Love Rekindled: A Firefighter Family's Journey to Reconnection

Surviving and Thriving: A Firefighter Wife's Journey through Life's Challenges

In this episode of 'Just a Girl and Her Firefighter,' Kristi Hilmer interviews her friend Heather, who shares her remarkable journey of integration into the first responder lifestyle. Heather talks about meeting her husband during EMT training, going through nursing school, and the challenges of blending families with eight children, including twins. They discuss their separation, subsequent divorce, and eventual reconciliation after deep self-reflection and coaching. Together, they now run 'Relationship CPR,' offering coaching to couples in high-stress jobs, emphasizing communication, self-understanding, and the importance of community support. The episode highlights the difficulties, triumphs, and transformations in first responder relationships, advocating the need for creating positive environments both at home and in the workplace.

00:00 Welcome to Just a Girl and Her Firefighter

01:01 Meet Heather: A Journey into Healthcare and Family

02:07 Blending Families and Career Challenges

03:52 Navigating Parenthood and Career Transitions

06:38 Struggles and Separation

10:27 Reconciliation and Personal Growth

14:40 Balancing Independence and Partnership

19:31 Creating a Safe Space at Home

22:36 Personal Coaching Journey

24:32 Creating Relationship CPR

25:55 Challenges and Insights

27:09 Community and Support

28:49 Addressing Fire Service Issues

33:50 Resources and Outreach

34:49 Rapid Fire Questions

39:14 Final Thoughts and Gratitude

Interested in chatting with Heather at Relationship CPR? Email relationshipcprstat@gmail.com and follow them on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/relationshipcprstat

