Brave Inspires Brave

Let's go back in time and you've got this big huge story and it's had such an impact on you and it's led you to this place where you're starting this new, well movement really, with regards to police. So tell us what happened. So I was a police officer for Toronto Police within Canada and previous to that I worked for the RCMP and that was out in British Columbia. And so I was a young ambitious woman looking for a career in policing and excelled within that within that career and found myself you know gaining the respect of my peers and my colleagues within the work that I was doing. and their trust as well within my ability to handle difficult situations within the community and also anything that went along with what the duty of a police officer would be.
And throughout my career, I just eventually started seeing and experiencing the sexualized environment for women internally within the workplace and as well, those victims or survivors that were entering into asking for help from police officers and what was being said about them, you know, behind the scenes. And as much as I was working as a police officer and, you know, with the high volume of calls and experiencing what someone does in a day as a police officer is very extreme, especially in Toronto, in the city of Toronto, it's very busy, you're go, go, go.
And you kind of just, The environment was what was reality and so at that time everyone just accepted the sexualized environment and As much as at times it's not that I accepted it. I just didn't know how to manage it In the way that it was and it just continued and it got worse and worse and worse and then I just started being able to see the different perspectives of how it was affecting me and how it was affecting other people and the ripple effect of that harm really.
And then you started looking up the hierarchy and seeing, you know, where was it coming from? Why was it being allowed? Who was allowing it? Who was involved with it? You know, where were they? How were they able to allow it to continue and why weren't they stopping it? So, you know, all of these different angles and people that were accepting and involved with it had become just, you look to the top for leaders and it was all the way to the top.
So at that point I didn't see any more light. If I was going to continue reporting any sort of abuse, which I had started, my career had just gotten worse after reporting. And I was at the top almost of my game where the other units within the police service were asking me to go work for them in permanent positions within the drug squad, undercover work, at homicide. And at that point, they had recognized that I no longer wanted to put up with sexual harassment in the workplace and stand up to my bosses for it to stop.
And that's what ended my career. My health took a toll. Mentally, it started not being able to manage that toxic environment anymore. And physically, my body started shutting down. And at that point, that's when I knew that I needed to save myself and go off work and get help. And when I went off work to get help, I received help from the therapist that I had connected with. And she has been wonderful to this day.
And so, but it was this, it became much more than me just taking time off work. The ripple effect of that was also very large. So it not only was Heather, I reported, you know, reported sexual harassment and how, you know, we're going to push her out, which I had seen other females who had reported similar behavior in the past. And I had noticed what had happened to them and what was said about them.
So I had an idea of possibly what would happen to me, but never to this degree. And so when I went off work at that time, you have to interact with a nurse from the police service and to be able to get paid and get your benefits, you had to be in contact with them. And I remember at that time, I had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and depression, suicidal thoughts and anxiety.
And when I called the nurse, she had known that I had experienced these things and that's why I was off work. But more people from my workplace were finding out somehow. And so they were breaching my medical privacy. And then they were coming to my home. And at that time, because of my trauma, I couldn't be around that environment or any police officers. Like they were triggers to me for PTSD. I didn't understand the illness or the injury at the time.
So they were just seeing it as, you know, we need to get Heather back to work. We need to get her back to work. They would call me, offer me jobs to come back to work. And I wasn't well, and they didn't, I don't know if they understood PTSD, but.

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it was really exasperating my symptoms for them to continually be knocking at my door at that time. And so when I called the nurse to check in, like I had to, as per these rules within policing, is to check in with the medical nurse. It brought it to a whole nother level at that point. She had told me that this was a man's world and what else did I expect joining policing?
She told you that? She told me that. Wow, wow. So you take us back a little bit. So you're a successful police officer. This is your career. You've studied for this. You've worked hard. You've been in college. You've gone excited. Your family's excited for you. You've got this big life and career ahead of you. And you get into this profession, which arguably should be the one where you should feel the safest. respected and the word dignity is coming up and you see and feel a sexualized environment.
And when you said a sexualized environment, just share a little bit about what was that? What did that mean? What did you see? What were you hearing? So there would be comments about from how you wore your hair to what the shade of your lipstick was to what clothing you were wearing. how it fit on your body, to the shoes that you were wearing, to your personal relationship and everything that they felt that they needed to know would be asked.
One person doing this is too much. And when you have numerous amounts of people speaking this way, it becomes unbearable. And victims that were coming in and survivors of sexual abuse. And after, I would sit down as a detective constable with my bosses and conduct interviews of people who had been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted or raped. And they would come in to give the interviews and After the interview, the detective would look at me, and these are my direct bosses who I report to and would say, you know, do you believe her?
Or they would comment as to why they don't believe her. And, you know, for instance, as a police officer, you can't make those judgments. You have to investigate all crimes. You don't make assumptions. We're not doctors. We follow evidence. And so it was already showing me that They were judging victims and survivors. They didn't understand trauma or female or gender type trauma or any sort of trauma for that matter, if we want to really put it out there.
And so they would say to the victim afterwards, one had even said, I don't believe you. And if you continue to report, you could be charged with false reporting and And so another time we left an interview of a sexual harassment in the workplace and my boss said to me afterwards, well, she had large breasts, so she must have been asking for it. And so these comments about women and their bodies and you just knew that if I just knew that if I reported something that it would not be taken seriously.
And so you tried to move past it because there's so much going on as a police officer that I honored as a police officer to be able to help people. But this just became the loudest thing for me that I no longer could accept in that environment. It had become so normalized that at that time when I had joined, I was a young person and I had no idea what other workplaces were like.
You know, I come in thinking, I'm new to the world. I'm joining a wonderful career. Here's policing and this is what it is. And who am I to know what other workplaces are like if this is what policing is? Was there a moment or did something happen or what made you decide to stop putting up with it and to speak up? So I was working in the Detective Constable position in the detective's office and there was a new staff sergeant that had come on to come to our station and he was working the same hours but in uniform and I was in the detective's office and so we had the same shift and he was continually starting to be more and more bold with his statements and I didn't know him like I had been on the job then for probably

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at that point, I think it was six or seven years, seven years. And I started noticing just how it was getting worse. Each comment he had made every few months that I would cross them in the hallway or at my desk, he would come by or if I was at the front of the station and I would have to respond to him and how he was constantly somehow being able to put in these sexual innuendos in our conversations.
And so I was really starting to notice that it was a large pattern and it wasn't just a one-off for people or for him. And then connecting that piece of the puzzle for me was what gave him the courage to be able to start speaking to me that way? What told him it was okay? I guess I should say because that shouldn't be something that should be courageous but for him it seemed to be in his perspective and the only thing that I could think of is that the other bosses who had said sexual comments to me that they must have spoke and said identified been identifying women in the station that you could say these comments to because they would not do anything or they were too afraid to say anything back.
And it was this constant test of how far they could go with their comments. Eventually I was on parade, which was, I was standing, I was back in uniform now and I was supposed to be, I was being offered positions right before that to go to drug squad or homicide and, or sorry, it was homicide at the time. I realized that just the way things were going at the time that they were denying me positions. based on the fact that I wasn't able to, or I wasn't accepting their comments and their behaviors or responding to them.
And so when I had to go work for that staff sergeant, he had said, if you work hard for me, you know, I'll let you go to that position that you want. And he was the one sexually harassing me. And so it was becoming, you know, this was happening more and more often. And And these are the people I had to report to, so I couldn't avoid it anymore. And so on parade that day with the other officers that I've known for years, and some of them I was friends with, and they heard one of the comments for the first time, because usually the comments were made in private, one-on-one.
And so this was said in a group setting with my peers, with the other police officers who respected me. What did they say? What did he say? They were speaking about, there was one, the first night there was comments about riding, there was no police cars available to take. And he referred to my time as a police officer with the RCMP and said that, well, Heather used to ride a horse. You know, why are you complaining that you don't have any police cars?
And one of the male officers said, I wish you would ride my horse. And the staff Sergeant laughed. And the next night I was in the same spot at the door cause I didn't want to get near any of him to be able to have any interaction with me conversation wise. So I stood in the back for my parade as starting shift, we stand there and get our details. And so at that time I was given a document that I had filled out incorrectly and I needed to correct.
