Chris Fields joins Linda and Jay to discuss his long career in the fire service and the work he's doing now to educate the next generation of first responders that it okay to not be okay - and its okay to talk about that.
Chris shares openly about his mindset as a new recruit & how that changed over time. He describes the impact of loosing co-workers, provides a vivid description of the of the Oklahoma city bombing scene, talks about the impact those incidents and many others had on his mental health, and the steps he took to rediscover wellness.
Vance Row joins us on the podcast to discuss his over 20 year career in law enforcement & shares how duty trauma & injuries impacted his mental health & led to negative coping mechanisms. Eventually Vance began to calm his nervous system and reclaim his well-being when he found Yoga, which ultimately led to Yoga Rescue - where Vance wants to use Yoga to combat first responder & veteran suicide.
John Kelly joins us & shares about his 30 plus years in law enforcement. We discuss some of the lessons he learned over the course of his career, we talk about trauma, addiction, infidelity, and how they affected John and his family.
Today - John uses the challenges & struggles of his past to help others, by speaking at conferences, seminars, & departments. He is the author of the book "Self Inflicted Wounds", founder of Law Enforcement Life Coaching, & host of a great podcast called Sometimes Hero's Need Help.
Jennifer Anderson is the founder and CEO of First Responder Coaching - where they help first responders identify challenges, positives, and create goals / structures for strong, healthy, lasting careers and relationships.
Jennifer is also the spouse of a medically retired police officer. She shares with us the challenges that PTSD brought into all aspects of her families life, and how she began to use coaching to help move them through their daily struggles.
In this episode we have a conversation with retired Police Chief Russell Jenkins, retired Fire Chief Joe Davis, and retired Police Captain Joe Comperchio. This panel of retired first responders share about their early days on the job, duty trauma, some of the calls that stuck with them, how these careers effect our family members, loss, grief, retirement and how to prepare for that process.
Trease Smock's passion for mental wellness and suicide prevention came to light when she lost her father (LEO) by suicide in 2014. We discuss the loss of her father, how that event impacted her and her family, how she grieved, what helped her heal, and her passion to help others.
Trease is a RN, BSN, CLNC, & Integrative Functional Medicine Practitioner for Protecting the Guardian. She has over 22 years in healthcare practice focusing on cardiology, critical care, health coaching and lifestyle wellness. Caring for patients, she incorporated a holistic “whole body” wellness to their plan of care realizing the reduction of prescriptive medications, weight loss, & improved home relationships are directly related to physical and mental wellness.
Father Sean is Parish Priest at Sacred Heart Church in Weymouth Ma, Boston Police Department Chaplain, and previously worked in law enforcement himself as a police officer with the Marshfield Police Department.
Father Sean shares with us about his law enforcement family, his time and experience as a police officer, his move to the seminary, training and experience in counseling, CISM, crisis response, responding to victim survivors, work with first responders, and his role as BPD Chaplain. We talk about trauma, PTSD, suicide, loss, grief, and healing.
Sgt Harrington joins Linda & Jay and shares about his career and experience in law enforcement. In addition to the work he does with his comfort dog Nola supporting his peers, he has also worked in public school and college environments.
Kevin is a founding member of the South Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (SEMLEC) CISM / Peer support unit and recently became co-director.
Chief Mark Kennedy & LT Bill Ward of the Quincy Police Department join us and share about their careers in law enforcement, some of the roles they have had over the years, & how they each came to believe in the importance of the departments stress team.
This is a department that supports the mental wellness of its officers.
In this episode Jay & Linda chat about their first 8 months of podcasts, reflect on some of the episode highlights, guests, and discuss upcoming events being hosted by Hope Beyond the Badge.
Kevin Lynch is the CEO, President, and Founder of the Quell Foundation. He joins us on the podcast & openly discusses some of the struggles he and his family have experienced, shares how those experiences ignited a passion within him to see a change in conversations about mental health, and how that led to creating the Quell Foundation.
The Quell Foundation strives to reduce the number of suicides, overdoses and the incarceration of people with mental health illness. They work to accomplish this by encouraging people to share their stories, increasing access to mental health services, providing a pipeline of future mental health care professionals with scholarships, and training first responders to recognize mental health crisis warning signs amongst their own.
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