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Transcript

0:23

Hello and welcome to Just a Girl and Her Firefighter. I'm Christy Homer, your host. Grab your favorite drink, whether it's coffee, fizz, or maybe something else, and let's dive into the wild, wonderful world of First Responder Life. We are here to swap stories, share laughs, and tackle those, did that just happen? Moments. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just figuring this all out, this is the place for you. So kick back, get comfy, and let's have some fun. Welcome everybody. I am thrilled today because we get to chat with my new friend, Heather, and she has a very full life and does some really cool things for the first responder community. So I'm really excited to dive in and hear your story and see Really what this life has been like for you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what you do, and then we'll dive in a little deeper. Well, thanks for having me. And I am so excited to be here. So our story starts years and years ago, and I, Decided to kind of change the course of my life and go into health care. And I started my first EMT class and lo and behold, I met my husband in that class, my future husband, which was kind of cool. We were going through divorces at that time actually. And just I ended up going through the class and I was so done with men. I was like, this is it. I got this. I'm on my own. And he just in a roundabout way, swept me off my feet. And we have, we blended our families at that time. We have eight kids. At that time, and that was a lot in school and he was helping me try to guide that path. Somebody being in the healthcare field, he was an EMT firefighter and had been for like 20 15 years, I guess at that point in time, and just guided me through that and ended up telling me I should go into nursing, which I thought was like one of the most boring careers ever. And he was like, no, no, no, get in the ER. It'll be fun. And I was like, okay I'm going to trust you on this. So I did. So I went through nursing school. And in that period of going to class and stuff, we ended up getting married and blending our families and I finished nursing school. And we were back and forth rather, we should have a ours kid and decided that we would just see how life would go. And Just test bait, see if it happened or not. And yeah, about a month into that testing process, I was pregnant. It didn't take long. It didn't take long. Yeah. And so we were both like, okay, here we go. And we kind of went through the first 12 weeks of that ultrasounds and stuff with one baby thinking we were going to have one baby at 12 weeks, we went in for a little ultrasound and there was two little babies. In there. And we were both in like the shock of our life. Like, how are we going to do twins? We nearly left our daughter at the doctor. Actually, she was six years old at that time, five, five, six years old. And it's good that she knew to tag along because we were both in shock, did cry or laugh at that point in time. We just weren't sure what we were going to do. So anyway, we have twins and life is how old are they now? They're nine. Yeah, they're nine. And so now that we have a family of 10, 10 kids and he ended up adopting right before the boys were born, he ended up adopting my two girls. So all 10 are his kiddos. That's amazing. It is. It's fun. It's wild and fun and crazy and all the things. Yes. I three is a lot for me. Yeah. Yeah. 10. Right? It's wild. Yes. So what are the age ranges? So, well, I guess there's. 21, I guess right now our oldest is 31 and then our youngest are nine. So a little bit of a range there. So cool. Any grand babies yet? Oh, thank you. Okay. We were scared there because some of the older ones were old enough that they could be, yeah. That same time I was pregnant, I was like, I am going to finish having babies before I'm a grandma. Luckily, here we are no grand babies yet. Yeah, so it was just crazy. So just after we had. Well, right before we had our twins my husband decided that he was going to go to paramedic school because they thought if now we're never going to do it right, we got twins on the way. And so I had literally just finished nursing school that June, and he started paramedic school in September. It nearly broke us. At that point in time, it was crazy. It was just so much. We were moving at that time because our, we were outgrowing our house and buying new cars because we were outgrowing the car. And he has always worked multiple jobs as I think firefighters do. It's tough. They don't get paid hardly anything I feel like. And so always working multiple jobs. And usually fire jobs. So they're still gone a long time, days on end. And so he was going through paramedic school. I had the babies. I was on bedrest for nine weeks. Yeah, that was rough. So now I'm an ER nurse working in the ER. I rest for nine weeks and he's just. Working crazy jobs, crazy hours, trying to go to a paramedic school. And our babies were born at 35 weeks. So they were in the NICU for a couple of weeks, but healthy and good. And anyway, we went through a lot of trying times during then kind of got just real interesting. After that we had a lot of ups and downs and sometimes it seemed that there was definitely more downs than, than ups. And, we separated. When the boys were, I guess, two years old, we separated for a little bit and then got back together and things were not great still. And we ended up being together for a little bit longer. So a total of, we were married for 10 years and it just wasn't working no matter counseling and whatever else we thought we were doing. It didn't work and we got divorced and So then in that process of being separated from that and then getting divorced, we both just on our own ended up doing a lot of coaching and really like deep diving for ourselves and ended up having a deep conversation with each other after our divorce was finalized. And it brought us back together and we've been back together now for over two years and we just got remarried earlier this year in Fiji. Well, congratulations. Thanks. That is quite the story there. So what kind of, I'm trying to think of where we're going to go back to cause there's a lot in there. Crazy. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Nursing school and paramedic school. We did that too without children. And so, I mean, We had our first baby. I was four weeks pregnant when I graduated nursing school, and I can't imagine also adding a combination of blending a family in addition to kids and doing both of that because to shift work. Maybe we'll start there to shift workers alone is incredibly challenging. So what have you found maybe has helped with that? And maybe if you could go back in time, what would you do to help that transition? I don't know if that question makes sense. Yeah. So it's, it's challenging to shift work is hard because my schedule was a little bit more flexible where I could kind of work that in the ER, but his is not right. Like he's just on his, at the time, like we've done all sorts of schedules too. We've done Kelly's schedule. We've done 48 96. And then you add in other shifts in there that, he has to work for overtime or part time or things like that. So I had a lot of family support. Luckily, my family was here. They stayed with the babies. I worked nights mostly so that people could come over and sleep at our house when he wasn't home. And then I would go to work. I was pumping at work on my lunch break, really setting my alarm because I was sleeping. I would just hook myself up and then go to sleep for half hour and wake up and then go back to work. And then get home and babies would not sleep at the same time. They just would not do it no matter how much we wanted to. And so it was tough. I don't know if there's a different way, if there's a magic formula out there to make it work, you just have to, it takes a village. It just really does. It takes a village for people to help. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I don't honestly know how we made it through that. Like it was literally minute by minute sometimes and days by day. And looking back, I just think the next day is coming like tomorrow's always coming. So it's, we're going to get through it, right? Like one way or another tomorrow's going to show up. So I think you just have to get through it. Yes. Yeah. Those little stages are man. They're not for the faint of heart. They're rough. Then that's probably, I was going to say like, well, what advice would you give people? It's probably just then knowing it's going to end, like this season is going to end and then you just enter into a different season. So then walk us through maybe what that transition was like, like with separation and then divorce and coming back together. Like, what was it that you guys were able to work on? Was it communication or kind of what led to the eventual reconcile? Yeah. So I think a lot of times people think like you just separate and then, it'll be okay. Like you can get back together and then we're just going to just continue on through our life. What we found is that even though we separated that first time, we never did get down to the root cause of our problems and our issues that we had. Yeah. And. If you don't fix it, if you don't truly understand yourself and be able to fix yourself inside to be able to communicate better or the way that you're showing up, whether it's old values or old beliefs that you're using, you're going to keep continue to carry those. And in times of stress, you're going to always revert back to those, unless you have a different plan. Going forward that you're committed to for yourself first, and then for your partner second. And when we got divorced, I mean, we were saying things to each other that I never thought we would say to each other and especially not people that you love. And it was so far from who we were in our core that it was like, we lost ourselves to like somewhere along that road. With kids and busyness and life and everything like we just lost ourselves. And so really staying true to yourself and knowing that it's hard like this fire wife life is hard. But it only is really truly as hard as you're going to make it. Be just realizing that like your perception on what is happening in the story that we're telling ourselves about what is happening. I was playing the victim a lot. Like I am always having to do everything. I am always having to get the kids everywhere. I'm always having to clean the house and do the dishes and making sure that our life is going. And I'm still working and almost not like I was saying for me, but just still really playing the victim, like feeling I wasn't getting credit or enough. From him. And I really had to get out of that because I didn't realize I was doing it for one and for two, nobody's coming to save you. Like it's you have got to change it. And so all of these situations that are happening are just happening. And it's not, there's nothing really attached to it emotionally one way or another. They're literally just things in life that are happening and how we react and how we process through that is really on us. And so we just have to choose to be happy and we have to choose to work through the issue with our partner. And so when we both really found out what the core problem was with both of us, what patterns were showing up for us. It really just kind of brought us back together. One like really realization that I had, I was sitting in the car one day and I just thought to myself, like, why do I keep ending up in this situation? I had been married three times. He had been married three times. This was our third marriage together before we got divorced. And I just was thinking to myself what am I bringing in to these relationships where they kind. I've started to turn similar directions and I'm pretty independent, which I think other people can relate to when you're on this side of it independent, right? He would come home and I would be doing like all the things, right? I have to do all the things like poor victim me. I'm doing all the things. And. What I didn't realize is that it really takes him out of the equation of feeling like that man of our house of the king that he needs to be to step into our