The Wisdom of the Fire Runner
Our lives are often built in pursuit of comfort (which we confuse for happiness). We seek comfortable salaries and jobs, placating friends and cultivating an existence where everything is just so. We create our bubble. We are safe. As long as things go exactly as we’d like, we’re fine.
And then life happens.
Someone close to us suddenly dies. A scandal at work. A relapse. A mass shooting. A lay off. A diagnosis. A natural disaster. A horrible accident. A lawsuit. A chronic illness. These things happen.
And the fire erupts.
Suddenly, our whole world is engulfed in flames. Everything we know is burning down. We begin clutching for information or answers or substances or something to make it stop. Because life isn’t supposed to be this way, right? But unfortunately, life is exactly this way. Life makes no guarantees. It is the majestic, pastoral peaks of Switzerland and it is the utter devastation of Ground Zero. And in between, is our existential journey and the realization that we were never safe — we were just naive and maybe, selfish.
And then the freeze begins.
When everything has been burned to the ground, the cold rolls in. After the initial shock of our situation has worn off, we encounter the beginnings of a new life. Suddenly, our world is very quiet.
I first experienced the freeze when my father died. I was fresh out of a near fatal car accident, four months sober and working a shit “get well” job with plucky optimism. And then — boom — a sudden heart attack and I would never see my father again. My world had changed forever. It took me a minute to synthesize this fire, but what happened after was equally stunning. I had friends and family completely bail. People I had counted on. A silence so deep and deafening I couldn’t believe it.
I learned that people aren’t always good with death. People aren’t always good with your fire because — they’re afraid they might catch fire. So, they run… up the hill and away from the flames.
I experienced this again when my mother died, another time after a lay off and most recently, during the five months I was misdiagnosed while battling a mystery illness. The latter, was one of the more painful freeze experiences…
So, my illness. The first inklings of this started in the pandemic, but hit a crescendo early last year. I laid in my bed for months dealing with horrible panic, suicidal ideation, racing thoughts, mysterious rashes, insomnia, an inability to hold food down and a firm belief in my gut that this was physiological and not psychological — but not one doctor would believe me. I was told I was burnt out and maybe had a gut problem.
To be abandoned by the medical world seemed like a very American thing. I was unhappy, but accepted that I would have to be more vigilant for my health. However, I never fathomed that some of my friends might abandon me. When our people are sick, we help them. Right?
Wrong.
I learned how horribly people treat you if they think you’ve suddenly developed severe mental illness or what looks like a neurodegenerative disease. One person told me something like they didn’t want to end up like me. Another person, a colleague whose life I had significantly impacted over the years, completely bailed and offered the feeble, “I didn’t want to talk about work” as an excuse for their absence and not inviting me to a birthday party. Yeah, I didn’t want to talk about work either… but I suppose we’ll bury the lede and carry on. A new church I visited showed me concern for about one week and then I could clearly sense that my disregulation had become too much for them.
The freeze is a lonely, cold place. You learn so much about yourself. You learn so much about others. As you reel from the PTSD of whatever trauma you’ve encountered (whether the accident or the death or the diagnosis or lack there of), you’re encountering a simultaneous trauma in realizing that the people you thought you could count on are not there for you.
And this, this is when you meet your fire runners.
Eva was my first fire runner. As I would text her from the bathtub during my fourth bath of the day or trying to understand why I couldn’t get my resting heartrate below 100, she would simply hold space and assure me that this would pass. As I would try to get by minute by minute, hour by hour, she would continue to respond to my texts. I kept waiting for her to get sick of me, but she wasn’t afraid. I had no idea how she could be so hopeful, but I clung to her hope like a life preserver. She had been through brain surgery, heart surgery, mold illness and more. To Eva, this was just life happening. She was not afraid of catching my fire, she was fire proof.
Her unflinching kindness reminded me of my mother’s last at-home hospice nurse, a beautiful Filipina named Candace. I’ll never forget how she looked into my mother’s eyes on her death bed and told her she was beautiful. She treated her as if nothing was wrong, she radiated healing and hope. I was so grateful for her kind energy and that she was the last person my mother held space with. Hospice nurses are fire runners.
Fire runners aren’t afraid of your scandal or your diagnosis or your natural disaster or what other people are currently saying about you online. Fire runners are here to get into the flames, to hold space and to offer hope and / or compassion. They may not agree with everything you’ve said or done, but they recognize you are human and deserve hope.