And he said to me, oh, don't worry, I'll spank you later for that. And so at that point, everyone had witnessed and heard what he had said. And I remember my face going a shade of beet red and not being able to look up at anyone and just feeling so devalued and degraded and sexualized in that moment. And then looking up and seeing my colleagues, the police officers faces, and none of them laughed.
And they were in shock. And I finally saw that moment where I felt like they got it. They finally understood how these comments were affecting me and how they affect other women in our workplace. And so at that point in time, I left parade and you're not supposed to leave before you're told to leave, but I left and I went to find another boss that I worked with before and to tell them what had happened.
And so I was going to go home that evening. He had said to me, the detective, because it was a night shift. So there's not very many people in the station, the police station. And so he said, you know, maybe it's best that you go home for the night because I was so upset by what he had said to me. and just all the buildup of this is the person that I have to report to.
I can't work in this environment. It's not safe for me. And so he was told, the staff sergeant was told to stay away from me, that I was going home for the night. And, you know, just like as a police officer, you would caution someone to stay away from someone. And if you breach that caution, you know, you could be arrested for harassment. The staff sergeant did not comply with that caution from the detective.
He was seeking me out before I was leaving the station. I had went downstairs. He was following me around the station discreetly in his eyes, but I could clearly see that where I was going, he was trying to cross paths to me to be able to speak to me after being told to stay away from me. And so I was getting really nervous about what his action was going to be. I was now, you know,

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going home from the comment that he made. Other people were now aware of his behavior. He had told me in the past, you know, if you work hard for me, I'll help you out. You know, it was clear that he was going to be in some trouble if I reported his behavior. And I think he had been, had problems in the past. So this would have been building on his, you know, on his file.
So I went to leave. the station and I actually, it was midnight and as I went to leave to go through the back doors to the parking lot, he was standing where I needed to walk through to leave. So that's not where he's supposed to be. So it's like he was waiting in the dark parking lot for me, which at that time was extremely terrifying to be alone with this man in a uniform, you know. with his gun and I'm just at this point a civilian so to speak going home and that power imbalance was something I had never experienced before so I didn't continue out the door where he was I walked back through the police station and I went into where the detective's office was again and said that you know he's following me I can't leave.
And so then he had to be escorted downstairs in the police station by someone. And then I was escorted to my personal vehicle to go home. And so, you know, at that time there was a few days I think that went by, but the very next day I had court and I wanted to go to court and continue my job as a police officer. And by the time I got to court that next morning, everyone had already known pretty much what had happened. detectives that I came by in the courthouse were commenting to the effect of what you don't like to be spanked so at that point everything just kept escalating and that year after that I well before I returned back to work my superintendent had said we can switch you shifts I said no I cannot work in that police station with this abuser in the police station And so they wanted to just sweep it under the carpet.
We'll make nice. You just go over and work here. He'll stay on this shift and everyone will be happy. And that's the way they had dealt with things in the past when females made complaints about sexual harassment in the workplace. And this is what I was seeing and identifying how they were using women, you know, to how they wanted them to be seen. for their own pleasure. So the next day after this happened, when you went into court and you were hearing all these comments, talk us through what happened after that that took you to that point where you stopped working as a police officer.
Right, so that following year after I put in a complaint against that staff sergeant, they were very specific to say write down your complaint, read your complaint on the interview, and then they weren't going to go outside of that scope. And at that time, I was very afraid to speak about anything else because I had seen what had happened to other women when they spoke out. They were sent away, never to hear from them again, really.
So I was then asked by my superintendent, actually more ordered, to go work for a female staff sergeant at homicide for an intel project. you know, he basically said, this is a good opportunity. However, it wasn't a good opportunity. I went to work for her. He introduced me to her. And in fact, she started degrading me as a woman there. And the first thing she said to me was she hated PWs, which was police women.
And we were in a small group of about five to six police officers for the wire project. And so from there, It continued where I was told by her that women were meant to stay inside and do paperwork and should not be on the road. How did that feel coming from another woman? I didn't know what world I had entered. At this point, survival kind of was kicking in and I was just like, I think I was just going through the motions.
I remember going home after, you know, a day of working with her. whatever comments she had made that day and needing to have a drink of alcohol. And that's when I knew it was really starting to be a problem. And so I remember one of the detectives on the wire project identifying but not saying, noticing that I was being treated unfairly. So he, I believe he gave me a detail to go on the road to interview someone that was involved in the project we were working on.
