Martin Wood Memorial Hike

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Martin Wood Memorial Hike Annual hike designed to bring awareness of first responder su***de and promote mental wellness among the first responder communities.

10/15/2026

Seeking support from Emergency Services widowed families and other Emergency Services families.

You are being encouraged to write to your local MP to support changes to the First Responders Memorial Benefit.

The benefit is a one time award to families/beneficiaries of those first responders lost to their duty after April 1, 2018.

The benefit currently does not reflect the rate of inflation and advocates are seeking to have the benefit reflect the consumer price index.

As well, the arbitrary cut off date of April 1, 2018, left many first responder families who suffered a loss prior to this, and who advocated strongly for this fund’s implementation, unable to apply for the fund. As such, it is proposed that the fund be expanded to include those prior loss families.

A champion of these changes, Luanne Donahoe, a fire services widow, will be meeting with her local MP, tomorrow, October 16/26, and would appreciate emails of support from families of first responders lost to their duties.

Please include in your email, your name, the name of your lost first responder, their date of loss, and a statement of support for the above changes to the First Responders Memorial Benefit.

She will be collecting emails/letters of support on a continuing basis.

Please forward your emails/letters to [email protected] and remember to send a copy of your letter to your local MP.

Thank you.

Please share this information widely through your networks.

09/16/2026

Suicidal ideation is more common than the general public is aware. Why don’t we know this? Few will ever actually admit to it, even in studies. Why? Because of how we react when people say they think about ending their life. Shame. Religious guilt. Judgement. Pity. Anger. Guilt. Fear. Panic. Isolation. Abandonment. And the threat of involuntary incarceration. We suddenly make their pain and dilemmas about Us. We don’t ask them why. We don’t non-judgmentally probe to get to the root of their ideation. We don’t actually help, instead we jump to conclusions, rush to fix it and push this away from us onto a professional. Don’t get me wrong, suicidal ideation (SI) and suicidality are best handled by a trauma informed professional, but we don’t live in a bubble, we live in a community, and it takes the support of a community to heal. It can heal. It’s estimated that 14% of the general public deals with thoughts of su***de, while in the first responder community, this estimate is around 54%. I would hazard a guess that these numbers are less than the reality. Let’s ask ourselves some tough questions:
1. Why don’t we talk about it?
2. How does knowing that your best friend, coworker, sibling, spouse, child or relative thinks about ending their life make You feel?
**The answer to this question is often indicative of where You need to work on yourself.**
3. If you were at a point where you felt you wanted to die, what kind of support would you want from your friends/family?
Before we can try to help others we need to be at the place where we Can help them. We need to be calm, nonjudgmental, accepting, empathetic and able to listen, even in the silent times. We need to be able to hear, not just what’s on the surface but also what is beneath. We need to be supportive of others’ emotional states and not get swallowed up by them. We need to be the support that those who think of su***de need. Change the culture. Talk about it. Make su***de and suicidal ideation as acceptable to talk about as having any other illness. We heal in community.
In solidarity.

(Copyright Martin Wood Memorial Hike, 2026).

09/02/2026

September is Complex PTSD Awareness Month.
I personally battle this everyday. Please educate and re-educate. We need to talk more about Complex PTSD, it just might help someone you love.

*I do not own this image.


Befrienders.org

09/01/2026

C-PTSD can occur in Emergency Services Personnel.

08/19/2026

THIS! 100%!!

Su***de. It is an irreversible decision. You can’t change your mind halfway through. It is permanent. The emotional stat...
08/17/2026