I want to also add, fire runners don’t try to fix you. I became allergic to people who tried to overwhelm me with their answers to my problems. When someone is in acute distress, they don’t need you playing God. They simply need you to hold space and point them to their own.
Spring comes slowly after the freeze. It usually happens after you’ve made a huge surrender. For me, it was crying under a tree in the park by our house. I had been unable to find a diagnosis for five months. I was exhausted and surrendered to the fact that this may be my life — forever. I may never be able to work again or hold food down and that was my destiny. I cried as I touched the tree’s bark and asked God (and to be honest, the tree) to please help or at least give me strength.
No joke, a moment later, I received an email from the woman who became my doctor saying she would see me. She also said, “You’re right to suspect your anxiety is physiological, I look forward to helping you heal.” I wept.
A sprout appears, a sign of hope. This is the beginning of spring.
“This sounds like classic mold illness,” Dr. Pearl said at our first meeting. And it was. An unknown hole in the roof of our house had been leaking water into the side of our bedroom and behind a very fresh coat of paint, lied wood rotted with black mold. Turns out I am one of the 20% of the population this effects (partly due to Gilbert’s syndrome — which I was also diagnosed with). The illness had destroyed my body’s ability to absorb nutrients and my ferritin level was 6. That was why I was in such intense panic and anxiety. (Once I began simply supplementing with the iron my doctor suggested, all anxiety symptoms stopped. I have less anxiety now than I’ve ever had in my life.)
As the flowers bloomed and my strength returned, I gained new confidence. A lot of people will take advantage of you when you’re sick. “I think you need to increase your visits to twice a week,” A therapist told me. My gut disagreed, so I declined. Months earlier, I would have happily paid in the name of buying hope, but now I knew how to stand in the gap for myself. When everyone abandons you, you learn how to show up for you. You become your own fire runner.
I ruthlessly dialed up and dialed down friendships. If you weren’t a fire runner, I didn’t want to be close to you. My tolerance for people’s passive aggressiveness or preciousness also waned. I am not here to help you cultivate the safest world you know, because this world is not safe. It is full of brutality as well as beauty.
And I became a fire runner for others. When I read about a chef I knew who been plagued by scandal, I reached out. When I saw an acquaintance had been canceled at the height of her career, I DM’d while others were evaporating from her life. As another coped with grief in clumsy and odd ways, I texted them. I didn’t have to agree or fix or do anything beyond say, I am here. I am here to observe your inherent humanity. I am here to be a hope dealer, because others were hope dealers for me and I am eternally grateful. In my current practice as a coach and CMO consultant, I do the same. I view it as my part of my calling now.
I’ve never been much of a summer person despite being a native Angeleno, I’ve always preferred the fall. Perhaps, that’s the Scorpio in me. But after the fire and the freeze and the spring, the first warmth of summer was the most beautiful thing. I have never loved the sand and salty air more than I do now. I can not get enough of nature these days — nature is also a fire runner for me.
In modern culture, we have famous fire runners. People like David Goggins. Goggins, who literally works as a Smoke Jumper when he’s not being the most bad ass guy on earth, is simply not afraid of anyone’s bullshit. He will run into any fire literally and motivate you the whole way through. Then there’s Bob Goff who wrote Everybody Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People. I highly recommend reading that book, it’s an incredible story. Goff is Christian and the book is also, but you don’t have to be to get the mind-blowing value from his pro-level fire running. I will add that my mom used to say in her thick Brazilian accent, “Tatiana, take the meat and leave the bone.” Ignore what doesn’t resonate in his book, but stay for the lessons Goff has to offer.
You have choices in this life. You can sit in the seat of judgment, comfortable and arrogant. You can run from discomfort. You can gossip about others. You can take substances to try and cultivate a constantly-blissful experience. You can demand other people meet you on your terms and if you don’t like what they do proffer up some bubble-wrapped narrative about “boundaries” which has more recently become a loose proxy for, “I need everyone to agree with me.”
Or you can be a fire runner. You can stand in the gap and fearlessly offer love when others are suffering or being confusing or mysteriously ill or disagreeable or unacceptable or simply broken without fear that you’re going to catch what they have. And if you do, you will learn that you are fire proof. And your heart will be bolstered by the love that you are giving and it will reverberate through your life. I guarantee you, it will change you. I also guarantee, there are people who need you.
Fire runners are life savers.
Become one for your self, become one for your world.
“No one expects us to love them flawlessly, but we can love them fearlessly, furiously, and unreasonably.” — Bob Goff
This piece is dedicated to all fire fighters, military and first responders. Thank you for being the true fire runners.
