I wrote an apology letter to fire chiefs everywhere.  It’s my personal story and my personal apology but I am very certain I am not the only fire wife who owes this apology and therefore on behalf of all of us, I put it out there.

We’ll get to that, but first, some background on how I spent last weekend with a bunch of fire chiefs and why you ladies should care.

2013-08-16 11.51.24This past weekend my husband and I had the pleasure of spending 2 days in Chicago at the Fire Rescue International with our friends from MN8 Foxfire.  Big thank yous to Zach and Amy and Kelly and crew who welcomed us like family for the event.

photo(1)

The products made by MN8 Foxfire are like a no-brainer to me.  Something very affordable that keeps my husband safer?  Yes please!!  Basically they sell accessories to fire equipment that illuminates in the dark.  Helmet bands, leather radio straps, tool handles, ladder tips, stickers, etc.  Pretty much anything can be illuminated and I already gave Zach a zillion more ideas that a fire wife would love.  He says I now have the fever 🙂  and yes we will be offering this and other fun Foxfire products in our store soon!

2013-08-16 18.12.44

We also have to give a big shout out to 1st Responder Treatment who was talking us up big time for the whole event.  Those guys are truly making a difference in the space of addiction treatment in the fire service.  In fact, my husband Dan wrote some really powerful stuff for them over at their blog this week.  (Read it here)

As if a partnership with great companies like Foxfire and 1st Responder Treatment are not enough, spending 2 days meeting and speaking with fire chiefs from all of the world was so powerful.

Let me just say this…..  99 out of 100 totally get why fire wives need a support network.

(And the other guy was just happy he had survived his 33 years with his wife and was missing the connection that maybe his crews could benefit.  Bless his heart!)

So why should you care about this event?

  • Marriages in the fire service are in crisis.
  • Our men are surrounded by people in their jobs who are not honoring and supportive of their marriages because they’ve been hurt too bad themselves.
  • Fire Wives are not connecting and many auxiliaries are failing because divorce doesn’t just end a marriage, it breaks up friendships.

So having the opportunity to really talk to chiefs about the resources we are providing was long overdue and they were all ears.

I want you fire wives to know about this so when / if your chief comes asking about us, you know exactly what we are telling the chiefs.

The Fire Wife Sisterhood, our online community for fire wives, is helping marriages and changing lives.

firewifecommunity2join

The Fire Wife Academy is launching this week bringing online training to the wives on topics that are at the root of dividing us in our marriages and friendships.

fwa-header

And I know this because I used to hate the firehouse (true story – confession in the blog post linked there).  So I wrote the chief’s an apology letter (linked here) and I’m sharing with all of you how to turn around that attitude and not fall into those traps.

Seriously the tension over his length of time at the firehouse for long shifts and then the extra training required outside of those hours, not to mention the “brotherhood” that needed to regularly go out for beers or help people move.  What about us?  How is a marriage to survive on so few hours a week?   Our inability to deal with this in a healthy way caused tension in our marriage, lack of maturity in each of us individually, and definitely caused my husband to miss some promotion opportunities.  It hurt him as a firefighter and quite possibly put him and other guys lives in danger when he went to the station with his head swirling around with junk I was hurling at him.

It’s more than one sentence to explain how we turned it all around and that’s why we have these programs in place.  And why I’m apologizing to the chiefs and promising them we can help fire wives and their firefighters are going to be better because of it.

So we are now offering memberships to the Fire Wife Sisterhood and our Fire Wife Academy programs at a discount to Chiefs who buy them for their entire department.



Our webform is powered by the best tool to manage projects in the business: PODIO.

The following two tabs change content below.
On a mission to be and inspire us all to be better humans, to strengthen fire families & marriages, to nurture and encourage fire wives, do "good business" in all areas of my life and of course, love on my 4 kids.

Latest posts by Firefighter Wife (see all)

1 Comment

  1. Ellen Kirschman

    Congratulations on telling it like it is to Fire Chiefs everywhere. You have a big challenge, sounds like you’re up to it. Straight talk and honesty are key. Thanks for all you’re doing now. Best of luck in the future.

    Ellen Kirschman
    author “I Love a Fire Fighter: What the Family Needs to Know.”

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *