Fire Wives
Join me as I chat with my fellow Fire Wives about what it's like to be married to a Firefighter. Every week, we’ll be talking about the good and the bad of being in the Fire Family, sharing funny stories, and highlighting the spouses that make it all possible.
Fire Wives
E23 Chelsi
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I've never done that.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01It's all right. When you were podcasting with your tooth, so we did an entire episode and it was like a really great one. And it downloaded, and then for whatever reason, Google lost it.
SPEAKER_02Oh no.
SPEAKER_01So we would upload our stuff to Google Drive, and I went to go get it to edit it, and it was gone.
SPEAKER_02And I was like, it was like the best episode ever, too.
SPEAKER_01Like it happens.
SPEAKER_02Stuff happens. I know. But at least you can blame Google. Now I'm now it's me that's the issue. So welcome, Chelsea. Thanks for being on the podcast. Of course. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and to do this time number two. This uh having forgotten to press record. I really appreciate your time. Hopefully, hopefully this won't be too stilted, having said all of this once before. Oh, it's all right. Maybe my uh answers will improve. Who knows? No, no, they were they were perfect. So thank you. I'm sorry about that. So I feel so dumb right now. I like to everything is fixable.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I like to start this podcast by learning a little bit about you. Tell me about yourself.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I am married to a Calfire firefighter. We have three boys. They are 21, 18, and 16. I grew up in Northern California in a little town called Fort Bragg. It is uh surrounded by redwoods. It is warm and cold and beautiful and rainy, and we love it here. I am fourth generation. So my parents grew up here and I kind of went away to college, but came back because I couldn't handle being away from the ocean, truthfully. And yeah, silly me decided to move to Reading, California. Why I thought that was some coastal girl was gonna be able to be in Reading, California in 110 degree weather was I don't I don't know who idea that was. Must not have been mine. What did you study in college? I was an English major in college, so I took all the English classes and then decided, you know what, this isn't for me. I'm out. So I left.
SPEAKER_02What were you thinking you would do with that? Did you think you'd be a teacher?
SPEAKER_01I honestly don't know. I kind of felt like I wanted to be a journalist at some point. And I did think that I wanted to be a teacher, and then I spent a considerable amount of time in a classroom one day and I went, Oh yeah, no, this is not for me at all. Um, so I think that might have been part of it too, is that I just didn't really know what I wanted to do with it. I love reading and I love writing. And so, of course, that was a natural thing to go to school for, but I just didn't really know. So it was more like a general studies thing. So after I dropped out of that, I came home and I lived with my parents, and my stepdad was a dentist, and he was going through dental assistants every several months. He would train someone from the ground up and then they'd leave and go work somewhere else or move out of the area and get a higher paying job. And so after that went on for about a year, I was like, listen, enough. I will just be your dental assistant. And so I ended up going to work for him. He trained me, and I worked as his dental assistant for several years before becoming his front office manager. And I took care of HIPAA and all of his infection control standards, and then eventually became the person that did the billing and graded guests and did treatment plans and things like that. So that went on for 20 years in the family practice. And then after 20 years of that and having had children for several years, I decided that that was a lot. And so I ended up in 2010, we had our second child, and my husband bought me my first digital camera. And I was just taking pictures of my kids, and a friend of mine called me up on the phone and she was like, Listen, I'm getting married next weekend and I need a photographer. Do you think that that's something that you might be interested in doing? I've noticed you have a great eye. And I was like, Well, I guess I could try anything once. And I'm like, just know that this is not something I've ever done before. And she was like, it's totally fine. It's fine. So it's a lot of faith to put in someone for a wedding. Yes. So I ended up photographing their wedding and absolutely loved every second of it. And then in about 2018, I started ramping that business up. And I had a full clientele. I was working full-time in the dental office and trying to do week photography on the weekends. And finally, I told my stepdad, I'm really sorry. It's time for you to retire. Oh, so he retired too. He told me that if I ever left, that he was retiring. Yeah. That was part of like the thing. My mom worked in the office with us. It was a whole family practice. And he was just like, I could never do this without you and your mother. So we're retiring. And it was time for him to retire anyway. So I gave him the big shove like, it's time for you to retire. So everybody retired in 2019. And yeah, so I've been doing the photography thing ever since.
SPEAKER_00Great.
SPEAKER_02Did you? So you really just were playing with the camera. You figured out how to use it, and the rest is history. That's pretty amazing. I have a Canon, and it's my husband also got it for me for Christmas. It's I'm so bad at it. I can't figure out how to do it other than to put it on the portrait mode or like the automatic mode. Like all the rest of it, it's just not clicking for me. I've had it for like a year.
SPEAKER_01Wow, it's uh it takes a lot of practice. You just have to practice, practice, practice, and realize that you're gonna you're not gonna be great at it the first time, but after a while, I will say that I did have a camera when I was very young. Uh my my grandfather was a hobbyist nature photographer, and my stepdad actually was a hobbyist portrait photographer. That's kind of crazy, but um so I got the best of both worlds. My grandfather taught me how to wait for a moment and leverage light in a way that made a beautiful photograph. And then my stepdad helped me with more of the posing and things like that. And so from the time that I was like six years old to the time that I actually became a wedding photographer, I've always had a camera in my hand. And so, yeah, I've I've been doing it a long time. And there's so many good YouTube videos too. Like Google is your friend, right? Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So you're doing wedding photography, but also you run an Instagram account that has many, many followers. If I'm not mistaken, it's like 15,000 followers, which compare compared to mine is is just I can't fathom that. Tell me how the Instagram account started.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the Instagram account started actually. So this Instagram account started about a year ago, but previously to that, I uh co-hosted a podcast called Deer Chiefs. And so I've been doing this passion work since 2019. Dear Chiefs was a podcast that we hosted for fire families and their spouses, or firefighters and their spouses. So it was geared towards the fire family, but it was really for everyone. And we would interview mental health experts and firefighters and all kinds of different nonprofits. And that work kind of ended last year, and I just continued on on my own with Hold the Line at Home. I really wanted Hold the Line at Home to be geared towards wildland firefighter families, but it's kind of evolved in the beginning. That's what it what I thought it was gonna be, and it's just kind of evolved into kind of talking to everyone with the caveat that I am a wildland fire wife. And so I'm gonna, my experience is going to be from that lens. And so that's kind of how it started and how it's going. Never in a million years did I think that I would be up to this amount of followers in this short period of time. Dear Chiefs took five years to get up to 20,000 followers, so a one year, and I didn't really carry a lot of followers over from that account. So this is all organic, which is wild to me. And I am so thankful, and it's it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02So that's great. What does your family think of your account? Oh, I don't care. I'm not, I don't. This has been like I said, this is like I said before I hit record. This has been a really just fun project for me. I've just been talking to people. My husband had told me to do this, and I initially I really was resistant. I was like, no, I I'm not somebody who does this. Like, I'm not really on social media. I'm I'm very social, have no problem with conversation, but like, what does anybody want to hear from me? But he made a good point. He's like, you know, you're interviewing other people, you're hearing their stories. So so that's what prompted me to do it. And and I've I've met so many people who are lovely. Everybody does things just a little bit differently, but this theme of needing the support has been, it's it's I don't even know what to say. It's it almost makes you feel strengthened by it. That's probably not the best word I could use, right? But you don't realize how much you're missing until you start talking to other people and you're like, yeah, you have the same experience. So, but I don't care if I have 20 listeners, I'm happy. It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01That was always my thing. One person hears this, then it was the right person, right? So I'm not writing to 15,000 followers, I'm writing to one person. And sometimes I'm just writing to myself. Yeah, exactly. And that's like if I get if one person feels seen by what I write or what I share, my job is done. Right. So absolutely. Yeah, how does your family feel about it? I interrupted you. My husband has been very supportive all the way through. He thinks it's wonderful and needed and wishes that something that we had had 18 years ago. My kids are like, holy cow mom, how do you do that? And they kind of make fun of me, but secretly I think that they're like, this is so cool.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, of course they make fun of you. That's what kids do. Well, they're also teenage boys, teenage boys, exactly. But that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. So everybody's very supportive of it. And it makes me happy. So it's great. Do you ever take social media breaks? I do. So I try not to do any posting on the if I'm posting on the weekend, it's because it's scheduled. So I try not to be on social media on the weekends. So I take a break every week. But I have taken like next week I'm going to Canada with my mom, and I probably will not be posting at all. So it's like that's gonna be a little week break. And I try to stay off of my phone in the evening and just be present. Yesterday I sat out on the deck and read a book all day long because it was sunny and the kids wanted to be outside, and we all kind of sat out there reading together, which was kind of cool. So that's lovely. I try to schedule in my social media time so that I'm not constantly scrolling. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I often have to take social media breaks. It's it, I find it overwhelming. I know that's silly, but I just feel like there's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01I don't find it overwhelming, and I find it overwhelming too. I've just trained my brain to scroll past the things that overwhelm me, I think. Like that, yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And I don't follow accounts that overwhelm me either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. How did you come up with the name?