Su***de. It is an irreversible decision. You can’t change your mind halfway through. It is permanent. The emotional state you are in when thinking about dying by su***de will eventually subside. The trigger you are currently dealing with will eventually go away. It doesn’t feel like it in those moments. In those brief moments sits your entire life, in peril. Your entire existence sits in the balance…and the scales are tipped in favor of death. And the biggest illusion in your head will be that whatever it is you are struggling with will finally be over for good. The thing is, you won’t be here to talk about it. You won’t be able to enjoy that peace. You will never know what it will feel like to defeat that demon you struggle with. And often, you simply pass that pain to others to keep carrying. And yes, that’s a cheap shot, that’s using guilt to influence your state of mind, after all, this isn’t about others, it’s about you, right? “They’ll be better off” or “they’ll get over it” or even, “I hate to do this to them”. If you think you’re the first one to utter these words think again. They’re practically suicidal cliche. Isn’t it strange that these exact words come up in so many people’s minds when they’re struggling? Why? If someone can answer that please tell me because I’ve heard my own voice in my own head utter these exact words so many times in my life since PTSD. I’ve heard it’s called depression. I’ve read up on it; that it could’ve been there in some form since childhood, that it can exist in degrees leaving some people the ability to function, work, have a career, have friends, look and behave like everyone else but deep, deep, down inside it’s like something is still missing. Like joy never actually lived in that pit in your soul. I’ve heard that this can be trauma that we don’t remember, maybe even trauma that happened before we learned to speak. Many times if we encounter hardship or trauma as an adult, this will get triggered and boy, will it mess with your ability to see things clearly. That pit inside you will open up and start sucking everything in, until nothing makes you happy anymore, everything positive gets lost, the world feels heavy, you feel heavy. You feel like a burden. People get angry with you, or, you can’t tolerate them anymore. And the weirdest thing about this? It can happen fast, very fast or it can happen slowly, over months and seriously mess with your ability to fight back. Your life isn’t actually pointless, you are actually not a burden. Your problem isn’t permanent, you just need to find help solving it. Your head is messed up and you are not seeing both sides of things - the scale has tipped in the opposite direction. You need to balance the scale. You don’t need to die. Su***de is not the answer you’re looking for, it’s the illusion your brain shows you. You have lost connection to your humanity. Connection is the correction. Talk to someone. Be honest. Force the words out. Reach out to a helpline, a crisis line, a trauma counselor, a trusted friend and honestly, if the words won’t come, then just cry. Break the f down. Let it out. You are holding too much on your own. Let someone help you carry it. No matter how much we want to solve our own problems, especially emotional ones, we need others, because in those hardest of moments the true you is lost. Only another person can guide you back to being the full and balanced you again. Please reach out. Please re-connect to your real self. No more flowers. No more blacked out badges.

In Solidarity.

(Copyright Martin Wood Memorial Hike, August, 2026)

07/22/2026

There is a big misconception out there that once you’re diagnosed with PTSD, you have it for life. You don’t. PTSD heals. What defines PTSD/SI is the disruption it creates in yourself and your life. These intrusive symptoms will eventually go away and you will heal and live life again. Whether you call it a disorder or an injury, the nature of these two states is to return to baseline; disorder reverts back to order, injuries heal. If there was an instant button to push for healing, I’m sure everyone would own one by now. Healing is a highly individualized, long and drawn out process. Everyone experiences trauma; remember trauma is your internal response to an external “traumatic” event and it differs from person to person, but not all trauma reactions are PTSD-SI/C-PTSD. These have specific diagnostic criteria that need to be met in order to qualify for diagnosis and those symptoms are extremely disruptive to your everyday function. You can experience trauma and not have PTSD. Not every traumatic event leads to PTSD. Everyone will experience some degree of trauma in their lifetime, but not all will go on to develop PTSD/C-PTSD. That being said, C-PTSD, (caused by unmitigated, ongoing/prolonged traumatic events ie. Abuse) often hides in personality traits and belief systems, which in turn affect how one behaves, and leads to limitations in a person’s life, so it can be hard to diagnose.
Regardless, of which type, PTSD can heal. You can be symptom free. Consult a trauma-informed therapist and start getting back to you.

In Solidarity.

(Copyright Martin Wood Memorial Hike, 2026)

Feel your feelings. Every time in PTSD you think that the emotional state you are in is “inappropriate”, or uncomfortabl...
06/26/2026

Feel your feelings. Every time in PTSD you think that the emotional state you are in is “inappropriate”, or uncomfortable, you suppress that energy. That suppressed energy needs to go somewhere, so the body stores it, as a result your body will suffer from muscle pain, aches that won’t go away, indigestion, inability to sleep or feel rested. Releasing stored energy is where stretching, yoga, tai chi, walking and guided meditation can help. We practice what is called interoception; that is the ability to notice your inner state, ie. Sitting, closing your eyes and focusing on / sensing your body state. Where are my muscles tight? Where do I feel pain? But also it is important to notice, what is comfortable, what feels at ease? Interoception is how we target the release of stored body energy in somatic therapy in the setting of trauma but not only that, interoception is also a skill taught with more cognitive therapies, such as DBT. Feel your feelings. In DBT you are taught to notice your emotions as they are happening, this means being able to notice your inner state, name the emotion, accept the emotion, allow the emotion to peak/wane (this is feeling it, without stopping it) and then notice how your body feels inside when the emotion has subsided. It incorporates somatic practices to allow your body’s energy to follow its natural patterns, to prevent the further storing of body energy. When we experience trauma the emotional states we experience can be overwhelming, there can be many emotions being triggered at once and so, being uncomfortable, we will suppress those emotions and store that energy. The nature of a traumatic injury in PTSD is the repeated triggering of an emotional cascade within the amygdala. This interferes with your ability to carry out normal daily processes and so, each time it happens, we get better and better at suppressing this emotional cascade in order to get through our day. This can lead to pain syndromes, and numbing (the inability to feel our emotions/body). Suppression is coping, not healing. We need to feel it, to heal it. It will be uncomfortable. It will be exhausting. It will be frightening. But targeting and releasing that energy stored in your body will help you and your nervous system start to heal from trauma. Give it a try, find the practice that best suits you, stick with it and start healing your body.

