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Episode 009: Renee Schofield: Reframing Drug Addiction & Leading from the Heart

Listen to the episode and access the show notes here.

Dawn Gluskin: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Bare Naked Radio, I am your host, Dawn Gluskin. It’s a joy and a pleasure to introduce today’s guest, Renee Schofield. Say, “hello” Renee.

Renee Schofield: Hey! Good morning.

Dawn Gluskin: So good to have you here. Renee and I met many years ago through an organization of women business owners called “Count Me In” and what I love most about that group is the friendships that many of us have formed. We’re still in touch today, watching each other from afar, and sort of cheering each other on and supporting each other however we can, which is awesome. Renee is the owner of TSS, which is a safety company. They specialize in workplace training for safety and Renee has some really unique stories and perspectives to share with us today. So we’ll be getting into a few of those different things.

One aspect of the work that she does is they do drug screening that is inside of safety. That’s sometimes a controversial topic, but Renee has her own take on that subject. She’s also going to share a little bit about her own personal life and her daughter had gone through her own struggles with drug addiction. She’s 14 years sober, so we’re really excited for her for that. Renee has a message and a stand on that that she’s going to share with us today.

Another aspect of the work she does is what they call, “Trauma Scene Decontamination”. And it’s just like what it sounds like. They actually go up and clean trauma scenes where the worst things you can imagine have happened, most of us would never want to see. And that’s part of the work she does. She also has a really big heart and she does coaching in business but also with folks returning to the workplace after being incarcerated. She’s just got a lot of stuff going on and I’m just so happy to have her here today.

So Renee, I wanted to start off with just reading your bio or talking about some of the stuff that you’re up to. I want to talk about your passion because it sounds like what you’ve got on your plate – it’s not necessarily easy work – taking a stand on a controversial topic and the trauma, taking a stand on changing the stigma around drug addiction. You could just be a business coach and that would be easy and there’s nothing wrong with that. But why do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning and excited about your business and your life?

Renee Schofield: I think the most important aspect of what I do here is the ability to be that change-point for every person that we touch. Whether someone’s coming for a drug screen for a new job, we get to provide that service and makes sure that the employer and the employee, the protocols are followed appropriately and they get to go to work very soon. If they’re coming because they’re involved in a probation situation or maybe a child custody battle, then we give that same service in the best way possible to allow them to maybe see their kid or maybe be returned to treatment because they’re not clean. So, we get to be that change-point in that aspect. If we teach somebody CPR, first aid – I have multiple people that come back and say, “Because of what I learned in your class, I did CPR on my boat while I had charter fisherman out” or “This happened and I knew how to stop the bleeding.” Everything we do is people heart-centered. So that gives us that unique opportunity to be that cross in the road where people get to make a different choice, perhaps.

Dawn Gluskin: I love that. It sounds like you’re really in business for changing lives and giving people an opportunity, whether it’s they’re fresh out of prison or whether they’re trying to get sober or better their lives in some way. And I just want to point that out for our listeners is when you can take that perspective on something – when you’re being of service, when you’re being about something bigger than yourself, it makes those hard days and those difficult times a little bit easier to get through. Let’s talk about some of your growth opportunities. I touched on it a little bit at the beginning of the show here. I always use the word “failure” in quotation marks because I don’t believe in anything as a failure. I think everything is just an opportunity to grow and to stretch us and help us learn and be more of who we really are. So what do you perceive as your biggest “failure” and how did you turn it into something to expand your growth?

Renee Schofield: Probably one of the hardest things in my life has been walking through my daughter’s addiction. Being in this industry and it happened right in front of me. So, I initially took on the, “I should’ve done something different. I should’ve seen it coming up. This is what I do for a living. I should have known better.” And then I got over myself and realize it isn’t about me. This was about addiction, what it does to families and individuals. Once I recognized and acknowledged that addiction doesn’t have boundaries and it doesn’t care who you are and where you live or how much money you have or how clean your house is or any of that – when it happens, it happens. You take that on as a parent, you take that on that guilt of “I should’ve done something differently.” And I actually had someone say to me, “Well, you know, I have three girls than I’ve just loved on them so hard that this would never happen if you had loved her more.”

