Our Journey: Marriage, Firefighting and Community

Building a Community for First Responder Partners

In the inaugural episode of 'Just a Girl and Her Firefighter,' host Kristi Hilmer introduces herself and shares her journey as the partner of a first responder. Kristi recounts their early years, the challenges they faced, including a devastating fire in their town, and the life lessons they learned. She emphasizes the importance of teamwork within a marriage, especially in first responder families, and her passion for creating a supportive community. Kristi invites listeners to join her in sharing stories, tackling challenges, and building a tight-knit, supportive network for partners of first responders.

00:00 Welcome to Just a Girl and Her Firefighter
00:59 Meet Your Host: Kristi Hilmer
01:35 A Love Story: From High School to Marriage
03:16 Navigating Early Marriage and Careers
05:51 Facing Unexpected Challenges
06:49 The Devastating Wildfire Experience
07:39 Lessons Learned and New Beginnings
13:46 Building a Community for First Responder Families
15:15 Creating a Supportive Network
17:33 Conclusion and Community Invitation

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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. Hello there. I am just so excited to have you here with us. This is such a dream to be able to be here in this space and to be able to create such an amazing community, especially for first responder wives, partners, fiancees, however you are in a relationship with a first responder. And so today as we get to kick off this season, this podcast, I am just going to share a little bit about who I am so that way you know who this lady is that's hosting you and what my vision is for all of us. So I really am just a regular old girl who married a boy who had just this massive calling on his life that we didn't really know actually what was going to be happening when we first got married. We were incredibly young when we met, which funny story, we actually met in high school neither one of us really paid too much attention to the other one. We were kind of in similar circles, but different schools, different interests, all the different things. But he was best friends or not best friends. I guess he was friends with my best friend. And he would actually sneak out of his school to come play chapel, which we had a weekly chapel service at my school. And he would be the band, or I think he was like the bass player for the band that played for that. So that's how I first actually met him. But one of the days I was at my house, he ended up stopping by my house, which I didn't even know he knew where I lived. because we just had that mutual friend together. And I remember when he left, my mom said these exact words, why aren't you dating somebody like him? Well, mom, I took your advice. Here we are over 20 years later. Now we have three kids, a dog and a mortgage. So seemed to work out okay. But anyway, after high school, we both went our separate ways. I went to college to become a nurse and he actually left and went and did music something totally completely different than what I did. So a couple years after all of that that same best friend She ended up getting married, and he attended the wedding, I was a bridesmaid in the wedding, and it was really just an instant connection, and we basically have been together ever since. And there's lots of funny stories in all of that too, but that'll be another time. Our early years of marriage were really spent in school. Because we did get married so young. I was still in nursing school. He ended up going to paramedic school and school has really never been his thing. It was always a struggle. Like he excelled in music, he excelled in sports and thank goodness our children have his sports abilities and not mine. Cause that was not a strong suit for me. Still really isn't. But we found out he actually struggled with dyslexia. So at least it kind of made sense. Of what he was feeling and his, you know, school years. But because of that, it was a resistance to go to paramedic school. And so he ended up going in, he got accepted. And I will never forget, I think this is one of those core memories is what they call it. But we would get up at four in the morning before I had to go to nursing school or then my job because you know we were young and married and had no money and so we had lots of different jobs and all sorts of things and we would get up at four in the morning and I would quiz him on his medicine which thank goodness because nursing school actually really doesn't go over that many meds you know which is that's a whole other subject but basically we Yeah. viewed this as a team. And I think back to that, like one, it's some of my favorite memories is, you know, getting up it's pitch black. We're having coffee on the couch and our brand new apartment. I mean, it was new to us and going over all of these meds because he can remember something like that with. hearing it. Where I learned by reading it and writing it, I can then learn. But he learned by audio. And so quizzing, he could remember it so easily. And he still never forgets anything if he hears it, which, you know, say a prayer for me, because that may not be a good thing. But the reason I share this story, one, it's fun, But the second one is this is how our life has always worked for us. It is a team sport. Like we are in this together, whether it's in my path or his path or children's path. And I think that this looking back is what has helped us in this first responder world, because we don't know any different. This is just what we've done. And if there's anything I can ever share with a new couple, that's entering into this kind of lifestyle is you're a partnership. You have different responsibilities. He may be putting out a fire or saving a life, but you taking the kids to their baseball practice is just important because