The Origin of Fuelling 22
Fuelling 22 came to fruition as a result of my family’s experience with sanctuary trauma and moral injury. If you are a first responder, both of these terms may be familiar to you, or they may not.
Sanctuary trauma is when the very organization that employs you and is expected to support you and provide you with the tools you need to succeed, treats you poorly and abuses their authority, creating an unsafe workplace. In the first responder world this can mean the difference between life and death. Sanctuary trauma is largely management driven as it is their responsibility to create a healthy workforce and a healthy environment for all employees—essentially creating the work sanctuary. Lack of leadership skills, lack of subject matter knowledge, low emotional intelligence, ignorance or disregard of occupational health and safety regulations, and lack of resilience in management can all be contributing factors. When administration and management sets the stage through their behaviours, thoughts, and actions for a healthy work environment, employees follow and it then becomes a collective effort to keep everyone safe. The onus remains with administration and management to lay the foundation for all.
Moral injury is experienced when one witnesses actions or acts in a manner that goes against their personal values and moral beliefs. The psychological and social distress one experiences after the exposure is the injury.
Increasing conversations on sanctuary trauma and moral injury are revealing the detrimental impacts on the brain, and the overall ramifications of such preventable injuries on the individual’s life. As a firefighter’s wife, I have lived my husband’s sanctuary trauma. As a result of witnessing his sanctuary trauma and the actions and behaviours of his administrators and managers, I lived my own moral injury.
My inflicted moral injury motivated me to find a better way. As I searched for solutions, I found the Leadership Wellness Group in Toronto and their Resiliency Coach Certification program. I enrolled in 2021 in the peak of my injury. As I progressed through the program, I realized much of my law enforcement training instilled resilience that could be utilized in daily life dilemmas. As I put the program into practice, I experienced first-hand the healing benefits on my brain and overall wellness. I gained a greater awareness outside of my first responder silo and realized the importance of resilience in everyone.
With the world coming out of covid, combined with technological advancements, and regular life stressors, people of all walks of life were feeling the ill effects of chronic stress—the unhealthy stress that wreaks havoc on our physical and mental health. It was evident that everyone and anyone could benefit from resiliency coaching, no matter what their motivation was.
Like fuelling a fire, you fuel your resilience by creating simple habits that are supported through neuroscience to grow your frontal cortex. With the frontal cortex being responsible for our executive functioning, the thicker our frontal cortex becomes, the more resilient we are.
In numerology, the number 22 is a master number with powerful energy to help find purpose in our existence. Cosmic wisdom is channeled to turn incredible dreams into reality. 22 combines spiritual and material, it trusts instinct to direct where its efforts are needed most. 22 is chosen to receive profound insights and has a responsibility to direct them into creating something valuable, true, and meaningful—something for the greater good. 22 is balanced, capable and up to the extraordinary task. 22 is the sum of my husband and mine service numbers, and our combined experience with the sanctuary trauma and moral injury were necessary for me to reveal Fuelling 22 Resiliency Coaching to the world—an effort to reduce individual stress responses with a focus on the workplace.
The flowering flame in the logo represents the chaos, overwhelm, challenge, and change in the world—the outside stressors. The individual represents our human capacity to grow our resilience to better manage all of life’s stressors in a healthier, stronger and safer way.
Through an abundance of experience and training, Fuelling 22 Resiliency Coaching was born!