Dawn Gluskin: Oh wow. Okay. Hashtag #ThingsToNotToSayToSomebody. I can’t even fathom that. Clearly, they didn’t know about addiction and what it really is, either to make a comment like that.

Renee Schofield: Exactly. Right. I took that really, really hard, but then I also am that person looks at challenges are opportunities. You just tie a knot on the rope and you hold on and you hope that that day will come, that your kid or your family member or your friend walks through the door and says, “Gosh, today’s my day and today I want to go to treatment.” We were fortunate enough that that happened for us. Not everybody is.

Dawn Gluskin: Totally. First of all, I just want to say thank you for the work you’re set out to do, for changing the stigma around addictions. I shared with you before we started the show that my brother, he suffered through a drug addiction for many years. He was addicted to prescription pain pills, which it’s, like, “Oh, it’s a prescription. And he got it from a doctor.” He was doing OxyContin and Xanax. I have my own opinions on all of those kind of drugs and why they’re out there. It’s a multi-billion dollar profit business. He was not one of the lucky ones. He was clean and then he would go back and it’s just such a struggle when you see someone going through that. They’re not choosing – like, he wanted to be sober, he wanted it to be clean, and he ultimately lost his life to a drug addiction and overdose nine years ago. Dealing with all people’s judgments and opinions about that, “Well, he should’ve done this” and “He chose that.” At some point, yes, we are responsible for our choices, but it’s not THAT black and white. So, thank you for speaking to that.

Renee Schofield: That’s true. People need to understand that nobody wakes up in the morning, says, “You know what, today I’m going to be an addict. That’s what I want from my life. I’m just going to be an addict.” They don’t wake up and do that. Prescription drugs, when they’re used appropriately and for the right reasons and monitored and exit your life in the appropriate timeframe, there’s good things about that.

But there are those huge things as we’re seeing the opioid crisis across the nation now – declared emergency status, it’s just rampant in our communities. Once that gets a hold, then we have to find ways to move people through it and that’s access to treatment and support and for them AND for their families, because that ripple effect goes all the way out. It’s not just the addict, you’re talking about everybody around the addict. And then you get a sober person after treatment and you don’t know how to deal with them because you’ve been dealing with the addict all that time. It’s that whole look at how we do things. For what I do, we’re not counselors here. We do the drug and alcohol screening. One of the things we really focus on here is we take care of people. So, while we’re not counselors, we know where they are. When somebody comes through here, we have that ability to respond when they say “I really am looking for a counselor today and I need to talk to somebody.” Then we can connect them right away within a couple of hours usually.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s beautiful that you’re doing that work in the world. It’s hard to because you could just be, like, “This is not my cross to bear. My daughter, she’s sober now. Let’s let someone else worry about that.” But, you’re so big-hearted and you want to help. You genuinely want to help people and want to help people that are in that crisis and change the world. Thank you because it’s not easy work to do. Sometimes it would be just easier probably to sweep it under the rug, but you’re helping so many people. So thank you for that.

Renee Schofield: It’s what we’re here for.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s such a beautiful example of, as the saying is, to “turn your mess into your message”, right? Even as a parent or a sister or someone that’s gone through that or person that has dealt with the addiction themselves, there’s all this shame this underneath that stigma. It’s like that shame of, “People are gonna judge me.” You even mentioned 14 years later, your daughter still feels some of that judgement, which that is a shame. She should be celebrated for the victories and what she’s overcome and not have to even worry about that anymore. But it is a “thing” in society and our community where we have to change the way we think about things like this.

