I know what it’s like to love a first responder, and watch the job slowly change the person you love, and the family dynamics around them. 

I was a middle school teacher, a wife and a mom, trying to keep our life steady while quietly navigating the silence, the distance, the outbursts, and the things we didn’t know how to talk about. I became the silent strong one, holding everything together while pieces of our family were quietly unravelling. I became so focused on being everything for everyone else that somewhere along the way, I lost sight of myself. Then I tragically lost my husband to PTSD, and the life I thought I knew; disappeared with him.

Finding My Fire is a window into what PTSD can do to a marriage and a family, told from the side we don’t hear about nearly enough - the person standing beside the one who is struggling. It’s also the story of how, somewhere in trying to save everyone around me, I lost myself, and how losing myself ultimately forced me to discover who I really was. It taught me how to get back up, when it hurt to even breathe.