responsibility. Maybe ownership is a better phrase.
I think of it as just being human and that's what it takes. That's like maintenance. We take our yeah, in for an oil change. Why aren't we going to a mental health therapist or a license, you know, counselor to talk to. At the same time, we're doing an oil change. Let's go in quarterly and just do a mental health oil change.
Yeah. So that that ownership is necessary. And maintenance. Yeah. Human maintenance. That's such a great a great phrase. That will look different for everyone, but nobody, nobody is coming to save us. That's.
A hard truth than the reality.
That really is. And I don't know if it's because in our job, someone calls and we go to save them, but but nobody is coming for us.
Yeah. Who do we call when we need the help for the ones always being called? Who do we have to call exactly.
So we we have to learn to take responsibility for ourselves and our well-being. And looking at in coaching or we we have this thing called the Wheel of life, which I had every client starred on. And you essentially look at your life, your relationships, your mental health, your fun and recreation, and you look at all these different areas of your life, and you read them and generally speaking, the ones with the lowest scores are the ones that people like to start off first.
But you also need to look at it from that perspective of your your spiritual health, your, your mental health, your physical health. And I would even say that physical health is a separate category than training, because you might, you know, be losing your hearing, but you can still train hard and get it. Yeah, yeah. You know, so we have to we have to start separating fitness from health because they are actually two different categories of things.
And once we are able to dissect these areas of our lives and take stock of each one, our if we then our gut will tell us, oh, this is my I need to do this here. And so often we don't like listening to that voice.
Yeah, the solution seems so simple on paper, but when we look at it and connect to that emotion behind it and recognize how hard it's going to actually be now to then do the work, yes comes next.
Yes. Implementation is really why coaching exists in the world because it's really hard to change.
I tried everything before joining in your program for sleep. I mean, I was doing the sleep meditation and blackout curtains, but the supplement since I was wrongly informed about those from the media, and it was so helpful to have that accountability to help me learn how to advocate for myself and even where to take no where I need to improve.
Yeah, yeah, the idea of improving your sleep is so great because it really is just a cascading effect into all the other areas of your life, and it improves your relationship to your mental health, your physical well-being, your resiliency. All of that is improved with your sleep. So it it's really funny. At my department, I'm kind of a bit known as the sleep girl, because I've been such an advocate on, with the Union Safety Committee.
And for a little bit, I felt a little bit on the spot about that, that, like, how are people going to think it's like. Because I'm weak or because, like, I, I can't handle things or.
You know, you go coming into play there.
Really. It's a real thing. It's a real thing. And and yet the problem that I had, the biggest challenge that I had now is something that has been able to connect me and helped me empower so many others who were also just really kind of scared to bring up the issue because it it felt like this was this is just the job.
Yeah, this is just normal. This is the baseline.
Exactly.
When you start to bring it up, they're like, yeah. And that's. Yeah.
And exactly what. Yeah.
Just for 25 years. You're complaining now.
Exactly. Literally I had conversations just like that. But everybody likes their sleep. And so to another large degree, I think that it has opened opportunities of, you know, training, at my department and writing articles and the online program that my business partner and I have put together and.
Being able to support people with the most foundational need in life, like sleep, is not a luxury, it's a need and yet a.
Basic.
Need. And yet we don't bat an eye, working a quad or a triple shift, going or running errands afterwards, feeling exhausted and shared a headache. We still go to the gym. Oh, I have my coffee, but I didn't eat until 230 because I was so busy. And then we take care of everybody else and then have to fold laundry after dinner and put the kids in the bath.
And it's just like, do we see ourselves?
Yeah, it just this time flies by and you look back and you realize, oh, it's been 2 or 3 years when I said, I'm going to focus on my sleep. And then fast forward to three years. You've done nothing and implemented nothing. Now you're more exhausted, more burned out, more drained financially. You've probably spent money. I think that's a big part of, human health that we don't talk about enough, because I think it really is a pillar that we have to consider and talk about.
I mean, a lot of us come into this career as a career and financially that's part of our health. It affects our mental, physical, spiritual well-being.
And it it is it is necessary. So I think trying to normalize conversations around like, how is your sleep and what are you doing without even coaching people in everyday life? That's something that I've been trying to normalize, because if we talk about it, you never know what's going to plant a seed or give someone this moment of can, you know, consideration to like, oh, like maybe I'll do this or I could do this differently, or
Maybe just by talking about it and the at the breakfast table the next morning you say, yeah, I had four calls last night. Maybe just that awareness and recognition of. Wow, I had four calls last night. I only laid down for seven hours. So how much sleep did I actually give my body? Maybe just having that conversation is enough to open somebody's eyes to realize, oh, maybe I shouldn't go straight to those errands today.
