After 26 years in the fire service, including nine as a battalion chief, Shawna reached a tipping point. The trauma of callouts, the long hours during California’s fierce fire season and the bureaucracy that comes with work in public safety combined to alter her outlook.   

“It just started weighing on me to the point that I couldn’t even get out of my car when we went to an incident,” she said. “I would sit in my truck, and I just couldn’t physically get myself to get out. I didn’t have the energy to have another person come up to me and say they need help.”  

Shawna was experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the symptoms had spread far beyond work. She described being angry and agitated—“adrenalized” is the word she uses—making her emotionally unavailable and straining relations with her two teenage children. She was not sleeping. She began drinking more. The physical stress on her body was so intense that Shawna thought she had arthritis. 

“I felt like I was driving and it was raining so hard that the wipers could barely get the rain off the window,” she said. “So you can’t see the road ahead of you.” 

Shawna signed on to visit to PTSD Centerdesigned specifically to address PTSD experienced by firefighters, police, dispatchers and other first responders. Clients are taken care of from the time they arrive, allowing them to focus on the hard work of recovery. Food, accommodations and transportation are handled. Every participant receives a custom therapy plan and is paired with a licensed counselor. 

The experience was so influential that Shawna actually returned for a second retreat months later, this time with a mission to work solely on her own issues with PTSD. 

“Going to 11th Hour was a big part of helping me put the puzzle pieces together and connecting the dots so that I could understand what’s going on,” Shawna said. “A lot of times, when you get to that point, you just don’t even know where the root of the fire is.