You’ve served everyone else your entire career.

The city. The team. The call. The chaos.
Every tone drop, you answered.
Every shift, you gave pieces of yourself you’ll never get back.

Now you come home with nothing left in the tank.

It’s 6:42 p.m.
Your son’s at the door with a ball. “Dad, game starts now.”
You nod, lace a boot, buy ten seconds. Your legs feel heavy. Breath is thin.
Left knee clicks. Lower back hums. Shoulder still pissed from the last call.

“Two minutes,” you say.

Three minutes later, he’s in the yard with the neighbor’s dad running, laughing, alive.

You step outside, then pretend you forgot something and retreat to the kitchen.

Phone buzzes: Special Teams training... Another excuse.

You scan the pantry. Quick hit. Caffeine. Sugar. A promise: I’ll fix this Monday.

Your brain starts listing options:

“Hire another trainer.” You’ve done that. Maybe two.
They had you chasing numbers that didn’t mean anything once the pager went off. Good intentions. No data. No plan that survived shift work, broken sleep, or stress.

“Push through.” You’ve been doing that for years.

“Another diet.” You’ve tried. It collapses under night shifts and stress.

“More coffee.” Buys 90 minutes. Destroys your sleep.

“Shortcuts?” You’ve seen what shortcuts do to men in your line of work.

“Maybe I just need motivation.” You’ve had it. Motivation dies when cortisol spikes.

Meanwhile, the drift compounds...quiet, corrosive:
Sleep is light; you wake up more tired than when you went down.
Focus fades mid-report; memory slips on scene details.

You sit in the patrol car silently... because "you need a minute"
Training used to be therapy, now it’s hit or miss.

Your body’s heavier. Your patience thinner.
Quick meals become bad habits; stress calls the shots.
Evenings blur into screens and numb snacks; alarms get snoozed.

Your family sees it, even if you think you’re hiding it.
Your kid stops asking to play because he’s learned “later” means “no.”
Your wife looks at you differently, part worry, part distance.

The man in the mirror? He looks more like a survivor than a leader.

But here’s the thing—the breach wasn’t a single call.
It was a thousand small ones—missed meals, broken sleep, crushed circadian rhythm, high cortisol, low testosterone, too much caffeine, not enough sunlight.

All slowly encrypting your biology until your body stopped following your orders.

You’ve led on scene. Now it’s time to lead at home.

What do you do in the next 90 days to stress-test your biology on purpose, expose the weak links, and rebuild the engine that carried you through the fire—so your family gets the version of you that still fights back?