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[Keith] In March of '97,
I'm sleeping on my bed at seven o'clock with a pager,
and that alerts us to fires.
And at seven o'clock,
I hear the dispatcher's voice come over,
toning us out for a building fire with people trapped.
And I'm three months into being 18
and I'm still not sure of myself as a firefighter.
And I get that lump, first time I get a lump, I go,
"Oh, God, people trapped, I'm gonna have to go in
and pull someone out of a building.
I hope it's not a kid."
So, I-- I take off out of my house,
I run across the common
and I get to the firehouse
and-- and I'm shaking right now because I-- I could feel it.
So, we get there, the house is fully involved.
I can see it from the road, it's a hundred-foot driveway,
flames 50 feet in the air.
Uh, I get my-- I get my job, my task,
getting off the truck, I get to the back of the truck
to pull the big hose line off.
They pull up the driveway, and then I follow behind them.
As I get up to the-- even with the house and the driveway,
I see what appears to be a lump of blankets
being carried past me.
It was not a lump of blankets.
It was a woman who was in the building
and as they get to my shoulder, I-- I smell it.
And it's a smell I cannot get rid of.
And as that goes by me and I realize what it is,
it is a body,
I look, and there's an older gentleman,
the co-- one of the cops is with him by the garage
and he's bleeding from his wrists,
and he's, like, 82 years old.
And I'm like, "What the fuck is going on?
What did I just walk into?"
And then we still don't know where the chief is,
or at least I don't,
and I look and the chief comes diving out of the window
that they just pulled the woman out of
and flames come out right after him.
And this is all in a matter of, like, 15 seconds.
That was my first fatal fire.
So the day gets over, we get relieved.
Um, we're told by the senior officer on scene, "Go home."
Because two of us were very young, we're brand new.
"Go home."
Well, I walk into the bathroom.
We had Pert Plus for shampoo
and we all-- anyone who knows what Pert Plus is
knows what it smelled like and I was huffing it.
I took almost a quarter of a bottle of it
and just drove it into my nose
and I'm sitting in the fetal position in my bathtub
just huffing Pert Plus trying to get rid
of the smell of a burnt old lady
that I never thought I was gonna smell.
That was three months into my-- my career.
I didn't even graduate high school yet.
[interviewer]
What they do is they bring everyone who was on scene,
especially first on scene, into this.
So, there were some cops,
there were some EMTS that were there,
and there was, the truck I was on,
all members of that and a few other firefighters.
And basically, um...
it was asked, "All right, so you guys were here at this call,
someone died, uh.
You guys want to talk about how that affected you?
You wanna share some feelings?"
And of course, it's a room full of all men
and, as I remember it, not one person shared anything.
And I may be slightly incorrect with that,
but the one thing I do remember,
and it sticks out with me to this day,
is at one point, the guy running that was like,
"Okay, guys, well, coffee and donuts in the back."
[tense music building]
[Riggle] Every first responder has the one call
that sticks with them.
It's true for Keith Hanks,
and it's true for his fellow firefighters,
police officers, and EMTS in rural towns in Massachusetts
and its neighboring communities.
[Gambino] I think my second fire was a fatal fire.
That's 18 years old. Getting off the truck.
Didn't think any of it then, but I can still remember...
that day.
It was a four-year-old girl who was struck by a car.
She was dragged 62 feet.
Her whole family was there.
We literally had to pry her from her grandfather's arms,
and that whole scene and the chaos
and it just happened to be a busy day.
A lot of people in front of a restaurant,
so, um,
a lot of people watching us, you know,
drag this poor child out, so.
And I made the mistake of looking at her eyes,
and that's a big no-no, so, um,
that's the call that-- that stuck with me.
And as soon as I walked in, I noticed a table
and there was a shell casing from a 40 caliber
and the smell of gunpowder was in the air mixed with blood.
I can still see the--
the boy who succumbed to his injuries' face.
An elderly lady hit a trailer truck head on.
She was, you know, dead at the scene.
The floorboards in the car just crumpled up
and were, like, all around her leg.
Quadruple homicide.
And it was kind of shocking
seeing that hatred and damage
that one family member did to another.
The shit that was happening, the calls we were going to,
the murders I was going to.
The rapes...
the domestics, the women I was seeing getting beaten.
I found all three kids,
and I pulled the only one that survived out myself.
And we realized, "Oh, shit,
we just walked into an active crime scene."
There was a person around the corner
that was tied and executed.
No police, no fire, no one's with us except for us.
It was probably over two and a half to three years,
but I had multiple suicides
and multiple high critical incidents.
And one of my firefighter's high school friends
shot himself with a rifle in a bathtub.
Watching people die, like,
how do you process that when you're 19 years old?
[Riggle] Becoming a first responder often means
pursuing the family business,
or it's the next step after leaving the military.
Or, in many instances, it's both,
a lifetime path laid at an especially young age.
[Keith] My family is, uh,
military and firefighter based
dating back all the way to 1875.
Uh, so, a lot of my earliest memories growing up
were seeing my--
my family, my-- my mother's side of the family,
which was all I really had in my life,
um, running out the door going to-- going to emergencies.
Yeah, my dad was-- actually,
he was a firefighter in the Air Force,
and then he was on-call firefighter
in Townsend for 17 years.
So, I used to go, and I was, like, the--
the gofer who'd go get all the guys a beer
out of the fridge
and, uh, I'd, you know, hang out at the stations.
Then when I was 18, I decided
that's what I want to do, give it a shot.
My whole family was either police,
fire, or EMS at some point.
Father was in the military for 25 years,
three time Vietnam vet.
Uh, every day seeing him in his uniform when I was younger,
I could remember he wore it with such pride.
I mean, the main reason why I chose the fire service
is 'cause I had a friend in the Marines,
one of my best friends who I'm still in touch with now,
who joined the Baltimore Fire Department.
I went in the Navy right out of high school.
When I got out, I joined the, uh,
Townsend Fire Department as a call member.
Started in the military.
I was actually in the third Ranger Battalion
for a brief period,
uh, had some combat experience there.
Honestly, um, it was kind of my dad's fault.
Got a phone call from the dispatch center,
they needed an ambulance
over on the next street over for a car accident.
My dad looks at me, I'm 16 years old,
he looks at me and says, "You want to come with me to help?"
I'm like, "Sure."
And from there I was kind of hooked.
[interviewer]
Mm-hm.
Oh, yes.
I'm sure nobody would like to admit that he did, but--
He didn't talk about anything.
"We don't talk about it."
"Oh, Dad, what was that?" "We're not talking about that."
"Okay."
[chuckles] Yes. Very much so.
- It was what I knew. - [interviewer] Yeah.
I knew what to expect.
It was something, like, a safety net.
He had seen some awful, awful things
and I remember,
I think it was one Christmas eve,
we were coming home from a Christmas party,
and there was a call and he thought, you know,
"It's a car accident. I'll just go real quick.
I'm gonna leave you two in the car."
It was just me and my oldest son,
and it was fatal.
