But when a person is involved, I think it strengthens our "never again" resolve. We want to ensure no one hurts us like that again, is given access or the opportunity to. Often, it's a promise we make to ourselves. But this is a hard tightrope to navigate, because opening yourself up to love, friendship, being vulnerable enough to share your inner world invariably opens yourself up to the risk of it happening again. When we open ourselves up, we essentially hand people the capacity to hurt us..

I know that my positive perspective on life and desire to "hold space" could be seen as a soft or irrelevant approach for a hardened First Responder population. The things I share aren't going to be for everyone, that's ok. But the insight often missed is that I view my purpose as holding space for your darkness....the dark, twisted, traumatic shit that we, as First Responders face every single day...and many don't know how to talk about. I saw it during the course of my own policing career...

However, what most people fail to realise is that what we choose to focus on, is what our mind will be trained to seek out. That's the important part. Negativity is a choice. Therefore, so is positivity.