Life Beyond Bunker Gear
Welcome back! After a two year hiatus from my blog (and a ginourmous journey of rediscovering myself during that time!) I'm super excited to be back at it!
Quick Recap
As a quick catch up for those who may be reading this but who don't follow me on social media, I was off work for the better part of the year in 2023 after burning out completely in my job as a Fire Instructor with the Ontario Fire College, travelling the province and delivering highly sought after training to fire service members along with my colleagues. I'd slid into a self-defeating pattern of overworking in a misguided attempt to prove myself (due to my own long standing hidden insecurities), and constant stress and overwhelm became my daily experience, until it finally hit a tipping point.
I was about to board a plane with a colleague in Thunder Bay to fly to Toronto for staff meetings and was stopped at the gate because my drivers licence and health card had both expired. I was refused boarding. I remember looking at my colleague on the other side of the gate, fighting back tears, as my mind went blank and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Shock and awe was all I had access to in that moment. Classic freeze/fight/flight response. It was a pivotal moment in my journey and a powerful wake up call. I wondered how on earth I'd become so disconnected from my life that I could've let my licence and health card expire. Not only that, what else had I become oblivious to?
Despite hitting that tipping point, it was another 4 months before I actually went off work. I had taken the approach many of us take when faced with the edge of burnout...I worked twice as hard.
I initially thought a month or two would set me straight and I'd be good to carry on. My good friend and mentor, Retired Fire Chief turned Executive Coach, Arjuna George said to me at the time, "I think you may need more than a couple of months."
I shrugged his comment off, thinking I knew better.
As someone who experienced burnout himself and wrote a bestseller about it called Burnt Around the Edges, it's still surprising to me now that I couldn't see the scope of what I was up against and what he clearly knew firsthand.
Long story short, I returned to work in the fall of last year and although I was doing well personally, I found the the work no longer inspired me as it once had and I longed for other experiences. I felt like I wasn't bringing my best to the work or living up to the fullest expression of who I was, and in February of this year I left the job to pursue other passions.
This wasn't the first time I'd done this. I'd left the same job in 2017 to start my own coaching and speaking business where I taught body language and nonverbal communications to fire department members and spoke about body language and mental health at conferences for emergency services. I shelved that first attempt at a business when Covid happened in 2020 and my husband and I also made a move 1000km across our province for him to take a new job as a fire chief. Later that year, I returned to my job at the fire college and remained there until this year when I left to give this business building journey another go.
For the past seven months, I've been busy adding certifications to my toolbox, continuing to do my own healing work, learning how to navigate an ever changing landscape of online coaching and social media algorithms, website building and content creation, working with clients and "building the plane while I'm flying it" as my friend and colleague Ken Benoit used to say. Even though I was no longer "working" or "employed", and I was home all day, I was still putting in 8 hour days at my computer, everyday, in an effort to accomplish something. Build something. Produce something.
Until, that is, I realized after taking a week away from all things business in late August (with my husband, to help my daughter with her new house and spend time with my beautiful grandbaby) that I was just repeating the same pattern of overworking that landed me in burn out from my fire instructor job.
The lessons will repeat themselves until you actually get the lesson.
That week off turned into a month off and a whole lot of introspection about the path I'm on. I'd fallen into the trap of trying to force myself to fit into a box again (something my soul loathes!), of trying to do it the way others are doing it (because after all they have thousands of followers and are making millions so they clearly have figured out something I haven't) and therefore I must have to follow their lead because I'm not going to figure this out on my own.
Except wait...haven't I already figured out some massive things on my own (thanks to that inner voice telling me there had to be a better way), and created massive shifts in my own life already?
So yeah...I stopped doing everything that didn't feel good to me. I stepped back from the social media game, unsubscribed from a ton of email lists, unfollowed a bunch of people on social media, stopped signing up for courses and then I, perhaps for the first time in my life, actually let myself relax. I spent more time with my family back home, helping out my daughter with my beautiful grandbaby, and helping out with work on the new house. I spent less time on social media and more time reading, walking and honestly just enjoying being without achieving.
Which has led me here.
When I stopped doing all the things I thought I was supposed to do, and began to lean into things that I actually wanted to do, and with the help of many crazy high energy back and forth chats with my biz bestie, Piper (like only two manifesting generators can do), I found my way back here.
Back to Beyond Bunker Gear, and the start of a whole new adventure.
About Me
I've always had a passion for learning about and understanding human behaviour, likely stemming from my childhood as a shy, anxious kid who became highly attuned to others as a way to feel safe inside. I, like many others, experienced my share of traumatic events in my childhood and that shaped me into someone that approached most life experiences through the lens of fear rather than fun and adventure.
This deep desire to understand what makes other people tick as well as to understand my own thoughts, feelings and behaviours led me to study and become certified in several coaching and healing methodologies.