Dead on impact, and that was what he saw on Christmas eve.
And then I'm like, you know, he gets in the truck
and I could tell he's upset and I'm like,
"Hey, you know, are you okay?" And he's like, "No, we're fine."
I'm like, "Are you sure?" "No, we're--
we're fine, like, everything's good."
It was, uh, why am I even mentioning it?
So, it definitely affected quite a bit.
Even, um...
later our nephew had killed himself
and he was a twin
and his nephew, my other nephew, found him,
so he was identical, so it really messed them all up.
And I remember Brian having a conversation with him
saying, "Look, you know, I hold everything in.
Don't be like me."
Can I ask you a question then?
How would you bring that up?
How would you start that conversation?
So, starting the conversation's hard enough,
but I think between it being...
an extremely masculine job
where we see terrible things
and it's so--
If you look at firefighters nowadays,
most of them are,
"My dad was a firefighter. My uncle was a firefighter."
It's always somebody in the family was a firefighter,
so this is something they know.
But they know the fun side of it.
Like, "Dude, I saw you coming out of that building,
looks awesome, this is great.
Like, you're a hero!"
But they don't see the ones that you didn't save,
and they don't hear those conversations
of the dark side of it.
Like, yeah, it's great
and it's such a commendable job
that not many can do.
But there's a reason for that.
[Riggle] First responders are America's heroes
for what they do on a daily basis,
but no one wants to talk about what they see,
especially the uniformed men and women themselves.
We didn't really talk about the bad stuff that we saw.
I mean, there were a lot of fires back in the late '90s,
early 2000s that we went to, a lot of bad car accidents.
You just never talked about it.
Like, everybody says, "You're-- you're a firefighter,
you're supposed to be tough.
You know, you don't...
You help people, you don't need help."
[interviewer]
Yes.
Here we go again, right?
Yeah, we-- we follow the same path.
So, in the military, again, you-- you can't be that guy,
the weak link in the chain that's talking about it.
So, uh, my first experience with death was at 19 years old.
I saw an eight-year-old kid step on a land mine,
and all the thoughts that go with that
and nothing was dealt with.
Nobody talked about it, my-- my son,
wife, kids, they probably don't even know that,
but it's just one of those things that we deal with.
And then I get that four-year-old girl,
and they don't look too different from that trauma
that I saw with the eight-year-old,
so it just continues.
It's just a continuous path,
and we do tend to like that same work
because we are trying to help,
we're trying to do the right thing,
and it's just kind of one of those calling things
that we-- we hear about.
Every day was...
a routine day for us was somebody's worst day
all the time and...
- it gets to you eventually. - [interviewer] Yeah.
You're gonna see death, dismemberment, heartache...
but you don't actually comprehend it
if that makes sense.
You can understand something without having to go through it,
but when you're going through it,
the gravity of the situation
is much heavier than I ever expected.
You know, you-- you gotta be the tough guy because that's...
the field that you're in, you-- you gotta be the tough guy,
and, you know,
that being part of the culture
doesn't help any of us,
and I don't have any experience insofar as,
you know, going to talk to somebody, you know,
like a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever.
Or a counselor, you know, whatever.
I don't have any experience with that
because it wasn't accepted.
[interviewer]
Not regarding, no-- not regarding,
you know, PTSD or anything like that.
You know, I mean, my-- my primary care doctor,
yeah, I-- I talked to him about some depression, but...
You see bad accidents
and I'm not trying to be a tough guy,
you see things you normally your body--
you try to condition yourself for it,
you try to get ready for it, but you never really are.
This stuff will stay with you in your mind.
You know, like I said,
it was taboo to talk about bad things then.
It's the stigma is the biggest one
is that, you know, men don't meditate,
you know, men don't have feelings, men don't--
you know, there's-- there's a lot of walls up
from our fathers and those who came before us
that it's just-- it's not talked about, you know?
There's not many people
who openly say they meditate, you know?
There-- there are more now, but not in the fire service,
not in the military, you know, um.
To even acknowledge that you have emotion
in the military is weakness.
You know what I mean? Like, it's--
we're not anywhere near where we need to be,
and to be perfectly honest with you,
I don't know how I could...
be an infantryman
and have the feelings I have now.
And it's the same thing with the fire service, you know?
We subconsciously turn the dials down
for certain emotions
because we have to
to perform at the level that we're needed to.
People need you to be strong, they need you to be calm.
If you show up on scene and you're a mess
and you're crying, you're-- you're not helping.
So, empathy has to go down a little bit, you know,
so you can think more logically.
You know, left brain, right brain,
whatever you want to call it, you know,
No one's doing it on purpose,
but you have to, and over time...
you learn that that's how you get through these calls,
that's how you rise to the occasion,
that's how you think clearly
is you let go of some of the things that...
you know, weaker people would bring.
That's-- that's not strength in those moments of extreme stress.
But the problem is when you numb yourself like that over time...
you don't-- you don't just turn it off
at the end of the shift.
It-- it becomes who you are. You know, you change.
Your whole life changes.
And if you ask any spouse
who's been married to someone, you know, in the fire service,
they'll tell you, "Oh, yeah, he's changed here
or she's changed."
It takes a while to get the perspective
of what it actually does to you, uh.
But, uh, a number of years ago I came home from a shift
and was talking with my wife,
and she was like, "You're changing.
Yeah, you're-- you're not the same person right now.
There's something going on. You're changing."
That's what happens.
You-- you adapt to your environment,
and that's what we do in this profession.
You know, in the military, when I was 18 years old...
I was very pliable,
and it was...
beaten into us that,
you know, "You don't feel this,
you don't think that way.
You think this way" and it's brainwashing, it is.
Let's call a spade a spade.
Uh, I never wanted to admit that I was brainwashed,
but I was absolutely brainwashed.
But I had to be to do the job
that I chose, to be fair.
And then there's no resources,
no direction as to...
how to turn any of that back on,
and you can't live in this world
without these things and be happy.
There is a little bit of resentment, like, "Why?
Why can't you talk about it with me?
If we're partners, if we're half and half,
you should be able to talk about it."
But I almost feel like with most...
first responders, it's like you feel full
and you picture yourself full of this black ink
or black paint,
and if you want to express that and tell them like,
"This is all the awful things I saw."
You feel like now that black paint's on you,
and you don't want to get them dirty
with all the nitty-gritty things you see.
You want to keep them clean
or you want to keep them innocent, kind of.
- [interviewer] - [Keith] Sure.
In 1999, I started working for her father
on a part-time job along with the fire department.
She opened up my world to so many things.
She showed me what love really was.
In 2000, we ended up getting married.
I thought I had everything figured out.
I thought the world was my oyster.
I had all my stuff...
that I knew about,
but I didn't think anything could go wrong.
[emotional music playing]
It did.
We had a-- Heather and I...
had hit some turbulent waters.
I was starting to show some signs
of what we would later figure out
is my-- is my PTSD...
and I kind of became unhinged.
We had a physical and verbal fight.
So we spent the next two weeks separated.