Renee Schofield: As we talked about a little bit earlier, if I break my leg when I’m 20, when I’m 40, people aren’t still talking about that. They don’t bring it up in a job interview. They don’t go, “Oh, that’s the girl who broke her leg 20 years. But when you have a substance abuse issue, as a society, we really kind of put that stigma on there and we’re not really willing to let it go. And I’m not saying that pretend that it didn’t happen because it did happen and it’s part of the fabric of who they are. If they’ve moved through treatment and become sober, that’s an every day battle they fight. Who are we to push them back down with a stigma. Finding those ways for the community to have positive conversation and to celebrate people in recovery and really honor that they’re doing their thing and be grateful for that and let them recover. Let them do that.

Dawn Gluskin: We should just be celebrating each other and helping pick people up. I really think we’re all connected. We’re all one. We’re all in this thing together. And to push someone down this after they’ve struggled – and the people that are doing it, they’re not doing it intentionally either. It’s something ingrained in their belief system that, “That’s bad. You did this bad thing like 20 years ago.” The same thing goes for people in prison. There’s not a person out there in the world that’s never done anything in their life that they regretted or they’re, like, “Oh, that was a bad decision” or “I wish I could rewind time,” but you know, we all have to learn our lessons. We all have to make our mistakes and have our missteps and learn our lessons. And then, it’s not up to us to judge somebody else on their journey. We need to forgive ourselves for our missteps and also be that forgiving with one another.

Renee Schofield: That’s the name of the game. That’s what we should be doing. It’s hard. It’s work.

Dawn Gluskin: It is. But I love that you’re being part of that change. I think it’s such an important message, too, because we all have the capacity to make a difference. And sometimes people are, like, “This is too big of a mission, how am I going to change the stigma on drug addiction… that’s so big.” But if all of us just do our little part whenever we’re called to affect in this world and just show up and be the voice and be the change. We all matter and make a difference. So thank you. I wanted to bring up something else you mentioned is that you live in the state of Alaska. You mentioned that there’s a really high number of suicides in your state and that was how the trauma contamination work that you do was born. Tell us about that, how that got born, and how you handle that. And everything. Because my heart hurts just thinking about it

Renee Schofield: In Alaska, and in lots of places – Alaska does have a high number of suicides. A few years ago, we had a situation where over a period of a year and a half or so, we had 18 or so suicides. Some of them were close together, some spread out, and some of them were copycat – for different reasons. But during that time, I recognized that what was happening was when the event itself occurs and the police come and the coroner comes and the body is removed, then those scenes were just being turned back over to family members. And a lot of times this happens in your home: in a bedroom, a bathroom, in your living room. And that broke my heart, that we were inducing second trauma to people on the worst thing, you know?

So, what can I do about that? And I connected with a guy in Texas who had a training center. I went down and did a training with him where we actually cleared all of the confined space and blood-borne pathogens and all of those things. He had set up a training center that had pig blood and he picked up roadkill, so we had smells. It was a phenomenal training.

But what that allows me to do is: when something like this occurs, a family can contact us and we can go to their home or to that site – sometimes it’s a workplace, where something’s happened in the workplace – but we can get there. While we cannot change this event, we can remove some of that trauma, whether it’s taking carpet out. And we can decon on almost anything. We can take car seats out of the car, take them off the frame. And decon those. We’ve done medavac jets where a person might bleed out inside the plane on the way to, in our case Seattle, because that’s our trauma location. Then they will call us and say, “Our whole plane is full of blood and we need that taken care of.” So, we will go and, one, decontaminate that fluid and then get that removed so that they can put the plane back together and get it back in service.

When we’re done in a home, and depending on the situation and the size of the room and what’s really happened, it might take us 12 hours, it might take us three days depending on what we have have. When we’re completed, again, we can’t change what’s happened, but we can minimize that trauma. That’s a big deal to me.

Dawn Gluskin: That is a big deal and I just want to honor you again for that because you saw a need, you saw people that are already suffering and then they have to suffer all over again and it touched you in your heart and you actually took action. You said, “Well, I am a human being that can do something about this and make a difference in these people’s lives.” And you took action.

