The Weight We Carry: A Paramedic’s Reflection on Remembrance and Healing

Today, on Remembrance Day, I hold close my paramedic, emergency service, and military family.

The ones who’ve seen too much.
The ones still healing.
The ones who keep showing up, even when it hurts.

Before I became a psychotherapist, I spent over a decade as a paramedic. Those years shaped me — broke me open and remade me — in ways that are hard to put into words.

There’s a sacredness to walking beside someone through their worst moments… holding their hand on what may be the hardest day of their life, or their final breaths. Those moments imprint on your soul. They change you — not just in your mind, but deep in your body.

For years, I thought I was handling it all. I wore my strength like armour — calm under pressure, steady when others fell apart. But underneath, I was unraveling.

I’ve witnessed coworkers struggle with PTSD, trauma symptoms, anger outbursts, burnout, and physical injuries. I’ve watched strong, capable people — some of the best humans I know — unravel under the pressure of what they’ve witnessed. And I’ve experienced it too.

What I’ve learned is this: we are not compartmentalized.
There’s no true separation between “work” and “home” when your nervous system has been shaped by crisis, loss, and urgency. It all blends together — the exhaustion, the tenderness, the grief, the longing for normalcy.

I’ve witnessed more than my heart knew how to hold — including the devastating loss of coworkers to suicide, and my own journey with PTSD, a work-related mental health injury. For years, I didn’t know how to feel. I was numb, disconnected from my emotions and my body. It was the only way I knew to survive the trauma, the sadness, the chaos.

I remember wondering, “Was I always like this? Or did the job make me this way?”
That’s what trauma does. It fragments you. It makes you question your wholeness.

And yet, through all the numbness and chaos, there were moments that cracked something open in me — moments that reminded me how precious life is, how delicate and sacred.

After more than a decade on the road, everything I had buried began to surface — the grief, the anger, the devastation. My walls crumbled. And while it felt terrifying at the time, that breakdown became my beginning.

It was then that my healing truly began.

I started to practice what I was learning in psychotherapy — how to listen to my body, how to meet my emotions with compassion, how to allow what had been frozen for years to begin to thaw.

There were days when I swung from feeling nothing to feeling everything. It was overwhelming — and it required me to call in safe community, aligned practitioners, and the practice of somatic trauma integration to anchor me through it all.

Slowly, I began to reconnect — to my breath, to my intuition, to my inner compass. I began to remember who I was beneath the armour.

Now, when I look back on my time as a paramedic, it feels like another lifetime. The woman I was then — strong, stoic, unshakable — still lives within me, but she no longer leads.

Today, I allow myself to feel.
To trust.
To breathe.
To be moved by life again.

I’ve reclaimed my softness and sensitivity — not as weaknesses, but as sacred strengths. I’ve learned that life isn’t about being positive all the time; it’s about allowing the full spectrum of our humanity — the grief, the joy, the anger, the awe — to move through us.

That’s what it means to be alive.
That’s where the healing happens.

Do I still get triggered? Yes. Halloween, for example, still stirs memories. But the edges have softened. The pain doesn’t own me anymore. Now, I meet those moments with tenderness instead of fear.

Today, I honour all who serve — my paramedic family, our emergency service workers, and our military communities.
You are seen.
You are remembered.
You are deeply loved.

To my brothers and sisters in service:
I see the weight you’ve carried.
I honour the stories you hold.
And I thank you — for the lives you’ve touched, for the moments you’ve stood in the storm, for the humanity you’ve offered when it mattered most.

May today remind us of our shared heartbeat — the courage, the grief, and the love that connect us all.

With love and remembrance,

💛 Jacqui