I live back with my parents for a little bit
and she comes over on a Friday night, April 11, 2003.
And's like, "This is dumb.
I love you."
And we forgave each other.
We're like, "Let's just go back to our lives.
We have two kids.
We're-- we're 24 and 25 years old,
like, we have our whole life ahead of us.
You have a career ahead of you.
You made a mistake. We're gonna get you help."
She says to me, "We're gonna get you help."
And we made plans with my friend
Dave Gambino and his wife at the time, Christina.
So, we go back to our house in Lancaster,
we meet them, we get in my truck.
Me and Dave get in the front,
which was weird for some reason, I don't--
We normally had couples-couples, you know?
I sit with my wife, he says with his,
but we didn't do that that night.
Usually, it was Keith and Heather in the front
and my wife and I in the back.
It was just-- I don't know how that happened.
And we go. It's raining out.
It was-- uh, it was April, so it wasn't--
it was, like, 7:30, so the sun was down at that point
so it was dark
and I end up behind someone who's going kind of slow
and I end up in the fast lane.
"Man, what the hell, I want to go down.
I want to get to this restaurant.
I want to have a good time with my wife and my friends."
And so I...
pass him on the right.
And as I'm passing him on the right,
well, it was wet...
and I made this slight maneuver with the wheel,
and I completely lose control of my truck.
We spin a bunch of times
and the only thing I can honestly remember
is the screams.
And...
in particular, Heather's scream.
The noise, the sound, the-- the smell.
I can...
distinctly remember the noise of their--
us losing control of that car and going backwards in the dirt.
I remember thinking that we're just gonna stop
and this is it.
We spun out. Let's continue on our way.
But, as we know, we didn't do that.
So I got knocked out.
I took out the driver's window,
driver's side window, uh, with my head.
I remember waking up at one point
not knowing where I was, not knowing who I was.
I looked back and I saw
the love of my life's face, the mother of my children,
and I knew exactly...
where she was and it wasn't here.
I think when I knew...
that it was terrible
was when I watched her pupils dilate.
Then I knew it was terrible.
We had hit a tree going backwards
at about 60 miles an hour.
Came through the cab,
the rear of the cab of the truck, and struck Heather
in the back of the head, snapping her brain stem.
Of course, it seems like forever waiting in the car, waiting.
Now, I know what they-- After that point,
I knew what they meant by,
"What took you so long to get there?"
Um, but it couldn't have been any more than a few minutes,
Lancaster fire was on scene and, you know, of course,
we knew-- everybody knew each other back then.
You know what I mean, I knew the guy,
the first Lancaster firefighter on scene
was a good friend of mine,
you know, and looking at his face,
he knew it was real, too.
They were transported to UMass in Worcester
and my wife and I went to Clinton Hospital.
And we-- She was treated and released,
and we went to Worcester to see Keith and Heather,
and I remember Keith's stepdad
coming out and telling us what was going on.
We knew Keith was still in the trauma room at UMass
being assessed, but he was okay
and then we found out that Heather didn't make it.
But...
I guess, you know, thinking about it,
I-- I already knew that in a way, you know?
But...
They took her to the hospital, they put her on life support,
and that Saturday,
um, we pulled the plug.
And that wasn't even the worst part of that weekend.
It was the beginning
of the worst weekend of my life...
because I then had to go home
after I got cleared out of the ICU
from UMass, leaving my...
my wife on a bed.
I had to go home and tell her kids
that mommy wasn't coming home.
My ten-month-old daughter,
who couldn't even speak yet...
my just over two-year-old son.
And so I go to my grandmother's house,
and I sit in my uncle's bedroom
with my children,
and before I can even get it out of my mouth,
before I can even tell my kids,
"Daddy's really sorry, but Mommy,
Mommy's gone," before I can even do it,
my son goes, "Where's Mommy?"
I didn't cry.
I didn't shed one tear that day.
I decided right there my soul was gone.
The rest of the damage had been done
and I was never going to show emotion again.
And I did a really good job of it.
And I never actually told my kids their mother was gone.
I didn't have to.
They knew because then they were crying.
There were seven people in that house,
they were all crying, but I was the only one
that was completely dry-faced.
It was hell.
[Riggle] In Townsend and across the country,
the government's attempts to encourage dialogue
after first responders experience trauma
has historically centered around
critical incident stress debriefings.
So, now you've got critical incident stress debriefings
and then you've got, um, a new one,
critical incident stress managements,
and you've got some that are supposed to occur
immediately right after the event
and some that should occur with, you know, no sooner
than 48 hours after the event,
and hopefully they're getting better now
because historically, it was somebody from dispatch...
or it was one of the supervisors
who was on duty that day
who, honestly, can barely handle a call
much less a group,
um, that really shouldn't be doing this
'cause you can do more harm than good.
And they probably did.
And I think what-- sort of this insidious
behind-the-scenes thing that nobody really understood
back then was, "Oh, are you going
to the critical incident stress debriefing or whatever?"
And there's always some--
somebody behind the scenes who is, you know, the official,
old-school representative of the crowd who's like,
"Oh, you gonna go in there and share some feelings?
Yeah, don't trip over in your feelings in there."
And so as the new people in the group, you're thinking,
"All right, that's my role model.
That's what I got to be."
That-- that-- that stigma right there,
that's a big part of it, that's a huge
puzzle piece right in the middle.
In certain parts of my career it wasn't boasted
that we had those meetings.
It was boasted that,
"Hey, we got through that."
We had a guy, um,
a gentleman that I worked with.
He was a police officer,
uh, in the town that I worked in,
and he went to his hometown
and, uh, for a friend's funeral and he was murdered.
The boast was, "Hey, not one of us
had to talk to somebody.
Not one of us. We're all good."
After a bad call, we'd, you know,
obviously go back to the station, get the truck
back in service, and while we were doing stuff
with the truck and, you know, cleaning up,
we'd talk about, "Hey, look, you remember that guy?
He had, you know, his foot was up here and this and that."
Um, yeah, so you definitely talk about it
with all the guys on the truck in the station,
um, and after some really nasty ones,
the-- the chief would have people come in after,
and, you know, if you wanted to go,
you could go, if not, no big deal,
and you go sit around and just--
You talk about it.
You could talk about what you saw or you don't even
have to talk about it, just listen to the other people,
and that was-- that was pretty much it, you know?
It was, like, in and out in less than an hour.
I didn't think that really did much
for anybody, but, you know,
I-- I feel being down in the engine bay
working on the truck, getting it back in service
or whatever, talking with all the guys
was-- worked better, I think.
Uh, over the years I went to several, uh,
critical incident stress debriefings, um...
but, no, most of it is handled at the firehouse.
In the fire service, we always are together
as companies, or in EMTs, you're always with a crew.
We did debrief after the call in the station.
Cup of coffee in the back, we call it tailboard therapy,
sitting on the back of the fire engine,
back of the ambulance discussing it.
And you're always-- Older guys, uh,
guys that have been around looking after the younger guys,
"How do you feel?"
