00:00:00 Brandon

Right. You are like, you’re testing out the new people. You’re joking, you’re joking around with them, right? And then it’s like, well, is it healthy or is it hurting? Right? At what point are we just, are we just demoralizing people and putting them down versus taking those people in and helping them rise up? And sometimes that becomes a really, a really fine line with, with senior firefighters who are joking around with, with newer firefighters and rookies. And it’s an interesting conversation because there’s a lot that goes on around the hazing and there’s like, I think it’s very, it can be very purposeful. Like part of it is testing new people out. Like, what can you take? Like, how much can you take? Where, where is that line? Even if we know where that line is, then we can kind of gently push it, but it comes from an area of like, give and take. So can you push back? Because the senior firefighters actually like when you push back a little bit and so then we can, we can play this game, right? Very similar manner that you would get on, on a sports team, right? Like I grew up, I grew up playing hockey. If you’re, if you’re the younger guy, the new guy on the team, very similar environment, like that locker room mentality and like in many sports teams, that can very easily get taken over the line and what, and those lines differ between crews, between trucks, right? And so if you’re in one station thinking, oh, this is okay, and you go to another station, it’s like, whoa, this line is way different over here than it was over there. So it, you have all these mini cultures inside of this larger culture, inside of this universal culture of the fire service that are all along very similar lines, but they’re all, they’re all micro and they’re all very different. So you, you actually have departments within departments within departments. As you look at the whole organization, to the stations, to the crews and the platoons that are within those in those stations, right? So it’s a very unique and interesting and interesting dynamic. And then we have to relate that to like, we’re not, we’re not bookkeepers or accountants just sitting on computers doing the thing. Like we are out in the field dealing with crazy stuff on a very regular basis that most people in society never get to witness. And maybe they do a few times in their life at best, but overall, like, we’re just doing it. So those, those massively traumatic events, those life changing events, we go to them every single day and we’re dealing with them every single day. And we have to deal with that every single day in one way, shape, form or another. And so as we look at this conversation in the fire service around mental health, it is one of culture and it’s like, well, how do we, how do we change the culture? What’s embedded in the culture? Like, it’s so there’s so many aspects and perspectives to it and there’s so many different cultures within even one organization. So it becomes, it becomes really interesting as we look at that, how it started off with me with fire to Light and, and, and this idea of mental fitness within the fire service and training was really like, how can we start to learn some new things about ourselves? Right? Because once you start going down this path of self discovery, you start to learn new things about yourself. You’re faced with like your ego and decisions. Oh, I used to think this way, but now I’m kind of, kind of leaning over, I’m leaning over a little more this way. And, and I think that that’s a beautiful thing, right? It’s like that idea of, of walking a day in someone else’s shoes. So it’s really easy to criticize somebody else. But if we haven’t actually walked in those shoes, if we haven’t seen things from their perspective, then it’s a very narrow minded view of, of how we think about that person or that thing or that culture. So if we on individual levels can start to just open our own narrow views of the world, of our culture, of our organizations, of ourselves, face a little bit of humility, right? I’m not always right all the time. Right? We have a lot of big alpha energy in the fire service, so we’re not always right. We have to make decisions and be confident in those decisions. So we are trained to say those things and do those things very often. And, and we, and you know, it’s, there’s a lot of power in being able to admit when we’re wrong and try to correct those, those faults. Right? And so the whole idea.

00:04:41 Kevin

Can I, can I pause you just a little second? Yeah, because, because we’re, we’re getting into, we’re getting into a podcast and this is all. I’m pausing you because I want to save this stuff. Perfect.

00:04:54 Brandon

I’m easily, I can ramble easily. So there you go.

00:04:56 J’aime

I’m thinking about like, well, I’ll just use some of this in the middle.

00:04:59 Brandon

I was like, you can edit it. You got it.

00:05:01 Kevin

Editor Brandon, you. And it was very. I watched the video that you recorded with JM And Rosemary and. And I’ve read some other stuff, and. Yeah, I. I don’t know that you. I don’t know that you would ramble. I just hear someone that is extremely passionate, extremely proud, extremely devoted to what they do, and I can see that you care a lot about what you do and who you are. And. Yeah, so it’s not rambling. It’s, you know, it’s. It’s talking about something that is really, really important to you and what I might do if it’s okay with you. As we talk, you know, I’m gonna imagine myself sitting on the side of an audience, you know, and I’m gonna be thinking, whoa, hang on. I don’t know what that is. You know, like, what was the thing you said?

00:05:58 J’aime

Hazing.

00:05:59 Kevin

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so with your permission, I’m going to say, hey, Brandon, you know, like, can we. Can we pause on that a little bit? And can we pick that apart a little bit? And because you. You obviously know, it’s very evident that you know what you’re talking about. And from the stuff that I read, some of the stuff I read was really cool, by the way. I’m going to, like, ask you some questions about that. But, but, but. And. And I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to dumb down, but it might seem like that, I guess, you know, maybe I’m offering just a little apology for that, you know.

00:06:33 Brandon

Well, like, I’m in my world, you know what I mean? When we have our world in the fire service and that those things are normal to us. So. But they may not be like, like that word, like, hazing, right? Like, may not, you know, like, stuff, whatever. So, yeah, if you need more clarification, questions, whatever, like, I’m super easy. Just stop me whenever you need to. And we can. We can rock and roll. I’m easy.

00:06:53 J’aime

We do tend to make these experiences a little bit formatted in the fashion of compassionate inquiry. I don’t want to call it a session, but definitely reflecting the principles, definitely reflecting the values of this work. And I saw beautiful opportunities to weave a lot of the values and qualities of compassionate inquiry into what I see presencing and making. Making something to explore within this culture you’re talking about. And like, yeah, as Kevin says, like, interruption is a massive tenet of compassionate inquiry. Is that. Know that we will probably interrupt you frequently and ask you to slow down or pause into a space. And so, Kevin, would you lead us in a little bit of a. Do you have any questions or anything before we get going?

00:07:52 Brandon

No, I’m good.

00:07:53 J’aime

Would you just bring us into a little bit more coherence with a little grounding and we’ll get. Then we’ll get right into it. Brandon.

00:08:01 Kevin

Yeah, And Brandon, one other thing I wanted to say. Even noticing the word you say hazing, and where I’m from, we say hazing. And. And when I say to people words like face and place and grace and shame and peeing, people are like, what? What? So if I say anything and you don’t know what that word means, please don’t pretend. Just say, dude, I. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Yeah.

00:08:31 Brandon

Oh, good. We got a lot of newfies in Newfoundlanders in Canada, and so they’re descendants of y’. All.

00:08:38 Kevin

So they are.

00:08:39 Brandon

You know, I’ll do my best.

00:08:41 Kevin

Okay. Yeah, they have. They have. Really west of Ireland, that’s another story. But how that west of Ireland accent has traveled down through three or four generations and is still very strong in that Newfoundland area. Anyway, that’s. That’s a different podcast. I would love us to invite just a quiet moment and. And Brandon, you’re welcome. Jim, you’re welcome to close your eyes, keep your eyes open, but whatever you do, maybe just soften a little bit. And just bring attention to your own experience right now. It. It can be whatever it is, excited, anxious, neutral, Maybe notice how your breath is moving your body in this moment. There’s nothing to fix or change or just noticing it. And maybe a gentle reminder that most of us doing any type of service do it because we love to serve, we love to help people, and maybe we can create a space where we support each other to help people better by helping ourselves. So maybe to close, if it works for you, taking maybe two or three slightly deeper than normal breaths, And then just in your own time, no rush, inviting your eyes to open or refocus and reconnect to the two other faces on your screen. So welcome to another edition of the Gifts of Trauma podcast. I’m here today with Jem, Jem Rothbard, my colleague, dear friend, co host, producer. I’m also here with someone who I’m. What’s the word I would choose about speaking to Brandon. I’m very grateful that Brandon Evans is here, and I’m really curious to explore what we’re going to explore with Brandon. And I’m noticing, Brandon, for me, sitting here at the beginning, there’s something. There’s a. There’s an emotion arising for me. And. And I think I’m going to call it love something about just chatting to you and knowing what you do and why you do it, and having watched a lot of the, the stuff that you sent us, the, the stuff that I research, and I really feel that I’m in the presence of someone who is deeply, deeply passionate about what they do. And the passion, my perception is that, that that passion isn’t about earning a million dollars or it’s not about being famous. To be in the presence of someone who really cares about other human beings is a really special thing. And it’s inspiring to, to watch the stuff about you. So I’m really keen to get into that, you know, who you are, how you arrived here, what has brought you to this place. And we’re going to talk a lot about what you do, the organization that you’ve set up and the work that you do. Fire to light. And talk a little bit about your aspirations for that and your hopes for that and your desires for that. And already, you know, we’ve chatted just a few minutes before we started recording. I just noticed that you’re. Well, you, you, you talk in terms of we as in, so you’re deeply connected to the people that you’re working with and you’re already talking about the difficulties that the group of people that you work with face. And I can really see that there’s a real strong desire to do something about that, do something about those challenges. So maybe I’ve spoken enough. I want to give you an opportunity, Brandon, to introduce yourself. Sort of take just a couple of minutes in whatever way. It doesn’t have to be a pitch to an organization, but, you know, tell.

