My Hero’s Journey

As I shared with you, my hero’s journey started at at a young age when I decided I wanted to pursue my calling as a first responder.

When I was 16 years old, I started riding along on the fire engine with my dad who was a firefighter, and saw horrible things on the fire engine when you go to 911 calls.

After high school, I worked on the ambulance for about 5 years where I was promoted to paramedic; and then became a professional firefighter paramedic. At 23 years old I was at the start of what was promising to be a 30-year career.

One day at work,I was using the jaws of life rescue tool. The tool blew out the car and crushed my hip. From there I was in the hospital for a week. I was in a wheelchair and then had to learn how to walk again, run again and come back to the fire department despite the odds which I did successfully. That was an excruciating, painful rehabilitation process because I had numerous nerves that were crushed at 23 years old. This was in 2006.

My injury was in 2006. A time when we did not talk about mental health. So here we are today talking about mental health today. Back then, nobody planted the seed and said: Hey, you might need some help. It might be a good thing to go talk to somebody. Learning through this, I want all of us to be people who plant the seeds for other people to grow Fromm when the time is right for them to do the work needed to grow. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to go get help and. It’s okay to admit that you don’t have the answers if you’re not feeling good but know there are a lot of great people in this world who do have different ways of helping you navigate life as well as physical and emotional pain. That is the human experience through multiple faith perspectives, throughout this world people have struggled as they have been human. This historical concept of suffering and overcoming is something that I think is very important to learn. The human journey presents struggles and then from there how do you overcome adversity?

At 29 years old my career as a firefighter was over. I was unable to continue to perform the duties of a firefighter and then from there I had to transition so I went back to school earned a bachelor’s degree earned an MBA graduated with honors and also started traveling so I started seeing different perspectives around the world because I knew that the way I was living my life, the way I was viewing life through the various traumas that I had endured was not how I wanted to continue living my life. I knew that people were happy out there and people were positive. I knew that they didn’t see all the negative things that I saw as a first responder and all the traumas of other people’s lives like what I dealt with every day as a first responder for 10 years. I started seeing different perspectives to create a healthier world view and then today I’m a consultant speaker, author, and global adventure. I’ve been to date at the time of this recording to 15 countries and I have a goal in my lifetime to experience every country in the world that is my bucket list. There is light at the end of the tunnel.