68 | Reclaiming Purpose after the Fire with | Natalie Newgent

A single accident stole her shield but revealed her purpose. Former firefighter and peer support advocate Natalie Nugent sits down with us to unpack the hidden cost of serving on the front lines, and the surprising, practical steps that helped her rebuild after PTSD, depression, and identity loss. From a heartbreaking moment with her daughter to a life-saving knock at the door, Natalie traces the path from isolation to treatment to a thriving support network designed for first responders, trauma survivors, and caregivers.

We go deep on what PTSD actually looks like off duty, sleeplessness, hypervigilance, anger spikes, and the instinct to withdraw, and why saying “I’m not okay” can be the bravest, most productive move. Natalie shares the exact tools that steadied her nervous system: a simple WRAP plan to guide daily choices, yoga for mind–body balance, cold exposure to interrupt spirals, and five-minute meditations to build tolerance for stillness. We break down the “window of tolerance” so you can map your personal baseline, notice when you’re tipping into fight/flight or shutdown, and use small interventions to come back online faster.

Out of treatment, Natalie founded Rekindled Retreats, a peer community that flips “retreat” into “retrieve”—a space to retrieve the parts of you that feel lost. She details what happens inside their workshops, why follow-up support matters for eight full weeks, and how a quiet text thread becomes a lifeline on hard days. We also explore Internal Family Systems, rethinking success after trauma, and how compassion, for yourself and others, reduces the urge to fix and makes connection possible again.

If you’ve ever felt overactivated, exhausted, or alone in your struggle, this conversation offers a clear, human roadmap back to stability and community. Listen now, share it with someone who serves, and if it resonates, leave a rating and a quick review so more people can find their way to these tools.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction
• 2:18 Injury, Identity Loss, and Isolation
• 5:24 PTSD Symptoms and Misconceptions
• 9:15 Family Impact and Breaking Point
• 12:18 Peer Support, Suicidality, and Seeking Treatment
• 16:40 Leaving for Care as a Single Mom
• 21:06 Speaking Up, Validation, and the “Apple” Analogy
• 24:46 Finding Help: Therapy, Groups, and Resources
• 28:26 Reintegration Challenges and Birth of Rekindled Retreats
• 31:56 Daily Tools: WRAP Plans, Yoga, and Consistency
• 35:46 Community Text Threads and Scaling the Vision
• 38:56 Five-Year Vision: Nature-Based Retreat Center
• 42:16 Inside the Workshops: Window of Tolerance
• 45:56 From “On Edge” to Calm: Cold Water & Meditation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

You're listening to the Off Balance Podcast, where faith, family, and business collide. Hosted by Brooks Deming, Doctor of Business Administration, Business Coach, and Resilience Expert. Each episode features real-life conversations to help entrepreneurs like you build resilience and lead with confidence.

SPEAKER_03: 0:32

Welcome back to Off Balance. I'm your host, Dr. Brooks. If the struggles of life have left you cracked or broken, today's episode will speak right to your heart. Today's guest is Natalie Nugent. She's a trauma survivor, a single mom, and the founder of Recendle Retreats, a powerful initiative that creates safe, restorative spaces for first responders, trauma survivors, and caregivers. Natalie, welcome to Off Ballet. Thank you, Dr. Brooks. I'm excited to be here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Before we dive into our conversation, can you introduce yourself to the listeners and let them know what it is that you do?

SPEAKER_02: 1:08

Yeah, my name is Natalie Nugent. I am a former firefighter of 14 years. I just recently medically retired. I had a significant accident on duty in September of 2023. I've had three operations since, and I have one more scheduled in three months. So it's been a significant trauma and event in my life. And therefore I reevaluated and decided to work with people who also got injured. And when you come off the line, you lose that brotherhood that you had and that part of a team or something, a bigger purpose outside yourself. And it's really lonely and isolating. And I discovered that after my injury, I fell down this slippery slope with PTSD, where it really took over and struggled, it helped me struggle every single day. And through pulling through that in the last two years and recovering physically, it's drawn me to realize there's an underserved population of people being injured and being forced to medically retire or just being away from work and needing support. So I started rekindled retreats as a way to offer that support and offer peer coaching so people don't have to go through that process alone.

SPEAKER_03: 2:22

So you mentioned that you got hurt in the line of duty. So when you got hurt, how did that moment redefine what your future was going to look like for you?

