From Fire Service to Trauma Coaching: Lynnette Fritshaw's Path of Overcoming and Healing

Jerry Dean Lund: 0:15

Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge Podcast. I'm host Jerry Dean Lund, and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button. I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. And, hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review. On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make a more of an impact on other people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. My very special guest today is Lynnette Fritshaw, and Lynette and I are going to have a conversation about what she endured being on a job in the fire service as a female, some of those personal attacks that she had to go through, the gender discrimination and a whole lot of other things that she had to endure while being on the job that I just don't think people should need to go through. We are supposed to be a brotherhood and sometimes that doesn't happen and it turns into these just personal attacks and destroying of one another. But Lynnette has turned this around and she has got an incredible story. She has embraced the journey that she went through and turned out that she discovered a lot of things about herself and learned how to grow from it. And she is taking that and helping others to reframe what they're going through and grow from those experiences. And let's jump right into this podcast with my very special guest, Lynnette. How are you doing, Lynette?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 1:56

I'm great. How are you?

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:58

Good, I'm doing so good. Thank you for coming on the podcast today and, you know, be willing to share your story because, right, not all stories are easy to share.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 2:10

It's an absolute honor to be here. I'm so thankful that you asked me to be a guest.

Jerry Dean Lund: 2:14

Yes, of course.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 2:16

I haven't told much of my story so far, so this is a big deal for me.

Jerry Dean Lund: 2:22

Yeah, I can totally understand that. It does probably bring up some emotions and stuff like that. Can you tell the audience just a little bit about yourself?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 2:32

I live in northern British Columbia, Canada. I've been in the fire service for 18 years. I was a full-time career firefighter, structural for 14 years just about 14 years. I just retired in August and took an early retirement. Took an early retirement. I have a 10-year-old son who is super active and keeps me on my toes. I have an amazing husband. I'm a dog mom as well and a stepmom. I have all the titles and, yeah, I've been churning out now into a whole different career. I've started my own business and just kind of going to see where that takes me.

Jerry Dean Lund: 3:14

Yeah, so I mean, taking an early retirement or retiring at all is very difficult. How difficult was that for you?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 3:25

It. Honestly, it was time. It had been coming. For quite some time. I knew I needed to do it for my own well-being. I had to put a stop to it, so it actually wasn't difficult once I actually took the action step to make it happen. Then it was just like a massive weight had been lifted off. We always hold ourselves back and it's like I know what I need to do, but I just had to do it and it's been honestly amazing. Since I have no regrets. I don't miss it. I miss certain things about it. I miss, obviously, my community working for my community but now I'm able to do that in a different way. I miss some of my coworkers and otherwise it's just, it's the right thing.

Jerry Dean Lund: 4:14

Yeah, before we get too far down into the details of your story. But you talked about, like you know, you needed to do it, but you took, like probably a lot longer than you wanted to. You needed to, like take action. What was what was holding you back?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 4:33

Honestly, stability. It's just that you know mental game of, you know steady paycheck and steady schedule and I had been an entrepreneur for years prior and it was a huge transition to go into. You know a pay schedule and holiday schedule and losing that freedom. But they kind of sell you on the pension plan and all of these. You know benefits and all the stuff, and so you get into it and then like, ok, now I have to let all of that stability go and I have to fend for myself.

Jerry Dean Lund: 5:06

Basically, yeah, that is really difficult. I call those and I'm not to like downplay you know your situation, I recently retired as well and I call those real world problems. Like making the transition from you know the being a first responder into an entrepreneur back into an entrepreneur is really difficult because you just have different problems, right, you haven't had those same problems for years and now you got new ones, especially one that's really like a steady paycheck is really good and benefits.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 5:46

Absolutely yeah, because my husband is also a contractor, so you know benefits and stuff is was kind of on me and now. But you know what? There's other options and you just have to kind of Actually lay out the facts and I'm like, no, we have options, we can, we can do this.

Jerry Dean Lund: 6:05

Yeah, I love the positive mindset that you have on me because it handcuffs a lot of people right. You probably know people like I do that want to retire and probably should retire, but the one thing that holds them back is paying for benefits.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 6:24

And that pension, like I know quite a few that are literally they know the exact day that they're going to retire and they are just waiting it out. They they should go now because their heart isn't in it anymore, but they've got that deadline and they're just going to go and grind until they hit it. And to me that just wasn't. I had a deadline to. I always said I would leave by a certain point, but I was like that I can't just can't grind it out any longer. There's no point in being there when your heart isn't in it, when the passion isn't there, and you're not doing it for the right reasons.

Jerry Dean Lund: 7:02

Yeah, because doesn't? I mean, don't you feel like maybe it takes a heavier toll if you're just grinding it out and not necessarily having all the passion that you once had when you got in?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 7:13

Absolutely. I don't want to be in a position where I have to be somewhere, I want to do, I get to be somewhere, I want to be somewhere.