Whereas you could have easily looked the other way. “That’s not my cross to bear”, but it would be perfectly acceptable, right? Because we all have our own stuff going on. But you just have such a big heart and I just love people that, that have the big heart and are also not afraid to get into action in service of others. Thank you for that. And that is a job that I could not do. Like, I just couldn’t. But, like you said, someone has to. Why would it be that family that’s already traumatized.

Renee Schofield: Yeah. And the ability to just be pretty clinical about it. I won’t say that I come away from every one of them going, “Okay, we’re finished and it’s beautiful and we’ve done our job.” Sometimes the story is really hard. I live in a small community. There are about 13,000 of us here. We work all over the nation. We can go anywhere. But when we’re working here, we’re going to see those family members at the grocery store and at the basketball game and everywhere. We really want to just honor the person who has passed on, clean the things that we can save. In some cases, we’ve been able to save artwork and poetry, the things that they’ve written on or clothing that is extra special to the family. That means so much to be able to have those things that would otherwise be just incinerated and go away.

Dawn Gluskin: Yeah, that’s incredible, the work that you’re doing. And thank you. Like I said, it’s not easy to answer “the call”, is what I call it. At some point you got “the call” that was like, “I can do something about this. I can be the difference maker.” Listen to your heart. Whereas your brain could kick in and be like, “No, that’s a crazy idea!” The difference you’re making in those people’s lives, It’s just… it’s incredible.

Renee Schofield: I’m very blessed to have staff who runs the day-to-day here in the office. We have six locations in different places. I’m fortunate to have people who just support that effort. While most don’t want to come to those scenes, they will come to the door and bring lunch or make sure that I have bottle of water, whatever it is. That’s really key to have the solid workforce that really honors taking care of people and that’s what we do.

Dawn Gluskin: It’s great to have that support and also that you, as a business owner, that you are able to cultivate the right people that are aligned with you, that can be that support team. Yeah. Good work. I also want to talk a little bit about fear. We talk about, on Bare Naked Radio, about our fears because our fear, a lot of the time, takes to the driver seat and it’s what stops us from answering the call of our heart. It’s what stops us from being who we are in the world. It’s what has us pretending and wearing a mask and showing up as someone else. So, I always ask the question: what scares you the most or maybe used to scare you that maybe you’ve overcome and if it is an overcome situation, what did you do to get to that point?

Renee Schofield: I think on different facets whether you’re talking personally or professionally or where you are and different things, I think everybody has something that – and maybe not everybody always acknowledges it, you’ll kind of push that back in the back of your mind – but truly when you get in front of this and go, “Alright, I’m going to overcome this. This is a great opportunity.”

One of the biggest things for me is: what does the future look like for my “minis”? Those are my granddaughters. What did we do for them and what are we setting them up for in our family and in our world, in our community? What have they got to look forward to? I’m always concerned about: will I be here for them in the future. That drove me to, “You need to get off your duff and get to the gym, you need to take better care of yourself so that when they are 25 and walking down the aisle or running their first marathon, that you have the ability to be there.” That’s a big deal to me. A lot of people work out every day. I had to learn for that to become a pleasure instead of a chore.

I’ve had a business coach since the Count Me In: Make Mine a Million group award. Through coaching, I was able to turn that around from, “Oh, I gotta go to the gym” – you don’t “gotta.” You have to get to “I am honoring this body, that birthed my children, that carries me around, that makes me think of cool stuff to do. I’m honoring this body. And so that changed that in a big way for me. And then, through the work that I do – I volunteer on lots of different organizations. Most of them focused on substance abuse and treatment and recovery. From legislation to sitting with somebody who just needs to ask a couple of questions. That makes this space better for those girls and give them something to start to work with to make their own path.