Or maybe I should take a day off from the gym and take a nap instead.
I think that that's something that has surprised me a little bit. People don't realize how little things add up to actually help them, and doing things like the basic sleep hygiene is, I think, getting a lot of really good marketing right now. And what's unfortunate about this for first responders is if we don't do those things, we just bite ourselves in the rear, doing those things isn't going to fast track instant improvement in our sleep, but not doing them will make our sleep worse.
So, you know, the easy things are like getting sunlight first thing in the morning and, having blue blockers on at night and not looking at screens, not doomscrolling in between calls, finding something that you can do in between calls that will actually lower your cortisol instead of your blue light on your phone screen, making your brain think it's high noon because that's exactly what that light emits.
Little things add up to really work in our favor, and so spreading that has been really cool on top of developing, you know, this, tactical sleep rescue program where you really get into the nitty gritty of how you can rescue or sleep on shift. But the truth is, a lot of first responders also go home, and they don't put any thought or intention into their sleep.
And that's the place that you actually can make so much progress, because you have so many things in your power to control.
You can make so many positive changes that big effect versus like where I was at, where I was trying all the things that I could find online that blue blockers, everything. But again, you fall into a creature habit. The last thing you look at before bed is your phone. Set your alarm even for the next morning. First thing you look at is your phone.
Just as humans, it's healthy for us to have that window of time without any light, or be on your phone or doing scrolls with all it, but that is so effective for firefighters, because our nervous system is so much more ramped than the average human. And when that's our baseline, by adding the blue light, we're just keeping ourselves completely ramped.
So it almost takes off. It's 30 minutes for somebody to decompress from their regular life with no lights before bed. It might be up to an hour. Yes, I mean, I spend I try, at least not every day but two hours before bed. We try to cut our screens and everything off, because that's the one thing I can actually focus on to change.
And I notice a difference in my body. My eyes are ready for bed with no exposure to light. They're ready.
Yeah, yeah, I, I dragged my husband into my bedtime routine because I had to do it. And you know, he's a veteran. So I'm like, brain health matters for you.
To but.
Our, you know, our nightly routine is to we do bedtime yoga and we, we stop being on screens really at least an hour before bed, if not two hours. And we just built this routine where we can connect and do something we enjoy, but that's outside of screens. And so, you know, doing bedtime yoga, reading a book together, doing a rundown of the day, those are all things that allow us to decompress and to move our system from that.
Sympathetic to Paris, sympathetic. And another topic which I'm sure that we'll get into with conversation around what you're doing. But first responders don't realize that the more you get activated into that sympathetic drive, the harder it is for your body to make that natural switch into parasympathetic, which is paras rest and digest. And so the longer you go in your career, the more you actually need to flip the switch yourself.
And that is probably one of the most fun and enjoyable things that I have found. In coaching, firefighters and first responders around their sleep is giving them the tools that, hey, guess what? Like you can flip this switch yourself. And that's why you can go back to sleep after every single call at work, because you are moving that switch from sympathetic to parasympathetic, and then your body like your body naturally wants to go to sleep at night when it isn't parasympathetic, so that you can put in that time and that effort and investment to do so is so empowering.
And we need to be intentional doing that at home. Also because one more reps, right, the right rats and the right technique, we can train our body to do anything. But we have so much in our power to control at home. So bedtime routines is one of the best ways to start looking at your life and seeing instant improvement.
Well, in in not just in the sleep area, but your nighttime routine alone. I mean, what I heard from it is more connection and valuable time when the people in our everyday life, in our relationships, it kind of just makes me think back to what you said. When you better one area, then every area increases. And that's so evident.
Just with sleep, you have a better connection when you're off the screens. In general, you can be more present and available to your family and your friends around you, and.
Connection translates also to meaning. Right and meaning is such an important factor warning us against burnout. Because the moment we struggle with burnout.
Things that matter to us stop mattering.
Yeah, I can relate to that a lot. Everything stopped mattering when I was at the peak of my burnout. Everything that I used to enjoy, I found no joy in anymore. And even just going to work, my nervous system was so on fire and just turned on every single day that, I mean, I could come off shift and I would go two three days without being able to bring my system back down and actually sleep.
It was just wired. It was that erratic.
And that's a scary feeling, right?
Because you lose all control. It's a terrifying feeling. You lose trust in your body and your self and your reactions, the brain fog that entails. And you start forgetting little minor details. You wonder what big details did you miss by just missing those little ones?