Jerry Dean Lund: 7:22

Yeah, I admire that your words like there's so much power in words and I can see that you've done some pretty good work on, like you know, the power of words, so that's awesome to see that. But, lynette, let's like die down a little bit more into your story and kind of like how did you get to where you're at today?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 7:44

My story is a little different than a lot of people's. When it comes to the first responder world, I think it's very common. It just doesn't get actually talked about much being a female. We are few and far between, so I believe that it's even more common, although I have had quite a few men come forward since I've started sharing my story saying I can totally relate, it's, it's happened to me. My trauma doesn't stem from going to the calls. Yes, I've seen horrific things and I, you know, was impacted. I'm not heartless. They did, you know, impact me, but I had coping skills in place. But my trauma comes from bullying, harassment, discrimination, men in authority positions.

Jerry Dean Lund: 8:34

Yeah, I think it does probably happen at a higher rate to women. Just unfortunate, right Still, some of the bias I guess you want to call it, it's still there and it does happen to men too. So I think if you're listening to this and like this just happens to women, it doesn't. I mean, look around your department. If you look and you're willing to do the deep work and look, it's happening to someone else in the department you know. Potentially.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 9:07

And sometimes it's hidden as hazing or initiation or you know they can hide it in all different ways. But sometimes it's taken to the extreme and we're in that position and we've fought hard to be in that position. Like you don't just get a job as a firefighter, you have to fight your way in and go through thousands of applications sometimes to get that position and so to just give it up because somebody's being mean to you, it's the whole. Suck it up, buttercup right, and you just take it and take it and take it or you won't have a career.

Jerry Dean Lund: 9:42

Right, and I'm sure you're right that sucking it up and taking it happened a long time to get you to the point where you're at, where you're like I've got to be done. I can't do this for my mental health anymore.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 9:58

Absolutely. It started right well from before I even got hired. It started then and then it went throughout in spurts throughout my entire career and then, right up until last year, there was an incident and I was like that's it, I'm done. Now I started taking the steps to make sure that I was set up and everything was ready. I've been doing my business in the shadows for the last couple of years and it was like okay, now it's time to get serious, because this is it's happening and I needed to make it happen.

Jerry Dean Lund: 10:30

Yeah, how did like, how did you handle just the repetitive? Well, just could we just call them attacks on you.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 10:42

Sure, I suppressed everything for many years, like for a decade of enduring, and I sacrificed and I suppressed, and it took a toll on my family. It took a toll on my body, you know. I was told in the very beginning that I wasn't allowed to cry. One of the captains asked me what I would do if I seen a dead body, and so I honestly have no idea, because I've never seen one.

Jerry Dean Lund: 11:08

Yeah.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 11:09

And he said well, I'll tell you what you're not going to do. You're not going to cry. And so I didn't. I suppressed and I used anger instead and I you know I'm anger socially acceptable, so I could punch a hole in a wall or I could throw a fit and throw stuff or be angry, and that was acceptable. And I didn't cry and I suppressed everything and my body started to fight back, because suppressed emotions wreak havoc on your body, which I didn't know at the time and you know it also sacrificed my family. Because I became such a control freak, because I couldn't control the threat that was happening at work, so I wanted to try to control any threat that could possibly come into my home life, and so I was angry all the time and controlling everything all the time, and when you're in it, you don't see it. And it took a lot of work and finally acknowledging that I was actually living in a trauma response Every day, all day, and started doing some work and understanding what was going on. And then that's when I started to actually see the toxicity that was around me as well, and it's a harsh reality.

Jerry Dean Lund: 12:25

Yeah, yeah, and you know I can get right like you're talking about, like I've never seen a dead body. I don't really know what my reaction is going to be. I mean, that's, it's very fair and most first responders, right, they can keep it together like on the scene, right, we're kind of like strangely built that way. But then to continue to suppress that emotion and have to do it, like you know, back at the station or whatever like that, then I think, rive, this starts to build up of just continuing to suppress so much, right, constantly. And I love how you talk about anger is socially acceptable but other emotions are not, you know, socially acceptable. Why do you think anger is, like, socially acceptable?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 13:14

I honestly don't know in the fact of, maybe it just makes you look bigger and tougher it. You know, crying makes you look weak. It's kind of you know, it was an old voice club when I started, so that was kind of the mentality of you know you're a girl and you shouldn't be here, and if you cry because girls cry, that's just going to ruin everything. And there was nothing in place. There was no critical incidents, stress management, there was no diffusings, there was no talking, there was nothing. It was your fine, right. That was the extent of any conversation. It's like, yeah, good, and then you, you know, continue on to the next call and the next call, and then you go home and it's, you know, the end of the day and somebody does something a little bit wrong or they left something in the wrong place, and everything just comes out.

Jerry Dean Lund: 14:06

Yeah, yeah, I could relate to that. I would generalize I'm sure there's a lot of people listening that can you know, relate to that? Because you're right, right, even though work is kind of chaotic, right, and the and you don't have really have a lot of control of what's happening at work, but there's some more comfort of control, like you know, when you're on duty and stuff like that, and when you get home you're like, yeah, this is not how the house is supposed to be being ran, and then you write. Your first thing is go to anger instead of like understanding maybe.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 14:43

I think for me is, work wasn't a safe space, so I just did what I had to do and I used the skills and tools that I knew and was trained for, and when I got home, it's like a kid with their mom. Right, that's your safe space and you just can be yourself and lose it. And I feel like that's how it was for me, was I would come home and they got the brunt of everything that I had endured from the day, even though it had nothing to do with them.

Jerry Dean Lund: 15:11

Yeah, yeah, that's unfortunate. You know, right, that's stealing a good career, that you had all those moments. I feel like still away from it. And then you're trying to like did I have a good career? Did I do good things? I was impactful, was I, you know? Did I do the community right? And then when these type of like attacks come at you and things like that kind of just takes the luster of your career away, is that, I mean, is that how you feel, or Absolutely?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 15:46

I feel like there's so many situations because of the things that happened within my department that I wasn't able to actually live to my full potential in my career because I was always trying to prove myself. I was always having worry in the back of my mind. I'll tell you a little story to begin with. That set the tone was my very first day on the job. The senior captain took me aside, who didn't want me there, and made it very clear that he hadn't wanted me there, and he took us into a room, closed the window, closed the door in the dispatch area and he sat me down and he said there's something that you need to know. We've all had conversations and we're all in agreeance that if you get yourself in any kind of trouble, we're not coming to save you, we're on your own. And I was like, okay, and I didn't really know to the extent of you know the conversations that had happened. I thought I had a few friends in there, but I wasn't sure on who and I didn't know the brotherhood is. It's tight, so I didn't know who would you know, be willing to or not. And so in the back of my mind I recall that I went to. I was like don't fuck up, because I don't want to find out if he's telling the truth or not.

Jerry Dean Lund: 17:11

Right.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 17:12

So there were so many times when I held myself back because I didn't want to take risks in the potential that I could get myself into trouble and I didn't want to find out if anybody was actually going to come and save me or not. I would hope, but you just don't know. And when that threat is told to you very straight face from somebody that's in a very senior authoritative position and you're the rookie, you take it seriously.

Jerry Dean Lund: 17:39

Yeah, yeah, I don't know how you could not.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 17:44

And so that kind of set the tone for you know quite a bit of the well, the beginning of my career. And then don't get me wrong I worked with some incredible people. I worked with men of true integrity and honor and, you know, stand by the brotherhood and sisterhood and are amazing, amazing men. But there's still those little bad seeds that you know you can't get away from.

Jerry Dean Lund: 18:14

Yeah, I mean there are definitely the bad seeds, but they just seem to like to latch on to certain people and, just on a more frequent basis, like it's just not. There are bad seed to a bunch of people and there are those too, but there are some really that just for some reason, they just don't like you and they're never going to like you, and which is fine, right, I don't expect everybody like me, or probably, you know, expect everybody like you, but there's still be a professional For sure.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 18:52

And they would tell me you know, I like you, you're a nice girl, but I don't want you here, you don't belong here. So I'm like, ok, cool, but I'm here and I have the type of personality that I'm going to tell me that I can't do something, or you tell me that it's not possible. I will prove you wrong and I will show you otherwise. And so that kind of worked as a fault to me, because I wasn't going to allow them to win and I will show you and I will prove to you that I belong here and I will prove to you that I can do the job. But it just never seemed to end. It was like that constant having to prove and it's exhausting.

Jerry Dean Lund: 19:30

Yeah, it's very exhausting to to feel that pressure and constantly looking over your shoulder. For those who have never like been in that situation, well, I'm super happy for you, but if you ever find yourself in that situation, you'll know how exhausting it is like. And it's relentless exhaustion, even off duty. It's exhausting.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 19:59

It is. And then you have, you know an image to uphold when you're off duty as well. So it's like you, you're wearing this facade and I lost every piece of my identity. Like I felt like I didn't even know who I was anymore, because I was trying to be everything that they wanted me to be. I was trying to fit in in places that I wasn't being accepted, and then I also became a mom at the same time. So I lost, you know, pieces of my identity that way and I was like I don't even know who I am anymore. I just know that I'm really, really tired.