Dawn Gluskin: That is such a beautiful, beautiful reframe there. And I really want to make sure that our listeners get that. We all have fear and our fear is different. And Renee spoke to her fear for years. “I’m not going to be here for my minis.” And that’s a fear that really was real and touched your heart. A lot of times, there’s two things we can do with fear. We can just kind of push it down. “I don’t want to deal with this. I don’t even want to think about it and we’ll find some other way to cope with it.” Some people use alcohol or shopping or drugs or whatever.

Or you can just kind of face your fear. What I say is to, not just fear, but anger, any kind of emotion that has a connotation that is “negative” and just ask it, “What are you trying to tell me?” It sounds like you did your own version of that. “Hello Fear. What are you trying to tell me?” “I was trying to tell you, it’s time to honor your body. It’s time to really take control of your health.” And you’re working out. And then you have that beautiful reframe with your mindset: “No, it’s not something I HAVE to do. I GET to do this. I get to be there for my grandchildren and for myself and for my employees and for all the people I save in the world.”

When you can return it around like that, it becomes so powerful. It could either be something that brings you down and makes you feel bad about yourself. Or it can be super empowering. I love that you did that work and were able to turn it around. We all have that capacity to do that with our fears.

Renee Schofield: I had started with: if you miss a workout one day and then it was, like, “Okay, I missed on Tuesday and it’ll be okay to miss Wednesday.” And before you know it, you’ve missed several weeks because you just keep talking yourself away. Just being able to acknowledge that you missed a workout – it’s okay to miss a work out. I’m not perfect. Some days, I do really solid heavy duty and other days I’m, like, “Eh, I’m going to swim in the pool today.” If you just acknowledge that you’re going to try and just go do something, even if it’s just walk around your yard that day, that’s something. Just being okay if you don’t do it that day, saying, “All right, tomorrow’s a new day, we’ll start again.”

Dawn Gluskin: Meet yourself where you are. Don’t beat yourself up. Really good. Really good. So the other thing we talk about it a lot on the show is living a life without regrets and that’s inside of the number one deathbed regret is people on their last days, the terminally ill, the very elderly, being asked the question, “Is there anything you would go back and do differently? Do you have any regrets?” It’s always the same answer keeps coming up: “I wish I had lived a life true to myself instead of the one that others had wished more me.”

This question is kind of just – bear with me, but if you found out that you had one year left to live, what would pop in your mind, once you work pass through all of that, is there something you still need to do in order to be able to get to that finish line and be satisfied with the legacy you’re leaving? I mean it sounds like you’re already doing an amazing job. And is there anything else that’s present for you?

Renee Schofield: I would spend more time with the minis. I would do more of that and we do already, but I do think we get caught up in the day-to-day and we get really busy and, you know, things are going on and they’re in gymnastics and dance and all of those things. I really try to focus hard on being authentic, which is not always popular because not everybody agreed with my businesses and a lot of things. But I gotta stay true to who I am because that’s who I am. I don’t care if people remember the day I was born or the day I die. I want them to remember that dash in between. That’s what matters. So what I do now will reflect on the future forever. It doesn’t matter that my name’s on it. It doesn’t matter that people go, “Oh, that’s the woman who did that.” It matters that it happens so that we leave the place better than we found it.

Dawn Gluskin: That’s beautiful. I want to commend you because I really see that you are doing that, you are living that and it’s beautiful. You said something in there that I really want to point out to our listeners is that being authentic and true to yourself as not always popular. That’s such a great point because a lot of times we back down from being who we are, from expressing our true voice, from showing up in the world as who we know we really are and who we want to be, because we’re afraid of all of those judgments and opinions. When you’re true to who you really are, the right people are going to show up, the right people are going to love you. Yeah, you’re going to have some people that are, like, “You’re not for me.” And I think if you’re don’t have that, if you don’t have any opposition, no one’s calling you out, then you’re not doing it right. Because if you really are going to piss somebody off, you have to embrace it.