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

That moment was pivotal in that I it gave me the awareness that my whole identity was wrapped up in firefighting. So often, that's the first thing we identify ourselves with. My name is Natalie. I'm a firefighter. It's your whole identity. And in that moment, in that injury, I lost my purpose without the calling to come to work every day and serve my community with a physical injury where I couldn't perform. I was just so lost. It felt like I had no identity left. I didn't know what I was even here to do anymore. And that isolation was really difficult. But that was such a pivotal breakthrough moment because through that breakdown, eventually through PTSD and depression, I had a breakthrough. It gave me the strength I needed to reevaluate and see where there's another need. And that is now my purpose because I'm completely physically fit and able to perform in a different way. It doesn't have to just be one role or nothing. So it's the beauty of just transitioning to something different. It doesn't have to look like you thought it would, but you can make it look like whatever you want to.

SPEAKER_03: 3:44

You mentioned that you have PTSD. What signs or symptoms did you display to make you realize that something was wrong?

SPEAKER_02: 3:54

One of the biggest things is isolation. PTSD makes you, it strips your identity and you start to see the world as unsafe. And that includes people in it, places, even as simple as the grocery store, became really scary to my whole system. And I felt responsible for everybody in the store as if I was on duty. And then the the thought that I couldn't show up if they needed me was too much. So I isolated. And that is something that is so common in PTSD because we are afraid of how we're showing up. We don't want to trouble other people. We don't want to burden, we're the ones that people call. So we don't have anyone to call. We don't want to burden other people. And so the isolation is one of the hardest symptoms. But it starts with simply not sleeping through the night, disturbed dreams or racing thoughts before bed. It's the anxiety you feel when you hear a loud balloon pop or a noise. Anything that disrupts your ability to cope in the cert the circumstance in which you're in is a symptom of PTSD or even post-traumatic stress injury, which is an injury from witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. So it can be a shock trauma like that, where you witness something, or it can be complex over time where you're witnessed trauma or experiencing it over a prolonged period. But symptoms of PTSD tend to be the same, and the worst is the isolation.

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

Valkyrie Heart Rekindled, a raw, unfiltered podcast for women on the front lines, fire, EMS, healthcare, and the military, about the work we carry and the work it takes to heal. Hosts Natalie Nugent, retired firefighter, founder of Rekindled Retreats, and Christina Dizon, active firefighter, women's wellness advocate, explore PTSD, shift work, hormone health, burnout, identity loss, and family strain. Each episode blends lived experience with expert insight. Join the conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

SPEAKER_03: 6:09

So when you isolated yourself, how did that affect your family?

SPEAKER_02: 6:13

It really affected my family. As a single mom, it's just my daughter and myself, and she is nine. I went from a high-functioning firefighter. I homeschooled my daughter for three years, and we traveled across the entire United States. We camped four months out of the year, out of our van, and we were very active, and I was very engaged in life. And after my injury, I just receded and I wasn't able to show up for her in that way. And my anger outburst because I would get so frustrated in the inner shame that we feel about how we're acting, because we know we're not acting the same, but we don't know why. So that shame that I just circled over, and then I would get irritated at myself. So any anything my daughter did would just set me off. And then we just got further and further apart because of it.

SPEAKER_03: 7:09

So looking back at your journey and prior to your injury, what is a misconception that you had if you had one about PTSD?

SPEAKER_02: 7:18

I thought PTSD would never happen to me. And I think, especially as a first responder, we all have that mentality. We're the strong ones. Everybody comes to us for answers. And so I think the awareness that it can happen to anybody is huge because everybody's susceptible to trauma and it affects us all. And it just is based on somebody's world life experience. If they have a lot of childhood trauma they haven't dealt with, then any career they're in is going to compound that trauma. The awareness of what you bring to the career or to the table from your childhood is something that was a misconception. I had a rougher adverse childhood. My mom was a drug addict in and out of jail. And there's partial times in my life where homeless. So very traumatic events that I made them through it. So as an adult, I thought I was fine. I made it through. I do the one-hour therapy every week. I'm doing all the motions. And so I never thought it would happen to me. I was preventing that. But the thing is, it does happen when we don't talk about the things, when we don't talk about the struggles we're facing every day, when we don't talk about the extra struggles of even just my childhood. It was very really hard. And had I been able to just come to the table and actually connect with my other coworkers and share my life experience, they could have gotten a better idea of who I was and we could have just connected even more than we did. So it was looking back now by trying to protect everybody around me by not sharing my story. I inevitably pushed myself further and further away from connection. And that is definitely something I never thought would happen to me.

