Recent Phone Call
My cousin called me the other day when she found out I was retiring from the fire department. It was really thoughtful of her to call, and acknowledge my years of service. You know, toiling in the salt mines and all. We exchanged all the family updates, blasted a few photos back and forth, and planned a post-pandemic lockdown wine-fest. And before she hung up, her last words were, “I don’t know how you did it all these years. Firefighting must be really hard for a girl.”
Her final TTFN (ta-ta-for-now), although well-meaning, is one that I have heard my entire fire service career. It immediately brought to mind an Instagram photo I posted back in March. The photo solidifies how far we’ve come with respect to gender diversity; the phone call illustrates how far we still need to go!
The picture at the top taken by one of my fire department’s firefighters – Darci Williams, in acknowledgement of Women’s Month, March of this year. I love this picture! And not simply because it shows women can be firefighters; but because there are 10 of us. When I started, there wasn’t even 10 female firefighters in the country! When Darci took the photo, I posted it on Instagram with this caption:
When I started in the fire service in 1986, many of my fellow firefighters told me that they thought it was “nice” that I joined; but figured I’d give up eventually because it was “just to hard for a girl”.
It was that kind of attitude that made me dig in and stay. Honestly, if they’d have just said “cool, glad to have you here,” I may have left years ago. But they didn’t say that.
Firefighting is hard work! But not because you’re a girl!
It’s hard, because it’s physically demanding and mentally challenging.
It’s hard, because it’s dangerous working in an environment that’s over 1000 degrees; and where you have to bring your own air to the party!
It’s hard, because someone is having the worst day of their life and they called the fire department to solve a problem that is far beyond their own ability to deal with.
It’s hard, because you know your family is at home worrying that you might not come home.
It’s hard, because firefighters have some of the highest occupational cancer rates in the world.
And it used to be hard; but that’s because I was alone. I was one of the only female fighters in my area.
Thankfully, that part is not “hard” anymore! I am so proud to be working with this amazing group of womxn every, single day! They make grateful that I stuck with it!
Being a firefighter is hard work, period, full stop. It has nothing to do with “being a girl”.
So yes, it’s hard for girls to be firefighters. But we’re women, and we have great big lady-balls. So we’ve got this!
Cheers,
Cynthia Ross Tustin retired early to pursue her passion for writing. Turns out, she's equally passionate about retirement! This author has spent 1000s of hours researching all the best that retirement has to offer. What you'll find here is a well-curated resource of amazing places to go and fun things to do as your retirement approaches. Not retired, no problem! There's plenty here for all of us that are "of a certain vintage"!