00:14:50 J’aime

Us.

00:14:52 Kevin

Who you are, tell us what’s important to you in your life right now. Maybe even tell us where you are, tell us whatever you want us to know about Brandon Evans.

00:15:03 Brandon

Awesome. Well, thanks for the introduction and those kind words. Appreciate that. I’m in Canada currently in Ontario, in cottage country, lakes, everywhere, forests. It’s amazing. I spend most of my time in Costa Rica now, so I retired from the fire service a few years ago to fully dive into this work. For firefighters, obviously, family, kids, those are the most important things. We’re trying to make some life shifts to focus on that and them trying to, you know, doing the work, doing this work and then like, how can we provide amazing life experiences for our children? Their upbringing, their raising, their education, all of those things, trying to keep them in the forefront. Right. They’re what they are, what matters most. Yeah, I like adventure. I love surfing. I miss playing hockey. So I Try and do that as much as I can. And yeah, most of my time is stuck between family surfing and, and Fire to Light working. Yeah, I mean, we’re going to dive into it, but, you know, founded the Fire to Light foundation as an effort to help reduce suicide and psychological injury within the fire service. Something that impacts all of us every single day. And you know, the fire says mental health is in the forefront of what we do in the fire service. It’s very, very loud right now and so just trying to help that momentum push things forward and try to shake things up, shake things up a little bit as we continue this movement, momentum, just about shifting the dynamic of mental health and how we perceive that and what we do about it.

00:16:58 Kevin

Thanks. I was playfully going to tease you in my mind there, Brandon, and thinking you’ve just created this image of the, the, the, the perfect Canadian man. Right. You know, surfing and being on the lakes with his kids and cottage and forests and firefighting and. Sounds pretty glamorous. And I’m suspecting that we’re maybe going to lift the lid on that glamour in just a moment or two and get into it. But I want to hear Jem’s voice as well. Come and say hello to us. How are you doing? And let us know a little bit about the series, Let us know a little bit about, you know, this was your baby, you wanted to do this. And of course Rosemary and I are supportive. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

00:17:45 J’aime

Thank you, both of you. I’m feeling really grateful to sit here with the two of you today and know that we are delivering this first of a five part series on first responders. And the desire for me came from really two things. One, knowing Brandon over the years, he’s his family is friend, family friends with my family. We go, our kids go to the same school. I’ve known a little bit peripherally about Brandon for a while. And the other part that’s just really present in my heart right now is, and you’ll hear it in my voice a little, I’m sure. I want to dedicate the series to a man named Tim who I on purpose did not go and try to find out his last name because I didn’t know him well. I met him a few years ago and he was the first gentleman to introduce me to cold plunges. He was a firefighter who had retired and had learned somatic practices, specifically breath work and cold plunging. And I got to participate in a almost month long program and spend some time with him. In the cold plunge. And he had an amazing partner. You guys hear me speaking in the past tense, right?

00:19:26 Kevin

Yep.

00:19:27 J’aime

Yeah. This was a person who to me had a lot of tools. And he said he would sit in the cold plunge every day for like two years at that time. And I really was drawn in by. I didn’t. Like I said I didn’t know him well, but I’ll tell you what was so palpable and what I did know very well was, like, the depth of his heart and how hard he was trying. And I’ll never forget you guys. After three minutes in the cold plunge, there’s the invitation to go all the way under with your head. And he said, I’m going to tap it three times. I mean, he’s right there with you every moment through that cold plunge, talking you through it, helping. He was so connected. And I’ll never forget the sound of my head going under the water and just hearing that. Super, super. I am with you. Knock, knock, knock. And then I come up and he would help everybody out of the water, just moment beginning to end. Pure, pure attunement. And we lost, we lost him to suicide maybe within a year of that. That experience. And so many, so many questions, you know, and, you know, the first time I told Brandon about Tim was, you’ve got to meet this guy. He’s so aligned. It’s. I, I don’t know if you know him, but I just got to tell you, this guy exists. And then the second time I told Brandon about him was to let him know the news, the terrible news of what had happened and to seek a little bit of solace and consolation from Brandon. And so here we are today talking about what Brandon does. And really, like, my heart is, is really in. And my intention is fully with just naming that love that I felt inside of Tim and naming that aloneness that nobody could reach and just sending love straight to that place, wherever it is right now. Whoever’s listening or whoever has a friend or knows, I mean, so that’s where it’s coming from. And we just finished the series on men, and we know that the firefighting industry is like 90% men. And US sitting over here at the compassionate inquiry table know that the compassionate inquiry world is 90 female.

00:22:08 Brandon

So.

00:22:10 J’aime

Some interesting, interesting invitations I see sitting across from each other at the table. And I just open with pure love what’s possible here. And we’ll see Brandon again on part five, potentially another, Another part along the way. But definitely he’ll be here to open and close the series. So, Brandon, thank you so much for being here.

00:22:34 Brandon

Thank you, Jim.

00:22:36 Kevin

Sh. Thanks for that. Yeah, it’s worth taking a breath and just. Yeah, Big, big guys hurt too, right? Brandon, what I’d love to do. I’ve got a question I’m going to ask you and then if it’s okay with you, and I’m not sure if you were expecting this, I’d love to just delve a little bit into your past and then come back in and move forward and talk about fire to light and what, what you’re hoping to achieve with that. As I was researching you, I was chatting to my partner and she’s a, a GP physician, I guess you guys call them family doctor kind of thing. And she has worked in, like, some really tough places. She’s done a lot of work in Africa and she ran a heroin clinic and stuff, you know, and I’m just chatting to her about you. So going to be chatting to Brandon and she was talking about, for, for physicians and doctors, you know, they would have big go down. Yeah. Like, like you guys, you know, life and death stuff. Someone would die, something would happen. And she said in, in the medical profession, you know, they would have this debrief, but from a, a chronological, you know, this happened, this happened. Someone made that decision, this happened. We turned that machine on, we did this, we did that. You know, so, so they have this system of, of reviewing an incident and they’ll take learnings from that and they’ll move on to, to try to not make that happen again. But what she says is no one ever has asked her. And, hey, how you doing? You know what, how, you know, how was that for you? How was that to be in a room where, you know, a mother in labor lost her baby because of a thing, or the mother died, you know, these big, big, big things. And I guess my question for you, it’s fairly blunt and fairly straightforward. How is it to be a firefighter?

00:24:42 Brandon

How is it to be a firefighter?

00:24:44 Kevin

Yeah, how is it to be a firefighter?

