What happens when strength becomes silence? For many who serve, that silence began as discipline and ended as distance.
By David Marentette (S/Sgt. RCMP, Counsellor-in-Training)
The Honourable Weight of Service
Service is honourable work. Every time we put on the uniform, step into chaos, and stand between danger and another person, something deeper than duty takes hold. It is an act of care and belief. In nearly twenty years with the RCMP, I have learned that the real cost of this calling is not only in danger. It is in what it quietly asks of our humanity.
Service doesn’t just ask for courage in chaos. It also asks for compassion in silence.
I grew up on military bases. A child of discipline, movement, and constant packing and unpacking. I learned early that strength meant control. Later, in the RCMP, that lesson deepened. Stay calm. Stay steady. Never let emotion surface. It worked for a while, but the weight of that emotional suppression eventually caught up with me.
One night at a northern detachment, I responded to a fatal crash. A side-by-side had tipped, and one person had died. As the detachment commander, I did what I had done many times before. I also chose to shield one of my young constables from the part of the job that leaves marks. The photographs at the morgue.
A family member of the deceased met me there. Her tears fell in a way that only the newly shattered understand. It is a look that haunts me. She asked to come with me. Policy would not usually allow it, but compassion overruled protocol.
In the small morgue, she said her final goodbyes. She reached for my left hand as my right hand held the Nikon camera to my eye. I hid behind the camera as I cried with her. She never saw it. For a brief moment, we were connected by a shared human pain that needs no words.
That night taught me what compassion costs. Public service carries human weight. It is an honour. It is a blessing. It is also a nightmare.
Driving home in uniform, I felt a pressure in my chest so heavy I thought it might be a heart attack. I was only thirty-three. It was not my heart failing; it was my armour cracking.
The moment the armour cracks is the moment humanity returns.
Psychologists who have worn the uniform themselves know this pattern well. Dr. Kathy Rolfe, an instructor at Simon Fraser University and a retired police officer now working as a registered psychologist and founder of Balance Psychological Services (Rolfe, n.d.), describes this phenomenon as follows:
I think that every first responder becomes aware of stigma very early on when they start on the job. Not wanting to appear as “weak,” and hiding how they are feeling for fear of judgement or rejection is exactly what causes them to be injured, and it is such a vicious cycle. — Dr. Kathy Rolfe
The Bridge Between Worlds
First responders live between worlds. Life and death. Calm and chaos. Despair and hope. Each call pulls you across a line you never fully return from. The real challenge is learning how to come back without losing the parts of yourself that still believe in goodness.
The Peer Recovery and Resiliency Symposium, hosted by The Recovery and Resiliency Foundation, was held between October 26 and 27, 2025 at Canmore, Alberta. Dr. Rolfe, whom I discussed above, as well as Dr. Alexandra Jabr were both speakers at the event (among others).
Dr. Alexandra Jabr (2019) teaches that resilience in emergency work begins with grief literacy, the ability to face pain without turning away. In her work with Emergency Resilience and in her writing on grief in first responders, she argues that we cannot keep asking frontline workers to quietly absorb loss while giving them no language or training to process it (Jabr, 2019). That night in the morgue, I began to understand what she meant. We cannot lead people through suffering if we are afraid to feel it ourselves.
Clinicians like Dr. Rolfe expand that lens further, pointing out that unprocessed grief doesn’t stay at work. It comes home in our silence, our irritability, or our distance from the people we love. Trauma isn’t just an individual experience, it is, tragically, a full family event. When we pretend we are untouched, our partners and children still feel the impact, they just have to guess what caused it (Rolfe, 2024).
This emotional journey of resilience is one that many of us share, and it’s important to acknowledge and embrace it.
The Fire That Renews
Years later, my understanding of resilience changed completely when I met a young girl named Nancy. She had endured abuse and neglect that would break most adults. I met her while on duty after she had attempted to end her life. There was no family, no support worker, no one to come for her, so I stayed. My shift ended, but I stayed.
We laughed about silly things that night, just enough to keep the light from going out. She later came to live with my family as a foster child. Today, she calls us Mom and Dad. She finished high school, worked with victim services, and is now studying to become a paramedic.
Nancy taught me that resilience isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about working through the pain until it turns into wisdom. Every generation that wears a uniform inherits both its honour and its hurt. Our job is to take the pain and burn it clean so it becomes understanding and compassion. That is how the cycle changes. Nancy’s journey is a testament to the transformative power of empathy, inspiring us all to believe in the possibility of change.
Resilience isn’t about bouncing back, it’s about burning pain into wisdom.
Researchers describe it as post-traumatic growth or the ability to transform adversity into new meaning and strength (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004). I call it Nancy. When she expresses her inner warmth of empathy and her lively, fiery humour, I affectionately nickname her “my little firefly”.
The Body Keeps the Uniform
The body recalls what the mind tries to forget. Trauma embeds itself in posture, breath, and sleep (van der Kolk, 2014). For first responders, that tension becomes a second uniform. I have shamelessly stolen the beat of this section’s title from van der Kolk’s titular book The Body Keeps the Score — an excellent read that I highly recommend.
For years, I coped through control: long hours, leadership, and gym sessions that felt more like punishment. It was only through therapy, study, and time in the mountains that I learned healing requires surrender as much as strength.
Neuroscience now demonstrates that movement, breath, and sensory grounding rebuild the connection between body and mind (Southwick et al., 2014). Hiking deep into the backcountry with my wife became my sanctuary. Out there, amid silence and wind, I realized the mountains are not obstacles. They are mirrors.
