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."
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| Photo courtesy of the Ellsworth American. |