00:24:46 Brandon

Well, it’s an incredible career and like, with everything, you know, it’s like, to me that feels like asking, like, how is it to be human? Right? Like, it’s, there’s not one word, you know, it is. It’s incredible. It’s fantastic. I absolutely loved being a firefighter. And it’s heavy, right? It’s, it’s a heavy job. Like all those things you just mentioned, right? The death of a child, a person, a spouse, whatever. Like, been there, seen all that stuff, you know, Been a part and you become a part of those, of those experiences and you know, unlike maybe not, I don’t know, but my perception is maybe unlike a regular office job, like that involvement of like being a part of a second family, right, Your crew at the fire hall, like it’s something that’s really special. You have this deeply intimate relationship. I mean, you sleep in the same we did anyways. You sleep in the same dorm room with, with your crew members. So you, you get, you, you eat with them, you sleep with them, you breathe with them and then you’re put in. They don’t always seem that way, but you’re put in these life and death situations with them. And so at times it can be incredibly stressful and a lot of time it’s. For us, it was incredibly fun. Like it was for me. It was like, it was like the 15 year old me playing hockey on the hockey team with all your best buddies, getting to go to work and do that every day. That’s what, that’s what it was like. So there were definitely moments that are life changing, I guess, like you would have anywhere. But you know, there’s, there’s a weight to it and there’s a beauty to it. You know, it’s, it’s like this beautiful expression of life. It’s both of those things. It’s, it’s heaven and hell all the same in the same place. There were many times where you’re, where you don’t maybe, maybe we didn’t allow it or it just for whatever reason, that call didn’t strike us, but you might have gone and done, done a round of CPR that day, maybe two, and it didn’t really impact the rest of our day. You know, that’s the job. So you go up, you do the job, you show up, you do the thing when you’re on scene, come back maybe chat about a little bit, maybe not, and you get back to whatever you were doing back at the station, whether it was training, whether it was a card game, hanging out, playing, finishing your workout, cleaning the truck, the bay floors, whatever, whatever it might be. You know, it’s like the energy is often that we’re trying to make the best of whatever situation we’re in. So, yeah, you know, I loved it. It was a beautiful job,.

00:28:01 Kevin

Brandon. The lovely thing I have, the lovely experience I have when doing these interviews is I come with a load of questions and then I ask the person the first question and then all my questions just go out the window because I’ve now got A whole set of new questions. And I do want to go back a little bit into your history because there was a time reading that fire to light was kind of our response to, or an awakening from a really difficult time in your own life. You know, maybe we’ll get into that a little bit more, but from a trauma perspective, you know, as you, as you sit there chatting about, you know, a couple of rounds of cpr. Dude, if I find, you know, if I find a bird in distress, you know, it shakes me up for the rest of my day. You know what I mean? If I have to, like, if I find a little cat. Cat that has been knocked down, you know, that’s my whole week knocked out, you know, I’m like, whoa. You know, And I, yeah, I say that kind of playfully, but seriously, you know, that, that, that kind of thing, you know, from a. From a, I suppose a trauma therapist point of view, what kind of person does a firefighter have to become to be able to do two or three or four rounds of CPR or be at amazing heights and have these, you know, pretty dangerous experiences and then come back home and finish the card game? I mean, that, that there’s a real nervous system shift to be able to, you know, be putting out a huge fire. Put. Pulling someone out of a building and then, all right, I gotta get my laundry done.

00:29:51 Brandon

Yeah. You know, I think part of that is. So the fire service is interesting. So we, like, I was a career firefighter, professional firefighter. Most of the fire service, 60 to 70 ish percent North America anyways, is volunteer. And so those volunteers aren’t going back to the fire station. They’ll go back, they’ll decon, get their stuff ready, and then they’re going either back to their job, farmer, plumber, whatever, or back to their house because they were woken up in the middle of the night, they were eating dinner with their family. And so as a career firefighter, we have an opportunity to go back into an environment with people who just did the thing so we can talk about it. We have that same perspective versus going back, being in your own head, being like, oh, my God, that call was really messed up. And like, none of you sitting here have any idea really what. What I just experienced. Right? And so it’s, it’s kind of unique in that way where, you know, what person, what kind of person do you have to become? You have to become a person who is, who has an ability to evolve. Um, because none of us know what that first experience of cpr, for example, is Going to be like, we don’t know. You practice on dummies. You have this perception of, of, of what you think you will be like in emergency situations. Because this is, this is like, we call it a calling, right? I didn’t just, ah, maybe I’ll be a firefighter. Not everybody, not everybody does that, right? Like, I have zero desire to be a police officer, Zero desire to become a medic. I just wanted to be a fire guy. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I wanted to do. And so you kind of enter into this calling and your whole job is about the unknown, right? You become more and more familiar with, with the unknown because you’re constantly going into these experiences, these calls, these events, whatever they might be. And a lot of them are traumatic events, but they may not be to you. They just become normalized after a while. And so, I mean, I think in the healthiest manner, you want to be able to adapt in a way, in the healthiest way possible where you can still feel the feelings, you can allow them to roll through. You can become aware of your nervous system and what that may mean within this environment where you have massive sleep disruption, you have massive, massive nervous system dysregulation because of the nature of our job. And then you’re switching back and forth between that environment and your home life, whatever that looks like. And like, this is life for us, right? Like, it becomes normal. Like, you may think, oh my God, I’m claustrophobic. I can never be a minor. Could you imagine what it would be like having to crawl in mines all day long? But to the minor, they’re just like, yeah, like, that was a Tuesday, right? A lot of firefighters. Like, I never want to sit behind a desk in a computer and just work in an office all day. Like, that’s nightmare to me. Like, no, thank you. So it’s like, get my hands, get them in there and allow me to show up every day. So that’s a part of it, right? Like someone who is, who has a desire to want to help, whether that’s themselves or the greater community, and whether they don’t even know what that means. It’s just you’re drawn to this type of profession for a reason. Whether you can put your thumb on that or not might be irrelevant. You know, could be some worth some self exploration as to why, why they are. You know. Like for me, growing up, school wasn’t my favorite. I wasn’t the best academically at things. And I love playing sport. My dad, my dad ran an Insurance brokerage. I had zero desire to do anything like that, you know, but my best friend as a kid, his dad was a firefighter. And then I met my wife in high school, her father was also a firefighter. And those were two adults in my life who never spoke negatively about their job. They always praised it. They always spoke very highly about their job, about the people they worked with, about the things that they got to do. And I didn’t realize this until I became an adult, but I was like, oh, that was really interesting, right? Like, they didn’t come home being like, oh my God, that sucked. I don’t want to go do that. They weren’t drained. They may have been, but they were still excited about their job and going to work. And I thought that that was really interesting. As a kid, I always loved working with, with my hands, whether it was up at the cottage, working in construction as I was young. And so it just seemed like a natural avenue for me to go and do that, do that thing. And so I was really, like, I was really pulled to it. All these opportunities kept presenting themselves as a child, really, and as a kid that were pointing me in this direction. And so for me, it was just a no brainer. Like, my very first call was cpr, first call I ever had on the trucks. It wasn’t like I was softened into it. You go to a bunch of difficulty breathing calls where everyone’s actually okay, they’re just a little bit scared or shaken up. It was like it was the real thing, like broken ribs, the whole, the whole spiel. And I was like, okay, like, I guess, I guess you’re in it. So here we go. And so, you know, if you can, if you’re being called to the job, I think, is it better not if you can, but like if this is a calling for you and then you know the importance of being able to, to understand or to develop an understanding of the totality of the job on both sides, all the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between. And to be able to be disciplined enough to. And honest with yourself enough to be able to manage those things and take those things to heart. Because they catch up with you at some point, right?

00:36:13 Kevin

And they did with you. Right. And Brandon, I was saying to Jen before you come on here, in my work with people, and I don’t mean this to be psychoanalysis, it just seems to be how it is that the.

00:36:28 Brandon

Pattern.

00:36:32 Kevin

Most people I work with or come across, their relationship, their intimate relationship and the work that they do tells me so much about the person. So whether they’re an IT consultant or a, a kindergarten teacher or, or a plumber or, you know, or a firefighter. And it seems to me that the more I work with people and the more I work with trauma, we talk a lot about adaptive behaviors, how we adapted or how we learned to cope with the, the, the traumas that showed up in our life. And I see a pattern where the work that people do is usually a place where those adaptive behaviors and, and I don’t mean them to be bad things. They’re quite often really, really, really good things. Those adaptive behaviors or those learned personality traits and ways of being people often choose in inverted commas. A job where those adaptive behaviors are celebrated can be expressed that they won’t be criticized for them. How does that land with you to, to hear that, that, that maybe how you learned to cope with life in your early years would have a great influence on you becoming a firefighter?

