 Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining the Santa Rosa office of community engagement and the Santa Rosa fire department for such an important and timely series on being wildfire ready. I'm Scott Westro fire chief for the city of Santa Rosa. During the course this presentation American sign language interpretation will be provided and the interpreter will be spotted for the duration of the webinar. Before we start, I just wanted to take a moment to thank director Magali Teyes and her team for the idea behind this whole series. This will be our third presentation this week. But this is really they're doing and they really deserve the credit for for getting the work done and coming up with this idea and getting all the speakers and looking at this very holistic community driven event so thank you to Magali and her team. So the reasons why we're doing this. There's there's a lot to it but with everything the community has been through particularly in the last couple years, the fires create a very common bond. That's a bond of resiliency strength and unfortunately trauma. The whole community of collectively shown what a resilient community looks like and how that strength actually unites us. I truly believe and my team's probably tired of hearing me say this but it's been evidence over the last four year that we are stronger together, and that not only goes for the fire department, the city as a whole, the entire county and the entire community it's all of us we are all stronger together. The fire shop revolves around the shared trauma of the wildfires through evacuations fires plan power shutoffs, other life stressors and now global global pandemic. It's important to take care of our well being and connect with others. You'll hear today about how this trauma is truly shared amongst the entire community, including members of the Santa Rosa fire department and the city organization. The apartment will we have lived through both personally and professionally and continue to endure on a yearly basis is exceeding is exceedingly taxing on the body, mind and soul. I say that's not looking for sympathy rather to open up a space of vulnerability that we as professional firefighters endure these traumas alongside the community and we are not impervious to their effects. If we begin to continue to heal together, we will holistically be stronger. To address this important topic and more detail today, I'd like to turn the presentation over to a panel discussion led by the Sonoma County resiliency collaborative and a quick reminder that both Spanish translation and ASL interpretation are available. I would like to introduce Griselda Correa. Griselda is the community communications and community engagement manager at the Santa Rosa community health, as well as a leader in the Sonoma community resiliency collaborative, which she is representing today. To help guide us through this work is my, my honor to introduce Griselda Correa. Thank you so much for that introduction chief. And I'd also like to introduce our other panelists that will be joining us today. Today I am thankful and grateful to be in community and and share the space with our trained facilitators from the Sonoma community resilience collaborative. We have Susan Dunn from NAMI joining us today, and Becky NS from SOS counseling. I also appreciate to be in space with Deputy Chief Traverse Collins from the Santa Rosa fire department joining us today in this panel. Before we begin, as we always start our circles and spaces in the Sonoma community resilience collaborative. I like to invite Becky and us to guide us through some breathing and ground us in the space that we are in today. Thank you. Thank you Griselda. And as I lead this exercise feel free to also on the panel feel free to turn off your video and have yourselves muted if we were in a space together I would ask you to maybe close your eyes or drop your gaze. So we'll we'll do somewhat of the same here in a zoom platform. So to begin I just would like you to take a moment to find a comfortable position seated. With your spine alert and straight, but shoulders relaxed and down and your hands maybe resting in your lap. Just take a moment here to take a slow deep breath in through your nose, and then slowly breathe out through your mouth. Once again just take a nice slow deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, just feeling relaxation coming into your breath. And again, maybe closing your eyes. Maybe bringing your gaze down without fixing it on any particular point, and one more deep breath in through the nose, and slowly exhale out the mouth. From here we'll take a few moments to observe our natural spontaneous breath. It was normal and comfortable for you. And now let's bring some awareness to our feet in contact with the floor and begin the scan of the body by moving from your feet through your legs to your knees, noticing any sensations in this area. And moving then higher above the knees to the thighs and hips, how you're seated in your chair, or couch, how your legs come in contact with that seat, and just accept any tension or discomfort you may have. All sensations are okay. And again, taking another slow deep breath through your nose, and slowly exhale through your mouth, and then becoming aware of your abdomen, your belly, the area around your belly button, continuing upwards, feeling your chest expand and contract as you breathe. Maybe even noticing your heart beating in your chest, any sensations in your back, your lower back or middle area, or your upper back and shoulders. And then just gently moving your mind's eye through your arms to your hands and fingers, coming back again to your shoulders, your neck and throat, and any sensations that you might have in your face and in your head. Being totally aware now of your whole body in this moment, allowing your breath to deepen naturally, recognizing that when you breathe slowly, you're doing diaphragmatic breathing, your diaphragm rises when you breathe out. And it descends when you breathe in. This encourages the air to go to the bottom of your lungs, where more oxygen comes into