SPEAKER_03: 9:12

Yeah, so you were going through this, you were isolating yourself, you noticed that you were having anger outbursts. What moment changed your mindset to where you decided I have to get help?

SPEAKER_02: 9:24

It was very significant. I remember it. My dog, we had to put down my dog in December 5th of 2023, just a couple months after my accident. And that was really a big event in my daughter and my life. And that night we're trying to just go through the motions and be happy. And I'm trying to just push right through the pain of my dog and not even stopping to just grieve. And so we're setting up the Christmas tree, and I'm trying to make this really light and fun, but I'm really just struggling on the inside and just really faking it. I had no business trying to do anything. And the tree wouldn't snap together. It was an artificial one. And it was limb by limb, the little hook ones. And finally, halfway through the tree, I just remember not being able to lift my arm because I had right side paralysis. So I couldn't hang any more branches up. And I got so overwhelmed and frustrated, I picked the tree up and I threw it across my living room. And that had never happened before. I'd never had any kind of outburst or anything. And it terrified me. And then I look over and my daughter saw me because she was sitting on the stairs and she was just so terrified looking and so scared at this new life that we're experiencing. She didn't know I'm her place of savior. And now I'm her place of being unsafe. So it's just a wake-up call for me, seeing her face and her crying, and then having to apologize and say how long it is. It really that night going to bed, I knew something had to change. And what really did it for me was the next morning, a coworker came and knocked on my door. And he had taken an interest because I had stopped coming into work at that point. I was too activated every single day in my PTSD. I couldn't make it to work. And he noticed. So he showed up as part of the peer support team. And he just checked in to see if I was okay. And for the first time ever, I said, no, I'm not okay. And I told him what happened. And the beautiful thing about peer support and community and just connecting with another human being is when I shared this vulnerable port of me that was struggling, he didn't shame me or judge me. He just walked inside with me. He sat down and just was there. And his presence made me feel so seen. And he helped me get into a recovery center. He bought me a plane ticket. And four days later, I was at my recovery center getting treated for PTSD. And I would not have gone without the push because I didn't know where to go. I just knew, okay, this is my last day. But my options were to not be here anymore on this earth or for this wherever the universe was going to take me to get me help, but I didn't know where to look. So it was the universe intervening and showing up that day through Darren. And he has been there every step of the way since, too. And that's the difference that a peer-to-peer connection can make.

SPEAKER_03: 12:38

I can imagine that you had so many things going through your mind. You're a single mom, and now you had to make the decision to leave your daughter. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_02: 12:49

That was huge. And that's another misconception I had made in my mind. I had convinced myself when I first found out about the program, it was 41 days. And I thought, there's no way in my mind I can leave my daughter for 41 days that she's never been away from me. And also, my mindset, I was highly suicidal. And that's why I wasn't leaving my house. I was so afraid I was just going to take a wrong turn or just not come back. Was just this overwhelming sense of, okay, I can't leave my daughter for 41 days, but I'm going to leave her forever. And in my sick mind, I didn't realize they weren't the same thing. And taking that leap of faith initially, because I had the support of just one person, Darren was there and told me, it's okay, I've got you. He helped me with child care. I couldn't have made it possible without him. And I ended up staying for 90 days in that treatment center.

SPEAKER_03: 13:50

That's amazing. I'm so glad that you shared the part about suicide, having suicide ideologies. What was it Darren that made you comfortable to say it out loud? Or was it the fact that you just knew that you needed to change in order to get out of that situation that made you say it out loud?

SPEAKER_02: 14:10

It was the fact that I said it out loud. And then once I uncorked and started sharing, I had gone through just even before my injury, before September 2023, I was only five months post-hysterectomy from uterine cancer. So I already had some ultimate other stressors and major illnesses I was trying to overcome. And to be quite honest, none of my coworkers even knew because I thought it was just too much to bring to the table. So the fact that I started talking to him and I told him everything, and he was just blown away that I had made it as far as I did. And I think that was very validating for me to have somebody else tell me, like, yeah, you have a problem. Let's work on this together. And I think that was a very validating moment, just saying it out loud and putting it out into the universe and just that little weight off of your shoulders that you can experience just by sharing. We use an analogy in the fire department where every call we go on is like a bite of an apple. So anything traumatic we see is a bite of an apple. And sometimes it gets stuck in your throat and you just need to cough up the piece of apple. So having a conversation and sharing something stressful you have going on is just like removing a piece of apple, just trying to clear some space.

SPEAKER_03: 15:34

I never heard that before. I really like that. So if someone is listening and they have similar situations going on, what is some advice that you can give them just about voicing, you know, that they need help and then just accepting that help?

SPEAKER_02: 15:50

Yeah, the first step is having a safe community or someone that they feel that they could open up to. And if you don't have the family and the friends, like I was in a space I didn't have the family support or friend support, if you're in that space, there's programs out there that I wasn't even aware of. They have free recovery centers, they have free counseling and therapy group sessions. And this is what I encourage everybody is just to find a therapist, and they will be a really good reference for other resources. And it's worth a shot to go into therapy. It is really amazing to be able to just have that shared witnessing of what you've been through in your life and to get some guidance on how to now work through it. And with that, all of us are different humans. We're not all created equal. So sometimes trying to find the right therapist and the right fit doesn't happen right off the bat. It's not a one size fits all. It will take a little bit of work finding the right person, but they are definitely out there. And everybody has the option to reach out to somebody if they just do the first step, which is admit they have a problem and they need some help or need some support. And however that looks, once you put it out there in the universe and then you start making intentional steps towards finding your own support, it really does start to come together. And it's amazing the people that come out of the woodworks. And if you have no community or access to groups, there's groups on Facebook. I run a group, Rekindled Retreats. I have a Facebook group and we have different free workshops. I run a free weekly Zoom meeting for first responders and people who are suffering from PTSD. It's just a space to jump on and be able to talk about your wins of the week and then share your struggles. And the idea throughout the community is somebody else has been through a similar trauma. You're never alone. That was something I thought. I was alone in my misery. And the reality is, no, we're actually all struggling in some capacity. And the real purpose. Sorry. And the real purpose is just to struggle together.

SPEAKER_03: 19:02

Yeah, I think when we go through trauma or any type of situation that this catches us off guard, I think sometimes we do think that we are the only person that has ever experienced that. And that mindset keeps us stuck and it just keeps us in that place for way too long. So how did you go from okay, you got injured, you went through a spat of PTSD, you went through recovery, and you extended your recovery to now you are running an organization called Rekindled Retreats. How did that all happen?

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

It came together completely on its own, to be honest. And I'm still trying to catch up and tag along the journey and figure out my place along it. But what I found in my own experience, I came home after 90 days and it was really difficult to reintegrate back into life. It you leave as one version of yourself and you come back, this different version who's very vulnerable. And you just in my program, it was very intense. It was in residence. We did anywhere from 40 to 50 hours of therapy a week. And so we lived together, we spoke the language, we were inundated in therapy. So you come back inevitably different, and you have real, authentic relationships for a lot of us, the first time in our lives. You share everything, you put everything out on the table. And it is such a blessing to be able to work through all that stuff. And then when you come home, you're expected to just be fixed and come home back to the version you were before your depression or your anxiety or PTSD. And the reality is now you've come back almost a more sensitive version of yourself because you're so open to the world and to living again. And then everybody has these high expectations, and you tend to slip right back into the same patterns as you did before. And I was no different. I fell to that same pattern, and it was really difficult to start finding connections back home that I could share and feel comfortable with. So after about six months of trying to find my own community groups and going bouncing around from AA meetings to codependency meetings and just trying to find a community that I fit in. However, I didn't really fit in anywhere. So I decided, okay, now it's time for me to create my own community because I need it. It is driven by a self-led need of connection and community. And my idea is we all come in together and through the power of connection, we're going to come out on the other end, friends. We can hold the space for each other in a way that we don't get to experience every day. And it's just comforting. The most comforting thing I have found is when I host these meetings for other first responders, you don't have to explain your job or the trauma or the story, because it's never about that. It's already happened and we've moved through it. But the lasting imprint they make that does stick around. And that imprint, when we share it and talk about, it's amazing to me to see that every single person I have personally met and talked to have the same experiences around trauma. So it is just a really validating experience to jump on with people going through the same thing and realize, okay, I'm not alone. I'm not special in this PTSD thing. It's we're all going through this together.

SPEAKER_03: 22:47

So let's unpack that. So you had 40, 50 hours of therapy a week. I can only imagine that was tough. And you put in a lot of work. So you transitioned home. What strategies did you use today to just make sure that your mental health stayed in a strong place?