You know, with, you know, uh,
and debriefing without even knowing
early on what we were doing.
Let's talk about it.
Let's figure it out, you know?
If you need help, ask for it.
You know, like, it has to be offered.
You know what I mean, you don't want to
end your career early because of stuff like this.
[interviewer]
Uh, evolved over the-- Well...
you know, like I said, you can solve world problems
at a firehouse table.
At least that's what you're always told, right?
But, no, I think, you know,
being on shift with the same people all the time,
you become a family.
You know, it's your--
You know, your family away from--
Your home away from home is the firehouse.
So, you try to, you know,
personal problems, firehouse problems, anything,
that's where it gets solved.
Hopefully.
[Riggle] Unfortunately, without professional
mental health care, first responders are often
left to self-diagnose and self-care,
including the complicated illness
known as post-traumatic stress disorder.
So, PTSD that we think of when you, you know,
it's a-- Lot of people joke about it, like,
"Oh, I have PTSD from this,
was sitting in traffic for whatever,"
we make these jokes.
Um, simple PTSD is,
you have an isolated incident.
The complex PTSD is reoccurring trauma response,
so every negative situation then becomes a trauma
as opposed to, "The gas pump just doesn't work today."
It becomes, "It didn't work because of this,
because of that, da, da, da, da, da,"
and it just spirals out of control.
And it's very challenging
'cause you have to retrain your brain.
You have to convince yourself you're okay.
You have to convince yourself
that not everything is a trauma,
and it's a lot of work.
You know, fixing this stuff, it's-- it's like, you know...
when you get diagnosed with cancer
and they always sort of lateral PTSD
with-- with cancer
um, because cancer doesn't necessarily go away.
It can go into remission,
but you're always still getting screened,
you're still getting checked.
You know, why would you expect with PTSD,
with mental health issues that you're going to go away
for 24 hours and, "Cool, you don't need chemo,
you don't need radiation, like, you're good."
It's not how it works.
When you think of PTSD, you think military.
You know, a guy comes back from wherever he was
and he has nightmares, doesn't sleep, anger.
That's all-- always been on the military side of that.
Now, it's slowly, very slowly creeping into,
uh, actually the first responders
having the problems as well.
You know, I've never actually
been diagnosed with PTSD,
but I've been around this long enough to know that,
yes, I have PTSD from-- from it.
You know, there's a lot of, uh...
signs and symptoms of PTS and PTSD
that people present over the years,
and reading up on it and doing the research on it
and stuff like that, you just...
I mean, I-- I don't know if I have it.
I'm kind of afraid to be formally diagnosed with it,
to be honest with you, but...
I do have a disability through the military
for PTSD, uh, relating to...
things that have been gone through.
It's more like a self-help.
The VA is in a difficult situation because they say,
"All right, here's your problem, here's your check."
And I was actually waiting for some therapy,
but now that I realize that a lot of times
you have to help yourself.
For me, combat
was very difficult.
Trying times, I didn't have my wife,
I didn't have the support group,
and it kind of brings back why you do these things.
It-- it's not
for God and country
and foreign policy
and whoever is riding the ship at that time.
Uh, it's for the people you work with.
Your left and right, whoever's there.
Even in the medical field,
I think my lowest moment
during COVID early on
is when we were driving in to work,
and it was like the disaster movie.
Everybody was at home collecting a check,
unemployment, uh, Amazon deliveries coming in.
I was driving over 100 miles an hour
going to work and hoping,
praying, uh, that a state trooper
would pull me over, arrest me, and throw me into jail
so I didn't have to go to work.
And the reason
I was going to work is because I knew
my guys and girls that, at the firehouse,
were going to work as well,
and that's why we showed up every day.
I tried to avoid that diagnosis
for a very, very long time 'cause I grew up in a time
where you don't talk about these things.
Um, I had to have a physical,
and my blood pressure was through the roof.
Like, the nurse was like...
"You're having a heart attack," and I was like,
"I'm just having-- I just need a minute,
I'm having a panic attack.
I don't do well in doctors' offices anymore."
And, um, they kind of just kept doing what they were doing
to the point where I had to scream, like,
"Get the fuck away from me.
Get out, I just need two minutes.
Give me a-- give me a fucking break."
And they took off out of the room
and they gave me a few minutes,
and my doctor came in and she's like,
"I have another person here that wants to see you, uh,
talk to you for a minute, do you mind?"
I said, "No problem."
A woman came around the corner and said,
"I'm doctor so and so, you have PTSD.
Do you want to deal with it?"
And my first response was, "Well, it depends.
Is that written down anywhere?"
She's like, "Oh, yeah, there's gonna be
a lot of documentation about what just happened."
I was officially diagnosed when I was 22
when I got out of the Marines, um,
about two months after I got home from my third deployment,
and I-- I thought it was bullshit.
You know, I-- I didn't agree with it,
but I understood that they basically just
gave me and all my friends that diagnosis 'cause--
More of a liability thing, I thought, you know?
I knew that my friends and I were different.
It was very hard fitting in
after getting out and coming home
from those types of experiences,
but I had no idea it was a problem.
I had no idea that there were symptoms.
You know, um, from my perspective,
I was normal and I was justified
in the way I viewed the world and how I acted,
and, you know, only looking back now
do I realize how messed up I was, so...
And we had to go see a shrink who was a Navy doc
and, um, we-- I was told, we were all told,
"Don't be honest, don't tell them the truth
because if you do, you're not going home,"
because they knew we were fucked up.
They knew that our answers would keep us there,
that we probably wouldn't get out, that we'd be sent
to a hospital or whatever.
I know plenty of people who were
restricted to the barracks
who were never the same, who weren't allowed
to go on a third deployment because they told the truth,
'cause they were honest about how they felt
about the drinking every day.
Everyone that was there was an alcoholic.
Everyone.
There's no coping mechanisms.
There's no therapy, there's no...
compassion, there's no processing.
It's just you do it and if you don't do it,
you're weak, and nobody wants to be weak,
so you suck it up and you do it.
[Riggle] Coping is only made more difficult
for first responders in that their day-to-day lives
are consistently met with the triggers
they need to avoid.
[Jen] My husband was a police officer for 15 years.
He would communicate to me about triggers
that he was experiencing, to a-- you know, due to his PTSD.
Um, for example, um,
he didn't have a mouth guard at one infant call,
and so had to perform CPR on an infant
who had, um, formula on his mouth
and the formula, um, reminded him of bananas
for some reason, so as a family, we didn't have bananas
in our house for years.
And 'cause I just-- I was doing my best to protect Kevin
and prevent him from-- from having those flashbacks.
It was a housefire in which, uh, two children got killed.
There were three children in the house.
Uh, I was the lucky or unlucky, however you want it,
I found all three kids and I pulled the only one
that survived out myself.
Probably over the last four or five years, you know,
a week or so before and a week or so after
I would get really depressed because the brain was like,
"Hey, yeah,
20-odd years ago, this is what you were doing,
and this is what you did."