kingdom here and to lead us and he can be a partner with us. And it really was not helping him to feel important. And so like, why would you want to come home to that? Why would you want to come home to us? Just telling us like how you're not really doing anything to contribute around the house and I'm doing all the things like he is doing things to contribute around the house. And we just had to get out of that mindset. That's the biggest thing, the mindset that we're in is it's literally us. Just making that up in our brains for the story that we're telling ourselves. So I think that's one of the biggest things. So true. This is, I think this conversation is going to help probably articulate for people because when someone asks me and they're like, what is so different about me being married to a first responder, whether that's fire paramedic, like any kind of job that is high demand, high stress gone a lot. It's that exact thing. It's the, you have to be independent and have your schedule under control when they're not there, but then letting them back in when they're home. And that balance is a really tricky one that takes a lot of effort. And there's not one magic thing because it's two different people in every relationship. And then you have different stages. You have the little baby to then the teenagers to then I haven't gotten past that yet, but there's things past that I'm told. Yeah. And. That's the hardest part is keeping everyone connected and functioning and then not getting into that whole scenario because we've had many of those conversations of who's more tired and I do more or this or that or I just need or this. And it's so important to have those conversations, but also that mind, like it's that flipping of the script of it's not, I have to, I get to, or. Whatever it is, or it's also okay if the house is a mess and we're playing a game as a family. I have to tell myself that one often because if the house is chaos, I feel like my brain is chaos, but yes, I think that's. The number one hard thing. I think at least. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think the other part too, one of the things is like, who are we talking to and who are we reaching out to for help? Because I think like in one of your one of the things that I listened to, Do with you. It's you're always having to say I promise I'm married, right? Right. They're here. They're doing this, you know? And so you're talking to people that don't understand this situation and sometimes getting advice from them that is not super beneficial for your relationship. And once you say things to people outside and you're venting they always remember that. And so no matter if you get back together, like in our situation, it's really caused a divide in our family because there was so much said going through that divorce on both sides to him and his friends, family, and me and my friends and family that really we weren't bad people. We just didn't know how to do it together and it was frustrating. But now that we're back together, it's been an interesting walk of life of who truly do we put on our team. That's going to support us and cheer us on. And first and foremost, we have to be a team in our house, but then who are we letting in? And I also think it's interesting when we reach out to like social media, because we have no idea what the background is for those people, what their experiences are, and we're sharing our perception, our blip of the story in a paragraph or two online, and then having people respond back. And then I just wonder, like, how much are we taking that to heart and how much is that really going to affect the choices that we make by people that we have no idea what their walk of life is behind that, what their experiences are and how much that advice is going to benefit us. And sometimes I just feel like a lot of negativity and these groups. I just, it doesn't have to be that way, like the perception of it right how you're internalizing that and yes we need help and yes we have a needed community, but at the same time. I just think we have to be careful in general who we're putting on our team to be there to support us and cheer us on and listen to what advice they're giving. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Because it, it's one of the reasons I was hesitant to even create a podcast. A community on Facebook, because that has been what I have seen is just negative and complaining. And that's not how I live my life. And I didn't want to do that. And so a friend finally said, you can make it different. Like you can make it look different. Oh, yes. And it's the huge motivator behind this, because I think the more we hear from each other and the more we see. That there are successful stories that we can see that this life can be lived very well. And it doesn't have to end in frustration or anger or resentment or then the kids get out of the house and then you're like, now what? Like, we can enjoy this life. Because there's Prose to it too. There's just, you've got to survive the cons and that can be tricky at different times of our lives. Let's go into maybe what would you tell somebody listening today that is maybe experiencing some of these things or they're in kind of that messy middle and they haven't had the resolve yet. What would you tell them that you wish you had known? I think I always felt like I was walking on eggshells to like tempers were so high, things were so crazy when we would walk into the house and rather they were saying anything or not saying anything right can send the same message. I think we have to create a safe space in our home for people to walk into whether it's your kids. Or your family like the world is so crazy right now, and we have to create the safe space in our home and I think it can be difficult when we're not in that we're not in the resolve we don't know exactly how to do that. But get down to that basic line of getting trust back because it's an interesting thing about trust that. We trust a lot of different ways. We don't always trust openly and everything we get in a car every day and expect that the person is going to stay in their own lane on the other side of that dotted line. And when they don't crash into us, like we still get back in a car at some point. Right. And we do it again, but when our spouse comes home, we're maybe like, where have you been or what's going on? Or, We don't trust maybe 100 percent there, or we might trust that like they are going to protect us if we were going to get mugged or something right like they're going to take care of us, but we pick and choose what we're going to trust I think realizing that we have to get back to the basics of trust, we have to have kind of this open conversation and not. Have this eggshell type of thing happening in our home and create a safe space so that no matter what's happening in the world, we just can come home and just let down our guard a little bit. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. To have that safe Haven where then they can communicate maybe from a hard shift and we can communicate from In your situation, potentially hard shift as well and home life. Yes. Cause the ER, I remember telling my husband, I was like, okay, the hospital is a controlled environment. I get to see, I am in control and you guys go out into the world and you are in their world, like wherever the situation was, like, I will take my nice controlled, even though it's chaos in the ER, it's controlled. Yeah. Controlled chaos. Much more packaged patients are packaged. Yes. Taking care of people's pieces out in the street, it's not very nice to say, but literally the things that they see in the field are a hundred times worse than. What we get to see in the ER. People are mostly still put back together. And if they're not, we have great stories for it. I mean, the ER is great for all sorts of stories. Yes. Things that belong on the body. Things that don't belong on the body. Things that should be on the body. Things that are not, right? Yes. Good time. Think I saw on your social media that you guys, do you run a counseling center or do you do something right? And I think that's come post reunification, right? Right. So as we were going through all of our sessions, Stuff individually. Which is interesting because I was really raised in a really coaching environment my whole life. I have been around that. My aunt is a life coach. I have been environments with lots of different life coach or helpful people. I don't know. Let's say. And then my husband actually was coaching people for PTSD. Okay. I'm just getting divorced. And so what was so frustrating is that like we were helping other people with this and we were telling them, but we could not figure it out for ourselves. And there's nothing more frustrating than like knowing what to do, but just not being able to implement it in your own freaking life. And was we went through and we separated out our own stuff and we went on our own ways. What I realized was there's a difference between talking to people, counseling and therapy that you're supposed to be checking all the boxes that know what you're supposed to do. And there's a difference between really truly living that life. And we went through two tons of counselors, through our marriage for different things, how to blend the family, how to parent on the same level. Wavelength because we were both were coming from different walks of life with parenting and whatnot. And it just wasn't working. And then us having both coaching, backgrounds really And not being able to do it. So it really was that kind of piece that when we got back together, we were like, we have got to help other people. You don't have to go through this people in this industry and public safety, your police officers, your military people, your paramedics, healthcare workers, like we don't have to go through all this. Crap that like my husband and I went through and it's so common that we hear it all the time that we're just like, Oh, we just want to help people on a large scale, be able to change it up, change their story and their future and not go down the road because divorces are expensive, splitting kids apart. Is hard schedules and all that jazz. And so through all that we did create a coaching program and yeah, we do personal coaching for these people that are in these high stress jobs. It's called relationship CPR and that's fun getting the pulse back in your relationship. That's incredible. So how has that been as a project that you guys do together how has that experience been? It's so cool because I can share like, where I'm coming from for the female oftentimes, like we're relating a lot. And then the guys definitely come from a different perspective and a different point of view. So as we're coaching couples, it's really cool to see both of it. And then we can See what each person's lacking or needing, and then we get to fill it in on our side. Because we both, we still have very different perspectives. Our brains, mine and my husband's do not think the same. And it's been really cool to be able to have these different perspectives to help people. And it's just really well rounded because we've both been through it. We both work in the industry. We have kids and it's just all that aspect, that full circle of it. And so it's really been cool. And I get to hear him say things that I was like, really? Sometimes I'm like, I've never heard that. Or I didn't know that you ever felt like that, but it's just really cool. It's fun for us because our relationship is in a so much better place and different place than it's ever been. And we love each other. Just unconditionally at this point in time, as opposed to before, like I felt like that. And we would say that we loved each other unconditionally. But when you look back on it, it was like, really, we had a lot of conditions on what was going on. So it's really cool to just see this, both of our perspectives of going through that walk of life, going through that transition. And it's been really helpful. I can imagine. Absolutely. That would be a really unique thing to then hear the other side. Of this is what they go through and this is what they might be thinking and different things that would be very unique perspective. And what