your body, and more carbon dioxide can leave your body. So just gently reminding yourself, soft belly breathing, allowing the belly to expand as you inhale and contract as you exhale. If you're feeling any tension anywhere in your body, imagine that breath going to your fat space and place in your body. And each time you exhale, vision that breath, taking with that tension and exiting your body. And as the tension leaves, bringing your attention gently back to your soft belly. So now I invite you when you're ready to slowly and gently open your eyes and bring your attention back to this space. Thank you so much Becky for getting us in the room and in the present moment. As Chief Westrop mentioned, my name is Crisanda Correa, I am the communications and community engagement manager for Santa Rosa Community Health. In addition to the role that I play at Santa Rosa Community Health, we are also spearheading the Sonoma Community Resilience Collaborative that was formed as a response to the Tubbs Fire in 2017. As an effort to help our community recover and heal. We would like to acknowledge that rebuilding goes beyond physically building our homes in our community, but it's also about rebuilding our community, our connections and our emotional well being. Our vision is to prevent the progression of stress and trauma effects into becoming more serious behavioral, physical and social impacts in our community. Since then, we have experienced additional community traumas, we've experienced floods, more fires, a global pandemic, and now we're also preparing for fire season once more. With all that in mind, I'd like to invite our panelists to come forward and start with some acknowledgement of what are some of the emotions that are coming up as we're preparing for another yet another fire season. I'd also like for each of our panelists to introduce themselves and share where is it that they work and what's coming up for you in this moment. And we'll start off with Susan, and then go to Becky, and then Travis, Travis. Thank you, Chris. So the really, really happy to be here. Where to start just so excited that this is happening. I'm very touched by the words about affecting our body and our soul and our minds, you know, across the county world feeling this. And I have had the privilege at Nami Sonoma County to work with people dealing with fire effects. I'm the education and support services manager. And we have offered wildfire groups for a long time, which is kind of morphed into our wellness groups. And just right now, I guess that what's coming up for me is a lot of gratitude and a lot of appreciation for all the work of many people that I don't even know that are behind the scenes, working on our responses to these things. So, with that, I'll let Becky introduce yourself. Thank you. I'm the wellness executive director for SOS community counseling. I too am honored and privileged to be able to serve the organization. We are collaborative of about 25 therapists, working to provide prevention education and intervention around mental health in our community with kiddos all the way to adults and couples and families. And then around what's coming up in terms of now here we are in the beginnings of a fire season. Again, just to speak to my own immediate networks and social circles. A lot of things as Susan said a lot of things are coming forward. And I'd like to the things that I'd just like to share at this moment would be a certain amount of desperation and exhaustion over preparing for yet another fire season I think I've heard that quite a bit. Not only professionally but personally and felt that way myself. I think I've heard a lot of anxiety over what will happen this year. Where will the fire be when will it happen. The anxiety around the weather. So, those are kind of the first two things that come from mind from for me as well. I'm Alex Collins and I'm the deputy fire chief the center is a fire department. And I'm happy to be here and I want to thank you for including us this is something that historically fire service public safety isn't really forward facing and being vulnerable and talking to people. And so it's pretty nice that we're included in this conversation. There are a lot of shared trauma, if you will that we are all going through together. So, as I mentioned we enjoy being forward facing sharing our feelings, and talking to community members to let them know what they're going through we feel as well. And maybe to give a little bit of reassurance that how we're preparing going into this fire season, and some of the things we've put in place for our members because maybe potentially some of the stuff we've put in place for our members to support our members with behavioral health issues are something that the community can use as well. So happy to be here and I look forward to contributing. And part of our circles and when we are in community is that our moderator facilitators also become part of the circle right and so I like also, as you all are talking, there are a few kind of things that are coming up for me. So, thinking about, okay, preparing for fire season. I moved out of Santa Rosa. After 2017, I was actually pregnant and found out I was pregnant before the fire, but really kept in mind, you know, how is this going to affect my child. There are multiple things that are coming up. And now as we're preparing for fire season again I now live in Paloma, but I still have family in Santa Rosa specifically where the fires have hit, and they've been evacuated every time. So for me as a way of preparedness one, I noticed that anytime I get an alert I still have my alerts from Santa Rosa and anytime I get the alert I'm like okay what's happening, you know should I be preparing to host family. I'm not going to look like I do notice in my body and even as we're having this conversation and my shoulders are starting to go up like oh no. Here it comes again right. So those are some of the things that are coming up for me. And also whenever I am in Santa Rosa and there are high winds. I was evacuated in the middle of the night. I didn't luckily didn't lose my home but it