without that, he couldn't go do that. That's just kind of how we've lived our life and I think it's been working. Okay. So back to the story, we're going to fast forward surprise. We now have a kid, which really actually was a complete surprise. She was, was not planned, but definitely a huge blessing and we definitely needed her. We did all the things, graduations, we bought a house, we had more babies, and here we are, in this new phase of life, and I was transitioning from the hospital. Because I really had a passion for more holistic health care and I branded with a company that I felt had more of that kind of alignment than maybe traditional Western medicine in a hospital setting. And then at this point, he's a captain in EMS and we've got the three kids. They were all under the age of five. God bless. I'm not sure how any of us survived that. That'll be another story for another day, but something then happened that we could no longer predict. Like we would have never dreamed in a million years that this was going to be part of our story. We lived in California at the time and a deadly, massive wildfire came through our town, nearly destroying the entire thing. Like we're talking the schools, the hospitals, communities, the kid's doctor's office. Like it wasn't just a few homes. It was the town and it was devastating. Like it changed absolutely everything. And one of the things that it taught us was perspective. And, perspective is everything. Like it shows us. A different lens where we can view the same event as someone else, and we can view it in a more positive light, or we can view it in a different aspect. And there's even health studies that show that that benefits your health. So there's all sorts of different things, but it really showed us perspective. For me, it was the perspective of the importance of their job. Like I got to see firsthand what it meant to save somebody and to, some homes didn't burn. So some it was, they saved their home, their livelihood, whatever it was, but then it also showed him that family comes first, I think at that time, We had gotten caught up in this cycle of work, work, work. We'll, play later or do things later. And he was always taking overtime and, one, it's easy to justify. This is an important work that they're doing, but it showed him that. The cost is then missing his kids grow up and so I'll be forever grateful that we went through that experience because it really helped give the kids their dad back and it helped show our whole family the importance of what it is that he does and it showed Each of us really what our callings are. He was meant to be a firefighter and I was meant to build community and I'll be forever grateful for that. So to give you kind of one little story, and I'm sure I'll be sharing lots of them, over the course of these, as we talk with other firewives and. Share our stories with each other. But one of the stories I'll never forget this. We were evacuating, he was working the fire as a paramedic and captain he wasn't a firefighter at that time. Which, you know, we'll get to how that happened, so then I had the home front, I was evacuating, the kids, the dog, all that kind of things. And this was a moment where. Our kids actually, for the first time, we're like, Hey mom, is dad going to come home today? Like they were watching the flames all around them and they were hearing people call me on the phone. Hey, I'm not sure how I'm going to get out of this. Or, just different things that. Mortality was now pushed to the front of their little brains, and that part was heartbreaking, because I couldn't answer. I did not know if he would actually come home, because there were many that were trapped. And, so in this, we had been in the car at this point probably three or four hours, because, traffic was stopped, and we were just kind of stuck. We weren't in danger, we were just trapped. Stuck in the car. And we had another four or five hours to go. Little did we know we were going to be in there that long, but I just had this gut instinct and this thing hit me that said, kids, it is time to pray. I don't know what's happening, but we are going to pray right now. We are going to pray for safety, protection, guidance, all of those different things. And later, what I found out is that was the exact moment that he got a phone call from the people in charge. I don't know what their titles are. Got a phone call from the people in charge and they had him turn around. He was on his way to go evacuate more patients from the hospital. He went to what I believe is a strike team commander. I'm not a hundred percent sure what all the titles are. But with that, his role was then to be leading the people through the evacuations of the hospital and the town. Which for me as a wife, I was grateful because that's a much safer place. but apparently what we found out later was the ambulance that got sent instead was actually one of the ones that ended up getting trapped. And that's a whole other story for someone else to share. But it was, it was a crazy experience. Thankfully thank God that they are completely, absolutely fine. But it did not look like it was going to be that way for a little bit. And it just really solidified like we talked about the importance of what it is that they do and the importance of what we do on the home front and not just the things that we do with the schedule and mindset and different things like that. But it shows that. Our role matters and it was definitely a big life lesson and taught our children, quite a bit of things about what dad really actually does. And we have this picture of my husband and the other paramedics. And they met in the hospital after, you know, they all finally got out and they're all covered in ash and smoke and all the different things. And they're just this embrace of dude, I didn't know you were going to make it. And it's just, it's such a