EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Retired Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer, living in Vermont.

About

When I die, I don't want heaven. I want the field at dusk in Autumn, the pines standing watch, and the cold air carrying me back into whatever cycle I came from. The land taught me more about trust than people or religion ever did. The wind has never lied to me. The pines have never abandoned me or switched stories halfway through.

I was born in New York City in 1979 and raised there, though "raised" is a generous word. I was assigned female at birth and have never transitioned. I have lived my entire life as a female named Emily. I was an only child, the daughter of Anne Pratt Slatin and Harvey Slatin. My friends called me Emily, or Em for short. In 1986, my parents moved to Stamford, New York. My father kicked me out of my home at sixteen when I came out as a lesbian, and I left to figure out how to survive without a safety net. I figured it out on my own. I always do.

I became a Firefighter and Paramedic young—too young, some would say—and stayed long enough to see what that work does to people who take it seriously. I worked fires, rescues, trauma scenes, and medical calls most people only encounter in headlines. I pulled people out of wreckage, walked into burning buildings, talked jumpers back from ledges, and held the line when everything was loud, chaotic, and falling apart. There are moments from that life that never leave you. I do not want the better moments to.

I rose quickly because I had to. By my mid-thirties I was a Lieutenant-Specialist, teaching rescue, incident command, and emergency medicine. I was trusted—by doctors, by crews, by people having the worst day of their lives—to make decisions that mattered immediately. I did not make those decisions gently. I made them correctly, even when they were not popular.

Eventually, the cost became clear. Trauma accumulates, no matter how competent you are. I walked away when I knew staying would take something from me that I was not willing to give. Leaving did not break me. It clarified me.

I am female. I use she, her, and hers pronouns. I am intersex and queer. I have autism. My personality type is INFJ/INTJ. Doctors once labeled me a hermaphrodite. These facts are not a debate, a performance, or a tragedy. They are simply part of my body and my history. I have lived my entire life as myself, even when others tried to tell me otherwise. They failed.

I am married to my wife, Amelia Phoenix Desertsong. We share a life grounded in honesty, autonomy, and deep respect. Amelia is a transgender woman. We are both lesbian, autistic, and neurodivergent. She accepts my eccentricities and my enthusiasm for the Oxford comma. We have an open marriage rooted in friendship. We see other women from time to time. We understand each other without much explanation. Meeting her in 2020 was the single greatest thing that has ever happened in my life.

This site is not a brand and not a résumé. It is a record. Of who I have been. Of what I have done. Of what remains after you strip away pretense, expectation, and fear. If you are looking for something easy, comforting, or sanitized, you will not find it here. If you are looking for someone who tells the truth and means it—welcome.

I am fully retired and now own and maintain a retired dairy farm in Middletown Springs, Vermont. I fix what breaks. I do my own wiring, plumbing, welding, fabrication, writing, photography, illustration, web server maintenance, and the various outdoor tasks that keep my hands busy. I believe in knowing how things work and in being able to repair them when they fail—machines, structures, and on occasion even people.

I do not wait on other people to rescue me. They seldom do. I do not outsource understanding.

I am a published writer and a master photographer. I write because there are things that cannot stay contained forever. I photograph abandoned places, quiet rooms, weathered objects, and landscapes that hold memory in their bones. Much of my work circles survival, loss, identity, and the strange peace that comes after enduring what you were not supposed to survive. I have been interviewed in-studio on live radio, had my photographs published in books, and mentioned for heroism in the press.

I am not interested in polish. I am interested in truth.

—Emily Pratt Slatin (she/her)
emily@rescuegirl557.com