does bring up. So when I'm in the high winds again, it's getting warm, we're in a drought. What are we going to do to prepare, and how can we prepare. So we can do another round of check in and share you know what other things are coming up, or other triggers that you may be experiencing as we're preparing for fire season to be in your in your personal or professional life. And one thing I'm really struck by, we just had recently a warmline call somebody asking about recognizing they're dealing with some post traumatic stress, and almost, you know, there's a sense of kind of, well that was a long time ago that was the end of the year. And it's you know we're talking 2017 it's not that long ago, and for people to understand that these symptoms and the situation is in your nervous system, and it's there, and it's just beneath the surface maybe, but to actively work with it. That's, that's what we want to do, like Becky's talking about just working with it. And just to take away any stigma or shame about I shouldn't be feeling this or this is weird or, you know, I sent a text to my friend and I sounded crazy, you know just like this is our nervous system just trying to protect us it's doing its job which is fight you know that keeps us alive that's our survival mechanism, and to just validate that it has a place. But what we really want to do optimally is learn to work with it just like Navy SEALs they learned. They visualize the goal they have self talk they have regulation which is breath. And, you know, it's almost like an athletic competition like we're going to have to run a marathon sometime in the next, you know three years we don't know when it's going to happen. So if you get ready then you're always ready, and you can relax. And so I kind of see it that way that it's a collective thing that we can, you know this event we can work towards being ready or just acknowledging what's going on. One of the triggers that's kind of interesting, you know, obviously fire engines hearing fire engine and I just want to share this little tidbit Becky and I were talking the other day about this that I've trained myself when I hear fire engine actually after the top fire was like it would set me off to slow down my response and to go oh someone's getting help. Make it something. And I use it like a meditation bell like oh how am I doing check in. Am I stressed out, do I need a break, and just just work with it. And that's the thing with trauma is that the greater the trauma the greater the opportunity to move to a new place if we partner with it and learn to kind of do the dance with it. So that's what I see this opportunity for Santa Rosa to come to a better place of understanding ourselves better understanding our neighbors better, just improving in every domain that way so. Yeah Becky, did you have more at you. Or anyone else. I'm just resonating with what you're saying about, especially about. Well that was the Tubbs fire and that was a long time ago and, and sort of these consecutive disaster after disaster and whether it is fire or whether it's a flood or it's maybe a family emergency of some kind, you know the body's trying to regulate and so if there isn't really a discrimination, you know to the body as to what's actually causing it. It still feels the same and so kind of to Chris Delta's point as well about you know sitting in a meeting and feeling your shoulders come up in that tension and anxiety that could be caused by anything and could be triggered by anything and so being okay with and accepting the sensation as it comes and allowing an opportunity for it to move through you. And, and for me to try to remind myself just to breathe and that 30 seconds, 60 seconds if I'm lucky to give myself a couple cycles of those breaths is just, it's truly transformative and I know that I tend to underestimate it at times. And, you know, even today I like you know I'm wearing my Apple watch and it tells me to breathe every so often and sometimes I get all frustrated with it and I want to turn it off and be like oh that's annoying, but if I actually stop and do it, it really does have a cumulative positive effect. And it's only 30 to 60 seconds and it's things that we have within our own control to be able to help ourselves and like Griselba said at the beginning you know to help prevent some of this to be from some of this trauma becoming more intense and more severe and of our behavioral health concerns. Yes, Traverse had something. Yeah. Yeah, so I, a lot of the things that all three of you said resonated with me and one of the, I think Becky may have brought it up but you know with the tubs fire, you know we went through the tubs fire and there was never really any time for us to recover. Right, because of what you said you know then we dealt with COVID and then we dealt with some civil unrest and then we dealt with additional fires impacting our community and our boundaries so that we've really had time to, I guess really take in all the feelings and emotions that we're feeling, because we're constantly as Susan said, in this state of readiness the state of fight or flight or what we call it on the public safety side, hyper vigilance. Right, we always have to and that's something we tend to be good at. It's not necessarily a good thing, because we tend to get emotions and we shove them in our pocket and we just push them down we push them down, and we don't acknowledge them. We stay in that state of hyper vigilance, so we can deal with the next disaster because a lot of times we don't have the liberty to take a time out and to breathe and to, you know, take care of ourselves that's historically we've not been good at, but that's something that we are really changing within our organization as a whole and really taking care of the behavioral health component of our members and their long term health as well so I 100% get what both of you said and the tie in there and then Griselda, one of the things with our, you know, with you getting those messages and you getting those, you know, those Nixle alerts and, and really the intention of that is because there's so many questions out of your when, like you said you hear a fire siren, or you, you know, feel the wind getting hotter and drier we're sending those out as kind of harnessing that technology as a communication tool to kind of let you know hey we've got this we're acknowledging this is going on. We've aligned our forces we're ready for battle. It's somewhat rest easy, we're taking, you know, we're taking care of it so I guess it's perspective in a lot of ways, the way those are interpreted, but just know and have some solace knowing that by sending you that we're acknowledging yes, our forces are lined up we're ready to get we're ready to put everything online for you for the community and for each other. So, if if I could, and I'm not in a position to give advice in any way but I would just say, know that that's a good thing because we're we see it as well we see what is happening and we're aligning our force to care of it. Thank you, Travers. And I also like to invite. I know that we have participants online if you all would like to write in the chat. Anything that's coming up for you all. I did see that there was a question that came through. We will leave questions till the end, but really just want to acknowledge what are some emotions or what's coming up for you as you're hearing our panelists, discuss so feel free to say something about mindfulness real quickly here, which is like the key to understanding, you know, we can be triggered and not know it and an odd trigger when you asked us to think about triggers, I thought of this time when I was triggered by something and didn't realize it so I was like, Why am I feeling anxious. I was just, you know, Sunday afternoon something is like, what's going on, why am I anxious, and I kind of like reviewed what was going on and I realized I heard the neighbors talking, just having a relaxed conversation, I can overhear them. And can't hear what they're saying but they're just a tone of conversation. And then I traced that back to the night of Tubbs before Tubbs Fire. They were having a similar kind of conversation and they mentioned fire. And I thought back on that sequence of events and when they, you know, there was awareness of the fire when it started that was being talked about. And then it led to all this so so all these months later, it's like such a seemingly innocuous thing was raising my anxiety level. And so mindfulness practices can allow us to understand what's going on in the mind, body and spirit that's going to eventually amp up or, you know, show itself. And so we're going to take in all of the improvements and all of the adjustments that have been made as support for us. You know, to take that in like when anxiety comes up, yes, and we're not letting anything go very far anymore. You know, there may be something there was a fire in the grass down by the golf course here. A while back, a couple weeks ago, and, you know, I got out just so quickly there was such a quick response it's like, I like to take that in as our body is responding. That's part of how I can feel safer and also to think through what are my plans what can I do to feel safer. So, thank you. Thank you Susan and I do want to acknowledge that there were a few comments that came through. It feels like everything was back to back. This is very helpful. Thank you. Here for our frail community members, get anxious that they will vulnerable that they are the most vulnerable during pandemic and other disasters, and also someone mentioned that brief have has been a helpful reminder for them. And with that, I'd like to ask all of you all, and what is one tool if you could call out one tool that has been helpful to keeping that hyper vigilance or keeping you steady. What would you say it is and how do you use it in your daily life and whoever would like to jump in. So, certainly the breathing. I think that's the one obviously we did and what is an easy go to. But I do the technique that was taught to collaborative around shaking and dancing. That one is extremely helpful for me. And just very briefly, for everyone it is mindfulness with movement. So meditation does not always have to be sitting still and finding yours on. You know, there's very much a physical component. And I know myself I think of meditation with movement and and so the shaking the literal, just moving of your body. Sometimes I do it to music, if I have that available to me. And I've, I can attest I have literally during the pandemic gone into a bathroom in a grocery store because I was very anxious about being out and being at the grocery store and something happened there for me where anxiety was a little bit overwhelming. And I found a stall and I just I did it in the stall just so I, you know, people couldn't see me but just really I needed to kind of just shake it out. And that was literally all that it is and spending a few moments and few minutes doing that has been tremendous for me. Thank you Becky. Traverse or Susan. I'm an amateur in this game, but I think that, you know, the biggest thing that helps me is families are huge for me as a huge component, you know, having that support network at home is huge component for me but the thing that can tend to help me the most is just spending time alone in your head. So there's so many distractors now in society, you know, we have can be everybody has a computer in their pocket. It's really easy to maybe be feeling some sort of way, and then distract yourself by going on a social media platform or texting or, you know, whatever escape playing the music really loud so you're not alone in your thoughts so I think the thing that's helped me the most is turning is getting some separation from those devices from spending some quiet time just in my head. So I can, you know, recognize kind of like what Susan was saying like hey why am I feeling this way today. Well, if you if you're being honest with yourself and you recognize those symptoms or those feelings. You can you can deal with them, or you can put, you know, another measure into place so you can help help yourself work through that process but if you're always, you know, I get up in the morning I slam