Your Episodes

Send us Fan Mail “You knew what you signed up for.” Maybe. But knowing what might happen is not the same as knowing what it will feel like when it does. In this episode, Cinnamon challenges one of the most dismissive phrases used toward first responders and explores the difference between understanding the risks of the job and being prepared for the emotional, relational, and psychological consequences that can follow. Drawing from conversations with past guests including John Mattingly, Giov...

Send us Fan Mail Season 4 begins with a return, a reset, and a different way of thinking about what it means to keep going. After a two-month hiatus, Cinnamon comes back to After the Tones Drop to talk about what actually happened when she finally stopped pushing quite so hard. What began as time away from weekly podcast production became an unexpected experiment in rest, grief, nervous-system recovery, connection, and learning how difficult it can be to truly disconnect when being prod...

Send us Fan Mail In this Season 3 wrap-up episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon steps away from guest interviews and clinical deep dives for a different kind of conversation: a check-in, a pause, and a summer sign-off. After a full season of powerful conversations, travel, trainings, conferences, client work, and writing, Cinnamon is taking a summer sabbatical from the podcast. This break is not because something terrible happened. Cinnamon talks honestly about burno...

Send us Fan Mail In this solo episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon takes a detour through Sons of Anarchy, Better Call Saul, childhood bullying, and first responder trauma to explain something that finally gave language to one of her own reactions: justice sensitivity. Justice sensitivity is not about being dramatic, difficult, or unable to “let things go.” It is the way some nervous systems react intensely to unfairness, betrayal, hypocrisy, selective accountability, and abuse of power....

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 158 of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with Katherine Boyle, founder of Beyond the Uniform with The LT’s Daughter, for a conversation about first responder families, law enforcement kids, parenting, values, and what it means to be present at home while serving in a demanding career. Katherine grew up as the daughter of a Philadelphia police lieutenant, and unlike many stories we hear in the first responder world, her childhood was protected, grounded, and ...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with Ron Clark of Protecting the Guardian for a conversation that feels like a history lesson, a warning, and a call to action all at once. Ron has spent decades in and around law enforcement, nursing, peer support, employee assistance, suicide prevention, and first responder wellness. He has seen the evolution of this work from the days when officers were expected to experience trauma, say nothing, and go right back...

Send us Fan Mail Retired Las Vegas Police Captain Josh Bitsko spent 24 years in law enforcement and was one of the responding officers who breached the suspected shooter’s door during the 2017 Mandalay Bay mass shooting. In this episode of After the Tones Drop, Josh sits down with Cinnamon to talk about what happens when a critical incident does not end when the scene is cleared. Josh shares what it was like to respond to one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, the emotional fall...

Send us Fan Mail In this solocast, Cinnamon responds to a listener who asked a question a lot of people are quietly carrying: if I’m doing all the right things, why did depression come back? Cinnamon takes that question seriously and goes straight at the lie sitting underneath so many depressive episodes: that if depression returns, it must mean you failed. She breaks down why depression is often cyclical, biological, and deeply convincing without actually telling the truth. She also talks ab...

Send us Fan Mail What do you do when resentment makes perfect sense, but it is also slowly poisoning your life? In this episode, I sit down with Rick Cheatham for a raw conversation about forgiveness, bitterness, grief, and what it takes to heal when life has taken a blowtorch to everything you thought you knew. Rick shares how loss, trauma, addiction, and anger shaped his story, and why he eventually realized that holding onto resentment was costing him more than the original wound. This is ...

Send us Fan Mail What if the worst day of your life became the thing that clarified your purpose? In this episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with Michael Chase for a conversation about trauma, service, and the kind of perspective that only comes from living through the unthinkable. Michael shares how surviving the Boston Marathon bombing changed the course of his life, deepened his understanding of what it means to protect others, and ultimately shaped his mission as a school...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with retired law enforcement officer and Protecting The Guardian founder Mark DiBona for a conversation about what really pushes first responders to the edge. We talk about accumulated trauma, bullying, alcohol, isolation, and the dangerous myth that suicide is always about one bad call. Mark shares his story with the kind of honesty that makes you stop and listen. Not because it’s polished, but because it’s real. This episode is about survival, sp...

Send us Fan Mail Firefighters know how to maintain equipment. The question Ryan Provencher raises in this episode is simple and uncomfortable. Why don’t we apply that same mindset to the people wearing the gear? In this conversation, Ryan and I talk about firefighter wellness as an operational issue, not a side project. We get into health, fitness, sleep, recovery, mental health, and why departments that want strong crews need to start thinking beyond rigs, tools, and turnout gear. Because wh...