And the next day when I was supposed to go and conduct this detail, she found out and she took the detail away from me in front of everyone and gave it to the other male officers. I was the only other female officer. And there was also a male officer that was working with us who had worked with her previously and more time than I ever had. And she had texted me one evening and asking about our shifts the next day and said,

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Do you want to go for dinner on days off? And this was a married police officer. I declined. The next day at work, we were supposed to be going out of detail. I was going to be included. He then turned to me and said, no, you won't go for dinner with me. You're not coming. So this became- It keeps going, doesn't it? I couldn't get away from it. And quite honestly, after what I've experienced now to date and what I've heard other- survivors speak about and everything I've gone through now is this is how they get female officers or any officer that does not want to accept their behaviour and the way things are for them, this is how they push them out.
They create that environment where you don't want to be there anymore and you really end up having no other choice. And is that what happened for you? So when I returned to my, I went to drug squad and I performed very well because I didn't want to fail. This was like my only hope out was to succeed in these other units, specialized units and get away from this environment and believed and hoped that these other places would not be like this.
And so I worked on and undercover drug squad with a team for, I don't know, I think it was four or five months. And they wanted me to come back permanently, but my superintendent would not release me from the station that he was in charge of. And so I think at that point, when they asked me to go to drug squad with no experience, I also think that that, in my opinion, was a test.
You know, it didn't work. with this female staff sergeant degrading her. She had said to one of the officers, just to go back as that female staff sergeant, she had said to one of the other officers, the males, and they didn't like it either, some of them, but they didn't know how to manage that either. And he had said to me, she said that she would sleep with the chief if it got her a raise.
So this mentality of sex for promotion was becoming clear to me that this is an underground of what is happening in that policing environment. I had been contacted by a female officer, had coffee with her one evening, and she was telling me about what someone in the high ranking of the police service had said to her about women needed to have sex with their bosses to be able to get promotions. So the evidence was mounting all around me.
It was piling up. And so when I came back from drug squad, there was information that I had learned there about my superintendent. There was investigations going on within Toronto at the time that were high profile. And there was information that he may be involved, but not being held accountable and eluding any sort of associations to the behavior or the criminal acts that were happening. So by that time, the behavior at the workplace, they were still continuing to sexualize it.
The one sergeant who had, he had sexually assaulted me previously and the year before, he had grabbed me and tried to shove his tongue down my throat in front of other bosses while we were out after work. as I tried to push him off me, no one did anything. But he started, as he worked with that staff sergeant that was sexually harassing me on parades, starting to pretend to masturbate and perform cotylinguist.
And then look at me after he had finished doing it, looking for reactions from the male officers and then seeing how I was reacting. And so the last, near the last few days that I was working was I went to actually that sergeant told me that there was a sexual assault victim at the hospital and I needed to go deal with her. So I took the detail and we call it a detail, but we go and speak to the victim at the hospital and she was very upset.
She had been getting sexually assaulted and very much in trauma at the time and very upset and screaming. And I could hear the male police officers that we were relieving from being with her at the hospital. And I could hear them talking about her and their perceptions of her and the words that they were using to describe her. Words like derogatory words, a whore, she's a prostitute, she's crazy. And really not having any sort of

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idea of what trauma was or what the effects of sexual abuse on women are. And so the next day I went into work and that Sergeant that sexually assaulted me and was continuing to sexualize the environment, sort of making comments about women and sexualizing them before praise started and the superintendent and the inspector and the staff Sergeant were all standing there. And after he was done making his jokes, they looked down at me to see how I was reacting to them.
And that day I actually had my first appointment with a doctor, with a psychologist to speak to about, you know, what was bothering me because my family had noticed that I was not myself anymore. And I remember going to see her and from that day forward, I decided that I needed to put my health first. I needed to process all of this. And at that time I thought it would take three to four months.
I would get back on my feet and go back to work and be a police officer. But due to how they were further harming me through the nurse at my home, it just exasperated by my injury, my PTSD that I was suffering without the time. And ever since that day that I left work, and I've gone through this hearing within the Human Rights Tribunal, up until last year, I would say, I have lived in fear of the police since that day.
They did not leave me alone. They have continued to intimidate, harass my life since the day I left Bork to heal. Disappointing at the deepest level. And you, could have, I suppose, stayed dealing with all that you were dealing with, but instead of that, you did go to the Human Rights Tribunal. And what happened with that? So within the Human Rights Tribunal, from the day we filed in 2000, I filed in 2014, my union association would not support me financially, but they supported the others. that were going against me.
There was an internal investigation. And through that internal investigation, I received the statements, the interviews, but they weren't allowed in court. But I had received them and listened to the interviews. They had conducted them as if they were interviewing children. Yes, no answers. There was no real investigation. Senior officers that were involved were not even investigated or interviewed. So we have an oversight body here that if there's anything that's sexual complaints made against police officers, there's an oversight body.
They also conducted a negligent investigation. Just for knowledge of the details of that is they interviewed the witnesses of the sexual assaults from the Sergeant that sexually assaulted me. And those interviews I also heard and they couldn't remember where we could have went for any drinks after work that evening or any evening for that matter. They all of a sudden had amnesia and didn't know where we would always go for drinks after work.
And the investigators investigated me, not investigated me, but sorry, they interviewed me, but told me I couldn't speak about any other allegations other than that evening. So as a police officer, you gather all the information you can about a crime. So they didn't allow me to speak about the sexual harassment by this sergeant before or after. That would give more evidence to my credibility, to the incident, and to the crime that was committed.
After they found out where it occurred, the investigators also didn't go back and re-interview the witnesses. to say, do you remember now? Can you refresh your memory now that we have the place of where it occurred and the time and all of those things? So they just basically took their word for it. They don't recall where we have drinks and that was sort of the end of it for their interviews. They didn't interview my mother who was who I first disclosed to as I was leaving the premise when it happened.
And so as an investigator, collecting evidence, you would take an interview from the person that the victim first disclosed the sexual assault to. That is common. That's the best practice for how investigators investigate, especially those kinds of crimes. So as an investigator, as a police officer, not only have I been harmed by the police, as a police officer, by police officers,

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The oversight bodies that are supposed to be accountable for holding them, the police, accountable was now also being negligent and further harming me by conducting negligent investigations and not collecting evidence. So from there, it took about two and a half years to finally get the court date. It was very difficult to get them to disclose evidence. I remember trying to get covered for being injured at work through our insurance here in Canada for workman's compensation.
And the Toronto Police had said that they have no evidence, they have no documents that I was sexually harassed at work when they in fact had conducted an internal investigation the year before about that staff sergeant. So I'm injured, I'm disabled. and I'm fighting for my life, not only for my mind, my body, but for my integrity. And all of those things together make me who I am. I was grieving the loss of my career.
I was grieving the loss of all of my colleagues and friends who were standing against me out of fear or because they participated in the problem, fear that they would be treated like I was where everyone turned against me. Officers would meet with me out of the city in a police in their personal car, not wanting to be seen in public with me, just to be able to have a conversation with me.
My life had taken a 360 and I didn't see it coming. What happened when you finally got to court? So at that time, my symptoms were very loud. At that point, I had also known an officer I'd heard had taken their life when they came forward, after they came forward and told their bosses or told their supervisors or colleagues that they had post-traumatic stress. And I thought to myself, I didn't want one more officer.
I didn't want any officers to take their lives over how the police were treating them. If that officer called that nurse that I got, what help were they getting? If that's how they were going to treat people, treat police officers that finally came forward and said, I need help. To be shamed and blamed was not how a police officer could ever get help. And I didn't want anyone, at that point, my mindset was my life had been taken from me at that time.
That was my mindset. I have lost everything. that I have valued in my purpose. And I wanted now to save lives and give hope to people where they felt they had to accept this behavior so that survivors could have a better chance when they come to the police that they will be believed that we can make changes for police women, for the culture, for they couldn't see how the toxic was affecting them.
They had become so normalized by it all and how it would be affecting the community. So I was feeling really ashamed of my disability at that time and not being able to control my emotions, not feeling like myself, not recognizing myself and now being in the public eye. All I could think of was this was for the greater good. I couldn't understand why this was my life. Why not one police officer could just stand up and say that she's not lying.