two cups of coffee and then I put my loud music on and I go into work and the minute I'm at work I turn my computer on, and I'm going my computer my lunch break I'm shoveling food in my face I'm looking at social media, and then I'm back on my computer again you get no time and it's really easy to do right. It's really like hot ourselves doing that, but I think it's so important, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a doctor, not a counselor, but I think it's so important to just spend time in your own space, and listen to what's going on in your own head. Absolutely. Yeah that quiet time or taking just taking a moment, even, you know we live in a beautiful county to like anytime you can stop and contemplate some beauty, you know, take that minute that's actually helping your whole system. I don't have a website just taking it and I do that anytime I can. But one thing that I have found really helpful is something I learned from Peter Levine a trauma person is writing about trauma for about 50 years probably by now. But it's this trauma hold and you can try this with me if you want to take your right hand and you put it under your left arm, and then take your other hand and put it so you can see me. Basically, like that. So, so right hand under left arm and then the other arm, basically creating a container for your body and then if you just shut your eyes for a second just feeling the solidity of the container. Just feeling you know right here. Any emotions that come up it's just like water through a garden hose, it just, it's, you know, we have this feeling like emotions are going to overwhelm us and we're solid right here. Just feeling that and another variation is to put the other hand by your neck. So just the same thing but just putting one hand by the neck, and there's a lot of nerve endings right there and just your own physical contact can be very soothing. Another version of this I've done this with our groups is just put your hands by your heart and just saying, I'm right here, I'm right here. I feel like the nervous system is kind of can be like a child lost in the shopping mall, you know, like, and then you, the child comes back and that they're still upset, you know, our adrenaline's going we got all the chemicals going. I just, I'm right here. Maybe I can't find my keys for a second. I'm right here just come as soon as the nervous system and brings us into the present moment. And one thing that teacher told me a long time ago is in the present moment the devil can't find you. You know, if you can get yourself present maybe that's playing tennis maybe that's whatever it is, whatever the thing is that you do that gets you in the present moment that are being with family. That can be very healing because we're not in the regrets of the past or anxiety of the future that coming to right here. Well then what do you do. What do you do. For me I have a toddler at home so a lot of the times I'm hyper vigilant, vigilant, making sure that she's not getting into trouble or getting her and you know being there for her. But I've also learned a lot of that the way I respond is going to impulse how she's going to respond or impact how she's going to respond. I do a version of shaking and dancing where mommy puts her favorite song and, and then we go do it together. And we literally just wiggle it out and shake it out doesn't matter how we dance. So that works well. The other one is a breathing exercise but I incorporate an imaginary balloon, and in this imaginary balloon we put all our anger and all the feelings that are coming up. And think better. And so as she and I do that and then she gets to pop my balloon which is the funnest part to her. And to me it's reminding me I'm here she's happy she's smiling. She's good. And that has worked really well for not only myself, but also for her, there have been times where we're in a new place and she gets very anxious so she'll say mama balloon, and it's like okay, we can breathe. And that's, that's her version of breathing. And I'd also like to invite us now I know Susan's going to be guiding us into an exercise. And after that we'll do some Q&A and also our folks that are on our panel today will be providing us with some resources on other things that we can do. Thank you. So I'm going to lead an exercise that's part of the mind body medicine training that we all received and it's called autogenics and basically the idea behind this is that there's a link between the mind and the body obviously. And there's a link between the suggestion of these words and what you're going to feel in your physiology. So for everybody to just get comfortable again, you can turn off your camera if you like, sitting or lying, however you want to do this I'm going to be just guiding through some phrases, and to just take a moment to get comfortable, maybe feel the contact of your body on the chair or bed or whatever you're on, feeling the support of the gravity right there. It's getting yourself really comfortable and just relaxing and letting these phrases sink in. And I'm going to repeat each phrase six times so it's it's it's very tedious but there's a point to that. And it's okay if your mind wonders if you're thinking about something else you just just gently invite it back that's fine. Okay, so here we go. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My arms are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My legs are heavy and warm. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My heartbeat is calm and strong. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My abdomen radiates warmth. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My forehead is pleasantly cool. I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I am at peace. My breathing is calm and relaxed. I am at peace. I'm just letting those phrases die away, letting yourself just feel your breathing, feeling the state that you're in at the moment and very gently, no rush at all when you're ready. Open your eyes and return. So if we were in person, if we were doing this in a mind-body medicine group, we would have given you a bio-dot so you could see your body temperature change. But basically, how was that for anyone? Curious, you notice anything different about when we started from where we started to where we ended? Sure. I noticed that I'm in my office, which it can get really cold in here. And I was just noticing that one, my breathing is slower, my heart is not racing. I was even able to feel like I could hear my heartbeat and my hand started to get really warm. Yeah, I love that. I'm noticing my heartbeat. I think it's really important to just celebrate, oh, I'm noticing more about my environment, my physiology, because those are the skills that we build on that eventually get us to have much more command of our nervous system. That's what we want is to be able to calm down when it's time to calm down and to be able to amp up when it's time to amp up. It's meant to be a flow. It's meant to be not stuck in one position, but just to flow with what's going on. So yeah, thank you. Because our physiology changes, right? I mean, that's the thing with stress, is that we're gonna be, we're on. And then I remember reading this thing that says cortisol is neurotoxic. I read it about six times. I was like cortisol, okay. So stress hormones kill brain cells. I was like, oh, wow, that's kind of important to know. I wanna keep all my brain cells. So that means I don't wanna have any more stress hormones than I absolutely have to to manage life. But any extra, it's like we need to address it. It's a health issue. It's a public issue, really, for all of us, really, to take care of our health is to understand how to calm down. So curious, anybody else with that exercise? How was that? I think it was good, because it kind of like what we talked about before, it forces you to relax. Yeah. And then you notice like when you relax, your mind kind of just starts to wander, but it's okay for it to do that, just kind of letting it go and centering yourself and spending that quiet time in your head. Yeah. And when the mind wanders, the mind is meant to be looking out for stuff for us. That's why we survive. So to just gently, just like a child or a pet, like come on back, come on honey, you know, come back here. Because then we can let down. And if we go from fight, flight, to rest and digest, we need to have that downtime to repair ourselves and to restore the whole brain. That's the other part about it is we don't function well when we're triggered. We're in basically when your computer is offline, that's a good analogy for once we're in, in that lower brain part, you know, the fight and flight, we've lost our cognitive function at some point. We don't make very good decisions. So restoring the whole brain is essential to functioning well, is to understand and any athlete, you know, great athletes, they all know how to manage their state when the stakes are really high, right? That's why they're taking the deep breaths. That's why they're slowing down. So thank you. Awesome. So I actually, as you were talking, Susan, and kind of reminding us of that fight, flight, or freeze response, right? I kind of threw me back to 2017 and acknowledging that we all have a different response, thinking about my partner. And, you know, when we were getting evacuated, what his response was versus mine. And I froze. I didn't know, you know, I was like, this is surreal. This isn't happening. And his response was, grab the dogs, grab the computer and run out the door and make sure I was in my car. And so remember sitting there and just thinking, okay, you're okay, but also wasn't processing everything that was happening. And wish I would have had these tools, right? And as I was going through the training, remembering, oh, this would have been helpful. But now that we have them putting them in place. And you can be triggered and not know it. I mean, there was an event at Luther Roehring Center a few months after the fire. There was like a comedy benefit or some event. And I went to this event with a friend who evacuated to her house actually. So we went to this event. And when it was over, I was like, okay, all these cars close to this intersection that had a lot of fire on it. You know, I had associations with that whole area. And the next day she said, you were totally in PTSD last night. And I was like, I was. I was like, I didn't even know. She said, yeah, you barely said goodbye to our friends. And I was like, oh my gosh, all I wanted to do is to get to my car and get out of the parking lot. I wasn't, no other consideration mattered to me. But I didn't know until she said that, that I was in PTSD. And so then something else happened. There was another event at Luther Roehring Center. And I went, okay, I'm going. And this time I'm going to watch the reaction coming up and work with it. And I did. I waited till the end of the event. I was like, I love the other cars, go out, whatever. And I felt so great because it's like, I'm not going to let PTSD limit my life. I was like a victory over something that could have, well, let's close down, let's retract, let's not do things because it might bring up an uncomfortable feeling. But instead learning that with awareness and with good friends, with community, you know, we can help each other out with understanding. This is, there's nothing wrong with you. It's a reaction to an abnormal event. It's a normal reaction to an abnormal event, actually. And there are ways to work with it. Yeah. Travis, is there anything you'd like to add or Becky? I was just thinking, you know, I mean, I certainly agree with what everybody's been kind of bringing forward and listening and thinking about, again, just, you know, the body's ability to, well, lack of ability actually to discriminate in what is a triggering event, what is causing this reaction, what is causing anxiety or anything like that and kind of brings me back to a moment in time when I had had some pretty significant surgery for me in my life, but I had injured myself. And so the injury then caused the need for the surgery, but listening and remembering from my doctor at the time saying that, you know, your body doesn't discriminate, you injured