SPEAKER_02: 23:05

I came back with a wellness. Well, it's called a wrap plan. And it's just basically a list of things that I can use as tools or resources. And so throughout the day, when I first came home, I was looking at this piece of paper probably 10 times a day and looking at what tool to do, and then picking one and then doing, knowing it was a preventative care to keep me stable and feeling good. And so I got a little lazy after a couple months of being home. As we do, we get sucked into daily life. And as I stopped going to that paper to grab different practices, I noticed the stress started to come on a little bit more. And I actually discovered yoga. So we did a little bit of yoga and simple mind-body connection movements. And so I thought, okay, I remember doing that in therapy. It was okay. I was injured, so I couldn't participate a lot. So I started yoga and I did it as a mental health at first. And then I realized physically the benefit it had on me. I was able to get in and out of bed at night without bending over and trying to straighten my back. And it just became this beautiful passion of mine now, where I can't really overdo yoga. I've overdone things in my life, bodybuilding and firefighting in general. The physical toll has been really heavy. And with yoga, you can't really overdo it because it's all about your own experience and the ability and capacity of your body. So that has been very therapeutic. And it's a daily reminder to me just to really slow down and connect with myself. And the more I did yoga, the more I found that I was doing the other practices throughout the day without even really noticing if I would get irritated or a big one for me is loud noises or somebody startling me. I will jump, I feel unsafe, I look around, I have to scan. But I'm able to calm down within a minute or two now. Whereas that feeling would be in my body all day before. And I'm noticing that's because of the mind-body balance I have just from practicing every day. It's the consistency of using the tools that makes the difference. And when you stop using them, that's when the chaos and the world, it comes on too much and it's hard to cope. So it's really about that diligent effort to put in every day. But they can be small practices as little as a gratitude, just in your mind, thinking of three things you're grateful for the day. They don't have to be extravagant. They can be as small or as large as you want them to be, or you have time for.

SPEAKER_03: 25:46

Yeah, we definitely have to make recovery or what relationships, whatever it is. We have to make it a priority because I think if we get sucked back into just being busy and just going into situations day by day, we'll definitely digress from the things that we've learned. And so I'm so glad that you recognize that quickly and that you were able to implement yoga to help you with your mindset and just help you even with your physical well-being. So that's really good. So you started rekindle retreats because you felt like there was not a space that you fit in. How has that changed your life?

SPEAKER_02: 26:27

It has completely changed my life in that I we have this text thread and we send each other messages throughout the day and just like little pick-me-ups. And whenever I know I'm going into a stressful situation or I have to make a stressful call, or as I'm preparing to go into surgery again, I know that at any time I can drop that into the text thread. And in a matter of minutes, two people have responded to it. And it's just that it's like a safety net, knowing that you have friends and real people who've just got your back. And we are so lucky to have found each other. And we're all givers and caregivers at heart. So we want to be there for everybody. And it's just, it's been such a powerful movement in my life. And trying to make that on a bigger scale is my next step. I want to currently they're over Zoom because we have people from Colorado, California. We had a Florida firefighter on there last week. So it's just really cool how far it's expanding. And it would be nice to have an in-person group. That is going to be my next kind of setup. So it will be local to the Portland area. However, we'll still host the Zoom too because we need to capture a space everywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 27:46

That's so interesting. And it leads into my next question because I was going to ask you, where do you see rekindled retreats in the next five years?

SPEAKER_02: 27:53

Yeah. Rekindled Retreats is going to eventually be a brick and mortar, a retreat center. And it will also have some yurts in areas for glamping because the relation that we have, the relationship we have with nature is so powerful. We see that in the seasons, just as the seasons come and go, our emotions come and go. And really modeling after the way nature runs its course and almost living our own life in that same rhythm is incredibly beneficial. And to be able to leave whatever stress you have in your environment and come to our retreat center. And really, it's not about retreating. I actually don't even love the word retreat, but everybody knows what a retreat is. And my idea is it's a retrieval. So this is a place that you come and you retrieve yourself. And possibly this is for the first time you ever get the opportunity to connect. And I'm really looking forward to when we have that brick and mortar because part of our retreats we do now, which are different locations, we change locations. Our next one is in Rhododendrum, Oregon. But the nice thing that we have with the in-place one is we can offer our workshops and trainings that we offer in the retreats. We could do day events on the weekdays that are off. And I see it as a space that's being open to the public, like a Monday through Friday, open to the public. And I really want to capitalize on the middle class who are just left unsupported. When you get injured and you leave your field, PTSD lasts forever. So these symptoms are really hard to overcome, just even as the days progress, although it gets easier, it's still always there. So I won't go back into a traumatic field like I was in. So finding a space that I can come and maybe even work or volunteer or create service and be able to give back in a little way to other people going through what you've already been through is what I see for it in the future. And I've I'm really looking forward to when that all comes together. But for now, we're just renting some beautiful Airbnbs. And the beauty of that is we can do seasonal transitions to the beach and to a summer house. And they're all within an hour of the airport to make sure it's easily accessible.