Jerry Dean Lund: 20:35

Yeah, I'm sure things probably even probably changed, maybe even got worse, after becoming a mom.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 20:49

Just in the whole control piece it did Right. I was trying to control every threat that was ever possible for my family, which is not possible. Control is an illusion, but in my mind I couldn't control this. But I could control this. And so that you know, added to the stress of it, and then being a mom, and I am the only female in the department as well, like the first ever and only so, I'm the only woman that ever, you know, took maternity leave in the department, so that was a big you know. What do we do now? Because, this has never happened before and so trying to juggle schedules, my husband also works shiftwork, so we had two sets of shiftwork. He was a seven on seven off, I'm a four on four off, and so twice a month our ships would cross over. Well, you can't get daycare for night shifts and try to get daycare for two days a week. It's, you know, almost impossible. So my family, my mom was a saving grace and stepped in and sacrificed her time to be able to come and spend the night at her house. When we're both on nights, I pack a pager so I'm always on call. So in the off chance that I was going to get called, I always had to have somebody here, because if I get called out in the middle of the night, my husband's on night shift, whereas it's a different dynamic unless somebody is also married to a nurse or you know someone that works shiftwork. You don't understand how that takes a toll and what you're expected to do. My pager would go off in the middle of a birthday party. Yeah, duty calls, I have to go, and people don't understand the extent to which that takes its toll on you as well.

Jerry Dean Lund: 22:32

Right.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 22:33

It takes a village like I had to have every base covered in order to be able to work my shifts.

Jerry Dean Lund: 22:40

Yeah, that would be exhausting in itself on a daily basis to be in that situation, trying to constantly figure out, if my pager goes off, what's going to happen, like who has the kid right, who's doing what?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 22:55

Yeah, where's most? I mean not to label, but most men when they, you know their spouse is at home and they can just go. So it was a different scheduling dilemma, that's for sure.

Jerry Dean Lund: 23:08

Yeah, and then you talked a little bit about you know this taking a toll on your body. Just all this stress, right, just stress, and probably a whole bunch of other words, things I could throw in there, but stress being, you know, one that all of us can really understand. Like I explained, people diseases, dis-ease right, it's the dis-ease in your life is going to find a place in your body to just anchor and wreak havoc.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 23:41

Yeah, when you suppress emotions, because emotions are meant to come out and be expelled. And so when you suppress emotions, they attach themselves to your tissues and your organs and they will cause you dis-ease at some point. And people will go to the doctor and unexplained back pain and unexplained illness and unexplained whatever's going on in your body and tests come back normal. But if they would only say you know, what kind of trauma have you suppressed? What kind of emotions have you suppressed? What you know, what kind of stress are you under? And so I had, you know, lower back pain that was just relentless and that knot in between the shoulder blades and eye twitch that would last for months at a time. And I mean, I'm super active, I'm very healthy, I'm very fit, but I was like what is going on? And then when you actually start releasing that suppressed trauma and suppressed emotions, I'm like there goes the eye twitch. No need to go to the chiropractor three times a week now. My chiropractor even noticed, because I was the exact same every single time I would go in and he's like, okay, what are you doing? Because, like, you're good. Yeah, I was like, huh, well, I actually just did some work and released a whole ton of emotions and some suppressed trauma. Voila yeah.

Jerry Dean Lund: 25:05

How let's kind of go down that road a little bit Like so through our careers we suppress a lot of different things, right, probably both on and off the job we suppress them. And then we talked about you know how that like gets in our body and anchors into a place and causes havoc. So my thought lately is there's not a lot of like emotional intelligence that kind of talks people, you know, teaches them about emotions and how to feel them and what to feel, and you know, and they can be different for different people at different times. But how, how did you discover a process or come up with your process of like releasing those emotions?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 25:50

Well, the gym has always been like fitness classes and the gym has always been like my physical release, always. I always say that's my therapy, but I what? I go into the gym and I leave it there. But even at times that wasn't enough and so I was doing, you know, massage and Reiki, breath work. But the biggest release for me was when I started doing hypnotherapy and I found an amazing hypnotherapist and went in and started dealing with some suppressed trauma and like the physical release at the same time was mind blowing and that's where I I had the biggest life changing alter. I think for for getting rid of that for sure.

Jerry Dean Lund: 26:37

I think there's. There's some different ways to to release trauma. You probably did you go through a couple of different things like, okay, maybe that's not as productive as I want it to be, and how'd you discover like hypnotherapy? Was there other things you did first?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 26:53

Oh, I did so many things, so many things, like you know yoga and meditation, like I said, reiki, massage, trying to get rid of you know, all of the stuff that way. Breathwork quite a few things with breathwork. I did retreats, I did coaching, I did all kinds of stuff and I just kind of got to a standstill and I had watched a girl on Instagram for over a year and I was like so skeptical and I thought, no, that's. I thought finally one day she said something on her stories and I was like I'm doing it, I'm going to try it and I'm going to allow myself. This, I think, was the key to be completely open and brutally honest with myself, because I had kept secrets to keep others comfortable for so many years, but I didn't know how to actually say them out loud because I was worried you know the repercussions and I was like this is going to be a safe space to be able to just let her buck and I have to and we'll see what happens and that was a game changer.