yourself, that's trauma. Surgery, while helpful, is still trauma. And it just kind of reminds, it helps me remember that, you know, if I can be present in the moment and present in my body and experience the, whatever it's experiencing and allowing that acceptance that it will inevitably help move it along as well. And so that it's not just getting stagnant or stuck in one specific place. Thank you. And Travers, I noticed you also unmuted. So feel free to jump in. Yeah, I was asked if I'd like to share, you know, my experience with the tubs and mine was a little bit unique in that I was working the night of the tubs fire. And my family, we lived up on Marquess Springs Road. So when the tubs kind of hit town initially, it came in as the nun's fire was out off Highway 12 and that's kind of where we started to allocate resources right off the bat. I happened to be working on that engine that night that serviced that area. And so we responded into what we soon found out was it was a huge incident. Gonna be an expanded firefight. And we started fighting fire and quickly realized that we were getting overwhelmed. So we went into a lifesaving mode with the residents in that area and just started really pulling people out of their houses and directing them towards safety. And about probably two hours into the firefight, I heard through the radio that the fire was passing Safari West. Well, that's as the crow flies, that's seven miles from where we were fighting the fire. So then you really start to picture this and realize that this is gonna be something huge that we haven't dealt with. The second thought was my family lives right there. Our house was in the fire's path. So I called my wife, she was sleeping at the time and woke her up and said, hey, you need to get out of the house. There's a fire coming and she sleeps like the dead. So she took her a little while to kind of come around and she asked me, she said, are you home right now? And I said, I'm not home. I'm not, I'm at work, I'm working engine six tonight. And she said, well, somebody turned all the lights to the house on. Well, it was the fire. So the fire had already started to involve our house. So I sent her, I said, hey, just grab the kids. We had two, we still have two young kids, but they were a lot younger then. I said, just grab the kids and leave. So as I'm talking around the phone, I hear the smoke alarms going off. And I said, hey, just call me when you're safe, right? So this, I don't know if you remember not, but the cell towers went down that night also. So there was no phone calls to be made, no texts. So for an eight, nine hour period, I just didn't know if my family was okay, if they'd made it out or not. So just like we tend to do, we can just continue to do our job. We took that stress and that moment, because at that moment, there's nothing I could do to help my family and put it, kind of just put it in my pocket and I didn't deal with it. And then they made it to safety. Eventually the next morning at little past nine in the morning, my wife sent me a text and just said, hey, we're safe, we're in a park. So that was good. That way it was taken off my shoulders. But the reason I tell you this story is not for to trigger anybody or to compare my experience to anyone else's. But the point I wanna make is, we all deal with stress differently, right? So I dealt with it by just keeping my head focused and at work and I have a, who's my boss now told me, he said, hey, you need to go see your family. And this was I think probably four or five days into the incident, because I hadn't called them, I hadn't interacted with them. As long as they were safe and I knew that, it was like, great. Then I'll unpack this bag down the road, right? But he kind of forced me to, he said, no, you're leaving, you're going, you're gonna go see your family. So I was able to do that. And it was very apparent in the way I was dealing with that stress and the way my family was dealing with that stress, right? And so they, we both had different experiences from the same incident, but I'm used to dealing with stress because we encountered every day, right? That's our job. We have to learn to compartmentalize stress. We have to learn how to unpack that stress when the time's appropriate. They were kind of looking to me for some guidance on how to deal with this stress. And, I really didn't have that ability to give that to them. So, my biggest point is that we all, we all deal with stress in different ways. The biggest thing I learned from that was how to not put my, how to not put my beliefs and how to not put, you know, my thoughts or I guess my expectations on other people and how they should deal with stress because everybody's just gonna, you know, deal with it. It took my wife some time to, you know, feel comfortable again during the red flag warnings. We rebuilt and same exact place. So, you know, there's obviously some, you know, always gonna be in the back of their mind. My kids ask, you know, now it's pretty common for my kids to ask, how many times are we gonna be evacuated this year? Cause they wanna go to a hotel and hang out and have fun. But that's the biggest message I would say for the community is that, you know, we recognize everybody's gonna deal with this differently. And we are here to support you. And like I said in the beginning, you know, we're, we are forward facing and, you know, we don't mind being vulnerable. And that's kind of another reason I told you the story is that, you know, we deal with the same, we deal with a lot of the same stresses. We just maybe deal with them in a different, in a different fashion. Thank you, Travers. And that reminds me, you know what you mentioned, the next little alert are there to remind and acknowledge that we as a community are gonna be okay. And our first responders are acting upon that. And so I'd like to invite Susan, Becky and Travers also. If there are any other resources that you would like to share at this time with our, with the folks that are watching us, anything else that people can keep in mind. And I did see a question come in about the warm line if it's in