Tales from Rural Maine: The definition of progress

When I started with the Orland Fire Department, I was afraid of everything. Quite literally. One year before I joined, I had been attacked by five idiots at a church before yoga one day, and for the next six weeks, I didn't leave the house unaccompanied. The church was so concerned for my safety, they provided an escort at my next week's class, and then they changed the locks and strongly suggested I never let myself be alone on the premises.

I slept with all the lights on inside and out for almost a month. My neighbors organized a 24-hour watch because there was a realistic fear that my anonymous attackers would come back to do more harm. I quit teaching yoga. I quit doing everything. I huddled inside my house all spring. All summer. I was afraid even to go in the yard. I was covered in stress-induced hives for almost a year. My joints ached. I didn't socialize. I barely spoke. I didn't sleep--and if I did, I had night terrors for the first eight months. I nearly committed suicide three times.

The police would not give me or my attorney the names of my attackers, who got off with a disorderly conduct charge because I was too frightened to press assault charges. I had no idea who most of them were. They were nameless. And they were terrifying. I saw the face of the woman who led that attack in my nightmares every night and I lived in abject fear that she or her friends would turn up again, somewhere, when I was alone. So if I was alone, I was behind a locked door--or two. If the doorbell rang, I hid.

I worked really hard to heal, to recover from the trauma, to get some semblance of self-esteem back, but as anyone with PTSD knows...the work is hard and long and sometimes it seems, we will never get well.

Even when I started going out in the world again, I lacked a sense of safety. And then one day, one of my most dedicated students, who also happened to be the assistant fire chief at the all-volunteer Orland Fire Department, suggested I use the training room at the OFD to teach a yoga class. It felt overwhelming to go out into the world again and teach. It felt unlikely that a fire department could be a comfortable home for yoga. But something inside me said, "Yes. Go. See."

So I went. I saw. I met Bobby Conary and Mary Lou Conary. And that space? It spoke to me. It spoke of kindness and belonging and of the possibility that maybe I could be okay again one day. I took a gigantic leap of faith, and I started teaching yoga at the Orland Fire Department.

Slowly, over the course of a year, the kindness and selfless service, the generosity and togetherness, the sweet, amazing courage that infuse that space calmed and settled my nerves. The nightmares stopped. The pain eased. I began to feel more brave and settled and strong. I developed a crush on the fire trucks. And then one day, the Chief, who had also become my student, said, "Why don't you join?"

I laughed. Me?? I'm afraid of everything. I thought he was kidding. But he was serious.

I told him I was too afraid.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked.

And I told him, "Two things really, fire and having to pee! What on earth will I do if I'm stranded for hours in turnout gear and I have to pee?!"

He laughed. And he explained that there were lots of things to do at the fire department that didn't involve being near fire. And as for the second thing, he said, "We have special equipment for that." And he took me to the back of one of the fire trucks and rummaged around in a metal compartment, moving big heavy tools with names I didn't know, until finally he pulled something out.

"This is what we use for that," he said, grinning, and he held out a roll of toilet paper. I laughed. 

It would've made all the sense in the world to say, "No," to joining a fire department, but something inside me said, "Yes. Go. See."

"Okay," I said. "I'm in."

When you apply for membership at the Orland Fire Department, someone nominates you at a monthly meeting. Then for the next month, you can attend weekly trainings as an observer to get a sense for the work and so that people can get to know you. After a month, they vote.

At the very first training following my nomination, I was about to get in a fire truck (my very first time!); I was feeling so brave and special and happy about this new chapter. And then I remembered that I had left my gloves in my car. I went out to get them...and almost ran smack dab into the two people I feared most in the world, the two people I had not seen in person since the day they attacked me almost exactly one year to the day before. I had seen them only in my nightmares. And it was them. They were there. The woman and one of the men (her husband, it turns out) who, along with their three friends, had attacked me.

She had joined the department just a few months prior to me.

Because I was never told her name, my students did not know her name, either, which meant that no one in the department could connect that human being with what had been done to me. I like to think that if they knew, the members of the OFD wouldn't have voted her in...

I'll skip all the stuff that happened next. How impossible, how terrifying, how rotten it was to serve with her for two years. How I refused to quit, even when all of my PTSD symptoms came back. I'll skip all that for now and I will tell you this: I have faced every single one of my absolute worst fears since I joined this department. I have done them one at a time. I began with learning how to step into the woods and pee without soiling my turnout gear at a structure fire. And I moved on to walking on roofs and holding a hose directed at a burning building and responding to an accident where a young man's broken legs were pinned under his car.

Every time, as I am about to do something terrifying--maybe it's going out in a little rubber boat to look for a man's body in the world's scariest bay; maybe it's going out in the middle of the night and driving a fire truck to the spot on the highway where a woman laid down in traffic; maybe it's getting behind the wheel of a fire truck in the first place; maybe it's putting on an ice rescue suit and walking out on the ice toward open water, knowing you are going to fall through; maybe it's just simply being there, with the person who triggers my trauma (over and over and over and over again). Whatever it is, I ask myself each time, "Is this okay?" and each time, something inside me has said, even when my body trembled and my head ached and my stomach churned, "Yes. Go. See."