SPEAKER_01Hold the line at home. I don't really know. Actually, I like it. It's really, it's a great name. Well, we say it a lot, like I'm holding down the fort, right? And I didn't like holding down the fort because that felt military to me, but I can't hold the line. Holding the line is a firefighting term. So I was like, hold the line at home. Why not? Right. I like that. That's great.
SPEAKER_02Where in Canada are you going?
SPEAKER_01We are going, I don't know exactly where, but we're going to a spa called Sparkling Hills. Um, it's very fancy. My mom has some health issues, and she goes to the spa twice a year, and she gets cryotherapy treatments. It's the only place that you can actually walk into the cryo chamber. It's an actual chamber that you walk fully into. The ones that they have in the US are from like waist down, and it's like this little thing that you sit in. Um so she's been doing this cryotherapy now for I think it's like been like five years, once every six months. So she goes for like five to seven days, and she does cryotherapy every single day that she's there. And it's really helped with inflammation and just making her feel better. So she's invited me so many times, and so many times I've told her no. And this year I was like, We're going, I'm doing it. So are you gonna try it? The cryotherapy. I'm doing the cryotherapy. We're doing five days of cryotherapy, and then we get we're doing I'm doing a fashion massage while I'm there, I'm doing reflexology while I'm there. I get to have like a total detox day, which is gonna be so fun.
SPEAKER_00Amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and everything in this particular package is included. So we get our hotel, our treatments, and our food while we're there. So lovely. I'm so excited. So excited. That's great.
SPEAKER_02I always say if you could get me a massage for every birthday, holiday, whatever it is, any celebration, I'll take a massage. That's the best gift you can get me. So that's awesome. I'm happy for you.
SPEAKER_01Yep, we get a massage every day because every treatment comes basically with a massage of some kind. So we're like massage and cryo every day. My mom said the food is outrageously good. It's all farm to table, it's all made to order. So, like the chef will come out and ask you what you want. They know my parents by name. So when they see them coming, my stepdad drinks tea all day long every day. And so they make him special tea just for him. They make an entire like vat just for him. He comes. It's it's great, but it's fantastic. So I'm really excited.
SPEAKER_02That sounds like a dream. I hope you have the best time.
SPEAKER_01I guarantee it will be the best time.
unknownGood.
SPEAKER_02I'm glad now. In your experience, you've been married to a firefighter for 18 years. It's a long time. What has been the best part of being a firewife?
SPEAKER_01When he actually gets his day off days off, the time that we get to spend together, I feel like we are really blessed because we get more time with him than most families get with their spouse or their parent. And so we just the family time is the best part.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's really great having them involved in a lot of things. Like I think being able to coach sports and things like that, parents who work till five, it's just not possible. So it's kind of nice having that option.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. He's gotten to be at most of the kids' events, except for when they played false sports. Because Calfire, that's just not gonna happen. But so when they played soccer, he wasn't he wasn't at soccer very much, but he's gotten to be at most things and involved in their life way more. And I've had way more help than I have been had than I have not acknowledged most of our marriage. And so yeah, it's just a blessing for them to be able to be home.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What do your kids think of him being a firefighter?
SPEAKER_01My kids are proud of him, but they say they will never be firefighters because they want to. This is this is the caveat, right? We get to spend a lot of time with family, but we also he's also gone an incredible amount, and they're like, We don't want that for our families. We want to be, you know, home every day. And so they're they were for a little while both like we want to be firefighters, and then uh recently they're like, No.