And that I can recall
in very, very graphic detail
everything that happened
from the time I got off the fire engine
till the time the call was done.
You know, and then-- And that's one I've actually
had flashbacks on that one
in the-- in the past, and that's terrifying.
When I went back, I had just gotten
in a bad accident where my wife was killed,
and right off the bat, I'm doing, like,
more accidents per shift than I had ever done in my life.
And we get to this accident and there was a fatality
in the car and the wife--
It ended up being a husband and wife,
uh, the wife was, uh, was the one that was alive.
And so we get directed to go past it to the person that,
come to find what caused the accident,
which was a drunk driver.
And we pull up and the cops got the guy
and I didn't realize it was a drunk thing
until I opened the door and I could smell the booze.
And he looked right at me and he goes,
"I hope they're all right."
And I went, "I knew the person what-- who was dead,"
and I had to be tackled to the ground by four cops
'cause I just lost it.
[Brian Harkins] Uh, I just had back-to-back calls
that sent me over the edge.
The last one involved a two-year-old,
I will spare the details, but it, uh, I broke.
Sorry.
[sighs]
Sorry.
[somber piano melody plays]
I just need a second.
It's been a while since I talked about it.
[interviewer]
No, I think it's important for people to know.
Um...
I quit my job over the phone.
The chief came out and, um...
actually got me into a program, at the leader program
at McLean's, and since then
I've been on the other side of-- of giving back the help
so people don't wind up like I did.
Sorry.
Sorry, it's been a while since I talked about that.
[Riggle] Without the knowledge of
and access to proper care,
first responders often turn to quick fixes,
vices that only make matters worse.
[sighs]
Um...
I tried to forget it as much as I could,
and I used to drink, I--
I was a pretty good drinker,
so I think that's how I dealt with it.
Um, and, you know,
obviously talking with the guys and stuff helped a little bit,
but I think I just put it in the back of the brain
and keep moving on and deal with the next thing.
I think you try,
you know, you try to forget about it,
but it-- I don't-- you never do.
You never really do, um...
and eventually it-- it wears on you,
and it gets to the point where you--
you do something, you know?
Like-- like, as I started drinking, um...
and that's how I dealt with it.
I don't-- I don't consider myself an addict,
I don't have an addictive personality,
but I abused the shit out of pills and booze.
I would show up to work drunk. I would drink on the job.
I would go out to the bar
right down the street from the ambulance bay,
get hammered,
drink until 3:00 in the morning,
be back on shift at 7:00.
Noon time I'd be hitting something
to keep you through the day.
Pop some pills, not feeling anything.
I drank a lot, I drank every day.
Um, I was always...
very hesitant about alcohol
because my father is an alcoholic,
and, uh, I saw how it destroyed his life.
And I knew--
that was one thing that I knew for sure
at a young age that...
I don't want to say I was an alcoholic,
but I could have been one so easily.
You know, I watched so many of my other friends
become alcoholics.
So, I was always very careful,
but I used it as much as I could bef--
without crossing that line, you know?
'Cause I couldn't let myself do it.
Too much pride, I don't know, like, I did drugs,
I did a lot of drugs, um...
just to feel something other than anger.
Just to, like, turn my thoughts off
for a minute, you know?
[interviewer]
- No, absolutely not. - [interviewer] Really?
Not at all? No?
Well, I mean, at the moment it did.
At the moment, you know, I think it was just--
it just, yeah, it's...
Yeah, just a little bit at a time
to help you get through or whatever.
Somehow I knew
that I didn't want to be an alcoholic.
I didn't want to be a drug addict.
Uh, so I switched booze and alcohol for women...
and I got around.
And it was the uniform...
and it was the fact that I was a-- I was a widower.
And so I just swapped one coping me--
one bad coping mechanism for another.
And this lasted for a few years.
[interviewer]
We got, um,
sort of inadvertently set up by our dispatcher.
He texts me back and goes, "They sent me your number,"
and I was like, "What?"
I was like, "No." [chuckles]
I was hurting, um,
I was lonely, I was single...
and, uh, so I texted her one day
I'm like, "Hey, it's Keith.
I heard you think I'm cute."
And it just sort of took off from there.
[interviewer]
I think that I don't see people necessarily
for what's on the outside, but who they are.
Um, and that our baggage,
our past, our history is--
it really just changes who we are,
it doesn't define us.
Everybody has good days and bad days,
whether you deal with mental health or not,
but things were-- things were good.
Um, I had finished my nursing education, um,
so we were doing a lot better financially.
Um, we had bought a house,
you know, sort of living the-- the American dream.
Um, and we made a decision
to, um, try to have a baby.
Pretty uneventful until the end
where we had some medical complications
that resulted in, um,
me delivering our daughter early.
During the period of time that I was in labor,
there was times they were asking if we wanted last rites,
if we wanted the chaplain.
They just can't stop the bleeding,
and she's hemorrhaging.
We didn't know if the baby would make it.
We didn't know if I was gonna make it.
The idea of losing another spouse
sort of started the spiral.
That was a really, really tough thing,
and I didn't realize it was happening
until we all came back home and then we--
we knew something was up.
Something was different with Keith.
[Riggle] The results of the trauma
first responders face can be catastrophic.
And not just with alcoholism and divorce.
In America, first responders
make up less than 2% of the population,
but account for nearly 20% of the suicides.
I just started becoming more aware
of what the problem was and how big it was
and how all encompassing it was.
And I-- I didn't know...
I didn't know if I could heal.
I-- I just felt like I was too far gone,
that the problems that I were--
that I was becoming aware
were problems was every bit of me.
It-- it wasn't like, uh,
"Oh, I just need to start doing this,"
or "Maybe if I do that better, I'll be okay."
It was, uh, "I need to not be me anymore."
And how do you do that, you know?
I gave up on therapy.
I stopped going because I felt like
it wasn't helping anymore.
And...
life was still stressful,
things weren't getting any better,
and I didn't know what to do.
And so I--
I started thinking about killing myself
off and on all the time.
You know, just constantly up and down,
never enough to actually do it,
no attempts, but just thinking about it.
I'd be driving in my truck just...
"Why don't I just drive right into this bridge abutment?"
Just, what am I doing?
Like, what is the point of any of this?
Why do I keep trying?
Like, I just felt like I had hurt everyone
that I cared about.
I was dragging everyone down with me, and I...
I just didn't want to do it anymore.
I didn't know what I was fighting for, you know?
I had no direction and...
it's really my-- my wife and my brother.
I just couldn't...
I just couldn't leave them behind.
'Cause I felt like I'd be a failure,
and I just couldn't-- I couldn't do it.
I wanted to. I just couldn't,
so I just stuck around, just treading water,
just trying to figure out what the fuck to do next, so...
My depression almost killed me a couple of times.
I tried to take myself--
tried to take my own life four times, so--
and as I got older, I learned how to take care of that
and learned how to manage it better.
It became apparent I couldn't take anymore.
Where I was just, like, turned so inward,
and I was so depressed,
and I just didn't want to exist anymore.
