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A firefighter confronts burnout and finds renewal in a community built for women on the front lines
There are lots of things you are told when you think about venturing into the fire service, but the lasting effects that lack of sleep can have on your body and mind aren’t exactly at the top of the list.
I’m sure as a new hire we can all recall the advice we were given, and how we were slightly naive to how this career would affect us. But it’s hard to shake the thought process of, “That won’t happen to me,” or, “Fragmented sleep? No problem! I can just nap and that will make up for it.” I was certainly one of those naive people. I had realistic expectations and an awareness that my life was going to be impacted by the obvious variables of what we see, hear, or smell. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the toll of sleep — or lack thereof — and the unrelenting sense of being in “fight or flight,” along with the cumulative exhaustion it creates.
The Slow Creep of Exhaustion
Don’t get me wrong, being a firefighter has been one of the most amazing journeys that I continue to have the privilege to be on. However, it has also been one of the most challenging.
I like to think I am a pretty resilient person, but you can only be resilient for so long. For many of us in this career, the shift happens quietly — brain fog starts to feel normal, needing multiple cups of coffee to make it through the day feels normal, and being completely exhausted yet unable to sleep at night (that “tired but wired” feeling) is just a non-negotiable part of the job.
I had reached a point where I started to believe this was simply how all first responders felt — because, in truth, every FR I knew felt the same way. Finding resources seemed impossible, and I could feel myself becoming another statistic on the “negatively affected” side of shift-work studies. Everything was beginning to feel dull and flat, until FireGals came into my life….
Read (or listen) to the rest below from our premier content partners at CRACKYL Magazine!