00:38:14 Brandon

You know, there’s there, there were. There’s. There’s definitely aspects of it where it’s like, oh, like, I might be able to. I might be able to do good here. Right? I might be able to succeed here and do well, you know, versus, like, should I go to university? I don’t know, am I going to be an engineer? Maybe I’m not good enough for that. Maybe I’m not smart enough for that. And so, I mean, it’s probably the reason why most of us. Right. End up in specific careers because, oh, like, I can actually, I can be good here. Part of me will be able to shine in this, in this space. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think it’s definitely true one way shape or the other. And then for each of us, it’s gonna, it’s gonna lift you up. There’s gonna be times probably where it’s gonna challenge you. And then it’s that, you know, how are you able to adapt so that it doesn’t just pull you down? Yeah, that it, that it does lift you up. And, you know, this is where that cultural piece becomes. It can become challenging because do you fit in with the culture? How do you fit in with the culture? How do you identify what your role is within that specific culture, whether it’s within your, your working group or within the entire organization? What. How have you been. Been learned to. To challenge, especially when you’re like, moral beliefs versus just diving into the cultural realms, the peer pressure of the jobs. Right. Oh, it gets really easy to dive into cynicism around the kitchen table at the fire hall. Really easy to do that when everyone else is doing that. Oh, yeah, the chief’s an asshole. Let’s just go down that train and stick to that train. You know, we see so much dark stuff all the time, and depending on who’s standing up for who or not, it’s really easy to just go down those paths. And, you know, from my experience, the more whether it was at the fire station, for me, it was outside of the fire station, wasn’t inside. It was outside. The more you kind of branch out to get a different perspective from other people’s shoes. So for me, it was like getting into entrepreneurship outside of the fire hall. We had started a. A CrossFit gym about 18 months before COVID started. And you start to get a different lens of leadership and what that means and the weight and responsibility that our chiefs and captains hold that just as a firefighter in the back of the truck, that perspective is very different. And so, you know, how we adapt is massively, I think, important. And, like, what are we willing to learn now versus just what we think we know? Because that’s a big thing in the fire service. We’ll. We’ll fight everything. Doesn’t matter what it is. We’re going to bring new fire hoses on.

00:41:14 J’aime

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:41:15 Brandon

What’s wrong with our fire hoses? Well, you know, they’re not good. Well, why have you done the research on them? They’re just not good. We just. Let’s just stick with what we know, right? We. We don’t like change, but we’re always changing. And so it’s. How do we adapt? You know, I think it’s. This is the piece. It’s this vulnerability piece, this humility piece. Like, what can we learn now? Like, what’s the next thing we can learn about ourselves, about the thing that we’re doing? Even if it’s working really well, obviously, if it’s not working well. But if it is working well, like, what can we learn? Like, what’s my. And what’s my role in. In all of it? Like, what’s my role in. In our conversation, if someone doesn’t like me, if I don’t like that person, if there’s always conflict between people? Right. This is probably the biggest issue everywhere is people, people dealing with people, and instead of blaming, just blaming the other person. But, like, what’s my role within that? And if we haven’t learned skills and strategies to adapt to different kinds of people, we’re probably constantly going to be heading up with other people. Often and time and time again. And we see this with dynamic in the fire service all the time. And then we see the opposite where it’s like people just getting along, loving what they do. So,.

00:42:38 Kevin

Brandon, thank you. Let me pause you there, Chim. I see you’ve unmuted. Have you something you want to add here or ask?

00:42:45 J’aime

I do. We’re talking a little bit about how and why Brandon got in. And I think parallel to this is how he got out. And I feel like that’s a very important nuance to explore while he’s talking about culture of the firefighters, because I was surprised to learn that many firefighters consider it like a lifetime relationship occupation do in and there when I heard on. I heard you say in one of your conversations when you were retiring from firefighting that you were met with like, wait, can you do that? Like you’re not ready to retire yet. And being confronted by that culture that says you stay in until you’re 55 or 60. And for me to hear that just kind of blew my mind because, you know, working in domestic violence, working, you know, having friends who work in trauma, we know that there’s often like a certain amount of time. And then after all of that exposure compounding over the years, it’s kind of understood within professions that you take a rest that you can, you can rotate out or pivot to something else. And so, you know, one of the first things Brandon said in our, in our initial talking to each other initial conversations was that they can do CPR like five or six times in a day. Like some of us maybe never do it in a lifetime. That level of compounded intensity over a 60 year until you’re 60, just. That was a part of the culture I didn’t consider. And it’s interesting to me that you decided to leave. I’d be curious to hear about that. I’d be curious to know what came up for you and what you encountered in that process also. We don’t have to do it now, but it feels related to getting in.

00:45:01 Kevin

Can I add a little bit of that, Brandon, before you chat? Thank you, Jim. Because there’s something. I heard you say something else, Brandon, about compassion fatigue and something else you were talking about. And interestingly, in compassionate inquiry, we would put forward the. The argument that, that there’s no such thing as compassion fatigue. All there is is self compassion fatigue. And from self compassion fatigue, then. Then the well is empty and we can’t, you know, we really struggle to help others. And linking in this. Linking this to what? To What GM said, you know, I. I know you had a period of your life, and you talk about it openly, so, you know, it’s not a surprise to anyone. And you called it, I think it was on your website or something else you’d written suppressed trauma and financial collapse. During COVID you talked about your gym. So I think that’s where James bringing us, and I’d love to hear you talk about that a little bit. You know, how was that for you? And then leaving a job, you obviously love thinking, you know, I don’t. You say, I got to get out of here. Or maybe your wife said, dude, doing this anymore, because, you know, we can’t have you doing this. So. Yeah, how was that for you to land in that space?

00:46:26 Brandon

I mean, it’s one thing leads to the next, right? So I’ll take it back a little bit. So before I was a firefighter, I had this opportunity, and I traveled around the world. I spent three years away from home, did some forest firefighting out west in British Columbia. That kind of opened my eyes. Like, oh, there’s more of a world out here than what I knew in my little bubble as a child. And started off with a work visa in New Zealand, ended up milking cows there. And then I was off through Asia, India, hitchhiked on a sailboat across the Indian Ocean, went to the Middle east, like, it had this incredible experience, came back home and got into construction, and that eventually led to me getting a job as a firefighter. And that was. That was my. That was what I was pursuing all along. But I had this brief moment of time where I had some really incredible, exceptional experiences that were unlike what most of my other friends were doing at the time. And so get into firefighting, do the thing. The truth is, you know, I was looking for what’s the next thing. Maybe not even outside of firefighting, but we have a lot of time off as firefighters, so had some young kids. You’re raising those kids. They’re, you know, start to get to school age, and I wanted to start a business, and I had. I had the time, so I did. That just happened to come 18 months before COVID So, you know, the beginning of 2020, things were fantastic. Gym was doing really well. We, you know, you get through the early phase of trying to figure out, how do you do this thing? And then Covid hit a Gym was closed for longer than it was ever open. Towards the end of COVID you know, you’re running numbers, you’re doing the thing, and I was just completely Burnt out right in. In the middle of COVID December 2020, we responded to a house fire. It was a homicide. We were third truck on scene, 360 of the house. Then we got called to help the interior crew. They’re in the middle of an extrication. So we go in the house. They’re in the process of removing a body from the house. We get in there, we help them, hands on, pull them out, bring that body outside, one of my crew members and myself onto the front. Onto the driveway, in the front lawn. We kind of had to move them over a little bit on the driveway to try to keep it out of people’s view. And I just remember, like, being stuck, like, frozen, staring at this body, right? It looked like a. It looked like a turkey is what it looked like. It didn’t look like a human, you know, and came home from that scene. And that was, I think, the first time where, like, that. That you get, like, these eerie butterfly feelings, you know, in your stomach. They kind of radiate through your body at times, certain calls. And that one just wouldn’t. Wouldn’t leave. And I’m trying to deal with. I’m also dealing with the gym and the business and lockdowns and all of these things. And the whole time, from a business owner’s perspective, I was trying to be on that pedestal, being like, it’s all good. We’ll get through it. Just one more lockdown. No big deal. Everything’s okay. And I came home. I lost it on one of my kids. I ended up pushing him to the ground. He was four years old. My wife kind of yelled at me, like, what the hell are you doing? Like, you need to get help. And she was right. I just completely broke down. And then the next day, I called a therapist. I booked a breathwork session, an embodiment session with someone else that I knew. And in our work schedule, we just naturally had seven days off. Every month, we had a stretch of seven days off. And so the fire happened on the Thursday we were off for seven days after that. I did all of those things, and that seven days off came back to work. And there was a lot more that happened. But I always say, like, I got back into. I have. I hopped back on the train of this healing journey that I had been on. Like, I was. I was a decade in, at this point, of practicing breath work and trying to learn more about it, you know, as I. As I. I love to read. And I just would digest book after book after book after book on self Improvements. You know, when I was, when I was in India, I had this opportunity to sit with the Dalai Lama for three days in this event just shifted my entire perspective of my life being like, oh, wow, this is, this is fascinating stuff that is projected back on me as the person and how I can, you know, evolve in improving my own life in a number of ways. And so it just, it shifted my entire mindset of I’m gonna be a firefighter, to, oh, not like that I wasn’t going to be a firefighter. But, like, there’s so much more to me that I didn’t even consider. And so what else can I learn now about myself?