Clinics that specialize in first responders, like Balance Psychological Services, work in this space between body and story. Dr. Rolfe and her team sit with people who have worn the uniform and help them notice what their bodies have been carrying for years: the hypervigilance, the sleeplessness, the flinch that won’t go away. Therapy in that context isn’t about fixing a broken person. It’s about helping a nervous system finally come down off shift.
The mountains remind us what the badge can make us forget. Strength is not about standing taller; it’s about standing still long enough to hear your own heartbeat.
The Quiet Revolution of Empathy
Leadership in trauma-heavy professions often confuse authority with control. We think command means having the answers. It doesn’t. The most powerful leadership I have witnessed has been a silent presence: standing beside a member who is breaking, listening without trying to fix.
Research on emergency departments, including work by Halinen and colleagues in a Finnish teaching hospital, shows that many serious safety incidents can be traced back to communication breakdowns and system factors rather than individual incompetence (Halinen et al., 2024). Creating environments where staff can openly discuss errors and near misses isn’t just a nice idea, it’s one of the ways we reduce harm.
Early Support, Not Silent Endurance
Crisis consultants like Sampsa Suomi argue that the same principle applies to staff mental health. In his work with health care workers, he points out that cumulative trauma and compassion fatigue are hard to detect, which is why organizations need ongoing counselling, coaching, and early intervention after difficult events. Building resilience is not about making staff tougher. It is about making it safe for them to say, “That call got to me,” and to get support before they break (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2024).
Dr. Rolfe brings this directly into first responder culture. At Simon Fraser University, she teaches Organizational Structure and Stigma Reduction to first responders and leaders. She has seen how stigma begins early, when recruits learn to hide their feelings to fit in, and how that culture can change when supervisors model vulnerability and create space for real conversations. The cycle of silence is not inevitable. It is learned, which means it can be unlearned.
I’ve seen it in briefing rooms and hospital wards. Every time we choose compassion over cynicism, we defy the culture that tells us to stay hard. Empathy isn’t weakness. It’s resistance to indifference.
Quiet empathy is a kind of rebellion. A refusal to harden. It’s how we protect the next generation from inheriting our silence.
The Mountain and the Mirror
My recovery did not come from theory alone. It came from movement, music, reflection, and the people I love. The gym helps quiet the noise. Long talks with my wife and kids remind me of what truly matters. Music helps me feel what the job once taught me to numb.
Jordan and Hinds (2016) found that nature therapy rebuilds emotional regulation and restores meaning after trauma. For me, nature isn’t an escape. It’s a return: to humility, to perspective, to life beyond the uniform.
Collective Empathy
We live in a time where division is profitable and empathy is mistaken for weakness. I’ve watched what outrage does to a room. A free society does not thrive on outrage; it thrives on dignity. Dignity is what will push people to keep showing up for each other even when it’s messy.
Every time a first responder kneels beside someone in pain, every time a leader listens instead of lecturing, every time we admit we’re struggling but still reach out, we strengthen the human spirit. If we keep asking our first responders to be invincible, we will continue to lose the ones who were only ever human.
True resilience is the quiet defence of empathy in a world that keeps trying to harden us.
Conclusion: The Human Return
Resilience isn’t silence; it’s the courage to remain open in a world that teaches closure. It’s the moral revival of our own humanity after walking through the valley of someone else’s worst day.
Sometimes, when everything feels overwhelming, I still catch the faint scent of kerosene (a story for another day), antiseptic, and pine. One reminds me of work, the other of the mountains, and somewhere between them is where I keep finding my way back.
As a police officer, husband, father, and now a counsellor in training, I have come to believe that service isn’t measured by what we endure, but by how deeply we remain capable of love. The next time you see a first responder, remember that behind the uniform is a person who has crossed between worlds and returned carrying stories they cannot always share.
And if you are still navigating the challenges of being human, still standing, still serving in your own way, still learning how to live, know this: you’re not alone, and your story isn’t over.
References and Further Reading
Halinen, M., Tiirinki, H., Rauhala, A., Kiili, S., & Ikonen, T. (2024). Root causes behind patient safety incidents in the emergency department and suggestions for improving patient safety: An analysis in a Finnish teaching hospital. BMC Emergency Medicine, 24, 209. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12873-024-01120-9
Jabr, A. (2019, October). It’s complicated: Grief and the first responder. EMS World.https://www.hmpgloballearningnetwork.com/site/emsworld/article/1223276/its-complicated-grief-and-first-responder
Jordan, M., & Hinds, J. (2016). Ecotherapy: Theory, research and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Rolfe, K. (2024, August 7). The emotional impact of trauma on first responder families. First Response Mental Health. https://firstresponsemh.com/the-emotional-impact-of-trauma-on-first-responder-families
Rolfe, K. (n.d.). Instructor profile: First Responders Trauma Prevention and Recovery. Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies. Retrieved November 5, 2025, from https://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/instructors/q-t/kathy-rolfe.html
Southwick, S. M., Bonanno, G. A., Masten, A. S., Panter-Brick, C., & Yehuda, R. (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: Interdisciplinary perspectives. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 5(1), 25338. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338
Suomi, S. (n.d.). LinkedIn profile. Retrieved November 5, 2025, from https://fi.linkedin.com/in/sampsa-suomi-3a32b3a6
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. (2024, August 21). Why are so many health and care workers suffering poor mental health and what can be done about it? Perspectives from Finland. https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/feature-stories/item/why-are-so-many-health-and-care-workers-suffering-poor-mental-health-and-what-can-be-done-about-it