So I continue to go. I continue to see. I continue to learn and make mistakes and get scared and come back to try again. My crush on the fire trucks has become a full blown love affair.

Which is how it has come to pass that, as of today, I am now officially enrolled in the Hancock County Fire Academy. If I graduate and pass my end test, I will be a real and true bonafide interior firefighter. If you stand outside your burning house screaming, "Save my baby!" I might actually be able to go inside and help.

I begin in a few weeks. It will take six months. It will be the hardest, most grueling, most insanely difficult thing I have ever done. Godwilling, I will not washout (although half the candidates do). Godwilling, my middle-aged body will not fail me. Godwilling, when I am scared, I will do what my first captain has taught me, "Stop. Breathe. Think." Godwilling, I will continue to do what I consider my "yoga-firefighting practice." It consist of three parts: "Show up. Stay calm. Be strong." If you do those three things consistently and in order, I have found, you can respond to anything (with anyone).

It's been two and a half years since I joined the Orland Fire Department. When I began, I was in the worst stages of PTSD. But what I've discovered is that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not have to be the end of the line. There is also something called Post Traumatic Growth. It is "positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with a major life crisis or a traumatic event." It is based on the idea that human beings can be changed by their encounters with life challenges, sometimes in radically positive ways. If it hadn't been for that traumatic attack, would I ever have found my way to the extraordinary gifts of volunteer fire service? I'm not thankful for the attack. But to imagine my life without the Orland Fire Department is like imagining my life without joy, companionship, or purpose. I am thankful for the tremendous growth that has blossomed out of that trauma.

Right now, as I prepare to face the Academy, the thing I am most afraid of is being in confined spaces on an airpack. My old fear of my attackers (or of fire or of an uncomfortably full bladder!) seem almost silly in comparison to the knee-buckling horror this situation elicits in me. And...it's mandatory. One really cannot be much of an interior firefighter if one cannot keep one's composure when pinned in turnout gear in a small, dark space breathing on air. So. What does a firefighting yogi do in this situation?

She asks for help...and she practices.

Last night, my first captain was kind enough to take me and Marcus Tweedie who will be joining me at the Academy, through some of the tougher drills we'll face. I did okay with everything. I learned to swing a sledgehammer. I climbed a ladder up to a roof while breathing on air. I'd never done either of these things before. And I was scared of both of them. But, when it came to the confined spaces...for the first time in the history of my experience in first response...I almost cried. I was *that* afraid.

But here is the definition of progress: When I couldn't do the hardest, scariest, smallest space, we tried another one, less scary. And I did okay, but I was still really anxious. So my captain, who is a professional firefighter, as well as a volunteer with us (and a really, really good teacher), took another tack. He had me lie down in a smallish space, but one I could stand up in, if I had to, and he turned out the lights. It was total darkness. "Now just breathe," he shouted through his mask, "and imagine you are in an ice rescue suit, floating on the Narramissic River."

Do you see?

I have come *so* far that the thing we can use to *soothe* me is the day I put on an ice rescue suit for the first (and only) time, and walked out on the ice toward open water. I walked until the ice cracked. And I made a mistake, and fell through all of a sudden, face first. Ice water went up my nose. Ice water went down my suit. And I was stuck for an instant, wrong side up under water in a mostly frozen river. It's hard to right yourself quickly when your bottom half is boosted by a rescue suit's buoyancy!

But I came up. I came up shocked and spluttering. I came up *smiling.* I felt calm. I *loved* ice water rescue! I loved it. You get to swim! In a river! In winter! Before we began, I was so scared I thought I might pass out...but I asked myself, and my Self answered, "Yes. Go. See." And now?

Now, ice rescue is the thing we use to *soothe* me when I am trying to learn how to stay calm doing the scariest thing yet. If that isn't Post Traumatic Growth, I don't know what is.

My friend Kirse Granat May says that there should be a movie about my yoga/firefighting. (I like to imagine Julia Roberts gets to play me.) But perhaps I'll start by writing a book about it. And if I do, I expect I'll want to dedicate it to Julia Gray, who first suggested I teach at the Orland Fire Department; and to Bobby Conary, who, as Chief, welcomed Yoga with Naomi into his station, and then stepped onto a mat himself, and then welcomed me into his company; and to John Gray, who taught me how to drive a firetruck with so much confidence that I passed my EVOC practical on the first try (while three of the people who attacked me that day at the church looked on); and to David Sukeforth Jr., who had the somewhat insane idea that I could do the Academy and become a Firefighter I and II, and then went to extraordinary lengths to get me into this next session. He has never wavered in his belief that I can do this, which I find remarkable (and confusing...me? Really??).

But as another writer/yogi who actually *did* get to have Julia Roberts play her in a movie about her life wrote, "You don't get what you wish for, you get what you believe." So...I'm gonna go ahead and believe that Dave and John and Bobby (and the other members of the OFD who have said so) are right when they say they believe I *can* do this.

And when I ask my Self? Even after the scary confined-spaces-almost-crying practice run?

God bless her. She still says, "Yes. Go. See."

Photo courtesy of the Ellsworth American.