I first began studying body language in 2017 as a way to combat my social anxiety and became completely liberated by the knowledge and skills I developed, so much so that I became a certified body language coach in 2018. Understanding how to read and interpret other's body language, and how to harness my own became my secret super power and it allowed me to develop a confidence within myself that I'd never experienced before within the realm of social and emotional intelligence.
That same year, I also completed training in Holistic Wellness Coaching through the IAWP (International Association of Wellness Professionals) because it made sense to me to understand how all parts of life are intertwined and affect the others. As a good friend once said to me, "it's like the four tires on a car. If one area of your life (or one tire) is flat or under extreme stress, it puts all other areas (or tires) under added stress." (Thanks Forrest ;))
I've long been a fan of meditation and when I practice it regularly, I've experienced profound effects. (However, like many good habits in our lives, it often falls by the wayside and I'm happily returning to practicing it.) In 2021, I became certified as a hypnotherapist, which as I explain it, is similar to meditation but takes you into a deeper state of relaxation. I followed that with a year long certification program in advanced hypnotherapy modality which included inner child work, cord pulling, energy work and healing of relational and attachment wounds. And became certified in another level of that healing work this year.
Healing work of your own is a prerequisite for helping to support others in their healing and growth journeys and I've been an enthusiastic learner for the most part. Not all healing work is pretty and in fact can be downright messy at times and it got really messy for me during my Heal Your Life Coach training in Banff. But I never gave up. I might have left the room temporarily, but I always came back! Right Victoria? ;) I found that particular training so powerful, in fact, that I went back in May of this year as a Team Lead to repeat the 10 day intensive!
I've always been a believer in the power of authenticity and in one's ability and willingness to be genuine and open as being the catalyst for eliciting hope and inspiration in others and it's why I've always been very open about my own experiences with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress, menopause, midlife and of course, my experiences of life in the fire service.
One of the longest running struggles of my life was that of my repeating pattern of depression and depressive episodes and overcoming it has been one of my greatest accomplishments.
I was once told by a psychiatrist that I'd likely be on meds for the rest of my life. I went on the meds to help me out of the hole I was in at the time, but I knew it would not be a life long thing for me. She was the "expert" but I wasn't buying what she was selling.
Last year, after a particularly bad bout of depression, one in which I contemplated downing a bunch of pills*, something shifted deep within my psyche, or perhaps more likely, my soul, and I had the awareness that there had to be a better way. (This sudden knowing/insight/awareness that there had to be a better way has happened to me at key points in my life and has been instrumental for me in finding my way back home to myself.) *For me, my children have always been the lifeline that has kept me from ever following through no matter how bad it got for me, however suicidal ideation is something I had experienced many times in my life. It doesn't mean that I have been suicidal many times in my life though. It's an important differentiation to make.
The next day, I found a course in a hypnotherapy community I'm part of to help clients life depression fast. I purchased the course, applied what I was learning, and can say without a shadow of a doubt that that course broke my pattern of depression. Similar to studying body language to hack my social anxiety, I'd discovered a way to solve a problem I'd struggled with for decades-and it was without medication and without therapy. (I have nothing against either and have used both at different times. But for me, I knew there had to be a different way.)
The big thing about me and about this blog and about my life for that matter, is that I always felt like I had two different parts of me that simply did not fit together. The quiet, introverted, book nerd, spiritual, self development junkie who loves learning about what drives human behaviour and this other outgoing, strong, passionate fire service member and instructor who travelled the province and who somehow miraculously held her own in a predominantly male profession-an environment which actually caused significant undue stress at times due to her history of childhood trauma.
And yet, here I am.
Finally.
My two parts, my two sides, my two personas have become one in the most perfect way.
It's not an either/or as I always believed, and therefore experienced, it to be. Both sides of me have always been equal and vital parts of me, but because of my own life experience they'd become fragmented and disconnected which meant that I was never able to show up fully as my true self. My complete, whole, beautiful self.
Until now.
What's Next?
As I shift my focus away from what I thought I should be doing and towards that which I'm naturally drawn to by following the breadcrumbs of my soul, I find myself drawn back into the fire service. I'm working on a couple of projects I'm very excited about; one of which is creating mental health awareness training for a fire department who reached out to me recently and the other is a course development and instructing opportunity, which I'm equally passionate about.
I'm also excited to bring all of my unique skills and certifications in healing and wellness, along with my life experience and my fire service experience together to support those in emergency services in a way that's never been done before.
How do I know it's never been done before?
Because I haven't done it yet.
We all have unique skills, talents, knowledge, personalities and life experiences that are woven together in a way that will only ever happen once, which makes each and every one of us incredibly invaluable in whatever we choose to do.
For me, for now, it's creating tools, resources, training and coaching for those on the job and beyond the job.
Welcome to Beyond Bunker Gear.
Commentaires