At this point, my-- my two older kids
were completely out of the picture.
They wanted nothing to do with me.
I didn't want to die, I didn't want to exist.
I went down in, uh, I went down in my basement
and, uh, got in my gun cabinet...
and I, uh...
I, uh...
I, uh, I grabbed my nine mil handgun.
That was my carry gun.
I'd gone to the range and probably put
700 or 800 rounds downrange
and never had a problem.
Never jammed, never double fed,
never had an issue with the mag, nothing never happened.
It was always just clean, spot on, dead on accurate.
And I was pissed, and I-- and I ran downstairs,
and I grabbed it, and I slammed the mag in,
and I rack it,
and I remember screaming,
and I pressed it against my head,
and I just pulled the trigger, and it clicked
and for, like...
it seemed like minutes,
but it was probably a split second,
it was nothing, it was-- I heard nothing,
I felt nothing...
I saw nothing.
And I was like--
I had that, like, feeling, "Oh, it worked.
It's over. The pain is over."
And I realized my eyes were closed...
and I opened them and I was, "What the--
the fuck happened?"
[sighs] So, I-- I dropped the gun
under a chair in front of me, and I started crying.
And I realize...
that the gun never went off.
And so I open up the slide on the gun...
and the gun had double-fed a bullet.
It jammed the firing tube.
And I was like...
I like to say I had this moment of realization
that it wasn't meant to be,
that I'm supposed to be here, but I didn't.
I was pissed.
So, never thought he would try.
After the fact, not surprised it happened.
Um, we had always sort of,
in my mind, had an agreement
that it wouldn't come to that,
um, but things had just spiraled to this point
where, in his mind, there wasn't another option.
Um, that his existence
was causing more damage than benefit.
So, I was not prepared
for when he told me what had happened, um...
but, again,
not surprised in hindsight
that we were leading up to it.
[interviewer] How did he tell you?
He called me. Yeah.
[interviewer] Do you remember what he said?
It was basically, you know,
"I just tried to kill myself, and it didn't work."
And it just sort of just-- was like getting backhanded.
You know, that we had gone so far
and worked so hard to get where we are,
and it, to me, felt like it was all gone.
So, then we...
sort of were like, "Well, what-- what is next?"
You know, "What do we do?
Do we, you know, go to the ER?
Do we go and getting--"
Our mental health system is so broken.
Um, there are-- I mean, I've had patients
that have walked out of our ERs and killed themselves
within 20 minutes of discharge.
It's a very broken system,
and it is even more broken
for the first responder community
'cause we know the system.
We know what to say and what not to say.
We've had a lot of ups and downs, um,
and to me the most challenging thing
is watching somebody
while Keith was going through his hardest times.
Desperately just trying to figure it out
and desperately just...
[clears throat] Sorry.
There was a point in time when he was in the hospital
and getting treatment that was causing some me--
some short-term memory issues,
and-- and we would talk, um...
uh, just regular day talk stuff
trying to just visit,
and he would talk about how just...
he would do whatever he had to do
just to get back to that spot of not being in this hell.
There's no-- really no other way
for me to be able to describe it to somebody.
He was in hell, he was, you know, he...
I-- I didn't help with that,
but I tried to be there for him when...
didn't-- didn't recognize some of the signs and missed it.
And, um...
then-- then your best friend tries to kill himself.
[somber music plays]
[Riggle] When that bullet lodged
in Keith Hanks' pistol, it not only saved his life,
it sent him down a new path of discovery.
That there are ways to cope with the trauma
associated with being a first responder.
Early on in my career,
it was just starting to be recognized
that we're probably not doing coping that well.
We've-- I've definitely seen a change
over the 30 years that I've been in the fire service.
Um, the change to understand that,
yeah, this-- this job will take a toll on you.
As I've been in my career, like I said, this is, um,
I'm in my 21st year,
so when you see certain things now,
it's easier me-- for me now to manage it,
and I have a good support system
of people-- of people to talk to.
I know some great doctors, I speak to other officers,
um, good friends of mine,
you just need to-- you need to unload it.
You can't be the tough guy and think nothing bothers you
'cause that's bullshit.
It does bother you.
Don't hide it, don't eat it.
You know, if you can't talk to your partner at work,
if you can't talk to somebody on the department,
if you can't talk to a chaplain or-- or, you know,
some sort of clinician or your significant other,
try and find somebody that you can talk to,
because if you eat this stuff,
it-- it does really bad things to you.
It's gonna-- it's gonna tear you up.
Even just talking to your partner on the ride back
from-- from the call helps tremendously.
All municipalities,
we have an employee assistance program
that's open to all members.
I've actually referred several people to that
for different reasons.
That's all anonymous.
You don't talk about what you talked about inside,
so people feel comfortable sharing.
Um, and that's designed
to kind of diffuse the situation,
get it out.
See, and those people would, you know, the--
the teams we bring in might recognize, you know,
it's pretty normal reaction with everybody
what they saw, you know,
whether it was a burn victim or whether it was a car accident
or whether it was a-- a person that we worked with
that we had to render aid to,
which is always a high stress.
Um, they might identify,
"Hey, we need--
this person, we need to go down a further road
to giving them those, uh, those resources."
We're getting there, but it's still a long way to go.
It's still taboo in a way to talk about...
the-- the traumas that you see and the fires that you go to
because, um,
either people don't want to hear it,
or they're just like, "Well, you chose that profession.
So, what do you mean?
You're having a bad time with something?"
The department that I work for now, uh,
the chief is very, um,
open about this stuff.
And any time there's a bad car accident
or a bad fire, he always offers help
if you need it.
The employee assistant programs are really good.
You know, I mean...
I-- I-- I hope people understand that it's good to talk about it
and get it off your chest
instead of keeping it all in, you know?
[interviewer]
Uh, they're at a lot better advantage now
than we ever were when, you know,
back when we started 25 years ago.
Yeah, back then there was a stigma.
But as far as the people coming up right now...
as an instructor
and as somebody who's worked with people like that, you know,
they ask me, "How do you deal with a call like this?"
I'm like, "You cry your eyes out."
Like, as soon as you walk out of the ambulance
or out of the emergency department,
you go cry your eyes out, you're a human being,
you're an emotional creature.
If you aren't affected by that, I don't know what to tell--
I don't know how to deal with that.
This peer support or anyone helping somebody else
is always, like, a secret.
It's like, you gotta know a special knock
or something like that
or have that person to call that person,
and it can't-- it can't be that way.
I'm not talking about talking about your feelings.
We get enough of that at work.
You just need to--
to basically identify
that there is support that's needed.
Even though as a society in general
is more open to having conversations
about suicide awareness and-- and depression
and those topics, um, we are just--
just now starting to connect them
into the first responder world.
We all started kind of networking a little bit,
and there's more and more people talking about it.
Uh, we have conversations now with groups
as opposed to people just going their separate ways
and-- and not talking about it.
So, they're still there, they're just more open now
because people don't feel they have to hide it.