Jerry Dean Lund: 28:04

I think you touch on something like allow yourself right to do that when you haven't allowed yourself to do that for so many years. It's probably was not like an easy process or just like a one day you know thing, right.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 28:25

Yeah it. It actually got to the point where I would you have to be able to say enough is enough. I feel like in our healing journey, in order to be able to actually have breakthroughs, you have to have had enough of your own shit. You have to say enough is enough. I'm not doing this anymore and I will just trust the process and see where it takes me. And it was such a release. It was so freeing to be able to actually say some things out loud, other than you know, to my mom, who basically knows everything from start to finish. Nobody else knew, they knew bits and pieces, but I'd never been able to actually say so many things out loud and I think that just that in itself, that true honesty with myself.

Jerry Dean Lund: 29:14

Yeah, I mean you like it's a journey, right. This is that this is a process. This is not like right, journeys have twists and turns and ups and downs and you know, doing Right Work on yourself is definitely a journey that you got to stick through right, because you know, like there's just it's not always up right. You have to have those ups and downs and I would say, like I like to do a lot of personal work because I like to have those ups and downs not be so drastic, especially the downs right, not just be this massive down that takes me forever to get out of this hole.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 29:53

Oh, absolutely it is. I always say it's a roller coaster ride you better buckle up, because it's a roller coaster ride. You know, and it's dark and you don't have any idea of where it's going to go, like it just, and then sometimes the circle back to the same stuff because you haven't quite finished what you need to there and, yeah, trying to get out of such deep, deep lows and not allow yourself to get in and stay there and actually feel it when it's there, acknowledge it for what it is and then bring yourself back out.

Jerry Dean Lund: 30:27

Feel it when you're there, right. So when you suppress so many emotions throughout your career trying to like really feel something, I feel like it's a little bit foreign.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 30:42

It's absolutely foreign and your mind will tell you I don't even think this is the right thing.

Announcement : 30:47

We shouldn't be doing this.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 30:48

This isn't. This isn't the right feeling. It doesn't go with this, because we're used to being angry all the time, so to feel softness and sadness and, you know, compassion or empathy is like what is that?

Jerry Dean Lund: 31:06

Yeah, and I know we talked about, you know, anger being kind of like our go to feeling often because and just, we talked a little bit before we got on about some we'll call it a little bit of more trauma that I'm going through. And then it angered me for sure and, I'll be honest, it shed a couple tears over it, because I was so just at a loss that someone would still try to hurt me, even though I've, like, moved past you know, move past things. So it was kind of fun to myself, was like, wow, I'm back here, someone's trying to continue to hurt me, try to come after me, and then I feel this anger. And I didn't want to feel anger, I want to feel like I moved past this, right. And so I was just like, but then, like you talked about, like feeling that you know the anger, like okay, this sucks, this is not right. Anybody tell the story to would agree. And so just to be in, have that little bit of space, you know, and be angry for a little bit and be with it, and then, just right, try to get, start climbing back up again.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 32:21

Absolutely. It's a warranted emotion, so allow it to just be what it is, acknowledge it, focus on the facts about it and then use it as a stepping stone and use it to fire you into the next chapter.

Jerry Dean Lund: 32:36

Do you think, like as a first responders and just speaking in general, like when we don't deal with our emotions like that, that maybe it's just we feel like we can't get out of that hole, like it just that's just the normal place to be, is just the bottom of this hole, and you know we're, we're a first responder and we're meant to suffer, right. That's just part of the job. We're just suffer here at this low level, in this dip of life.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 33:02

Yeah, absolutely, and it even goes for the stuff that I had endured. I literally became immune to it. When people hear pieces of my story now, they're horrified and they're upset and in tears and I'm like, yeah, that's, that's normal, that was normal to me. And then now understanding that that wasn't normal and really processing what it really was and and acknowledging it for what it really was, it gives you some relief, but it definitely has brought up a lot of different emotions as well, and I just, you know work through them. And that's the biggest piece is it is acknowledging it for what it really is, because we're like, no, this is good, we're fine, we're just, I'm going to keep it right here, I'm going to control this roller coaster on a straight line, nice and flat, we're good. And then it's like bam.