SPEAKER_02Really? You had mentioned one of your kids is in college now. What is he studying? Psychology. Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01Actually, we'll be grab so he's graduating in December with a major in psychology, with a bachelor's in psychology, with a minor in education. So he's really he's it's incredible. He's graduating actually like three quarters early.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say December's not a usual graduation time.
SPEAKER_01No, so they have he's at UC Davis and they have two graduations. They have one in the in the traditional time and then one in December. And I think it's because most people that want to do a master's program, they'll graduate in December and then go right into the master's programs in Davis. He's not doing that. He wants to get his master's, but he wants it in clinical psychology, not research psychology. And so he will be going to a different school for his master's program because they don't offer what and is his plan to become a psychologist.
SPEAKER_02Yes, eventually. He wants to actually be a school psychologist.
SPEAKER_01So that's quite a minor in education. That's a tough one. That's awesome. It's very highly needed. It is highly needed. He uh is actually he has autism, so he has very high functioning, obviously, to be able to go to school, but he yeah, so he wants to work with uh autistic children and uh help make IEPs, and so he's wow, that's incredible. Yeah, so we actually Aiden wasn't diagnosed until he was eight because we struggled to get the correct diagnosis. They diagnosed him in the pediatric office with ADHD, which was not correct. He may have a touch of that because a lot of autistic children, that's a sure, yeah, but that wasn't it. And so he ended up, I ended up tapping into our regional services here, and they did their own evaluation at the age of like four, and they were like, he it's too early to tell if he actually has autism. At that time, the diagnostics were different, I think. Super different. Um and so I I I often wonder what could have been had he been diagnosed sooner. If maybe he he still struggles a lot with anxiety and the social interactions in large crowds and things like that. So he does have a service dog that helps him come out of a panic attack and kind of does he leash blocks. So it's the most incredible thing. We send him off to training because he was like, he was fine in high school. He didn't have a service dog, but he's like, when I go off to college, I'm gonna want to have he's always had a dog at home and it's always been like a calming thing. And so he was like, I want to be able to take my dog with me to school. And he was like, I think I should have a service dog. And his his psychologist was like, That's an absolutely great idea. Let's do it. Got him hooked up. We he has a golden retriever lab mix, his name is Rusty, and when we took him off to training, it was like right before graduation from high school, and we picked him up, and then I took Aiden to the Aeros Tour for his graduation present, Taylor Swift's Aeros Tour. Oh, nice. Okay, it was the same weekend that we picked up the dog. So this was the first time that Aiden actually got to interact with the dog in a crowd doing leash blocking, and it was like the most incredible thing I've ever seen. It was so cool, and people were so cool with the dog. But three hours that dog sat at his feet, and we we got him some noise-canceling headphones that were made for animals, and I actually forgot that he was there. Wow, because how well behaved he was. It was incredible. But then when we had to walk back through, it's just hordes of people. And he kept, he did the weaving thing back and forth and kept people out from in front and on the sides. It was amazing. It was incredible. So it's incredible to see this dog what he does, and then to interrupt a panic attack, he noses you. So any kind of excitement or like rapid heart rate or anything, he'll knows you. And if Aiden and I get excited like about something, he will literally come up and like knows me if I'm like being too really too excited. It's it's he's the coolest dog ever. It's the coolest thing.
SPEAKER_00So that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I highly recommend if you can get one. There, it's incredible if you if you need it.
SPEAKER_02What has been the hardest part of being a fireway for you?
SPEAKER_01The way that it's kind of changed my husband from the time that I met him. He's seen a lot, he's been through some pretty devastating fires, and it's it's been a struggle. So it's changed his personality, but I would also say that it strengthened us as individuals and as a couple, and so it's also not a bad thing necessarily, either.
SPEAKER_02Has he ever been injured on the job?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Thank goodness.
SPEAKER_01Well, not physically.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, of course. That's yeah. Not physically. He did have a pretty traumatizing event happen and he ended up going to a lot of therapy for it. And they've pretty much diagnosed him with a PTSI.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, of course. I'm glad he got some help. One running theme throughout this podcast that I've been, you know, hearing from a lot of wives is, you know, I wish they would get some more mental health help. I wish they would go see a therapist. So kudos to him.