Like trying to process why anyone would watch someone, and especially as a police officer, and not stand and say the truth. Why they were so afraid. And so my intentions always needed to be that I wasn't doing this to harm people. It hurt me to know that it was harming people. All I wanted was it to change and for them to see that it wasn't serving any of us and that it was harming us and that the environment we were in was not healthy.
And for us to be able to serve the community in the best way that we can, We have to be healthier ourselves and we have to have healthy morals and beliefs and ethics and perceptions about how to respect people and have compassion and empathy and understand mental health and understand trauma. Did you get that when you went to court? Did you get that? Like what was the outcome of going to court?

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So it took, so it was 2016 and then we finished last year in 2020. So there was a rollercoaster through court. You know, I watched officers take the stand, not tell the truth. 30 officers, I think it was, 28 to 30 officers that took the stand against me. I was on the stand, I believe- 28 to 30 officers took the stand against you. Wow, gosh. I think I was on the stand for six, six or seven days.
And even in court and all through the hearing, through disclosure and emails, the defense lawyer was degrading me and my disability. So I was going through further shame and blame about what my symptoms were. And what was the outcome of it? So I was found credible and the other officers were not found credible. And that was superintendents. There was a deputy chief that took the stand. There was sergeants, detectives from internal investigations, like professional standards.
They weren't found credible. There was colleagues, female and male. So after that, there was decisions made by the vice chair, which is the judge in the Human Rights Tribunal that the police needed to start tracking complaints. They had disclosed that they were not tracking complaints of sexual harassment or sexual assault within the workplace. However, it was later discovered through the last testimony of the deputy that, in fact, they do have a system, but they didn't tell us and they didn't disclose how many complaints there were.
As in the beginning, they said, I was the first and only person to complain. Do you feel like it was justice? It's interesting because some people don't think it's enough. I received a monetary amount that was roughly half of how much I spent fighting this out of my own pocket. It brought a lot of awareness and attention to something that was desperately needed for change. And every day that I stood in it, I believe that other people started to understand the importance of it.
They received training for sexual harassment, the police service as a whole. I know it was worth it. That's what I was looking for. Any positive change in the direction that is better for everyone, for humanity as a whole, is how I feel is worth it. I want to acknowledge you. I wake up every day just shocked that I still survive this. But look at what you're, look at, oh my God. I mean, what a story.
And so many years. I mean, this is just completed last year. I didn't realize. A guy gets stressed out with something stressful happens for an hour or two or goes over a few days, but… To go that long, Heather, and to keep going when it must have just felt like everyone around you was against you and all of the people that should be supporting you, that takes something. That takes some kind of resilience and capacity to deal with that stuff.
And also, I always sort of think that sort of like what you've been through has led you to where you are now and has led you to what you're doing now. And if you hadn't been through that, you wouldn't be doing the work that you're doing and you wouldn't be inspiring so many others with the work that you're doing. So tell us a little bit about that, the work that you're doing now.
So the work that I'm doing now involves identifying the things, the places, or the people, the barriers, the challenges within policing, within the culture, police officers personally and collectively, how it's affecting the community. It's about bringing change to police culture in a positive way and breaking down that hate and that blue line that everyone seems to just in policing want to talk about. And I know from my experiences about as a police officer and what you're trained, how they train your mind to be able to see things and do A, B, and C every day.
And what they want out of you to be able to do is how they see policing should be run. And looking back now,

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the views that I have and the things that I've listened and watched and just really taken in about the culture and how it affects the community and how police officers are affected by their own culture. I want to go back in and identify those places that can be improved for police officers, for survivors, for victims, for the community so that we can start communicating and understanding one another. and bringing education and research and training and awareness to really what's stopping us all from moving forward within policing.
So you're starting a not-for-profit. Yeah, I'm starting a non-for-profit. It's actually, it might be a business or a non-profit, we haven't decided yet, but it's definitely gonna be working with survivors, working with the community, working with, partnering with experts within doctors and lawyers and allies within the community, and putting together and implementing changes within the law. And so all of the systems as well that go along with that. with that is the internal investigations, the oversight bodies, human rights, and all of the places that I've experienced through this that can be improved and where we can do better so that there isn't this cycle of further harming victims when they come forward.