00:51:17 Kevin

Brandon, can I ask you a question?

00:51:19 Brandon

Yeah.

00:51:26 Kevin

You just told a really big story. Just there. Like, a really big story. And, you know, something happens when we tell big stories a lot of times. And you talked earlier about, you know, firefighters and normalizing. You know, we normalize this. You know, we pull bodies out of fires and we do cpr and, and then it’s normal. Like that. That story you told isn’t normal. I, and I get it. It’s your story, you know, to, to be at that, to be going through that period of your life and, and, you know, setting up a gym and, and young kids. And I think the, I think the part, you know, you talked about, you know, taking that body out of the house, and you talked about the struggles with the gym, and I think the part that wobbled you the most, and certainly wobbled me the most because I’ve had a similar experience, which I won’t go into right now, but was the pushing your 4 year old to the floor. You know, I can, I can feel that catching in my chest right now. I’m like, dude, you know, like, what, what does that do to a man? What, what, you know, took him through that and do that. What, what does that do to your mind? How was that for you? You know, like, like, how was that for you?

00:52:42 Brandon

Like, you know, the first thing that came in my mind, whether I believe it or not or whether I don’t know how it’s going to sound, I don’t really care right now, but, like, I’d rather pull 100 bodies out than do that again, than push my kid.

00:52:52 Kevin

To the ground, you know, yeah, that’s, that’s a big deal. And, you know, just spending this time with you and listening to the, the picture you created earlier, you know, surfing and family and kids and get it on the lake and the trees and I can hear that this is really important to You, I can see that in your face. I can hear that from talking to you. And then here you are standing with yourself, having pushed your 4 year old to the ground like that must have been. You talk about sitting with the Dalai Lama. You talk about, I too have been to Dharmasala, honey, a few years ago as well, actually to the Dharmalalas place. But you talk about that, you talk about these big moments and that, that for me, that’s, that’s a defining life moment right there, right?

00:53:39 Brandon

Yeah, yeah. These are the things that like, you know, I say it often, right. Especially around, you know, this era we live in of screen time, Right. As a parent, you know, you really learn to eat your words, oh, my kid will never go on a screen, right. Like, and I think we’re just constantly faced with, with our biggest fears in one way shape form or another. And then, and then the challenge isn’t like, are you not going to be faced with it again? It’s how are you going to show up the next time you are faced with it again, right? Whether it’s, whether are you thinking a little bit? Are you, are you, is your afterthought different than it was the last time? Are you actually thinking about it now? Are you not reacting in the same way like, like it presents? And then how do we, how do we learn to adapt to that? Especially if it’s something that’s negative that we didn’t, that we didn’t like, that we didn’t enjoy. And so, yeah, like that was, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and it’s led to like a lot of incredible things in my life. Right. So yes, it was a horrible moment. Yes. And I don’t even say that I regret it. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t ever want it to happen again. And it’s changed so much in a positive manner for me in my life. Right. Like in that moment, it just happened. It wasn’t like a conscious decision of this is what I’m gonna do. It it just happened. I just reacted. There was all these other things going on. It was like, you know, and I’m not proud of it, but it happened. I can’t go back on it now. I can just, I can just look forward and try to move, move forward. And I was someone that was actively doing things. You know, I was from, from just before COVID started. Every month I was going to seeing a breathwork practitioner moving through all kinds of, all kinds of things just with the business, with myself, with where I was at Covet Hit. Perfect. This, this stream is already rolling. Like, these things don’t make us immune to suffering or these kinds of things that happen. But I was able to react in a manner afterwards of like, shit, like, I need help, right? Like, I went over a waterfall. Probably could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t good. But I know, I know where the people are because they’re already in my space, right? They’re already maybe even holding my hand as I’m falling down that waterfall. So we can, we can start or continue that train rather than trying to, like, find people who we don’t know who are there. So, I mean, you know, the event was. Yeah, that was the biggest thing for me. All the stuff, the other stuff at work is like, you know, there’s crazy stories, there’s wild stuff, but that, that’s the thing, right? That was the pivotable, like, oh, yeah.

00:56:26 Kevin

And my heart is open to. I, I don’t want to, you know, take this time away from you. But a very similar reason was the reason that I do this work. You know, I, I, you know, it’s like, oh, yeah. And I, I was like, I need a book, and went and ordered a book. And the next, you know, 15 years of my life completely changed because of a very similar incident. Jim, I see you’ve unmuted. We want to ask something, say something. Please do.

00:56:51 J’aime

Yeah, I feel like this is just bringing us into exactly why we’re here. You know, I’ve heard, I’ve heard Brandon tell that story, and I notice he always chooses to tell it, to name it. He never glides over that part. He names that part of the aggression that came out unconsciously towards his child, his tiny child. And any of us who are parents get struck by that and relate in some way to a moment where our unconscious took over. And it is, I think, one of the hardest moments to face as a parent. And I think that this is bringing us right to the place where Brandon is really the space he’s cultivating because he had begun the journey before this happened and therefore had tools to turn to when his wife said, you got to get help, and he said, I’m on it. It’s happening tomorrow for the rest of my life. You know, it’s these moments that just that signal to us where we’ve been unconscious and give us that opportunity. It’s the gift of trauma, right? Like, it’s exactly what we’re presencing in this whole, whole show. So I wanted to make some space because I’m watching how fast time is going, and I want to talk about the toolbox. Maybe talk about some facets of the toolbox in a. In a way that really names who you are. Because I. When I listen to your stories, I hear about how strong your authenticity is. I hear how that has been a guiding light for you. And talk about light, too. Talk about what fire to light. Talk about what that light is. Because many of us will interpret light in different ways. But what is it to you? What are you bringing into this darkness? What does it mean?

