Jacqui Farley

Transcript

It was a sunny summer day. The kind where the light spilled through the windshield and warmed my face. I was working as a paramedic. Just another shift, just another call. My partner drove as the sirens cut through the air. Lights flashing across familiar streets. My body knew this rhythm. The weight of the uniform, the hum of the ambulance. But, as we turned down a quiet townhouse complex, something felt off. The air was heavy, charged. A police officer met us at the door and his face told us everything before he said a word.

Inside, there was chaos. A woman was screaming, not crying, screaming. A sound so raw, it barely sounded human. And then, I saw it. A tiny body, limp and still. A baby boy. This mother had just murdered her child. Another paramedic crew later informed us that he had been stabbed 90 times. It was supposed to be just another shift, just another call. And my first response wasn't horror. It wasn't tears. It was nothing. If you've ever listened to a true crime podcast or watched a show about murder, you know how gruesome those details can be.

But imagine, just for a second, that you are standing there watching this all unfold. I was there to treat the mother. The same woman who had brutally murdered her baby. I swallowed the part of me that wanted to scream. Because my job was to feel nothing. That's how we're trained. But that day, something inside of me broke. Nothing fell apart right away. I kept responding to calls, steady, neutral. I'm the one who felt nothing. Until one day, after swallowing countless more traumas, my body said, "Enough."

I didn't just cry. I collapsed. And this is the part no one tells you. Healing can be brutally lonely. No one to come to my rescue. Just me, all alone in the dark, feeling like everything around me was falling apart. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a work-related mental health injury. After that, healing became my only job. Years of therapy. Not to fix what was broken, but to uncover what had been buried. But somewhere in that darkness, something shifted. Instead of things slowly falling apart, I felt something new within me start to break through.

Something more myself. [snorts] Not because the pain vanished, but because I stopped running from it and started rising through it. And now, as a psychotherapist and nervous system specialist, I sit with people exactly where I once was, between falling apart and breaking through. I don't just help people cope. I help them rise. I help them stop running and start facing the pain without the brutal loneliness. So, let me ask you, is there something that you have been carrying all alone? Because here's what I've learned between the crime scene and my collapse.

You do not break because you are weak. You break because something buried deep within your soul refuses to stay silent. And when you finally face it, joy, laughter, pleasure, aliveness comes rushing back. Collapse isn't failure. It's interruption. It's life clearing the ground beneath your feet. So, if things feel like they're falling apart, maybe they're not. Maybe it's exactly what you need most falling into place. And what feels like breaking may be the very thing that is rising in you. Thank you.

Woo! Woo!

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.