H.O.P.E Beyond The Badge

Seamus Shanley is a prominent Firefighter in Worcester Ma, digital creator, and Marine Corps Veteran - He has dedicated 25 years to the Fire Service. Beyond his career as a first responder, Seamus is a highly active advocate for mental health and addiction recovery, particularly within the public safety community.

In this episode Seamus shares his own story of hardship, service, struggle, recovery, healing, perseverance, and helping others. 

Kelly Chiulli joins us on the podcast and discusses her years of service - Military service, service as a Law Enforcement Officer, and service to other first responders navigating their own struggles. While Kelly talks about her many years of service, she also explains how the stress of the job can impact those who serve, she discusses some of the calls that stayed with her, and shares openly about significant loss that she has experienced personally.  This episode highlights the very nature of a life of service, of loss, of grief, of resiliency, and of healing.

Chris Fields joins Linda and Jay to discuss his long career in the fire service and the work he's doing now to educate the next generation of first responders that it okay to not be okay - and its okay to talk about that.

Chris shares openly about his mindset as a new recruit & how that changed over time. He describes the impact of loosing co-workers, provides a vivid description of the of the Oklahoma city bombing scene, talks about the impact those incidents and many others had on his mental health, and the steps he took to rediscover wellness. 

In this episode we interview Jared Buchanan and DanielHerzog.

Jared is a suicide loss survivor, and Daniel is afilmmaker.  Together they produced adocumentary that explores grief, PTSD, suicide prevention, and resilience through telling Jared’s story on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death by suicide.  

Jared’s father – Paul Buchanan – a police officer in EastHartford Connecticut died by suicide in 2013. Paul left a note for his family; in it he asks them to make his death an issue to help others who are struggling like him.  Jared shares with us how he navigated grief following his father’s loss, and how that led him to becoming a mental health clinician, advocate, and ultra marathon runner dedicated to First Responder and Veteran Suicide prevention.  Together, Jared and Daniel discuss their meeting, getting to know one another, their journey into telling Jared’s story, and the importance of their film’s message.

To learn more or request a screening of the film - go to Beautifully Broken . com

Elizabeth Bartholomew joins us on the podcast. 

Liz worked as a police records clerk in Batavia Illinois  where she met Joe Bartholomew, a paid on-call firefighter, they married in 1980.  Joe was hired as a full time Firefighter in 1986.  While their daughters were young Liz was able to be a stay at home mom.  Later she drove a school bus part-time in Naperville, Illinois, became Band Booster President and was on the coaching staff at East Aurora High School.    In 2005 Joe was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder from a response call, he later retired on a duty disability pension after 33 years as a firefighter.  Seeing the reaction in the workplace to his PTSD diagnosis and watching him learn to live with PTSD she came up with the concept of Responders Retreat as a place to open a conversation and know that you are not alone. 

Lieutenant Sean M. Carroll (Ret.) spent 23 years with the Providence Police Department, retiring as a Lieutenant and Commanding Officer, after serving in the United StatesMarine Corps.

Today he is Founder and CEO of A.I.O. Leadership, LLC, where he trains supervisors on the leadership decisions that determine whether officers stay whole or burn out. 

He is the author of A.I.O. Leadership for Law Enforcement, a Police1 columnist, an IADLEST National Certified Instructor, an adjunct professor at Roger Williams University, andhost of the Street Tested Leadership podcast.

Sean is also a post-traumatic stress survivor. He is candid about the mistakes he made while wearing the stripes, speaks openly about recognizing the signs of PTS in himself and his fellow officers, talks about what first responders can do for themselves when stress becomes overwhelming, and how to properly navigate those moments from a leadership position when a fellow officer shows signs of struggle.

In this episode, we interview Jennie Babcock & Paul Gabrial of the Plymouth County Suicide Prevention Coalition. 

Jennie & Paul share valuable information about suicide prevention, reduction, awareness, the education they provide through their coalition, & what led them to to do the work that they do. 

Retired Fire Chief David Rhodes joins us on the podcast.

David is a 39 year veteran of the fire service retired from the Atlanta Gorgia fire dept. He currently works for Clarion events as the Vice President of Education for Clarion Fire Rescue Brands, he is the Editor in Chief for Fire Engineering Magazine, and the educational director for the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC). He is a Chief Elder for the Gorgia Smoke Divers Program, served on the Fire Department Instructors Conference Executive Advisory Board, was the hands on training coordinator at the FDIC Conference, and author for Fire Engineering Magazine and Fire Apparatus and Equipment Magazine. Chief Rhodes has served as an adjunct instructor for the Gorgia Fire Academy, and is an advisory board member emeritus for Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Research Institute , and current board member of the Firefighter Air Coalition. He has served as an incident commander for the Gorgia Emergency Management Agency, Type 3 all Hazards Incident Management Team, and was a task force leader for the Gorgia Search and Rescue Team.

Chief Rhodes discusses his career, shares his knowledge, experience, and thoughts on the importance of educating and training first responders about the hazards and impacts of interacting with trauma. 

Our guest on todays podcast is Marchelle Farmer

In September of 2023, at the age of 57, Marchelle met the love of her life, Scott Farmer. They both knew right away that what they had was special, and were married in February of 2024 - on Scott's 57th birthday. 

By May of 2025 Marchelle was making funeral arrangements. 

Her husband, retired K-9 Sergeant Scott Farmer, after 25 years of service and 3 years of retirement  - lost his internal battles with PTS.  Scott died by suicide in the early morning of May 16, 2025.  

Just the afternoon before Scott had told Marchelle -  "You're going to be fine. They like you there." Maybe he was encouraging her about her fairly new job, or maybe he meant something else. A little over a year later, Marchelle is not fine. She struggles regularly. 

Gradually, and with much effort she is learning her way out of the dark pit of trauma and grief that she was thrown into  following Scott's suicide. 

During her own healing process -  Marchelle recognized that suicide did not process Scott's trauma or heal his pain. His trauma and pain was mutated and transferred to her. While pursuing her own healing, she chooses to honor the amazing, beautiful man, officer, friend and husband - - known simply as Farmer - by sharing their story, with the hope that others will be motivated to seek their own healing.

Charlie's work in Critical Incident Stress Management began around the time of its inception, he then started on the Boston fire metro team in 1998, he has provided CISM and peer support throughout the northeast united states, and he is currently the co-coordinator of the statewide peer support network here in the commonwealth.   

In this episode - Charlie speaks openly about mistakes he made throughout his career in the fire service – including the amount of hours that he worked for years on end – he shared this message and many others in order to help the next generation of first responders avoid some of the mistakes in their careers that he made in his own. Additionally – Charlie spoke about some of his own critical incidents – he spoke about structure fires, including one that resulted in a fatality early on in his career – the cultural response to that in those days, which was to drink until you felt better – he spoke openly about how those incidents affected him, how something inside him demanded that there must be a better way to manage critical incident stress – and how as the years went on Charlie came to realize that it is oftentimes the constant grind of duty, response, responsibility, and how we respond internally to those and other components of the job that takes the largest toll on our emergency responders.

Currently - Charlie works as a clinician at On Site Academy – an organization we hold in the highest regard – and consider as the gold standard of treatment for first responders.