00:58:56 Brandon

Yeah, you know, it’s a dear friend, a mentor of mine, you know, she. When she talks about trauma, it’s. She talks about, like being in the cessation of suffering, right? So it’s like we can be suffering from something and also be in joy and love about something else. Like, both of those things can happen simultaneously versus I’m suffering because of this thing. My life partner just passed. And so now everything else in life must be garbage because that thing is gone. Whereas, you know, you can still have love and joy for your other siblings, for your children, for the birds chirping, like, for so many other things that are around. And so when I dove into this breathwork session right after this event, this was a homicide event. And I respond extremely well to breath work, working with a practitioner. Maybe it was just this specific practitioner or whatever, but I respond really well to it. And what happened was all of this really dark imagery. Like, I could not shake the imagery from my mind. Did some, some nlp, which was fantastic. And then when I dove into this breathwork session, I just had this incredible, like, super vivid imagery of like, the scene, the fire, and then all that fire just shooting out into the sky, this beautiful sunset behind it. And when we were doing a 360 of the structure, there was a pumpkin decaying in the backyard. Okay, so this was a horrible scene, right? A person was beaten and burned to death. This is what happened. And that pumpkin showed up of like, hey, like, even though this person was involved in this horrific event, they still had enough love to nurture the earth, right? To put the pumpkin from Halloween in their garden so it could decay and feed their fruits and vegetables or whatever they were trying to grow in the garden. And then it was like this, this scene where both of our souls kind of collided and embraced above this house that was on fire. And for me, that was like, right, I’ve been focusing on the wrong things here. Like, yes, it was horrible. And this person was loved. They expressed love through the pumpkin. Their children were extremely upset, as you could imagine, standing on the front lawn. Like, we pass by family members as we go in to do our job. So that becomes a part of each of our stories as well. Right? As first responders. Right. It’s not just that person that things like all the family is around also witnessing this thing with one of their loved ones. And so it was just this, like, kind of like, awakening moment for me. Of like, right, Both of those things can happen. Oh, bad finances right now because I had to close the gym because of COVID because of all these things. And what else is also happening in my life and what opportunities are presenting themselves and what could we potentially do about that? So, you know, it’s this. It presents opportunities if we. If we’ve. Like, I was. I had just learned about that, right? I had. I had someone in my space that shared that idea with me that I could now sit on and think with and be like, oh, that’s interesting. Up until that point, I didn’t. I fell into like, oh, if I’m suffering now, then I guess I’m suffering. Fuck, I’m in this alone. It’s just me. Why is this happening to me? All those thoughts and ideas. Not that those things don’t still enter in, because they do, but it’s that other perspective that also exists of like, cool, yeah, you’re right. You’re in it. It sucks. And what else is also there? So it presents this idea of, oh, I can also look at this thing over here and I can work to attach to that versus just the internal suffering that’s happening. Right? That was just something that really, really allowed me to step out of it and get back into, you know, get out of survival mode and back into just, like, life and like, embracing. Embracing life, the kids, the family, all of the things, you know, that led to the ability to make the decision to close the gym. That was a great, big, huge decision that also crushed me and. And freed me. Right? It was like. It was like a. It felt like a trap. And. And then you have all this, like, there’s a lot of money that needs to get paid back. So, like, what do we do about this if we don’t have the current avenue to. To use to pay the thing back? And. But like, it was just. Everything was pointing at it and that came through work, right? Like doing that. Just self discovery. Do I need this? Do I want it? Asking myself really challenging questions and then. And learning how to answer them. And when I closed the gym, like, fire to light didn’t exist at that point. There was no thoughts about what that would be. But then it freed all this space. And for three months in my life as an adult, I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t pursuing firefighting, I wasn’t pursuing, doing. There’s all these exams we have to take within the first three years of firefighting. You know, trying to be that good rookie, get into the job, understand the job and be good at the job, and then pursuing a business and all that kind of stuff, and I just did nothing. And then it kind of just like popped up. You know, the more I looked into what were we doing for the mental health of our firefighters in the business world and, you know, all the friends I accumulated in that space, we were talking about inner fitness and mental fitness and, you know, to become that next version of yourself, what you need to do, what do you need to overcome, what do you need to identify? And then I started looking at the fire service being like, well, what are we doing in this space? We do some mental health training, but it was very infrequent, Very infrequent. And that just kind of opened the door to this.

01:05:18 J’aime

Can I ask you a quick question about the mental health training? Is that mental health training for you or is it mental health training for the people you’re responding to? Because I heard, and I was surprised to hear this too, that most often firefighters are not responding to fires. They’re. They’re responding to community mental health slash social work needs, like problems breathing, panic attacks, tummy aches. So, like, is that training, when you get the mental health training, is it for the wide myriad of social work things that you do, or is it for your own self care or both?

01:06:02 Brandon

It was. It’s more for. For self care. That’s what, that’s what it mainly was, right? Yeah, it was. We actually. There isn’t a lot of training. In dealing with the patient.

01:06:23 J’aime

Right.

01:06:23 Brandon

From the, that compassionate lens, the, the. The panic attacks and those kinds of things, we. I wouldn’t say that we are greatly trained in that, in that space. These are, these are. These are newer things, right. In recent years, yeah, we’re responding to way more panic attacks. I don’t remember many panic attacks at all in my early career. Right. And you especially, like Covid was this massive focal point. Right. Like coming out of COVID like those things have just gone kind of through the roof. But no, they were for us. But they were like, you would like I’d done it twice in my career, you’d Go in, do a three hour, ish session, usually put on by one of our peer support leads. They go over a curriculum. It’s a bunch of good stuff. It’s very clinical. And then that was it. We wouldn’t revisit it again. And so through this exploration and like, I did an international research study on the current state of mental health, put it out in 2025, end of 2024. I interviewed over 104 chiefs and leaders from five different continents that represent like 1.3 million firefighters. And we wanted to gather as much information as we could on, on who’s doing what in the fire service in terms of mental health. And like, over 86% of these organizations are only training one to two times in mental health programming in a firefighter’s career. When we look at how we train in everything else in firefighting, how often we hit fire hydrants, train with ladders, pull hoses off the truck, you name it, whatever it is, like, there’s no match. We do those things every day, right? Every single day we’re training on some kind of operational necessity for the fire service, from how we clean the truck to how we maintenance the truck to how we manage our equipment to how we train on that equipment, whether it’s medical calls, cpr. Some things are very structured in terms of quarterly training, for example, and some things are great, big, huge. And so I just, I kind of looked at that and like, well, why. Why are we treating mental health differently? Because that should fall under safety, right? That should be a part of our safety requirements. As much as I’m going to step on a, on a rust nail inside a fire or get burnt, so I wear my bunker gear. What about the psychological safety piece of it?

01:08:53 Kevin

J. You want to ask something there? I’ve got, I’ve got some things I want to talk about.

01:08:56 J’aime

Go for it. Go for it.

01:08:58 Kevin

I’m conscious, Brandon, of your time as well, and, and our time.

01:09:04 Brandon

I’m aware of.

01:09:05 Kevin

Okay. Yeah. My, my editing friend is sitting to my. To my left. May have something to say if I keep you here for another 60 minutes. Sure, sure. So we get this picture of mostly men who are really committed, working really, really hard, experts in, in their field, you know, firefighting, doing remarkably difficult jobs, trained to. With an inch of their lives on the, the technical stuff, you know, the pulling hoses and the, the truck and using ladders and all that kind of stuff, but not supported. And you talked about that earlier, you know, not supported in, in their psychological, mental health and mental fitness. And I was just reading, you know, some of the things when you talk about your, your research or research, as my Canadian and American friends say, you know, and quotes that were pulled up there. We have field when it comes to the mental health of first responders because we have treated first responders as first responders, not as people. That was a really, you know, that.

01:10:25 Brandon

Was really, that was a powerful quote when I heard it. That came from the fire chief.

01:10:30 Kevin

Yeah, it was a powerful quote. And we talked then about you moving through this difficult period of your life and this moment of, you know, I can do something about this. I, I have these skills. You know, you’re sitting with the Dalai Lama and traveling and firefighting and raising kids and you’re obviously a very self reflective person. You’ve said that a lot of times. What can I learn? What can I do? How can I move forward? So you’ve had this moment of I can do something here. I can be of service to the people that I have shared my life with. Slept in the same room as, eaten at the same table as, and you come up with Fire to Light. And I really want to take some time just to focus on that. With great interest, the five pillars of Fire to Light. The intro of the mind, the body, rest and energy. So the, so the question I have is, would you talk a little bit, you know, about that? And I’m also then keen to hear how this has been received because you know, most people when I talk about energy, they immediately think, oh, woo, woo, you know, like what sort of nonsense, you know. And you’re taking this into a 90% male dominated population of big alpha male energy, of guys that are working really hard under really serious conditions and you’re going to talk about rest and energy and they’re going to say, you know, like what the actual. Dude. Yeah. So I’d love to hear you talk about the, not necessarily the pillars, but the structure of Fire to Light and what that’s hoping to deliver. And I’d love to hear how it’s been received by these, these dudes that, that are doing this really dangerous work.