SPEAKER_03: 30:23

So if someone is listening and they are interested in rekindled retreats, you mentioned that you have workshops. Can you walk us through what will what one of your workshops look like?

SPEAKER_02: 30:33

Yeah, our workshops always start with a grounding practice. We want to really make sure we are present in the moment and what we're about to get into. So it's about really focusing on the now and experiencing. The community of the group. So we introduce ourselves, we go through that. And then there's a training on the window of tolerance and your actual stress capacity. And so we all discover where we want our baseline to be. A baseline is where you're the most confident. You can cope with anything that's going to come your way and you have a clear mind. And when you get outside of your window of tolerance, you get really agitated. You can't think straight. You can't think clearly. Or if you are below your window of tolerance, you shut down. That's when you know we break down and we cry and we just feel like you're stuck and you can't move. So actually visualizing this and creating your own personalized map of your own system is a valuable tool because everybody leaves and walks away with knowing, okay, if I'm activated in this way, then I can use this tool to come back down to my baseline. And it makes it easier to grasp versus we've all heard going fight or flight. And so that's like turning on the light. You go fight or flight, you're turning on the light switch. Or if you're really depressed, in bed, can't leave, you're turning off the light switch. The concept we teach is just having it dimmer. You want to be able to dim up sometimes because as a first responder, you need to be on. You need to be in the fight or flight in that sympathetic range. But also you need to dial back down to our baseline. We can't live up there. The light will eventually burn out if you keep it on all the time. So it's so valuable. And the feedback we've had is that the awareness people have when they come home, and then we continuously reach out. So it's not just the workshop, it's eight weeks of reaching out, making sure the practices make sense, making sure they're able to fit it into their lifestyle or their professional career in different areas that would benefit them. So it's although some of the events are only a four-hour workshop, it it lasts eight weeks. And then it's a forever community where we jump on calls. So we're always available to jump on if people have questions or they just want a little bump.

SPEAKER_03: 33:02

That is really good. And I like that. So I can imagine as first responders, everyone was so strong, everyone is so resilient. So, how do you guys transition to the just to relax? I can imagine that part, especially if you're coming from a field where you're always on edge and you're always alert. How do you the grounding, you said grounding, but how do you guys just really just relax and allow yourself to be present in the moment?

SPEAKER_02: 33:32

Yeah, I would say the bigger almost you could relate it to personality, the bigger the personality and type A and raw charge, I'm gonna take charge, the more your personality is engaged and your system is activated. It takes bigger tools to bring you down. So a big one that works every time for me is the cold water. And I do not love it. I do not like the cold plunge whatsoever. But if I'm really activated, it is something that does reset my system right away. And just because what happens is it takes me out of my thinking brain where I'm just constantly ruminating, and it puts me into that sympathetic range, but in a controlled fashion, so that as I breathe through the pain, essentially, because that water is cold and painful, and as you breathe through it, you can feel yourself softly come back into your thinking brain. And you're just thinking, okay, I can't wait to get out and get my towel, and you have a plan for the hot shower. And, you know, I'm gonna have a cup of tea or coffee, and you have this plan. And when you get out, your body is actually warm and you're adapted to the environment outside because you were so cold. And it's just such a calming, it almost puts me, I could almost go to sleep after just because it brings me down to my calming state so fast. But it also works with just cold water on your wrists. So that is something you can do anywhere. At a restaurant, when I'm feeling really anxious, I'll excuse myself, go to the bathroom and just put some cold water on my wrists and just be really intentional about okay, I recognizing and naming I am anxious, just that alone is going to reduce your anxiety by 20%. Just naming it and acknowledging it in your body.

SPEAKER_03: 35:27

Thank you for sharing that because I had no idea that cold water could reset your mindset. Because I've met first responders. I have a cousin that's a firefighter. And when I tell you, he is always like level 10, like he's always alert, even if we go somewhere. I'm like, just relax. It's like he's very just aware. And so I was wondering if you get a bunch of first responders in the room, how does that process hurt with just trying to get everyone to calm down, just get everyone to relax? So thank you for sharing that. That's really good. I never did a cold water plunge. I can imagine that is it's cold.

