Raise Your Resilience

11/13/2025

This hits close to home. There was a reason Petra Martin started Whidbey CareNet, a nonprofit that helped volunteers get resources to help them with that "burnout." Volunteers are roughly 80% of the US fire service.

A poor term, "burnout." I had my own after 16 years and I assure you, once it was properly named, "burnout" wasn't it. Raise Your resilience rose from it's ashes, and while it was Carenet, we thought it's be beneficial to be duplicable for places like Cornersville. No EAP, no HR department, no staff help of any kind for responding to the residents' worst days 24/7. Which means you go to the fatal car accidents, su***des, heart attacks, fires, and so on of the people who you know.

Way beyond burnout.

I finally stepped away from my service in 2015 to focus on healing. A tough choice, and sometimes I miss the service. This is what it is coming to in many places.

https://www.firerescue1.com/volunteer-fire-service/its-best-we-all-step-away-tenn-fire-chief-entire-volunteer-fire-department-resign?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawOCzIpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEesEVhrC-NXBf1cYsxUyhlctevZhWfk9T3pJMhdsYSd26ENvezbbMCjrVJFME_aem_K0kdxA-7TndQKyhgB6AZ_A

Former Cornersville Chief Matt Fox and his crew stepped down, citing administrative strain, burnout and funding challenges

11/05/2025

PSA:

There is a reason I never cared for IFS, apart from the fact it's just another talk therapy. For me, healing means I integrate. I was dis-integrated by trauma, so healing doesn't mean a bunch of parts. I would have to agree there is no scientific basis for his view. Anyway, the same with "inner child" perspectives. Integrating meant I became the one elderly man I am today.

Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.

01/18/2025

To cap of the last week, what it means to show up in the world. Try this, right now, for 60 seconds: stand up and strike the Superman Pose, knowing you are a super person. Not easy, is it? Healing your trauma using the Raise Your Resilience Toolbox Program™ can help you achieve that feeling! Own your place in this world!

10/29/2024

Just planned out the last 6 videos to be half way done with my trauma healing course.

10/26/2024

I am partaking of cancel culture this morning. I cancelled my Disney+ account. Partly because 1) they were taking my money and not not providing their service. 2) I cancelled them, and others, because I'm using that money to cancel something else - the last remains of my debt. 3) I am cancelling time consumers, and will hopefully turn to my once again growing music and book libraries. Yes, I still need a stereo. Donations welcomed.....

I posted an article about the FTC ruling that one click cancellation was going to be required which was as easy as one click subscribing. To which of course, providers objected. I explained my Disney+ experience on LI. Definitely not easy, so I can surmise that they love to take, and not give back. A good reason to cancel. I might in fact subscribe to the streaming provider that jumps on that bandwagon first as a matter of principle.

Don't be afraid to cancel. Cancel what doesn't serve you.

10/26/2024

A 12 minute video I made about resilience. Includes ladder tests we did in the fire districts. Yes, aluminum can really do that. Amazing isn't it!?

StreamYard is a professional live streaming and recording studio in your browser. Record your content, or stream live to Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms.

10/22/2024

When the pager goes off, you're expected to get to your station, put on all the bunker gear I have on in this image except for the air tank, drive that rig with all that gear on it, and get to the scene within 10 minutes. The bunker gear weighs roughly 70 lbs.

I was also expected to carry some of those tools pictured here, and a hose charged with water that is 150 feet long? I was expected to know how everything worked on that rig, where it was stored, and take care of it weekly, including the vehicle itself.

Even at 2 AM. And then going to work the next day.

It was hard.

On top of life I also had to keep learning new things about the profession, which in the end paid me about 27¢ an hour for 16 years of 24/7 response. I gained a bit over a dozen certifications, including a few required FEMA IC certs, and then some like Confined Space Rescue (200 feet up a buried drain pipe), and completing the FEMA Professional Development Course for Emergency Management.

It was hard.

On top of that life of going to work, responding to calls, and family, I had to deal with not being able to talk to anyone outside of the department about the calls I went to. The local professor who accidently killed himself with au******ic asphyxiation. Or the local Tai Chi instructor (mine) who decided to hang themselves on what would have been their wedding anniversary, dressed in their wedding finery. Or the gunshot su***de, the vulgar messes that life presents in car accidents that kill people you know.

What was hard got a lot harder.

I eventually broke under the hardness. I had to ask for help, and I needed a lot of it. Learning to take risk was hard. Discipline was hard. The discipline to train every day to earn my Krav Maga Instructor certifications. Dealing with the weight of the unidentified trauma of life was very hard, and healing it required doing the work with discipline because it doesn't heal in a two weeks. It doesn't heal in two years. And it doesn't take a life time. It might not be comfortable.

It does get easier.

It get's easier to execute the discipline even when there is no motivation, no inspiration. Easier to feel joy, and easier to smile. It gets easier to do what is hard because I get to put it down when it's over, rather than add that weight to my life.

It gets easier to break the cycles.

And then life is good.

You can heal your trauma once and for all. Your body keeps the score, and it can not only even the score, it can win the game.

It might be hard. It can get easier. Living with trauma is hard, and over time get's harder.

What will you choose?

10/21/2024

LI post.

From 2/2021 - Imagine that feeling, rolling down out of the Lolo Pass of the Cascade Mountains, and seeing the green Willamette Valley in front of you. This is why you loaded your wagon in Missouri and left for parts unknown in the first place.

10/13/2024

A video I did on the first of 4 Agreements by Don Ruiz. Once you watch, the image will make sense.

https://streamyard.com/yknkyejkah5g

10/04/2024

My Friday sentiments from my younger years. Let us stop, and heal.