SPEAKER_01It's it's a really big step to take. It is. It is a very big step to take. And thankfully for us, Calfire makes it pretty easy. Like we have a hotline we can call, and we have our own EAP. We have and the spouses as well. So they have, you know, we have access to that. And in fact, my children can access it on their own. They don't need to ask our permission. They can just call the hotline. So it's pretty incredible. So they make it pretty easy access. And I, in my opinion, the stigma is still there, but it's less than it was 18 years ago.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01So yeah.
SPEAKER_02What other stigmas have you felt being a firewife? What have you heard about? What have you seen?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I haven't really been affected by any stigmas. The only one is the mental health. I mean, that's the biggest theme that I can think of. Yeah, I just we haven't experienced any.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01That's good. So but mostly around, I would say like the one that I hear about the most is the mental health. Like they're afraid they're gonna get fired or be treated differently or made fun of or whatever, because why would you need to go to therapy? Kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02No, but like they all need it. Like they all need it. I get so frustrated thinking about it. Like they all they all think the same thing, right? Like they all are afraid to go get it for the same reasons, but they should all do it. It should be mandated. Well, that's my opinion.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that's that's how I have always felt about it. Like, if in an ideal world it would be mandated and debriefings would be mandated, peer support would be every day. Like, in my opinion, that is that is exactly right. Right. But what do we know? Yeah, what do we know? We just are married to him. It's okay.
SPEAKER_02Right, it's fine. We just see it at home. It's all good. Something that has actually been really funny has been it's a segment called Shift Happens. I actually I borrowed the term from a previous guest, but basically the question is what has happened to you? Or what story do you have about something that has happened while he's been away on a fire? And you're like, of course this would happen while he's gone. I'm sure you have a million of them.
SPEAKER_01The most recent one is we had a major leak in our bathroom. I my son was taking a shower one night and I heard like dripping water, and I was like, What is that? And it sounded literally like it was raining, and I was like, Okay, so I went downstairs in our bathroom, so the bathrooms sit right on top of each other, and I went downstairs in our bathroom. It's literally raining in my bathroom downstairs, and of course, sounds like a lot of fun. Of course, he was at work.
SPEAKER_02So, what'd you end up doing? So much.
SPEAKER_01We shut the water off, and thankfully, he was coming home the next day. So we ended up ripping the entire bathroom apart and remodeling it because we had already had plans to do that, but that was like a month-long project because he only had his two or three days off to be able to work on it, all the work himself, and so we were a one-bathroom family for a while. That was a child. Three teenage boys.
SPEAKER_02Good. Does he do anything when he's home for work? Like a lot of Massachusetts firefighters have side jobs, things they do. Like my husband's a contractor on the side, but in California California, I don't know that you would have the time.
SPEAKER_01No, he doesn't really have the time. He did when he before he became an engineer and he was a communications operator, he did work for an ambulance company on the side. But with the schedule the way that it is, it's almost impossible. And the mandatory overtime that happens, there's no way. I don't, he would never be home. We would never see him. He does have hobbies, he does have so we live in a beautiful A-frame, three-story A-frame that was built in 19 the 1970s, and it needs a lot of remodeling. One of the things that needs to happen, it has this huge wraparound deck, and it needs to be replaced. And so he recently bought a mill and he's milling. We took some trees down in our yard, we had redwoods, and so he's milling redwood, and then he will rebuild the deck. So that is his major like go outside and get all of my pent-up energy out decked into physical labor.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_01It's nice to be able to physical labor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love being married to somebody who's handy. I just I just have a tendency to break things, and so he just fixes them for me. It's really great. I always say I'm married up, honestly. Firefighter contractor, like you can't go wrong, it's pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so my husband before I met him, before I even knew, well, when I met him, I didn't know, but his dad's a fine woodworker, and so beautiful furniture. Like I I'm so blessed. I have so many beautiful things in my home that were made by my father-in-law, but and some from my husband too. But when I met him, I didn't know this that that this was a family trade. He actually I walked into he had this apartment off of his dad's shop when I first met him. And I walked in and I was like, Oh, those are beautiful that the beautiful shelves, like obviously made by a fine woodworker. And Tom was like, Oh, well, I can't take credit for those. Cameron made them. And I had been coming to this apartment for like, you know, weeks and months before this. I ever I had no idea that my husband had this talent. Uh-huh. And he wasn't gonna tell me. And I was like, why would you not tell me that? And he's like, Well, then you're gonna want me to build things.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's disrespectful.