And we're trying to pass on to the newer generation,
the newer firefighters and paramedics
coming into the field
that it's okay, talk about it.
Nobody cares, nobody's judging you.
I think that's one thing,
especially in the last few years has become--
the mental health professionals have realized
peer counselors
or people get them trained somewhat in this
are incredibly powerful.
'Cause sometimes, someone from the outside,
especially when you're on that hair trigger
or you're snapping because of what you've seen,
and, I don't know, someone right out of college
comes in and says, "Well, we're gonna talk about this."
"Well, I don't want to talk to you right now."
I do peer support groups two nights a week,
and we just talk.
And it's good that when you have that bad call,
my wife would just look at me, "You got group tonight?"
"Yep."
And we know we're good.
And a couple of times I'll get in on it,
and I just kind of need to vent a little bit,
and life is good.
Now, we have this backpack theory,
I don't know if you've heard this,
um, every time we see a trauma,
we put a rock into a backpack.
And every time we talk about it, we take a rock out.
If we do not talk about it, that backpack will weigh us down
and break us.
So, the more we unload from that,
the more we can receive.
One-on-one should be to sit down and talk.
"Is everyone here all right?
We're gonna sit down and talk as a group,
we're gonna sit down and talk individually,
we're gonna make sure everyone's okay."
Because you need to take care of the people
that are taking care of everyone.
Mentally, physically, you know, um...
whatever we can do.
When you're on,
you're not allowed to not be okay.
You call an ambulance and they show up,
they gotta walk in calm, cool, collected.
I'm not running, I'm walking with a purpose.
I'm not yelling, I'm talking loudly.
I'm not upset, I'm calm and giving direction.
And if we're a mess...
imagine how things go from there.
To find a way to shut that on and off,
that's not a real easy switch to hit,
uh, but...
when you're day-in and day-out is potentially death,
dismemberment, destruction,
you should make sure that you're all right.
Um, when I first came back,
my first appointment was in Panama,
and I was able to meet
this old timer special forces medic.
So, him and I, coming from the special ops background,
really clicked,
and we were doing some training together,
and he said to me, "Brian, I don't know you at all,
but you need to take what you have and what you feel,
and you need to make a foundation.
And you can't make it out of sandstone,
and you need to start this today to make a solid--
because if you build it out of things
and just suppress it and tuck it away,
it's gonna crumble and you will crumble."
The state has-- has recognized, in the emergency services,
that we had-- we had a problem, we have a problem,
and if we don't deal with these things early on
and get it out of the-- get it out of the-- shadows,
uh, we-- it's a real problem.
I-- I wanna share this, I always feel, um...
bad or a concern
for my law enforcement brothers and sisters
'cause we talk about us operating as companies
and together all the time.
Law enforcement officers, a lot of times,
they're in their cruiser by themselves
so they may get and do a scene,
but then they go back out on patrol.
They don't get that as much.
So, yeah. It's getting better.
Before, in my profession,
I'd say, when I started, garbage.
"Oh, let's go get drunk." That's how we took care of it.
"Oh, we saw 27 dead bodies today."
"Ah, let's go get hammered. It'll be all right."
But now we have good companies and good services
that will come to the station.
And our bosses where we work, they're pretty good at it,
and our fire department, they help out a lot, too.
This stuff has been going on a long time.
We need to bring it out and make it part of the culture
that it's okay to ask for help.
You're not invincible,
and we're gonna-- we're gonna give you the tools
to help you deal with this 'cause we don't want to see
anybody deal or go to that-- driven there--
and it's-- it's a problem, suicide or whatever.
I-- I can't even imagine.
It's never entered my mind,
but someone getting to that point
where they're so helpless,
that's their thought, so culture change.
Now the culture is developing,
it's understanding that, no, you know what?
You go see some of these tragedies,
you should probably talk to somebody about it.
And if you do go talk to somebody about it,
it's not reflected as negative so much anymore.
[Riggle] The simple act of opening up
has proven to be a powerful tool,
but the first responders of Townsend
have also found additional ways of coping with the trauma.
[sighs]
I'm still on the job, so there's only so much...
that I want to say, but--
or that I can say, but...
oh, fuck, it.
In 2017, New Hampshire finally made it
medically legal for people with PTSD
to get a medical marijuana card.
And, uh, I am very against pills and pharmaceuticals,
but I was willing to try that.
And I did, and it helped a lot.
Um, it didn't cure anything,
but it just helped life suck less, you know?
It just-- I didn't want to drink,
but that was the only thing I could do,
like, legally, you know?
That's the only thing I could talk about.
I hated alcohol.
I knew alcohol made it worse,
but temporarily it made it better.
But once I got my medical marijuana card,
that helped keep me here,
it helped keep me around,
it leveled me out a little bit, you know?
Then eventually,
it wasn't really helping anymore, you know?
And I ended up having an event happen at work
which really triggered me and just set me off
in the worst way possible.
And basically I had a mental breakdown.
And I was unleashed, unhinged.
It was the closest to pure insanity
I've ever been in my entire life.
Over something now I consider pretty stupid.
But, you know, after years of just bottling it up
and just holding it in, it's funny,
all you need is that one little thing
and you just... [imitates bomb exploding]
It just explodes.
And, uh, so I exploded, and, coincidentally,
right around the same time that I exploded,
I started reading a book on meditation.
And after many failed attempts, I finally was able to meditate
and it changed my entire life.
And, uh, it's just been an incredible journey
for the past three years, since then...
of healing, and I'm doing it myself
with no outside sources.
And, uh, it's led to everything.
That's the basis of my talk that I tell people
is I try to get veterans
and police and firemen to start meditating
because of how much it helped me.
And that's when I met Keith.
And so here I am meeting this guy,
and we're talking about our presentations
and how we're gonna do it.
And he's like, "Oh, man, do you meditate at all?"
You know, he's asking me, "Do you do cannabis at all?
Like, what are your things? What do you do?"
And he's kind of a laid back guy,
and I'm like, "No, I don't fucking meditate.
Like, no."
And so he sends me a book by a Buddhist monk.
I'm like, "Oh, my God. Here we go."
I started meditating, and I started realizing
the only thing I have control over is my reaction,
and that my whole life I've been reactive.
And for the first time in my life, I'm able to...
shut off the, you know, whatever it'd be,
the images, the-- the voices.
You know, thinking about the past
and worrying about the future, it started to become something
I had more control over
because I was living in the now.
I was-- I was practicing mindfulness.
I was-- I was-- I was really getting into it,
and it just-- it just-- I nurtured it,
and it just flourished.
It just grew into something just amazing.
I wouldn't have bought into it
had I not experienced something in the fall,
uh, a breathing process that I witnessed.
I lived it, I saw it, I saw what it does.
Uh, my arthritis, that I've had most of my life
since I came back from Iraq, doesn't exist.
I don't have aches and pains when I stand up anymore.
My stress level's significantly lower.
That stuff works.
This Reiki stuff and the yoga and all that stuff is working.
