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By Deputy Chief Lee-Ann O’Brien
I was standing in a staff meeting when a young member looked straight at me and asked, “What are you doing to help me?” Not angrily. Not disrespectfully. Just honestly.
My initial reaction was defensive. I am not your mother, I thought.
Out loud, I listed every resource our service offered — free virtual counseling, a revamped peer support team, local culturally sensitive referrals — all the things we were proud to make available. But later, in the quiet, I replayed his words. And I realized something uncomfortable: he was right.
We were helping people after they were already struggling. We were standing downstream, pulling people out of the water, never questioning why they kept falling in.
For the first time, I wondered: what would it look like to go upstream?
We talk about resilience in policing all the time. We expect it from ourselves as leaders and from our teams, but rarely do we stop to build it intentionally. That gap is what led me here.
For years, I believed resilience meant toughness. Keep going. Do not complain. Push through. Handle it.
In policing, I learned early how to carry myself like someone who didn’t flinch, didn’t fatigue, didn’t falter. As a woman, a mother and a leader, I thought armor was my ticket forward. If I stayed strong enough, long enough, maybe I could outrun the cost. For a while, it worked. Or at least, I thought it did.
Toughness will get you through a night shift. Through a critical call. Through a season of personal upheaval. But resilience is something altogether different.
Toughness endures. Resilience adapts. It took me far too long to understand the difference.
The pattern I couldn’t ignore
The turning point didn’t end in that meeting. It stayed with me.
Over the past eight years in my role as Deputy Chief, I had already started to notice a pattern. But after that question, I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Strong, capable people were stepping into policing and leadership roles without the tools to withstand the relentless stress, cumulative trauma and intensity of the job. We were asking a great deal. But we were not equipping them to thrive. We trained them tactically. We trained them legally. We trained them operationally. But we had not trained them to understand their own nervous systems.
In policing, perseverance is rewarded. The officer who never calls in sick. The supervisor who absorbs pressure without flinching. The member who handles traumatic call after traumatic call without visible cracks. But we rarely ask: at what cost?
I have seen extraordinary officers leave not because they were weak, but because they were strong for too long without the skills to process what they carried. I have seen leaders admired for their composure struggle privately with exhaustion, cynicism and disconnection.
Resilience is not stoicism. It is not emotional suppression. It is not pretending to be fine. True resilience requires self-awareness and deliberate practice. It requires learning how to regulate your nervous system under pressure, how to recover instead of simply endure, how to separate your identity from your rank or position and how to grow from adversity rather than harden because of it.
I started asking myself harder questions:
- Why aren’t we preparing people before the incident?
- Why do we talk about resilience as if it’s a personality trait instead of a skill?
- Why do we expect leaders to model resilience if we’ve never taught them how?
The answers changed the course of my leadership — and, if I’m honest, my life.
Why we have to start before the crisis
The truth is that people cannot access complex skills in the middle of crisis. By the time the brain is overwhelmed, learning shuts down.
So I began exploring what would happen if we taught officers before they were exposed to trauma:
- How stress hijacks the brain.
- What happens physiologically during threat.
- How breathwork, grounding and self-awareness prepare neural pathways.
- How repetition rewires the nervous system long before it needs to rely on those pathways.
Pre-incident education is not theoretical. It’s preparation. It is the act of building a bridge before asking someone to cross a river.
Later, during and after a crisis, that same education can be reinforced, reminding the brain of a skill it already possesses. Post-incident review becomes a strengthening exercise rather than a desperate attempt to learn while depleted.
Neuroplasticity teaches us that repetition builds the path. Policing teaches us that we don’t get to choose the moment we need it. So we must build the path early. And walk it often.
Leadership is not a rank
As I began shifting my thinking, another realization surfaced. We talk about command staff as if leadership is a rank. But leadership is not a badge. It is behavior. Some of the most influential leaders in policing have no office and no title. They lead by presence, integrity and consistency. They are embedded leaders, who lead by doing. That especially matters now, as Gen Z enters policing with different expectations — ones rooted in mentorship, meaning and modeling rather than hierarchy. They do not follow because of rank; they follow because of credibility, vulnerability and authenticity. And credibility in this era comes from embodiment — showing your work, not just issuing it.
If we want members to regulate, reflect and recover, then those in leadership roles must do it first — and visibly. Not behind closed doors. Not in theory. In real, human ways.
In 2025, I completed a 12-week certification with the Leadership Wellness Group and became a Certified Resilience Coach. It was one of the first times in my career when I wasn’t expected to be strong — I was expected to be aware.
I was the only police officer in my cohort, and what surprised me most was how little that mattered. No one asked about my rank. No one treated me like a Deputy Chief. I was simply another student learning how to understand my own nervous system. And for the first time in a long time, that felt grounding.
I learned how sleep, movement, nutrition, breathwork, mindfulness and connection influence sustainable performance. I learned how trauma reshapes neural pathways — and how intentional practice reshapes them again. I learned how purpose keeps us aligned when the work becomes heavy.
At the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service, we hired a resilience coach who worked with squads weekly. These weren’t lofty conversations. They were practical, neuroscience-backed skills that officers could use immediately. And slowly, I watched culture shift — not through slogans or posters, but through daily habits, small choices and quiet moments of honesty.
Peer support has always mattered. It offers understanding rooted in lived experience, someone who can say, “I’ve been there” and mean it. But peer support is often reactive. Resilience coaching is proactive. Both are essential. Peer support meets you in the moment. Resilience coaching prepares you for the next one.
Some still treat wellness as personal business. But the research says otherwise. Trauma affects decision-making. Stress affects memory. Overwhelm affects impulse control. These are operational risks. Caring for the nervous system is not a soft skill. It is a tactical one, a survival one and a leadership one.
When those in leadership roles model regulation, recovery and reflection, resilience stops being a buzzword and becomes a culture.
From surviving to integrating
Policing will never be gentle. It asks us to walk into grief, chaos, violence and human suffering with steady hands and steady hearts. We cannot change that. But we can change how we prepare our people.
In my upcoming book, “Raising Fire,” I write about the difference between surviving and integrating. Surviving keeps you functional. Integrating makes you whole. It means understanding your nervous system instead of fighting it, building habits that support long-term sustainability and recognizing that strength without recovery will always fracture.
Resilience is not about bouncing back. It’s about moving forward — becoming wiser, softer, stronger.
Perseverance may carry you through a career. Resilience carries you through a life.
If we want healthy members, strong leaders and sustainable organizations, we must build resilience deliberately, not demand it passively.
We must move upstream. Not because it is easy. But because it is necessary.
And that — quietly, fiercely — is the fire worth raising.
About the author
Lee-Ann O’Brien is the Deputy Chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk Police Service, Quebec, where she has served in senior leadership roles for nearly a decade. With more than 20 years of experience in Indigenous policing, she brings deep operational knowledge and a strong commitment to community well‑being, officer wellness, and organizational leadership.
Originally from the Ottawa Valley and Pikwakanagan, Lee-Ann began her policing career in 2005. In 2015, she became the first woman promoted to Patrol Sergeant within her service and has since held positions including Inspector of Field Operations and Acting Chief of Police. A graduate of the Rotman Police Leadership Program, Lee-Ann holds a Bachelor’s degree with distinction from Wilfrid Laurier University and is a certified resilience coach. She is also an award‑winning author of “Breaking Trail: From Complex Trauma to Command” and the founder of Head Fire Resilience Coaching, where she supports leaders navigating stress, trauma and sustainable performance.