01:12:25 Brandon

Yeah. So like the whole idea kind of came of like, how can we introduce some concepts of consciousness and self exploration to a bunch of firefighters without being very cautious and aware of language and not using that language, like how can we put it and frame it in, in a manner that’s going to connect with these firefighters? And that’s something that we’re constantly working on. How do we use the right language? I’m in the process of Renaming some of those pillars just to kind of mesh with firefighter language that currently happens. But the whole idea is this individual and collective approach. How do we provide both of those things to connect with firefighters? Super short. So the videos are all like three to 10 minutes long. Nothing’s longer than that. Interest, right? We want to like keep interest low. And then how can we do that on repeat? Right. Whether it’s once a week, once a shift, once a month. Like how can we create a rhythm of training within the organizations and help those. Help those organizations create this rhythm or system of training around mental fitness, not just mental health. Right. Most of what we do is on the clinical reactionary side of things. And we do have support. Right. There’s lots of support for firefighters and mental health. It isn’t that there’s no support. A lot of it or most of it just comes on the reactionary side. Right. Once we’ve gone over the waterfall, here’s the clinicians, the helpline, peer support teams, critical incident debriefings, all that kind of stuff, which is great. It’s wonderful. We need it. The preventative side that we currently view is us putting those things in place. Fire to Light is more upstream where we’re like, let’s learn the tools now so that as we’re approaching the waterfall, we can start to do something about it. The same way as we’re responding to a house fire, we’re already doing things in the truck before we even get there. Based on the information that we’re gathering. We’re not just waiting till we get there. And we’ve trained on how to hit the hydrant, pump water out of the fire truck, like how to use the tools. We train on all of those things so that we can just go when we get there. So this is the idea, understanding that as we move through our own journey in life, it is both an individual and a collective agreement. Like we need people to help us. Right. And as much as we think we’ve done everything ourselves, like someone else made the steel toe boots you’re wearing, someone else wrote the books that you’re reading. Like there’s always this collective that is happening within society. Right. And so the one avenue is everyone gets their own individual login. They can go through this series of pillars and learn about the self discovery from education. But as well as tools like the how tos, where we’re kind of working on in the fire service now is how do we move from awareness into operations. So Fire to Light is about operationalizing wellness for firefighters. And so we work to make that culturally competent. So it isn’t like, let’s just do some breath work. But how do we, like, tie in breathing to, to the job? Like, airway management is something that we’ve been doing for a long time. We just called it airway management. Well, what if some of those airway management tools don’t just allow us to breathe longer if we get trapped, but they also allow us to manage our stress and our nervous system and help us go to sleep at night. So trying to make these synapses, these bridges between things we’re already doing and mental fitness. Because, like, we’re already doing mental fitness. But if we aren’t thinking about it that way, like, if we just can start to think about what we’re doing a little bit deeper, differently, that will trigger new things in the future and it’ll change our lives in some respect. So that’s what we do with Fire to Light. And we’ve created a drill book. So these are like, there’s all kinds of them. There’s over 50 drills in the book and they’re all one page. They’re super simple. We’re trying to take the thinking away, right? A lot of mental health now that lands on the shoulders of the firefighters, of the captain, of the fire chief, of like, well, I’m supposed to be a mental health expert now. On top of being a firefighter, a hazardous material expert, an auto extrication expert, a technical rescue expert, confined space expert, like, right, we have all of these modalities that keep piling on our shoulder. Now I got to be a mental health expert. We’re not trying to be therapists over here. We’re just trying to say, hey, here’s some simple tools that we can start to learn. Whether it’s a self reflective piece, whether it’s a breathing tool, whether it’s a way that we can learn about mindfulness and meditation and bring that into our own job so that we can perform better, we can enhance our own performance, we can be better at radio communications. I say that as I’m stuttering here, right? Be better at radio communications. We can go home a little bit differently at the end of our shift with all the things that we learned. And so those drills are designed to happen in the fire station, around the kitchen table, with the entire crew in five minutes or less. Just keep it quick because if we’re not consistent with things, we lose it. And when current in most organizations, they’ve like, yep, oh, we did a mental health thing three years ago, five years ago. And if you’re, if you’re leading that charge, you’re doing it once a year, which is great. It’s fantastic. We’re moving the needle forward and there’s a lot of space that we could greatly improve with our mental health training.

01:17:42 J’aime

Storytelling is important to you also, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? What you mean by that?

01:17:50 Brandon

I, you know, we, we have always told stories as humans, you know, and learning how to tell a story, learning that each of our story has value, I think is something that’s really important with us. With the, like, tradition of storytelling in the fire service, there’s a lot of pros and cons, right? It’s, it’s a lot of how we learn, right? Often we come out of the training academy and you get into your crew and they say, all right, forget all the shit you just learned in training. Now you’re going to learn how to become a real firefighter. And a lot of that comes through stories, right? Oh, we had a call like this. This is what we did when we debrief calls, often it’s so that we can learn from them. And oftentimes, like vicarious trauma is also a very real thing that may not be very present for most firefighters. And so it comes up, those stories come up and they come up again and again. And sometimes you get into this, like this ego match of who’s seen the worst shit, who’s done the worst things, right? And so like, for me, learning how to tell my story in a place where I can actually tell it, where I’m not breaking down all the time, where I don’t want to tell it, where I want to just hide myself away was really healing for me. I learned that from my father in law, who was a fire chief who is very open, right? Always wears his heart on his sleeves, calls it his voodoo curse, as he’s up there speaking to a class of recruits, crying for 42 years of service about the things that he’s done because he’s a real human, whereas a lot of others just simply don’t tell the story. And so it isn’t just about telling one side of the story, but about how do we encompass and learn how to share the whole story and learning that your story has weight and has value regardless of what it is. Because it helped, like, from my experience, it helps me. It’s selfish. It helps me move through the things that I need to move through, through. And what I learned in my career is the more open I was, the more People would come and talk to me, hey, what is that breathwork thing you’re doing? Right? Like, what can you tell me more about that? And we would have, I can’t tell you the number of one on one conversations that I had within my crew on the fire hall because it opens doors for other people. It allows them to take a different look at themselves, to say, oh, like it’s like that permission piece, right? Oh, someone else is doing it. So it’s like, if we’re not telling our story, then who aren’t we helping? Right? And my story is not going to connect with everybody. It’s not supposed to, but if it helps just one person, then awesome. And then in return, I get to help myself. So it’s a win, win.

01:20:43 Kevin

And I also think, Brandon, that. I don’t mean this to be judgmental of anyone else, but people like you telling that story. So you seem fairly cool. You’ve got long hair. You do cool stuff. And I think even in the work that I do, I tend to speak to a lot of young men who have heard other people talking, who maybe wear a white collared shirt and a tie and a suit, and they come and look at me and I’m covered in tattoos. And I have a shared history with some of these young people. And it really works for people to hear people like you telling the stories that you’re telling. You know, you’re. You’re not a weirdo is what I’m saying right now. You know, you. Thank you. And that works for people.