Spanish. We do have us, we do have a Spanish speaking person who can answer warm line calls. And we're actually just about to launch a family support group in Spanish. Really, really excited about that. So yeah, just in terms of resources from NAMI, we have our warm line. It's 866-960-6264. And Info at NAMI SoCo is another way to reach us. We offer all of our regular mental health services, but specifically for this, we have, we have had a wildfire support group that went on for a while and then morphed into wellness and stress relief group every Wednesday from 12 to one. So that's free to anybody. They can email Info at NAMI SoCo to join that. We just do, we do basically these kinds of tools. We just keep teaching tools, different, you know, people respond differently to different tools, just trying out new things to work with the nervous system is the wellness group. The warm line, we also have something called NAMI talks or we're doing little talks each month. And there's going to be one, I'm going to be doing one on boundaries on June 16th from 530 to 630. And we'll probably do something a little later in the fall on tools for wildfire readiness or something that extends these practices because they're so practical. You know, what do you do when you're in Walmart and you're freaking out and you know, you're needing to handle your life, but you're also feeling triggered. So that's, we focus on that. So Info at NAMI SoCo and the warm line are ways to reach us. And then we have all of our other services which are for people dealing with mental health diagnosis in a loved one, support for the family members and support for the person. So you can check out our website. I'm going to direct this one to Becky. I've moved back into my rebuilt home in Hidden Valley Estates. I would like to visit my family in Arizona, Oregon and Washington, but I'm afraid to be away from home between May and November. I feel trapped and unable to leave my home. Should there be a firework when I'm gone? And it's, let's go ahead. Yeah, I know, very, very real concern. So SOS Community Counseling, as I mentioned before, we are a collective of therapists. And, you know, I kind of just want to circle back to something that Trevor said earlier about, he was saying, I'm not a therapist. I'm not a doctor. I'm an amateur, something like that. I don't remember exactly what you said, but that you don't have to be able to use these skills. Like we want people to be able to cope and heal and, you know, do as much self-care as one can do. But then if there becomes a need where things have, you know, risen to a higher level, you know, SOS Community Counseling is there. We do pro bono work for those where a fee might be a struggle. And certainly that's been the case for a lot of people, especially during the pandemic, losing employment or having wages decrease. So you're welcome to reach us by phone, 2-8-4-3-4-4-4 is our intake line, area code 707, of course, but we serve all through Sonoma County and currently operating in this platform and predominantly in a telehealth Zoom platform where we can have sessions with you wherever an individual might be. We are also seeing people face to face at our clinic in Santa Rosa, but we also have a clinic in Ronan Park, Cloverdale, and working on Windsor as well. So we're out there in the community. And then there was one other thing I wanted to offer and I'm totally blanking on what it was that, but come back to me, I'll put it together. Thank you. And Travis, is there anything you'd like to add before we wrap up? Yeah, I was just talking about the person that I can, I have some empathy for the person that says, hey, I don't wanna leave my home. I'm the same, I go through the same thing, I try and go and spend time in the outdoors in August, September, and it's always, I always know I feel very leery to do that and leaving my family in the same area. Granted, we've cleared all vegetation away from our house and we've really hardened our home, which has given me a lot of peace of mind that, hey, if I do leave this, I can leave this to the professionals now that I have a defendable platform at my home. So one, and it's not really along the mental health lines as an avenue or a website, but if you do go to srcity.org backslash wildfire ready, there are some tips there on what you can do to your home to be sure your home is hardened, just, I know we're trying to be, we're trying to be, I don't wanna say we're trying to be hardened, but we're trying to put in some mechanisms to deal with these stressors, but that's an avenue for you to give you, like I said, a little bit of peace of mind that when you do leave your home, it's gonna be a lot in a lot safer and more defendable position. So I know it's not only, like I said, along the behavioral health or mental health lines, but that is something that's helped me preparing my home and allowing that to be a safe place if we do have to go through this again. Well, thank you all so much. I appreciate you all being here today. With that, I... I'm sorry. Go ahead, Becky, no worries. No, I just, I wanted to at least mention that, you know, should evacuations happen again, well, if they're happening again, hope crossing my fingers it doesn't, but SOS is part of the Sonoma County Co-Ad and we are a member of the Emotional Spiritual Committee of that Co-Ad. So we do have people available when evacuation takes place or there are re-entry points. So if you're coming back to your home, we try to get people out there to support in real lifetime when those kinds of things happens, whether it's a temporary shelter or a permanent shelter that you may have been evacuated to or like Trevor said, if you're coming back to your house and maybe something's happened and you just wanna have some support and going back to your property, we're there as well. Great, thank you all so much. And I'm actually gonna close out our circle as I usually close out all my other meetings and that's just with music and feel free to stick around until the song ends or just go ahead and listen and log off when you are ready. Have a great day and thank you for joining us today.