There's so many things that I've been able to expose to that I feel that can be improved. and I'm looking forward to sharing them. I'm looking forward to, you know, positive changes and giving hope. I think we really, on both sides, within policing and outside of policing, we all need hope. What's it called, the new venture? It's going to be called Brave Inspires Brave. Ooh, I like it. I feel like that has been…
What has happened through my experience is that the more brave I got, the more brave others got to live in their truth. Brave inspires brave. And what would you say to anyone listening to this podcast who perhaps is in the situation that you were in? What would be your advice or your insights? For me, our health and wellness has to be our top priority. If we want to live our best life, careers are one thing, but our health has to become our number one priority.
And to be able to live our life and find our purpose, we have to listen to our body. And we have to listen to our mind and our body and connect to our spirit to understand where we're supposed to be. And if we're in an environment within our workplace that is not healthy for us, we need to put our health first and remove ourselves and jump ship and find the place that we can thrive in and not have to go to work every day and put our health second to the environment that we're in.
I just think if I didn't do this, I don't even know if I would be here, whether my physical body could not take any more harm it was it was shutting down from head to toe all the different places my organs you know it did not like to be in that environment and um i just don't want people to wait as long don't wait until it's it's gotten too far and um there's so many people out there now that are there to support you and stand by you and you're not alone Just reach out, be honest, believe in yourself, trust yourself.
There's good people out there. You know, that's what I experienced and that's what helped so much is that all the good people that I met after I left, you know, that's what keeps our spirit alive. And that's why we're here. And that's why I feel we're all here is to connect to other people that align with the environments that we want to create. and be in. And so that will bring you more joy than any toxic environment is connecting with people.
And for me, it's worth it. I could never make it about the money. It needed to be about my wellness and my self care and the love that I had for myself and that we all deserve better. Heather, brave inspires brave. I love it so much. Any final words? Thank you so much for having me. Oh, are you kidding? I love it. And I mean, not only did you go through this whole thing and not only do you have these sort of amazing, powerful, quite guru-esque insights on wellness.
You're now starting this whole thing to go back into the bloody place and try and sort it out. I mean, I think it's phenomenal. I mean, most people would be like, OK, bye. I don't want to be anywhere near that ever again in my entire existence. And you're starting something up to go back in there and try and change it. I think this is really because it needs changing and it is systemic and it's huge and it's a big deal.
But every day you're going to be making a difference on it. And I think.

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women, men, all genders the world over can learn a lot from this. I know we have talked particularly here about the police, but we know that this happens in many, many other organizations and sectors and industries across the globe. And for women out there that are in it, and it's really frightening, isn't it? It's very, very frightening. And when you're feeling so Don't you think, you know, when you're feeling so vulnerable, it's hard to make a big decision, isn't it?
It's hard to be like, OK, I know I need to go. I'm listening to this podcast. She's right. I shouldn't leave it too long. But it's still really hard to actually make that first move. So I loved what you said about find somebody to talk to, reach out to somebody, reach out to somebody who believes you will be supportive. And I think that's got to be the first step. You might not know.
That's what I heard from you, I think, a bit. Like, you might not know the whole road. I don't know if someone had said to you, well, Heather, do you know what's going to happen? Actually, this isn't this. It's going to be like a four-year court case. It's going to be like 30 officers that are going to be against you. Like, your whole world's going to completely shatter. You'll have no career left.
At the end of it, you will be feeling really balanced, and you'll be doing some podcast where you're very guru-esque, and you'll be talking about your new not-for-profit. You'll probably be like… No, forget that. You nailed it. That is exactly it. I did not plan for this. And, you know, that thing that you just said about I wanted to run away and never hear policing ever again, I went through all of that.
I put all of my policing, anything into a bin, locked it up, put it in the closet, did not watch the news, did not want to hear the word police. I could not. I was ready to just shut the world out for the rest of my life. And day by day, there's always something that returned me back to this purpose. That's the key, return to your purpose. Well, thank you. I could talk to you all day about it, but the dog's barking and the kids are screaming and life is life.
And so thank you very, very much for being part of Strip Back podcast. And I am excited to see where it all goes with Brave Inspires Brave.

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