With you by our side, we can help thousands more this year like Twiggy

Being an on-call firefighter for 36 years, Twiggy Lake experienced some incredibly difficult shouts on the job, some of which involved his own colleagues and friends.

However, he says it was only in retirement that some of those memories caught up with him and had a major impact on his mental health.

He now hopes, by sharing his experiences, he’ll encourage other retired staff like himself to get in touch with us if they feel they’d benefit from support.

“I was based on a busy rural station and had a very young crew at one point,” says Twiggy, 68, who worked for Devon & Somerset FRS throughout his career. “I was almost like their father figure.” “The mental side of it didn’t really get acknowledged back then, you were expected to deal with it and get on with it. The officer in charge was responsible for comforting his crew – and of course that fell to me.”

Twiggy knew about our support, having heard about us through colleagues, and first got in touch with us himself in the late 90s, after being injured on a shout. That experience stayed with him afterwards, and Twiggy did all he could to spread the word about our services round his colleagues.

However, he never expected he’d need mental heath support until much later down the line, when he began struggling with difficult memories from his time on the job.

“I was put in touch with one of the Psychological Therapists and offered 10 counselling sessions externally. It was like I’d been a pressure cooker and she released it all… honestly, I think if I’d gone another year without talking, I probably would have harmed myself.”

“There must be so many retained firefighters like me, perhaps they’ve retired now, and have been to all these calls, just carried on, never had help, but likely suffer from it now.”

To read Twiggy’s full story, visit www.firefighterscharity.org.uk/twiggy-lake.

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