SPEAKER_02: 36:08

Yep. And I can imagine it's it's an extreme tool, right? An extreme example. But another extreme example could be meditation. It takes a lot to sit in your body when you're always on the go and moving. And if you start with just five minutes of just sitting and just noticing your thoughts and recognizing what they are, not changing anything about it. And just sitting in that space for five minutes, eventually through that discomfort over time and consistency, like we talked about, your body will start to recognize that is safe and where it wants to be. So, just like anything, the more you practice, the better you're going to become at it. And it's really just a skill that we never learned. We never learned how to slow down. We were always, usually a lot of us had a lot of expectations on us as children and then into adults and then our careers. So we feel like we can't let our guard down.

SPEAKER_03: 37:06

Yeah, that is definitely so true. So if someone's listening and they don't know the benefits of community, what's one thing that you have learned about healing and community that you wish more people knew?

SPEAKER_02: 37:19

I wish more people would understand that they're not alone, that we are not alone in our problems. And although a friend is going through a different stressor or a different event that may seem minor to us, it is a big event in their life and it is a point of stress. And we can all relate to that. You know, some of us have a different resiliency tank or capacity to just take on more, and some of us don't. And at the end of the day, the biggest part that I can't stress enough is just the more you give, the more you get. So maybe if you're in a group and nobody's talking about real deep conversations or it's just surface conversation, maybe that means you're the person who needs to step up and try to take it to that next level and just open up and just share. Just have an open, honest conversation with whatever you have going on. And that then allows the other person the opportunity to share and do the same. And it's not about just dumping all your traumas on somebody, but it's also about not lying. So when somebody asks me, Hey, how are you doing? I don't just respond, Oh, I'm fine, I'm good. I surprise them and I'll say, Oh, actually, today I'm a little anxious because I'm waiting on a letter and it's two o'clock and it hasn't gotten here yet. And then they say, Oh, I can relate to that. I'm waiting on this or this. It just what you give, you get. And if nobody else is doing it, sometimes that means it's you. It's on you to do.

SPEAKER_03: 39:01

That's really good. How do you hope sharing your journey will impact someone that's listening today?

SPEAKER_02: 39:08

I hope people just realize there are resources out there and I encourage them just to start looking for them. And that is one thing I wanted was just to get the awareness of the there is community out there, and there's people that want to help. And it's not just rekindled, I have a space for first responders and PTSD survivors, but there are spaces out there for everyone. And it's just about going on Facebook or word of mouth and asking. Find the people that live the life that you want or you respect about them and ask them how they got there, ask them what they do for support. You don't know unless you ask, and maybe some bit of advice that they've learned through their experience will help you in your own.

SPEAKER_03: 40:00

Yeah, so many of my listeners they do struggle with whether the mom guild or PTSD or anxiety, work-life balance, just a lot of things as entrepreneurs and business owners. So, what advice would you give them to just slow down? What advice can you give them to start to slow down to balance things for themselves?

SPEAKER_02: 40:24

Life is going to continue with or without you. So whether you are showing up to every event, they're still going to happen. And the beauty is the event or the circumstance or the deadline you have, they are still going to be there in the future. And not everything has to be an emergency. I think we get really caught up where we need to do a bunch of things when in reality, if we step back and saw what we had to do and then what we thought we had to do, I think we would be amazed at how big the list is that we think we have to do and accomplish. And we put the stress on ourselves to get done when maybe what we're doing is already enough. And when you stop and can just slow down and sit back when you're doing your to-do list, maybe split it in half, do a to-do list and a think I have to do list. And then maybe if you don't have energy and you're coming to your think I have to do list, maybe that's not the day. And there is always a tomorrow. And if there isn't a tomorrow, then we don't need to worry about it.

SPEAKER_03: 41:33

So now that you are on the other side of all of the things that happened to you, does success look different to you now? What was that question? Sorry. So now that you have gone through your journey, you went from being a firefighter, you got hurt, you had to go through recovery. And now that you're on the other side of your story, does this does success look different to you now?