it meant to each other too, because the same situation we're both experiencing the same events, but can have very different outlooks about what that meant to us. And yeah. I just have to break it down a little bit and get back on the same page so that we're both headed in the same direction sometimes, but it's been really cool. That's awesome. That's so cool that you did that. I feel like something that's, I will probably talk about a lot and then in real life and on here, but it's that whole idea of purpose in the pain of if this is going to be the experience we are living, then let's do something with it so that we can help other people through whatever that scenario is and just help them not experience it maybe as severely. Yeah, for somebody that's actually been through it and walked through it, it's definitely different. It's different to be on the other side of it. But also like really inspiring. We get a lot of our friends and stuff that have been with us along this journey, us being together. And what's interesting is that people would say to us they're so shocked that we got divorced because from the outside looking in, I don't think that you would know that we were struggling as bad as we were inside people that were closest to us knew our families knew But looking on the outside, people were just like shocked. I posted on our Facebook a little while after, like when we were getting married, like like about us type of a thing. And people were like, did we miss something? Because we thought you were married. Have you just been together for 12 years? And it was like, no, like we struggled. And I think that's the thing too, is you don't have to struggle in silence either. There are other people out here. That are willing to help and just give a little bit of guidance and sometimes you're really not off the mark as far as you think you are, you're really might not be at the end. And what I think is really challenging is people will say like these statements, if this happened, then, whatever. We see it a lot in the fire service public safety stuff is that a lot of our folks are ADHD, ADD. And that comes with. Other habits, right? So you get a lot of alcohol, a lot of guys drinking with their buddies coming home completely drunk. They're trying to like numb their emotions and all the things that they've seen. And then they don't feel good enough at home because the wife's already got everything taken care of. How do they step into that? Like you don't need them. Right. So there's like all this stuff here. And some of it's just how their brain works, but also their. Need and so you see a lot of infidelity in the fire service. And just like a lot of those things that just come with the job in here. And I just think It doesn't have to be that way. We can just do a better job. We can support each other better. We can do a better job. We can recognize when those things are happening. An interesting statistic is that the fire service has one of the Largest suicide rates per capita over. So there might be more people, but per the pool that we have in the fire service, there are more firefighters committing suicide. And it's just awful. Like we don't have to suffer in silence. We don't have to go through all these behaviors thinking that nobody else is going through it because there are so many. Many people going through it, that's exactly like talk about it and create a community. That's positive. And this life is not always positive. We see a lot of not positive things, so we can just make it positive at home. It's just a much better situation. Yes. Yeah. There is so much in PTSD and in what they see, and then how they're just wired. Like you see this even in physicians, right? Like there's a certain type of physician that acts this way, and then a certain type of physician goes into this, industry or whatever the specialty is. It's the same in the fire service. So you combine all of those different aspects, and then when it's in silence. People just think that there is no one else going through it. And it's if we can name it, it's so much less power over whatever it is that either side is feeling. Yeah. So it's incredible the work that you guys are doing. Thank you. We just really wanted to help other people. It's a large scale. It's just it's awful to go through what we went through. It's easier to talk about it now because we're on the outside of it, but going through it's just it's hard. It's tough. It's hard on everybody, especially the kids too, I just really want to help others know that this is, we're all in it together. We're on this crazy big boat together swimming along and somewhere on their lifeboats, just hanging on for dear life. Yes. And then if we can reach out to the community, then they can come alongside and help. Whoever is on that boat. And I think that's just the most crucial part is we have lost that sense of community and that sense of being able to share the struggles and the successes and being able to have those conversations with each other. So hopefully. This helps that where there is a community of people that can run alongside you and be there to lift you up in certain moments. And I think it's been interesting to like the time that I've been involved with my husband in the fire service, like to see it change over time. There was a lot more joking and playing around and stuff like that. I think that was a way that they could release that crazy fire station pranks and stuff. Here, especially they've really cracked down on that, it's almost more like bullying and hazing and things like that. And so I think it's almost taken the fun out of that. And some of the things probably went too far, but this is a thing. But an alarm clocks and they're selling the awful hours in the night, like just funny stuff, right. Yeah. They're like really allowed to do that anymore. And so what's the release? When you don't see all this horrible stuff, like what's the release. So we just be silent and let everybody thinks that you're fine because you're always silent. We actually had one of the guys in my husband's station committed suicide. And, um, I was pregnant with the boys. So