SPEAKER_01And as lack would have as luck would have it, I did want him to build things after that. Of course, I would imagine. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02How did you meet your husband?
SPEAKER_01He was the interim pastor of our church at the time that I met him. So very much not what I thought I was getting into when I got into it.
SPEAKER_02How'd it go when he told you he wanted to be a firefighter?
SPEAKER_01He was actually a volunteer firefighter and had worked previously for Calfire. So, and I obviously didn't know that when I met him. That was a big mystery. So when he decided to get away from ministry, and the biggest concern was that he wanted to be able to support the family. And he didn't think that being a minister was going to pay the bills. And so he said, Well, why don't I go back to Cal Fire? And I was like, That's gonna pay the bills, so I was okay with it. I don't really think I understood what I was saying when I agreed to it. Yeah, sure. Because I didn't have my grandfather was a CDF firefighter, but I didn't have a direct, like neither of my parents were firefighters, so I had no idea what to expect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So and looking back, how has it been different than what you expected?
SPEAKER_01I didn't really know what to expect, so I don't know how it would have been different. Obviously, I thought that when I met him, he was an interim pastor, so I thought he'd be home most days every day, right? And it wasn't a nine to five job, so it wasn't like he was gonna be right committed to so many things for such a period of time. So I guess I thought he'd be home more.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, fair, fair. I mean, you get married to somebody to spend a lot of time with them, maybe not all the time, and often a decent amount.
SPEAKER_01Obviously, you know, ministry ministry in the church sense isn't necessarily dangerous. So I didn't think he'd be going into dangerous situations and seeing maybe such devastating things.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, how do you deal with that? What do you do to be able to cope with the fact that he is doing dangerous things?
SPEAKER_01I have I practice my faith, I put the worry where it belongs, and I just I I kind of trust try to let that be, you know, what it will be. And I can't, I could drive myself crazy, right? Like trying to think that I was gonna solve that problem on my own.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02And there's no way for that, you know, nobody can solve that problem, right?
SPEAKER_01No, no, and I I was uh in the very beginning and I was a listen to the scanner girl, and I realized that that was like really making me more anxious than it needed to, and so I decided I'm not listening to the scanner, and I actually don't, I don't listen to it at all. My kids sometimes listen to it, but I do not listen to the scanner.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they listen to it to see what their dad is doing.
SPEAKER_01Uh not necessarily to see what their dad is doing. I think we my youngest listens to the local scanner. So he likes he likes chatter.
SPEAKER_03Can I answer this one?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, yes, please. I own I gotta get into this frame though.
SPEAKER_03I I answer like I look at the ones that are in the local area as long as they're super big. If they're small, then I really don't care.
SPEAKER_02But what are you listening for? What are you trying to hear?
SPEAKER_03I just want to know when it's contained, you know, so I can know if my friends are okay. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I just injured and that's really cool.
SPEAKER_02Hey, can I ask you one more question?
SPEAKER_03Come back.
SPEAKER_02What do you think of your dad being a firefighter?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's I think it's cool. I think it if he wasn't a firefighter, I would have grew up a lot differently. But him being a firefighter definitely like raising getting raised as a firefighter's child was both really hard, but also like really cool in a way. Just because I can look up to him as a firefighter. For a long time I wanted to be a firefighter, and I think it was just it it was very good. But I do wish he was home more, which yeah, I can't really change that, but all right.
SPEAKER_02Wow, thanks for answering. Bye. Thank you. I always wanted to talk to a child of a firefighter. I love that. I'm always afraid to talk to to a like a young person, you know. I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but but that was lovely. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01My kids are like open books. They'll talk to you all day long about anything you want to talk about. I love that. That's great.
SPEAKER_02What advice would you give? To sorry, let me clarify my question. What advice would you give to a new fire spouse, maybe a child of a firefighter, somebody who's new in this in this life? You mentioned it's not what you expected, and things were different than you thought they would be. So what would you tell your old self?
