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I have worked with first responders and military for years - twenty-nine years to be specific. Something that I have seen over and over in the people I have worked with is many come from dysfunctional families of origin. Think about it for a moment. What made you want to do a job that is full of risk, trauma and chaos? Many times it is due to childhood issues of living in a chaotic, abusive or abandoning home. You learned how to negotiate that mine zone and so you are very go

Don’t touch Daddy’s (Mommy’s) gun. Four seemingly unassuming words literally acting as an invisible barrier between life and possible catastrophe. This invisible barrier is nothing when up against the fascination of a child who is inquisitive by nature. Sadly, some of these inquisitive children died after discovering an unsecured firearm in their home. Unsecured firearms claimed the lives of over 4300 children aged 1-19 in 2020 (McGough, Amin, Panchal, & Cox, 2022). Firearms

Over the last year, I’ve told my story at three conferences. My story of what’s it like to live with PTSD. Complex PTSD to be exact. The first one was at James Madison University’s (JMU) Diversity Conference in March. It was a weird experience for me to do this in person since so much of life had been online for the past couple of years thanks to Covid. It was titled, “Living with PTSD, Working in Human Services,” because I was working for the Department of Aging and Reha