powerful, powerful photo. Like we talked about lots and lots of lessons that we learned and when this was all finished and the emergent part of it was gone we had this conversation and he said, I'm going to go fight the beast that tried to destroy us and I'm going to win. And so we packed up and we went to Firefighter Academy, or whatever you want to call it. But, I'm not going to lie, it was a pretty easy pack. We didn't have anything much, it was what was on our backs and in our cars. And so we left and we went to One of the premier fire academies, which, it's not an easy thing to do in your thirties. Like it's a little bit easier when you're 20 and so it was definitely a job and it was rough to have, kids in school and balancing all those different things. So that'll be. That'll be another episode, I'm sure, but it was definitely an experience, it's what he was meant to do. You know, he had always wanted to do fire and paramedic. It just wasn't, we thought at least we weren't able to complete that in the season of life we were in, but you know, perspective. So we changed the story and we got out there. So back to the story. He crushed it. He crushed the academy. He was amazing. We were so proud of him. His graduation is one of my favorite moments. Seeing him complete all of that was just an unbelievable experience. And some of my friends even actually gave me two dozen red roses as good job. You did it. And I'll never forget that either. Cause I was like, yes, yes, I did. I did do that. But it was a great thing to accomplish as a family. And then we went on another adventure. We made our way here to Texas and we are proud, proud Texans. We absolutely love it. It has been our favorite adventure so far. But in moving, it showed me back to that community aspect. I have had to learn to create community wherever I was. And it's a skill I had to learn really out of necessity because when you're married to a firefighter, a paramedic, a police officer, you know, somebody in this first responder, emergency medicine kind of role, you need help. It's just simple. You need help. It is nearly impossible to do completely on your own. And it's a kind of lifestyle that is really hard to articulate. Yes, the schedule's crazy. Yes. It's also amazing, and the fact that they get to sometimes have four days home straight, but there's also the mental load of it. There's the physical aspect of balancing the schedule. If you have any work outside. Of the home or in the home, kids, sports, school, field trips, it's a whole thing to really have all of this in your head. And whenever we moved, it's something that I had to do over and over again. Cause we've moved a few times. And to create the community, cause we need each other. We used to live this way. We used to, as a society live in a way where we literally needed each other to survive. And we have lost. That way of living, you know, we've become so independent, we can just order something and it's door dash to us. We can have it delivered to Amazon. We can have groceries delivered, but we no longer have to knock on our neighbor's door to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar, or, whatever it is, and we've isolated ourselves from the other people, and so we lose that connection that I truly believe we were created to have, people want to help each other, people want to be seen, people want to be in a relationship and have community with each other, So that's really how this whole thing was born is I had to learn how to create community. I saw a need and it's one of those things that when you meet somebody else who's in the same type of life. It's almost like you can take a deep breath. Like you get it. I don't have to explain. I don't have to be like, yes, yes, I'm married. He does exist. I know this is the fifth barbecue. He's not been too, but he really is here. I promise I'm married to a real human. We've all had to have those kinds of stories. And when you meet somebody, it's like your shoulders relax. You can take a deep breath. You're like, I don't have to explain myself. And I thought, why not create that community? And so that's where we are. It's how it was born. And this is a community that I just want to have such fierce, vulnerable partners of first responders, people who look at this life and address the challenges and the struggles, but also work to make it a good life. Living out a calling is priceless, but it comes with struggle, but it is the most rewarding thing to do. That we can do and so why not do it together and why not learn from each other? You know There are people that have figured this out and that are doing this way better than I am and I can learn from them and Then I can pass on that knowledge and I can share it with somebody who just got engaged to a firefighter And they're like, I don't know what I'm doing How do we do this and then they had a kid in there and they're like now what you know cuz man That changed things. So it might be like, if you're sitting here and you're listening, you're like, well, it's his calling. It's not mine, but you are a part of it. You matter. And I cannot wait to create this community with all of y'all. It's just going to be Absolutely unbelievable. So when you're listening to these, because what we're going to do is I'm going to have different guests come on and we're just going to share each other's stories. We're going to chat like we're in my backyard, sitting around the fire pit with one of the most magical Texas sunsets that you've ever seen. You can have your wine or tea or whatever it is that you're drinking in your hand. And just imagine we've got this cozy blanket and we're sharing stories around the fire pit. And it's where we hear the struggles. It's where we hear the successes. It's where we share our lives with each other and create this community. And it's going to be a powerful one. 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.