Poppylillac grew up right in the thick of her dad’s work. Born and raised in a police house right across the driveway of the small two man station where her dad worked alongside with his off-slider and neighbour, Poppy and her mother saw, lived in, and experienced the ups and downs of the first responder life. She saw all the cool gadgets on her dads belt up close, she got rides to school in the police car, and she was cared for, and loved by, every copper, admin, and community member who came to the station.
But with the good, comes the bad. She also had to have her overnight bag packed incase dad got called out to a job, she missed birthdays, Father’s Day, Christmas’, and New Years with her dad, and she dealt with and continues to deal with the effects of PTSD caused by the job. Poppy was accustom to the fluctuating ups and downs of the job, and the abnormal to others was her family's everyday.
It wasn’t unlikely that jobs would happen on her front doorstep, that people would rock-up in her driveway, bringing their situations with them. It was almost every night that the phone would ring, and dad would be up and gone; already in the car before she could reciprocate his “I love you”. 7pm, 9pm, 12am, 2am, back in bed by 5am; long enough for 3 hours of sleep before he was up again for the 8-4 shift. 8-4, day after day, no days off, just weeks and weeks and months of the 7pm, 9pm, 12am, 2am, 8-4.
Tired dad. Sad dad. Frustrated dad. Relieved dad. Every job took a toll, every lost minute of sleep, every head-on accident, every missing person, DV, death, found person, persecuted person, saved person. Every single job took their toll on her dad. And those tolls festered and eventually formed into anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).
They took a toll on Poppy and her mum too. They saw, heard, experienced, and felt the pain of the job. They developed their own form of trauma, their own hurt and pain. Every job that affected dad, affected them too. Every mid-dinner call out earned choruses of groans and sad glances. Every tragedy, death, loss, and heartbreak was felt through the whole house. They loved him, Poppy especially; as much as she was a daddy’s girl and thought of him as a superhero, it still hurt to watch him leave. She might have been young, but she still knew that the lights and sirens weren’t a good sign.
Even after her dad’s retirement, his PTSD lived and moved with them. He suffered and continues to suffer the effects and mental struggles of PTSD; the sadness, the pain, the trauma.
For little Poppy, this was, and is, a part of her life. But she had never completely understood the significance or abnormality of her life to other kids; this was just how it had always been. It wasn’t until she had emotionally matured and began to understand the severity of her dad’s job that she had begun to feel the years and years of unresolved trauma fall on top of her like a heaping pile of bricks. She, through some form of secondary trauma, had developed her own mental disorders. Through the accumulation of traumatic events in her life, without fully comprehending them, without having proper coping mechanisms or understanding of why things happened the way they did, Poppy struggled.
Henceforth, The Poppy Project. An advocacy group for First Responder families like her own. Advocating for their mental health support and emploring government entities to create change.
Poppy feels as though no First Responder family should have to go without mental health support; no family should have to suffer like her family and many families like hers did.