Jerry Dean Lund: 34:00

Yeah, it comes to that somewhat of a screeching stop, like at the end of a roller coaster at some point. You know. I wanted to point out like this was something that just didn't happen to you. I feel like just on duty right, like you have an off duty, pretty crazy experience where you're saved somebody from a house fire.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 34:21

I did Four people actually. My family and I were headed out on a ski trip early one morning. I will note that I was running late because, that plays a key piece in the story and my husband never says you know, he doesn't blame me for being late anymore but we were running behind and we pulled out of the garage and I could see it was dark out but we could see heavy smoke and right away I was like that's a structure fire. But we couldn't see where it was coming from. So we pulled around the corner and the smoke was so thick on the street we couldn't tell exactly the source. So we kind of had an idea it was between two houses. So we pulled into the driveway. My husband was honking and I got on the phone right away with the fire hall and said we've got a structure fire. Of course there's no address on the house Trying to figure out exactly where we were. And he ran around behind and hollered yes, it's this one. And the roof and the whole back of the house was fully involved. The lights were off in the house. It was dark. So we're banging on the door and banging on the door and we're just about to kick the door in and all of a sudden the light come on and there was a very pregnant woman standing at the top of the stairs. Why died? Because it was thinking somebody was trying to break into her house. Not a stitch of smoke in the house, not a smoke detector going off, nothing. She came down and unlocked the door and we were running in and gathered up two little girls that were with her and I said your house is on fire, you have to go. And we gathered them up and I looked up and the entire ceiling was involved. I could see the flames in the pot lights. I could see it up the seams in the walls Like it had been going for a while, got her into her vehicle, drove it out the garage, fire truck pulled up, they opened the door and the roof collapsed. So it was literally a matter of minutes before the ceiling collapsed. And yeah, it was pretty crazy. My husband ran me home to get my vehicle so that I could run down to the fire hall and then jump in an apparatus and go fully into firefighter mode. And then they backed into a driveway and actually watched me work for the very first time. They had never actually seen me do my job. So that was pretty cool. They got to watch everybody in action and you get that feeling like somebody's watching you or somebody's be lining for you and I turn and there's a man on a mission coming up the road and he is like, headed straight for me and he walked right up to me and he said I understand, you just saved my family. Oh sorry and I said I did and he gave me the biggest hug and we didn't really know them at all before the incident and we know them very well now. So sorry, that's okay.

Jerry Dean Lund: 37:29

It's one of those times we have these emotions. That's a pretty epic thing to do in your lifetime.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 37:39

Yeah, and she had a beautiful baby boy and she put or they put my husband and I's initials in his name. So it is something that will live on forever, a story that will be told forever, one that has impacted their family and mine. Obviously, the ultimate high in my career Not many people get to say that they did that and then have you know their initials in a baby's name is a legacy that will go on. My son got to watch it and be impacted by it, and that's a story that he'll get to tell forever as well.

Jerry Dean Lund: 38:26

Yeah, that is an awesome save. I think we have these cool things that happen on and off or off duty. I mean I've never like that's. I've never done that before off duty. I've done CPR off duty and you know plenty of car accidents. But you know I had to why I shouldn't say I had to write. I got to do CPR on a gentleman who claps in a restaurant and my daughter was there with me who has now become an EMT After kind of like going through some things in her life. She's now decided to become an EMT and you know, take that, that on. But she kind of like got to see me work a little bit right, none of my kids have really ever seen seen that that's kind of a powerful thing and I had not thought of that really until you said that like, get to see your work, get to see you do what you do. It's awesome.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 39:29

It was extremely powerful and I didn't quite understand to what magnitude until I started watching my son after, because he was continually drawing pictures of the house fire and where the flames were coming out and, you know, the firefighters in their gear. And when the family came over so that we could meet them once everything had kind of settled down, it had been a couple weeks after the event. I didn't know that he had actually drawn another picture for them and so he gave it to them and he was like this is your house on fire. And at first I was like oh no, don't don't do that. And she was like no, that's okay. And then I took a second. I was like man, this is his way of processing what he seen, because through his eyes it was completely different than what I seen through mine and my husband through his and it's my job, so I'm used to to doing things to that extreme, not rescuing people out of a house, but off duty. But it is part of the job and to see it through his eyes was pretty incredible.

Jerry Dean Lund: 40:40

Yeah, we don't give kids enough credit a lot of times on how, how smart they are and their perspective is right, just the way the brains formed and everything, and different through the different ages, the way they actually see things and take them in completely different than an adult quite often.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 40:58

Absolutely.

Jerry Dean Lund: 41:01

So I would like to say the fire department must have been very proud of you to do something so amazing off duty within you know, the community you serve must have been so proud of you. Sure, I didn't know how to frame that question? I know the answer to it. Sorry, I didn't know to like frame that out, that's okay.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 41:28

That's okay Because it is what it is. It was just another, just another thing. The media release that they put out was the number of apparatus that responded and the number of firefighters that responded and that the fire was extinguished successfully. There was no mention of anything. A few of the you know the guys that I work with and stuff that obviously the story kind of circulated amongst us and it was a pretty big deal, but there was absolutely nothing. There was no recognition, no acknowledgement, no, nothing. And to me that's just silly, I want to say stupid.

Jerry Dean Lund: 42:09

But yeah, I got you Stupid yeah.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 42:12

Because they could use that to make themselves look so good. These are the caliber of firefighters that we have. This is the type of training that we do. This is the skills that they can use off duty to save people in the community Like this. This is the caliber of the fire department that you are paying for as a tax bank citizen. This is, this is us, but they just couldn't bring themselves to do it.