SPEAKER_01I would tell my old self that not to wait. So I had this really bad habit of like waiting until he'd get off work to go do things, or like I'll do that after he retires, or you know, like we'll have time for this when, you know. And waiting, it just stunted my own growth. And it made me resentful of him, and that didn't help our relationship at all. So don't wait. Take the vacation, do the things, take the kids out, you know, write the book, start the podcast. Whatever it is that you want to do, do it now. Don't wait.
SPEAKER_02That's great. That's really good advice. I definitely was guilty of that in the beginning when I first had my kids. Before kids, I feel like it's just a different. I don't care. You go do your thing, I'll go do my thing. It's fine. Having kids messes everything up. I know. I don't know why we do it, but just kidding. Um, I don't know. Sometimes. But I do think, you know, I've tried, I've been trying I've heard that a lot from a lot of the firewives that I've been speaking to, and I've been trying to be better about that. Like I want to wait for the fun stuff for my husband to be there for it, but that doesn't mean I can't or I'm not capable of doing things. So if it's something that can't wait, I'm still gonna do it. Like I brought my daughter to a little pop-up carnival thing and he was at the firehouse. Granted, I asked my friend to come with me just for ease, but I was still gonna do it regardless. And the only reason I asked her is because I had I can't go on the rides with my son, who's one. So I just needed a second body, right? But like I was gonna do it anyway. I was gonna figure it out. So I love that advice. I think that's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say that that was like the biggest hindrance to our relationship is that I was just not doing the things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for yourself and for your kids. Right. That's right. Did you write a book? Have you written a book? I have not written a book.
SPEAKER_01I have a Substack.
SPEAKER_02Nice.
SPEAKER_01That's great.
SPEAKER_02Are you gonna write a book?
SPEAKER_01I'm toying. Well, I'm toying with the idea. We'll see what Substack ends up being.
SPEAKER_02It feels like you could. You seem like you have that ability to kind of put everything into one place. Like looking at your Instagram, you've done a podcast, you know how to make media or a content out of it. So that would be that would be really great. Yeah, it might. We'll see. We'll see. A little teaser. Speaking of books, and you mentioned earlier that you love to read. What book recommendation do you have? It doesn't have to be fire related.
SPEAKER_01So going along with the theme of don't wait, I'm actually we actually started a book club this last summer. This summer, actually. I am part of the Fire Family Collective. I don't know if you're familiar with them. Um I yes. But Amanda and I started a book club for Fire Family Collective. And we have been reading The Mountain Is You by Brianna Weist, I think is how you spell her last name. And it's all about self-sabotage and getting out of your own way. And so it's a fantastic book. 100% recommend it. And if let's say, let's give you a fire fire family themed one. Fit for Off Duty by Peter Solarno is probably the most fantastic book I have read for the firefighter and the fire spouse. It talks about all of the things that you should be doing at home while you're off duty.
SPEAKER_02So as the is it geared to firefighters or it's geared to the spouse?
SPEAKER_01It is geared to firefighters. He also has ones for law enforcement officers as well. So there's one for firefighters and one for law enforcement officers. That's really great. I'll have to read those. I listen to books a lot. So hopefully it's on audible. Yeah. He also has an Instagram account, which is really fantastic. So highly recommend. Awesome.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything else that you would like to say? Anything you wish I had asked you? Anything you would share with other firewives listening?
SPEAKER_01The only thing, other thing that I would say is community is really important and finding people who are able to understand your life. So and maybe even do things with you so you're not waiting for the firefighter to come home. So find find your people, whoever they may be. Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for doing this two times with me. Ridiculousness. It's been lovely to meet you. And I I mean, I already follow you on Instagram. You have you have a lot of amazing content. So thank you for doing all that.
SPEAKER_01Of course, thank you for having me. All right, take care.
SPEAKER_00What did he say? He said he said goodbye. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_02Goodbye. See you later, hopefully one day. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed being here as much as I did. If you have any questions for me or if you'd like to be interviewed, please reach out at the firewivespodcast at gmail.com. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Tune in next week for the next episode of Firewives.