SPEAKER_02: 41:57

Yeah, everything about life looks different now. Through my therapy center, we learned about internal family systems, which is a modality of therapy. And through that modality, it creates an awareness inside of you for the emotions that you're feeling at the moment and even possibly where they were created, the trauma points or the age line along the way. And one thing I notice in my recovery through everything I went through is I am able to relate to people far greater than I ever was before, in that I can just sense and almost see their emotions and the parts of them that we learn to read about ourselves. I'm starting to recognize that in other people. And it allows me to approach somebody from a different lens and also make it not about me. So maybe if they're having a bad day and they were rude to me, it had nothing to do with me. And the blessing of being able to just verbalize, not everything is about me. This is their experience, and maybe they're just having a bad day. And if I'm able to see it from that compassionate lens that they're a person, they have parts, they have emotions, they're separate from me, it it relieves that pressure for me to have to be responsible for them. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03: 43:18

No, it does. And I could imagine that was an aha moment because when you're in the moment, you don't realize that we make things about ourselves.

SPEAKER_02: 43:26

Yeah. We don't. But we do at the end of the day, everything we tend to make about ourselves, or we're thinking, I used to, now having the awareness now is I used to approach conversations already with the answer in my head and just waiting to butt in. And it came from a place of love. This person's struggling, and I just want to jump in and solve it because it seemed so clear for me as an outside eyes looking in. At the end of the day, that's not a good friend. And I could brag all day saying I'm a good friend because I helped them solve things, but really I wasn't because I made it all about myself and I didn't want to be uncomfortable with the fact I couldn't help them and just sit with them. So it's a humbling experience for sure. And it's empowering too, because you put that on the other person who maybe never gets the opportunity to be themselves or be the lead or be asked, hey, how are you actually doing? How often are we ever asked besides a surface, hey, how you doing? When has somebody really sat down and said, Hey, I noticed you're showing up different. You know, what's going on with you lately?

SPEAKER_03: 44:38

Yeah, I think we are so used to being in a rat race that when someone really stops and genuinely listens to how our day is going or really care to know what's going on with us, I think sometimes it can shock us because we are so busy and we're so programmed to not be inconvenienced that sometimes those moments are the things that we need to even replenish or refuel ourselves. So I'm so glad that you're talking about this. So you have mentioned a lot. You have these awesome retreats at workshops. If someone wanted to reach out to you or wanted to learn more about your organization, how can they do that?

SPEAKER_02: 45:15

Yeah, I have a Facebook group on Facebook under Rekindled Retreats, and we post all our active events and just happenings around Rekindled on there, as well as I have a website, Rekindled Retreats. And you can anyone can book for a free resiliency blueprint. So this is 30 to 45 minutes of time. We speak over the phone and we really just see what's going on and create some resources for you to be able to walk away with and start either implementing in your life or start calling and trying to get the supports and the pillars in place to be able to even address and start addressing our PTSD or other depression anxiety that's going on.

SPEAKER_03: 45:59

Natalie, I am so glad that you joined us on today because I know when most people hear the term PTSD, they think of our military community. They think of those military members. And so the fact that you were able to have this conversation and you talked about it and how it can affect anyone, especially first responders. It can affect someone that was sexually assaulted. So PCSD is not bias, right? It can affect anybody. And so I'm so glad that you brought that to the forefront today because a lot of people that's dealing with PTSD, they could have shame, they could have embarrassment. And so for you to have an open, candid conversation about it, thank you so much. So as we wrap up, what's one message or a piece of advice that you can leave with our listeners who may be navigating their own journey as it relates to PTSD anxiety or depression?

SPEAKER_02: 46:50

Yeah, I would just really offer to normalize the situation. You know, when you go through these life experiences, it is a normal human reaction. It is not something broken about you. There's nothing wrong about you, there's nothing that's unfixable. It is just simply something that happened or was. And it is about creating a space and making those intentional movements moving forward. But at the end of the day, you're never broken. And that was how I felt. I had no purpose and I was broken, and there was no need for me here anymore. And that just simply wasn't true because, in addition to who we are in our careers and our identity, I'm also a mom, a friend, a sister, a daughter, just a member of my community. And we all matter, and it takes all of us to build a community together.

SPEAKER_03: 47:45

So you heard her. It's all about community. So if you are a first responder or is you are active or have been hurt, whatever the case is, Natalie has created a community for you. So I will have definitely have all of her contact information in the show notes of this episode. So make sure that you reach out because you don't have to do life alone. You don't have to go through your journey alone. They have a group of people that are waiting with open arms to help you out. So again, Natalie, thank you so much for joining. You have been a pleasure, and I have learned so much about your organization and just about you sharing your story. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 48:23

Thanks for listening. Please rate this episode and share it with your family and friends. To learn more about your host or to book a coaching session, visit www.brooksdeming.com. Until next time, rise.