Later in the fall of 2021, I got a weird Facebook message
from one of the groups I had joined
regarding first responder PTSD,
and she was like, "I run this coaching business
and, you know, with what you post,
and, you know, everything, and what I saw in your bio,
you know, I really think we could be a good team."
And I'm like, "What's life coaching?"
Because it's so unheard of in the first responder world
because it started in the corporate--
coaching started in the corporate world
and in the church world,
but as first responders, we're barely using therapists.
And so we start doing these-- these sessions,
you know, me and her, and we start setting goals.
What can you work on?
What things do you not like in your life?
And one of the things I didn't like was
the fact that I hadn't talked to my son in seven years,
my oldest son,
and then my oldest daughter in almost three.
And we had this conversation and we talked about goal setting
and perspectives and what can be done,
and the next day I actually called my kids.
And so it's become this-- this thing
that just fits into who I am.
In a coaching relationship
we listen on three different levels,
and we ask very powerful questions
that allow the individual to come to their own ideas
and understandings about where they are right now,
and help them to formulate action steps and goals
to lead them into positive changes.
Um, the negative connotation that therapy, uh,
we-- we feel when we talk about therapy or counseling,
um, is something
that's very different from-- from coaching.
[Riggle] After years of watching himself and his peers
struggling with mental health, Brian Moran opened Hilltop Farm,
a retreat for friends like Keith Hanks and Brian Harkins
to get away from the triggers of everyday life
and just breathe.
30-something years of working 90, 100 hours a week
and now here I am at the Hilltop Farm
in Mason, New Hampshire, working as a shepherd,
working with my wife.
We actually have survivor's guilt
because we got out of health care.
We made the break.
Counseling can only do so much,
and I found that just talking more and more,
like, we talk to Keith and Brian and these other groups
that we're doing.
These retreat-like atmospheres,
I think they help more than the therapy.
There has to be more places like this place here
to help us out,
um, more relaxation for us.
And it's working better than the high-priced medications
that they want to give you.
Or maybe you can go out
and play with some sheep, you know?
Help trim their nails, feed them, clean the stalls.
You know, go out and play with the dogs
and run around the fields.
It's working.
We realized that one of the things we could do
is working the farm, working with animals,
that they can relax
and just learn how to breathe again.
I physically changed,
and I've only been here five months,
uh, off basically all the meds that I take,
uh, clean eating, clean living.
Uh, it's been good.
It's been very good.
And we wanted to give that to other people,
so we came up with a crazy idea
of starting to invite people out.
There was two good studies out of the VA,
uh, one for animals and one for plants and horticulture
that it just lowers your blood pressure,
get you off the medicines, calm, that kind of stuff.
We don't want a clinical site.
We just want a place
where you can check your luggage at the door and breathe again.
Sometimes we don't need to hear your story,
just be here.
And even if they just need to do it for a day,
it's-- it's-- sometimes the day is all that counts.
The day of the trades where people are working
and they build something and say, "I built that."
For us in health care,
and a lot of times in the military,
police as well,
you really can't put your finger on anything,
and so here is that moment
where you can have an anything.
What I do now is I'm an advocate for PTSD.
Uh, the stigma, the awareness, suicide awareness,
mental illness and mental wellness as a whole.
You know, the biggest thing...
what I tell people...
is that you gotta-- you gotta face--
you gotta face the music,
you gotta face who you really are.
And that's a really hard thing for us
in the first responder world to do.
You know, and, you know, we're like--
we won't face, you know,
the skeletons in our closet, right?
We'll go into a burning building
where there's absolutely no hope to find anyone alive.
You know, we'll go in a burning building
with-- with-- knowing that, you know,
that hose line may fail and we may get trapped
and we may burn alive.
That's okay.
That's okay, but facing the shit that's already happened,
it's already happened, it's not happening right now,
it happened 20 years ago...
that's too scary to deal with...
but if you're going to heal,
and you're gonna have longevity in the job,
and you're gonna be a better, you know,
father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter,
whatever it is you are,
you gotta face that shit...
because it's not going away until you do.
It's gonna stay there.
I think the message is that you are not alone,
that we have resources, we have support.
Hopefully, someone starting today,
in 30 years will go-- look back and go,
"Geez, the culture now is better,"
or, you know, they can't even imagine
where I came from.
Coffee and doughnuts were always in the back. [laughs]
It's pretty funny.
You're leaving an asset on the table
as far as I'm concerned.
You should make sure you check in with people.
The biggest thing is don't try and deal with it on your own.
If you need help, get the help.
There are plenty of things out there nowadays.
I think the mentality that we have to lose,
so important that we have to lose,
is that man, woman, child, you still have feelings
and what you see...
and how awful those things are need to be talked about.
It's not necessarily spouting off all the answers.
It's, "Here's where you want to look,"
you know, "Here are some things you want to be a part of."
It's, "Here's the other resources
that can help you," and that's a good thing.
You know, whether you grew up in the fire service or not,
you need to take a breath, and if it's a bad thing
or you're having a tough time, to always come back,
and that's what the firehouse kitchen table's for.
I've already seen quite a few things,
and I know that I'm gonna continue to see that.
And I'm okay with that 'cause I love this job...
but I'm mostly okay with it
because I know now I have the tools to deal with it.
You know, you're a firefighter,
you're supposed to go out and help everybody, and--
but the problem is, it's like who helps us?
Let's just-- let's just find a way to help and get through it,
because if I'm not on point at work right now
'cause I'm worried about what happened the other day,
I'm gonna be ineffective and something bad could happen
to any one of these people in the public
that I'm supposed to help.
You're not a victim of your past,
you are who you are as a product of your past,
but it doesn't change you as a human
in terms of your good qualities.
Those things you can't take back that you can only--
you can only do better from this point forward...
that I'm now facing with my-- with my two older kids.
And-- and how do you do that?
As a-- as a man in his-- in his almost mid-40s now
with two adult children...
now my battle is, how do I fix that bridge?
How do I prove to them that
I'm not angry, scary Daddy anymore?
Riley, she's never known me as a firefighter.
She's never seen me run off to a call,
She's never-- I've never had to leave on a 48-hour shift.
She also hasn't seen me as the Incredible Hulk.
She's seen me as Daddy.
And I am so grateful for that.
♪
["Whatever You Say" by Dark Sky Reserve playing]
♪ And some things won't leave you ♪
♪ No matter how hard you try ♪
♪ They stay in the distance ♪
♪ Like the moon stays with the sky ♪
♪ Some folks have to wander ♪
♪ No matter how far they go ♪
♪ Still drawn together like the body and the soul ♪
♪ You and I had a difference ♪
♪ We've caught up in the flood ♪
♪ We live just outside of of the moon ♪
♪ And blood ♪
♪ I need a drag 'cause I want to drown ♪
♪ Hurry up, try not to wake us up ♪
♪ I didn't want to let you down ♪
♪ Not what I had coming ♪
♪ I guess I should've known ♪
♪ I left with all the splinters ♪
♪ The crushing of the bones ♪
♪ The words you say about me ♪
♪ You know I'm still the same ♪