nine years ago, just for Christmas and I would always go get him and pull him out of his room. And we would always talk, but he was just silent all the time. And I don't think anybody really realized how much he was suffering until we found out we got the call and stuff. It was just horrible. Like we just don't too many people that have suffered in silence and silence doesn't mean you're okay. Absolutely. Well, what resource would you have or do, and we can put this in the show notes. If there are people listening and they're like, I'm not sure if that's my partner, or it could even be a firefighter that's listening or whoever it is. And they are like, maybe I am not okay. What resource do you have that we could connect them with? So they can get connected with us. Probably the easiest way is through Instagram, just with relationships, CPR. We can just get on a call with them a short call and talk it out and see if this is something that they feel like we can help them with to do coaching. And if not refer them out to somebody that maybe is a better fit for them. But yeah, we would love to do that. We've actually thought about doing that. Some bigger stuff, just like big group things so maybe more to come, but definitely following us through Instagram and Facebook is going to get all the updates and things like that. Okay. Awesome. We'll wrap this up. I have one more question and then we'll do rapid fire questions, which are always fun and this on a little lighter of a note. What is something you wish the outside world could understand? Oh, I would say the Is first responders are people, they have families to come home to. They're not just the uniform that you see on the street, even though they're kind of sexy and they're they're human. You know what I mean, like they have feelings and they go through the same things that you and I do and they're just in the public eye so they're held to a higher standard. But we at home, their families just want them to come home. Everybody comes home and we just want them to come home and we want them to be okay. And we want them to be dad and mom when they get there and be able to with us. And so be kind, like in a world where there's not a lot of kindness, please just be kind to these people. So good. Okay. Now we'll get into rapid fire. Okay. So what is your favorite movie? This is a good one. Cars. The Disney movie cars. Yes. A little lighter. That's a later. Okay. Favorite cartoon. Favorite character of all time is a mater. He is awesome. Have you gone to the Disneyland what's it called? Cars Land. Yes, I was like, it's not a ride, it's more than that. I've heard of Cars Land, yeah. Yes, okay. Oh my gosh, love it. Yep, Cars. Awesome. We've actually had a lot of people say cartoons. I don't know what that says about us, but yeah, or we're just home with our kids and that's all we're watching. I guess. Yeah. A hundred percent. Uh, do you drink coffee or tea, tea, chai latte, so iced or hot either way. I actually don't like the smell of coffee, so we have a little coffee maker in our house and it makes one cup of coffee so that you can take it and put the lid on it. So I don't have to smell it. Is that crazy? I'm like, I am. That is one of those things in the world where you're like on your own. It's me. I know. I don't mind. Coffee. Because even people that don't like the taste of coffee will like the smell of coffee. Yeah. Yeah. That is unique. And I will tell you what, working night shifts, I have never liked coffee more in my life. I just can't, I can't get, I can't get past my nose. That is interesting. And hospital coffee is not good coffee. Yeah. That's how I started drinking it. Black was working in the hospital. Cause I was like, there's no time for nothing. Like you got to enjoy it or be done. Yeah. There is some time. A hundred percent break. What? Yeah. Yes. The most breaks I ever had was when I was pumping. And that was still, dicey. Yep. Okay. What is one item you can't live without? Oh, it can't be people can be people. It cannot be people. It's too easy. Okay. I'm going to say my phone, but I'm going to tell you why. Okay. Because we don't carry cameras anymore. Yes. I have got to take pictures and video. Like I want to just capture all the moments. And I think it really came from when my twins were just babies. I could not remember anything. And if I didn't have pictures and videos to like, remember that first, probably year to two years of their life. Yeah. I will probably forget it. It was so just, like a zombie going through life. Yeah, I would say my phone just for the fact the camera. Yeah. The camera. That's good. Okay. Mountains or beach? Oh, beach. 110%. Oh, good. That's mine too. All the way here. And I live in Utah. Oh, you do? So there's no beach, huh? No. But get me to the ocean and I am just happy camper. You do have beautiful mountain. Are they considered mountains? What is like Zion and arches? Yeah. All mountains. Mountains. Okay. They are beautiful. They are beautiful. Last question is what is the best advice you have ever been given? Just in general. Has that doesn't have to be fire related. Oh my gosh. Don't eat yellow snow. Cause you're in Utah. I'm in Texas. That does not pertain to us. Oh my gosh. I would say that's pretty good advice. I remember getting that advice. Don't eat yellow snow. And I never have. Yeah. It's probably a good thing. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today and to share your story. I know that it's going to impact a lot of people and it's not always easy to share, the things that we are perfect at in life or when we've struggled. So I am just so grateful that you shared that with us and that we can hopefully rally in this community behind people who. Or maybe in that right now and that are going through the hard in that messy metal and that we can get them some resources and some help so they can get to the other side. So thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to just a girl and her firefighter. It would mean the world to us to have you subscribe, like, share with all the people you love and join us in our FireWife community. Thanks again and see you next time.