01:21:33 Brandon

There’s a lot of this, like, you know, some early debriefings after rough calls, you know, where they’ll bring in a clinician to talk to us about it. And we know the conversations that happen when the clinician leaves because part of it is like, you weren’t there. Have you ever dealt with all these dead people and stuff like. Like you don’t like, cool. Thanks for being here. We’re obviously respectful. And then, you know, there’s also horror stories of. Excuse me. Of firefighters going to see the psychologist. The psychologist is in tears because they’re not culturally competent on what the job is. And then these things just spread like wildfire throughout the fire service. Oh, yeah. Johnny went. I’m not going. Not for me. Yeah, but it’s like people like us doing things like us. And there’s a lot of different people within the fire service. So if we only have the chief standing up telling their story, that’s going to offer one perspective, one angle. And the more people we have learning to share their own story. It helps to connect with more people. That’s the bottom line. It’s probably one of the most important pieces, right. It’s like, it’s okay, like learn to tell. It doesn’t need to be a therapy session. That’s not the intent of all of these things. And like all the stories, not just the trauma stuff. Stuff, right? But like if you are going to therapy, that’s going to open the door for someone else to start going to therapy if you are, versus like I’m going to go hide away or I’m not going to do any yoga when I’m at the fire station because I don’t want everyone to start making fun of me about that. Because this is what happens, right? Especially when there’s this predominantly boys club that’s happening. Like things are. The tide is changing. Things are obviously shifting in the fire service. It’s not so much of that anymore. It is in some places. But to be able to have confidence in those vulnerable spaces and not worry about what everyone else is saying, actually not giving a fuck what people are thinking about you or saying about you can be really powerful. And I think storytelling is a really magical way to be able to connect with people. You’re not telling somebody what to do. You’re not telling. Saying this is about you. You’re not saying, hey, you need to go and get help. All you’re doing is sharing a small piece of what you’re doing. And it creates. It creates people thinking. Like when I was sharing that story in the fire hall of me embracing in love with this dead victim and the fire in the house, I remember looking around the room and everyone was paying attention. Some of the guys were in the conversation. Some of them were like, what the hell is Evans talking about right now? But I was, I became really fascinated at the fact. I’m like, you were all paying attention to that story, to that conversation. Whereas I got a pretty good idea when I started on my first crew that there would have been a few people in that room that would have shut that down right away. Right. And silence that that story. Not intentionally, but just like as maybe made someone else feel uncomfortable. So we’re going to shut that down. And so being able to use your voice can be a really powerful tool.

01:24:35 J’aime

I wanted to highlight too, before we wind it down, just a couple of statistics that your research surfaced. Talking to all these fire chiefs and finding that above 77% of all fire chiefs that you spoke with personally knew somebody who had died by suicide. So we’re taking like this, the storytelling and the vulnerability and the very authentic lived experience that I think is really resonating with people when you’re speaking to them. But then you’ve also gone and you’ve collected this information from all the world, found, like. And I’d be. I’d be curious to hear some universal insights that surprised you, but always landing on this, like, that’s 77 is a really high number. And I heard you say firefighters go to too many funerals. So why aren’t we doing more for these guys? Why aren’t we doing more for the lifesavers? You know, that’s what I. That’s my question. That’s what I want to know. And I hope that. I hope our audience is feeling that charge of, like, something we’re really missing as a collective here.

01:25:53 Brandon

Yeah, I mean, I think as a service that we are. We’ve recognized this and we are working around to do as much as we can. I had a wonderful opportunity to interview Dr. Laurie Moore Merrill, who used to be the United States fire administrator. And what she said is, we are in the awareness phase of mental health, and how do we get into the operational phase? Like, how do we operationalize it? And so municipal governments, all kinds of governments, heads organizations trying to. What’s the piece? What are the missing pieces? How do we do this? What does that sit? We have a culture that’s already here. How does it mesh in with the culture? How doesn’t it. How receptive is or isn’t it? Do you make things mandatory or voluntary? There’s a lot to that whole piece of mental health. And how do we drive that charge forward? And so things are happening. They may not be very rapid, but if we look back, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, we’ve. We’ve come a long way from where we. From where we were, and there’s a lot more that can be done. Right. And so to put the effort forward, to keep driving change, to be a part of the change matters, to keep, I think, to keep challenging status quo. Right. We just always find excuse for things. You know, we know the numbers are high. We go to those funerals. It’s a part of what we’ve always done. Maybe we didn’t know that it was a suicide. For example. You know, I’ve been to funerals where, oh, yeah, he died. How’d he die? Yeah, he died.

01:27:39 Kevin

Yeah.

01:27:39 Brandon

But he was like 43 years old. You know, wasn’t a year till a year later that we. That we learned that that was because of an overdose. Right? And you have family, you have, you have family wishes, you have all these things that, like, we don’t know about. So you’re trying to, like, appease all kinds of people. But if we don’t know that, then what can. We can’t do anything about it as an organization, as a crew, as a department are, you know, it’s not a very healthy job. As we look at carcinogens, cancers, cardiac issues, like, cardiac issues, cancers. These are massive, massive killers in the fire service. And our mental health is tied to each and every one of those things. It’s not like mental health is a, is a separate.

01:28:22 Kevin

I’m, I’m sorry, I’m just really excited to talk, talking to you, and I’m interrupted, and I’m really sorry for that. I, I love the point you were making that, that, you know, in, in compassionate inquiry, we try not to even distinguish between mind and body. You know, it’s just health of a person, you know, and landing, I suppose, our conversation. I’m thinking of myself as a, you know, dude that’s worked in firefighting for 25 years and has done this really hard work and probably hasn’t leaned into meditation or breath work or hasn’t read stuff by the Dalai Lama or Sri Ramana Maharshi or whoever. And, and there’s just a little line here. First responders and firefighters are repeatedly exposed to high stress situations. This keeps their bodies locked in sympathetic overdrive. Without the tools to regulate her and recover, the cumulative impact on mental and physical health is significant. So even for that guy to go locked in what, Sympathetic overdrive? What the hell is sympathetic overdrive? And my guess is, you know, when we talk to people about what is sympathetic overdrive? And that guy’s gonna go, that’s me. I’m locked in sympathetic overdrive. He doesn’t know that he’s locked in sympathetic overdrive because he doesn’t know what sympathetic overdrive is. You know, but yet he’s drinking or he’s, he’s, you know, he’s addicted. He’s, he’s doing other things. His, his family relationship are being affected. So even to give people this, I think in any field, awareness is, Awareness is everything, you know, that, that you, you said your, your colleague was talking about. So to help people understand what’s going on for me and why am, why am I doing, why am I doing this stuff? Say, yeah, because your body’s locked in sympathetic overdrive. And we have practices and tools and things that you can do to get you out of sympathetic overdrive and into parasympathetic. Okay. I’m conscious. I could keep you forever. I have a little question.

01:30:35 J’aime

Yeah.

01:30:36 Kevin

I really hope you do come back, Brandon, because I think you’ve got so much more to say. And letting our audience know that.

01:30:43 J’aime

Yeah, let’s give ourselves permission to bring this to kind of a screeching halt because we know Brandon’s going to be back. This isn’t the only time we get him. And are you coming back to join us for the second interview with another, which will be another firefighter conversation?

01:30:58 Brandon

Yes, I’ll be here with Corey.

01:31:00 J’aime

Okay.

01:31:00 Kevin

Okay.

01:31:00 J’aime

So please proceed. Yeah.

01:31:02 Kevin

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I think our conversation could go off in so many directions about spirituality and life, Brandon. It really could. But I have a little question that I ask most people when they land on the show to finish. And some people answer in a very comical way. Some people answer in a very profound and deep way. Some people have even sounded a Tibetan sound ball as their answer. So you could answer in whatever way you see fit. And the question is, if. If you, Brandon Evans, had had the ear of humanity, I normally ask, or firefighters, if you had the ear of humanity, what would you say?

01:32:14 Brandon

Maybe nothing. Right. I think our actions speak really loud. And so to try to help promote action, leading by example is, I think, one of the most powerful things for any leader. Whether you’re a firefighter in the back of the truck, whether you’re a station officer, Italian district, platoon chief, whether you’re the chief, we can, you know, we’ve said a lot in this space in the fire service, so, like, start taking action. That’s it.

01:32:49 Kevin

That is a beautiful answer to that question. Yeah. Thank you, Brandon Evans, for just now, for this part of this conversation. We’re going to see you again. All being well. Thank you. I have really. It’s been a real pleasure speaking to you, Brandon. So thank you for sharing your story yourself, your wisdom, and I wish you every success in what you’re hoping to achieve. Brandon Evans. Thank you.

01:33:24 Brandon

Thank you.

01:33:32 J’aime

All right.

01:33:33 Kevin

Actually, could I. Could I add a little. Could I just say thank you to you as well? Could you edit that in if I. If I did that?

01:33:40 J’aime

Yeah.

01:33:41 Kevin

And J. For inviting me into this conversation, that. This has been a real special one. GM thank you. I really appreciate you and. And all that you do.

01:33:54 J’aime

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you. Every listener who stayed on this long, please stay with us. The train’s just leaving the station. Turn that record off. All right. How do you feel, Brandon?