In Solidarity.

(Copyright, Martin Wood Memorial Hike, 2026.)

(Graphic courtesy of our friends at the DBT page.)

06/20/2026

PTSD. It comes with a lot of emotions. One thing that can help you to understand your emotions is accepting that emotions are a HUMAN experience. They are not male or female, every single person on earth has the capacity for emotion, it is society that conditions us to repress/express emotions along a gender bias. Emotions are not a weakness, they are an innate biological means of restoring your internal homeostasis. They can balance us. When one emotion becomes too great, often another will emerge to counter that effect; ie, fear, if our fear response rises too high, our body may cry to release tension and restore balance. If our frustration levels rise and our internal experience becomes too intense, we may release this pent up energy by expressing anger, if anger does not fully release this energy, we may also cry. These emotional responses are normal for everyone. When our nervous system becomes injured and “over reactive” such as in the setting of PTSD, our emotional centers can become hyperactive. Your fear response can spike quite high in response to what used to be an innocuous stimulus and this can cause your body to suddenly need to counteract that spike, so you may cry or scream to release energy. You are not weak, your body is simply performing its checks and balances. Accept that your body understands how to balance itself, its responses may make you feel out of control, but try not to suppress them, you need to feel them to heal them.

In Solidarity.

(Copyright Martin Wood Memorial Hike, 2026)

06/13/2026

Everyone talks about what the symptoms look like, no one talks about what healing looks like. PTSD. Healing is messy, chaotic, rough, exhausting, can feel defeating and is painfully slow. Every inch forward can feel erased in the blink of an eye. Every skill you practice and think you’ve mastered can just fly out the window in the presence of a trigger and bring you to your knees, shaking, crying and terrified again. Healing doesn’t happen overnight. Healing takes long, because it’s not simply about changing the way you think about something, it’s about changing how your nervous system responds to that something (and other associated somethings). It is an innate, biological reaction that was designed to keep you safe and alive. When your nervous system develops stronger pathways towards reactivity, (by repeated trauma encounters, repeated trigger exposures) it can take longer to extinguish those responses. You are reprogramming your nervous system. When you’re exposing your nervous system to danger/trauma while trying to heal, you are erasing any forward progression because all you’re doing is “practicing” feeling unsafe, strengthening those neural pathways instead of strengthening the pathways to restore calm. Healing looks like doing things that make you uncomfortable - staying still, being in quiet, learning to listen to your body, recognizing when it is starting to react and acting to utilize the opposite pathways to help it to stay calm. Staying still is a tough one, in trauma staying still goes counter to what your nervous system tells you is safe, especially if you have a history of childhood trauma (and a majority of first responders are drawn to the field because of childhood trauma experiences - remember, these can also be deep emotional wounds). But staying still, in silence and utilizing your breath activates the “calming pathways”, your vagal responses, which have been under utilized since trauma came on the scene. Many people get frustrated when they don’t suddenly feel safe, calm, confident and in control after a few sessions or months of treatment or therapy. Think about it this way, your job, your work environments (first responders experience extremely unsupportive work environments) and even the workplace processes for recovery, position you in a state of hypervigilance - your brain is actively using the “trauma pathway” to keep you safe every minute of every day. By the time you get to treatment, those pathways are like superhighways, the autobahn of trauma reactivity in your brain, because you’ve been driving them for so long. Healing this means driving down a different pathway and trying to build that path into a highway even though the “autobahn” is automatic. You are building new brain habits. Paving a new road. It takes time, patience and kindness with yourself. It will be hard. You will be exhausted. You will feel like everything you practiced is pointless. But, if you think about how you learned to tie your shoes - at first it felt awkward and dumb and sometimes you made a knot, but eventually after A LOT of practice, you were doing it without even thinking and the funny thing is, you didn’t even notice when you got to that point. You can get to that place of being centered again in PTSD recovery, it will take a lot of practice, it will feel awkward and stupid and uncomfortable. It will be slow, but I bet you won’t even notice how far you’ve come until you look back on it. You can get there.

In Solidarity.

(Copyright, Martin Wood Memorial Hike, 2026.)

**You are welcome to share, copy, and quote/reproduce any part provided proper credit/citation is given.**

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