Jerry Dean Lund: 42:44

Of course in my head is like why Like, just why Like? Why do you have to take things to an extreme level of hatred towards somebody? I don't know how to put it. Like just sad on the outside Very sad.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 43:05

Very sad. I mean there's so many ways that I, being the first ever and only female, could have been used per se to boost the department in so many ways when I first got hired. You'll see media releases of departments that will you know, they've hired their first ever female.

Jerry Dean Lund: 43:23

Yeah.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 43:24

This is who she is and I was not allowed to speak to the media. Nothing was allowed to be said. They wanted it completely under the radar. It's like, oh okay, you know, and then something like this happens at this magnitude. Not a word was said. So I allowed the family to say their social media release and what had happened to them and all that first. And then I asked their permission to share my story, from my perspective, of what happened on social media, and most people at that point hadn't even. They had no idea and they were like what you did, what your family did, what?

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:04

I mean you couldn't just drove on by?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 44:07

Yeah Right, one of the neighbors.

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:10

Not your problem.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 44:11

Had we left when we were supposed to, we would have missed it completely. It would have been a completely different outcome. One of the neighbors had drove by 10 minutes earlier around the corner to get his mail and back home and there was not a stitch of smoke. He didn't see anything. Had we left at the same time as he was out there, we would have continued on to the mountain and I don't even want to think about what would have happened. I was in the right place at the right time, by whatever made that happen to be there.

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:48

Yeah, it was meant to be. I'm sure there's probably a few people listening. That's your job, right, that's just your job. You shouldn't get any recognition for that, like, just you did your job and you should be grateful, type of thing. Now I'm going to take a different approach and be like wow, like you said, this is one of your all star. You know staff right, our staff is made up with these incredible people. This organization is amazing. This just happens to be Lynette. She happened to be off duty and did this. You know, this is like you said. Like do that because that adds value to people's lives and adds value to the department and just brings, I feel like, the department closer together, or could bring department closer together. Just take care of your employees at the very bottom line, right, do the right thing.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 45:44

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's what one would hope, like that's the ultimate hope, but it was never the case.

Jerry Dean Lund: 45:53

Yeah, that's the lot to endure over your career. So you've done a lot of different work, a lot of like self it sounds like a lot of self discovery, a lot of different things. So, after retirement, what are you doing and what's going on with your life?

Lynnette Fritshaw: 46:14

I am running my own business, so I do trauma coaching, I teach crisis intervention, critical incident stress management. I've been hosting workshops, healing circle workshops, which literally fill my soul, giving people a safe and space to be heard and seen and work through their stuff. I have taken all of the tools and things that I have learned along the way that I know work and put them into into play for other people so they can skip the steps that don't work and and take part in the stuff that does. There's a lack of support and community when it comes to being able to say I need help.

Jerry Dean Lund: 46:56

Yeah.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 46:57

And so to have that space already created and be welcomed in with no judgment and no opinion, and it's very powerful.

Jerry Dean Lund: 47:08

Yeah, I get two questions for you. So like why is it so important for people to be seen? Why is that such an important like emotion.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 47:21

Acceptance, connection. I think that's where, when we are going through trauma, we isolate and we feel like we, you know, we're so alone and so to actually be seen by other people and understand hey, me too I can relate to what you're experienced, and connection with other people is a crucial piece when it comes to healing.

Jerry Dean Lund: 47:48

Yeah, I was up the other night because I couldn't sleep and I watched like the most random thing was avatar, the new avatar that was out, and I thought there was a unique couple, unique things in there and was like, when they went to like from one tribe to another or were talking to certain people, they like, they did a gesture and then, like I see you, I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful in a lot of ways, you know, just to just acknowledge that I see you right. So many people just go through life like they feel like they're not being seen. But I feel like I see you gives you like okay, we have a connection, go ahead, talk, let's talk.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 48:32

Absolutely. One of the exercises that I do in the workshop is you stand face to face with somebody and you hold their hands and you look them in the eye and you say I see you, I support you, thank you, I love you, because those are things out of a world of emotion Sorry. It does, it does, but we need to hear those things for ourselves and being able to say them out loud. It's so powerful.

Jerry Dean Lund: 48:58

Yeah, yeah, definitely. What's trauma coaching? Look like.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 49:03

I do one on one in person sessions for anybody that's local. If you're not, they can be done over Zoom and I give you a different perspective. I can guide you through what it is that you're experiencing, giving you understanding of how your traumatic experience is impacting your current life. I think people are living in their trauma experience now. They're focused on the future and trying to control it, or they're living in the past and trying to function, which they're not. Yeah, they're barely getting by and they're running on burnout. So, being able to show them how it's impacting in their current life and focusing on the facts and breaking it down and giving them tools, actual tools. It's not just to sit down and talk therapy kind of session. It's let's get some actual tools in place so that you can cope. Let's be proactive and start working on steps so that you can cope through these things, because it's never ending. We're going to be dealing with things our whole entire life. So having some healthy coping skills in place is crucial and I think that was a big piece for me is I had healthy coping mechanisms put in place for my job. That was that was a non-negotiable for me right from day one healthy coping so that I could process the calls and deal with the things that I was seeing. That was completely abnormal. But I didn't have any coping skills for the personal attacks. I had no idea what to do when it was personal. And so being able to give people these tools because some of it is personal and then some of it is out of their control and so deciphering the two and having healthy coping mechanisms for both, it's a big deal.

Jerry Dean Lund: 50:59

Yeah, what's also a big deal is being proactive right instead of reactive, because when you're reactive, the outcomes they spend my personal experiences not as good as you would hope they would be.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 51:17

For sure, and so many of these departments like I know, mine included was. But this is how we've always done it, so we just wait for it to happen and then we are reactive instead of taking that proactive approach. Because it's it's going to happen, it's not a matter of if it's when. So let's actually have some things in place for that when it does happen on a bigger scale. We've practiced so many times with the small stuff that it just comes naturally with the big stuff.

Jerry Dean Lund: 51:45

Yeah yeah, I think that comes with being able to look at yourself and say I need to do some work on myself and be willing to put in the effort. Because it's effort. It's not easy, but I try to tell people it's worth it though. It's just it's worth it. You know, and you talked about once again about being proactive, like, okay, we can learn from the past, we can do all these things, but, man, if you learn to be a little bit more proactive in your life, like I said, those ups and downs are just a little bit different and easier to get through.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 52:23

Totally. And I think a big fear for people is they don't want to actually deal with the stuff that they've experienced, because they don't want to relive it. And I'm like, but you're living it now because literally stuck in it every day, you're living it and when you start doing the trauma work and the trauma healing, you're not going back into it, you're just going to sit with it. So you're not going to take a deep dive and relive all of the horrific pieces about it. It's already happened, it's done, we can't, we can't reenact it, but you can actually sit with it and it's not as painful as one would think. And so getting people to have the courage to be able to just go there, I think is the first, the first step.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:13

Yeah, yeah, definitely, and it gets. I feel like it gets easier after you start like dealing with this and start removing some of the crap in your life, just start filtering it out, and you know these things easier. They're different, like I said, they're not always going to be easy, but in general, the little things get easier.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 53:38

It does get easier Absolutely.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:41

Where can people find you and see what you're doing and maybe reach out to you? You know if they need some help.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 53:48

I am fire within crisis services on pretty much every social media platform. Fire within crisis servicescom is my website. They can reach me through there. I'm very active on Instagram with stories and answering messages and stuff. It's always just me. It's not that I don't have any staff, so it's just me, and they can find me on Facebook, instagram or my website.

Jerry Dean Lund: 54:15

Awesome. Thank you so much for being on today. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I know sharing stories like this are not easy, but I think it's worth it, right? I think it's it's worth. It's worth doing. Your story is has a lot of power.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 54:33

A quote that impacted me greatly was you don't have a secret, you have a story. And I do have a big story to tell, and this was actually kind of the final piece in my own healing journey was I needed to be able to tell my story in order to get past the pieces that I had been hanging on to for so long, and that was another determining factor in my retirement was I couldn't tell my story. Well, still employed, and I was like you know what it takes, it takes precedence I. It's. It's time to put me first. So thank you very much for giving me a space to tell my story. And the impact that you're making on others is amazing, so keep doing what you're doing as well.

Jerry Dean Lund: 55:14

Well, thank you, it's I love the quote, you know but it's it's really, as I tell almost every guest like I've learned so much from them like and just adds value to to my life. And then I'm like, well, I mean, we're not alone, right, they're people, they're similar to me, so I'm like it's adding value to other people's lives, like I selfishly get to ask the questions, so I'm very lucky that way. But it's just the you know the guests with amazing stories that need to be shared, so you don't feel like you're alone. And I think you can listen to almost any podcast and you'll pick up something that'd be like Okay, yeah, I could do that, or I didn't realize I was doing that, so there's always something there, but it doesn't come from the comes from the guests.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 55:59

But it does come from you to. You play a big, you play an important role. So thank you for giving us the space to be able to do that and you know it can work for yourself in your own healing journey as well.

Jerry Dean Lund: 56:09

Yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely, Thank you, please reach out to Lynette and she's got you. I can tell right, I've done a lot of self work myself and been in that business for a long time and I can tell you know, when you talk to another person that has done that to you, you're like oh, I can tell by the power of your words.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 56:29

Thank you.

Jerry Dean Lund: 56:30

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for being on today.

Lynnette Fritshaw: 56:33

My pleasure.

Announcement : 56:35

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