And I put so much focus into like, health and sleep. Sleep health. I had my own season of burnout a few months ago, and that experience really caused me to realize that as we move from, well, our growth trajectory. Right. Like so many of us enter this path of growth with the sleep conversation because it is, such it is one that brings us to such desperation.
We're willing to start making change, right?
This is the foundation that everything can, yes, grow from.
Yes. And unfortunately, oftentimes that pain of staying the same overrides the pain of change. But with sleep, we often come to that point where we're like, no, the pain of change is worth the pain. The not pain of staying the same.
On your body will naturally eventually go there.
Yeah, it has to do. Exactly.
We can only hold out against that.
We can only adapt so many things in our physiology. But as we continue, you know, okay, we focus on sleep and improve that and then realize, oh, I need to, like, put some attention into my recovery. Oh, we need to adapt my training a little bit so that it more for longevity. Oh, I need to like, focus more on connection to others and like also myself and showing up the way I want to show up.
And there's like this, this almost, upward spiral of growth that starts happening. And for me.
It's like planting a seed of hope, as if you can manage and actually start resting. You just have the energy.
Right to.
The point that whatever changes you need.
That's a really be able to.
Accept the help or the counseling or whatever you're looking into.
Yeah, exactly. And for me, like spiritual health and really dialing in on what was going on internally in my spirit and addressing old stories and patterns, came to this influx point because of this burnout. But I was it was such a scary feeling to feel like you were losing yourself because of feeling burnt out. And, and so the sleep health is so important, but then also the mental and spiritual health becomes a necessity as well.
It's like your next milestone to then. Yes. Now we need to address this.
Which is so fun that in our history together and in our story together, we started each of us with sleep. And then we've been on this like parallel path of okay, sleep, okay, physical health and wellness, okay, connection and meaning. And now this trajectory of of actually actual spiritual health and, how mental health and spiritual health almost have this like this.
It's almost like a railroad. Like they go side by side one, you know, one line of the rail and then the other line of the rail, like they, they go in conjunction together. And that's why I'm really cool about the work that you're getting into more and more, because I think mental health, I'm so grateful that the stigmas are changing.
And also, we. What's going on in here matters more than any external. And that's also not conversations that are happening in the life of a first responder.
Or in society, because we're really taught to look for external validation. We look for validation in, our work. We look for it in our peers, our friends or family. We're always constantly looking for that outside validation. Not many of us have the ability to look inside ourselves and say, I am enough, just as I am, and I'm doing as much as I can.
But the truth of the matter is, what is going on externally in our lives is such a reflection of the internal dialogs and stories and conditioning.
Yeah, my life was completely chaotic and I had no idea. It's because it was a reflection of how chaotic my own thoughts and my own parts of me had become.
Oh my gosh. And the difference in your life now?
And it's like, oh, every six months. It's like a new version of Natalie downloading that. It's been an amazing journey. It really.
Has been. It really has been. So I hope that people are just encouraged. Women are encouraged that. You can be in this job, in these jobs and start feeling better. You can start feeling more and more of yourself.
And we deserve to.
And we deserve to.
We are putting ourselves out there on the front lines to be there for everybody else, and we deserve to have that for ourselves. We deserve to get into this field and take care of ourselves and be able to work a 30 year career and retire. Most women retire under 15 years of service, so, let's let's fix that.
It's unfortunate that the environment and the exposure is none of that actually does lead us to feeling and being our best. So it has to become our own job. And yet it is possible, and with intention and effort and a willingness to put in the work. You can actually feel like you are yourself without the masks and the caves and I think it also takes a level of that is a next level of being fully yourself, because you aren't afraid of not meeting someone else's expectation.
You're just going to meet the expectation that you have set for yourself. And if that's showing up and being yourself and doing your job to the best of your ability, like guess what? That is perfect. It's not like, oh, that's good enough. Like, no, that is that is perfect.
That's how it's supposed.
To be, and that's how it's supposed to.
Be. And that's where we're working to get to.
Exactly. So it's really been an honor for me to be in this space. And I've thought a lot about is this is this the right place for me? Because I'm, I feel like I'm a very different kind of gal.
For this, this world in these, these fields.
I feel a lot. I'm very sensitive. I have to take care of my health. And and it feels very much at, opposition to a lot of what is and what is established in my cultures. And yet, also, sometimes it takes someone who is in polar opposite to actually start moving.
Maybe the pendulum to more where it should be right in the middle or balance constantly looking for the balance.
Exactly. So yeah, I'm really excited for us to have this podcast and to dive deeper into all of the things, all the.
Aspects will touch on all different avenues of health physical, mental, financial, health, all the pillars.
I love it. Is this a good time to transition into our party? Yeah, let's do it. All right.