Send a text What happens when the trauma you carry didn’t start with you? In this episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with Dave Freeman for a conversation that moves through childhood violence, emotional survival strategies, suicide ideation, and the moment that changed everything. Dave grew up in a home where fear was constant. A violent alcoholic father. A mother whose behavior could shift from loving to explosive without warning. As a child, he learned early how to survive ...

Send a text Sleep is not a luxury, and for first responders, poor sleep is not just inconvenient. It can impact mood, decision-making, trauma recovery, physical health, and even long-term brain function. In this conversation, Cinnamon sits down with Dr. Leah Kaylor, licensed clinical and prescribing psychologist and the FBI’s sleep expert, to unpack what happens when responders run on empty and why sleep has to be part of the resilience conversation. From sleep deprivation and sleep apn...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I sit down with Dena Ali for a conversation that goes way beyond “one bad call.” We talk about firefighter suicide, peer support, belonging, bullying, leadership, and the culture inside first responder organizations that either helps people heal or quietly pushes them further into shame and isolation. Dena shares how her own difficult season led her into this work, why peer support became such a critical part of the solution, and why she now believes the real...

Send a text What does it take to find peace after chaos? In Episode 147 of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with Kelly Cheatham for a deeply honest conversation about marriage, addiction, grief, and the long road to personal healing. Kelly shares what it was like to grow up in a household where silence and explosive conflict were the only communication styles she knew. Those patterns followed her into adulthood and into her marriage to a firefighter, where she eventually found herself...

Send a text This episode is not a highlight reel. It’s a reckoning. I sit down with retired firefighter and transformational speaker Rick Cheatham and his wife Kelly for a raw, two-hour conversation about addiction, loss, paralysis, forgiveness, and what it actually means to commit when walking away would be easier. Rick shares the long road from sexual addiction and self-destruction to purpose and service. Kelly shares what it costs to stay, to set boundaries, and to become emotionally safe ...

Send a text In this episode, Cinnamon sits down with former Louisville Metro Police Sergeant John Mattingly to talk about what really happened the night of March 13, 2020, and what it cost him to survive it. John was shot in the femoral artery while serving a warrant that was part of a larger drug trafficking investigation. He nearly bled out on the hallway floor. But the physical wound wasn’t the hardest part. What followed was something far worse. A national narrative formed almost overnigh...

Send a text In this episode of After the Tones Drop, Cinnamon sits down with AK Dozanti, former deputy sheriff, victim advocate, wellness coach, and author of The Responder Reset: 99 Real-Time Tactics for Frontline Regulation. This conversation is for the people who do not have the luxury of slowing down when stress hits. The ones who need something that works in the moment, not after a weekend retreat or a six week program. AK breaks down how regulation actually works in the body, why most r...

Send us a text Episode 143: Healing Language That Hurts Some of the most damaging things we say about healing are said with the best intentions. In this short solocast, Cinnamon takes a hard look at the phrases we casually throw around when someone is hurting. Let it go. Move on. Put it behind you. You should be over this by now. She explains why this kind of language doesn’t heal. It shames. It implies erasure. And it quietly tells people they’re doing recovery wrong if the past still shows ...

Send us a text Episode 142: Frontline Strong Together – When Support Actually Shows Up In this episode, I sit down with Mike Mattern and Scott Taylor from Frontline Strong Together, a Michigan-based mental health program built by first responders for first responders. Here’s why this matters. It’s free. It’s state-funded. And it works. Mike and Scott are retired first responders who didn’t find this work through theory or policy. They found it through lived experience. Years...

Send us a text In this episode, I’m joined by Justin Atherton for a conversation every first responder and leader needs to hear. Justin spent twenty years in law enforcement as a SWAT breacher, detective, and training lieutenant. But it was a nine-week internal affairs investigation and the identity crisis that followed that nearly broke him. That season forced him to confront a truth many of us avoid: I am not the job. The job is not me. We talk about how internal stress, administrative proc...

Send us a text Episode 140: It Takes 15 Years to Get 15 Years – Cinnamon’s Sobriety Anniversary Solocast Fifteen years ago, my life split into a before and an after. In this deeply personal solocast, I’m marking 15 years of sobriety and reflecting on what time alone does not teach you, and what staying and doing the work slowly, humbly, and honestly does. This episode isn’t a highlight reel. It’s a conversation about what really changes over long-term recovery, and what doesn’t. I talk about ...

Send us a text Episode 139 | Doug White on Accountability, Leadership, and the Cost of Avoidance In this episode of After the Tones Drop, I sit down with Doug White for a conversation that isn’t comfortable, polished, or performative and that’s exactly why it matters. We talk about accountability in a culture that often rewards avoidance. About leadership that looks strong on the outside but collapses when it’s not rooted in moral courage. About vulnerability that isn’t about oversharing or e...