Renee Schofield: Our entire company – every week we have a staff meeting and one of the things that’s on our agenda in big, bold letters that everybody gets is we are about authenticity. So everything we do is build culture. And, like I said, it’s not always popular when you stand up and say, “Legalizing marijuana probably isn’t a great thing for our kids.” There’s a lot of pushback on that because a lot of people think, “Well, it’s not so bad.” Well, it took us 50 years to decide that cigarettes weren’t good for us. It’ll take us 50 years to get there. My point with it is: no matter where you fall on the fence with that, people assume that legal equals safe. OxyContin is a perfect example. Alcoholism. So when you think “legal equals safe”, your kiddos start thinking, “Well, it’s legal. So it must be okay.” And when you get up in a room and say that, that’s not always popular.

Dawn Gluskin: I get it and I see both sides because I am for the medicinal use for many reasons because it can replace a lot of the prescriptions that aren’t good. But there has to be an education, especially for the children. So you make a very good point. Because you can use it in ways that will positively affect your health, your well-being, that you can use it for spiritual reasons. There’s no judgment here for what people choose to do with their life. However, there is the other side and that goes with any substance, alcohol, you know, anything else out there that if you’re using it for the wrong reasons, if you’re trying to escape from something, it can be a detrimental thing. And especially to the children when their brains are still developing. There are two sides to every coin. I always try to listen to both sides. I get it. I know that that argument must not be a popular one because people have opinions about it. But thank you for being true to yourself.

Renee Schofield: People have very definite opinions on it. And that’s okay. That’s what we’re made to do. That’s how we’re built. So just find that spot of being able to talk about whatever issue it is and being authentic and holding true to yourself in what you think about something and not letting somebody back you into a corner on something. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be open minded and learn new things. But that authenticity is really, really critical.

Dawn Gluskin: It really is. To live a well-lived life. Well, Renee, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. I just love what you’re up to. I love that you are so authentic and that you’re following the call of your heart and doing things that a lot of other people would back down from. So thank you for who you are in the world. I just wanted to give you an opportunity at the end here to promote yourself, anything you’ve got going on, what you’re working on, where can people find you on the Internet, all that good stuff.

Renee Schofield: Well, thank you. At TSS, the staff kind of runs, like I said before, the day-to-day, so I’ve been really coaching some folks and trying to just spend more time on that because I enjoy that a lot. You can find us on the internet at tss-safety.com. Everything safety is there. We do a lot of different webinars. For instance, today we’re talking about drug programs on the webinar and in a couple of weeks, we’ll be doing harassment training and so there’s lots of opportunities to look at that kind of stuff. Let’s see. On Facebook, you can find us @thesafetyspecialists [“TSS Inc.”] or you can find my coaching Facebook page at “NO SPEED LIMIT.” I’m a huge NASCAR and dirt track racing fan. My coaching kind of takes that racing theme. I enjoy that, you know, putting fuel in your tank and get your roadmap out. I spend a lot of my coaching going that direction. I have business coaching clients and we have a few that may be coming out of incarceration, rehab, little bit of that, connecting them to resources and help them with their resume. Those things are really, really awesome when you can see somebody just flourish. That’s really is what I’m here for.

Dawn Gluskin: Absolutely. And I love what you’re doing. And for our listeners too, if you didn’t catch those links so you can always go to barenakedradio.com and it’ll be in the show notes under Renee’s show. Thank you again, Renee. I mean, really, it was a pleasure having you here today. You are an inspiration and I love what you’re up to in the world and just thank you for being so authentic and willing to get “bare naked” with us today on the show. So thank you.

Renee Schofield: I’m so grateful for the opportunity, Dawn. We’ve been following you closely for a long time and you’re doing such amazing things for people and that really matters. And I honor that for you. And thank you for giving me this space.

Dawn Gluskin: Well, I will receive that acknowledgement as well. Thank you so much.

Listen to the episode and access the show notes here.