Why I Went In

By Laura G. Hanson

Why I Went In is the story of how Laura Hanson went from hero to zero. It began when she left her job as a SWAT Operator on the Virginia Beach Police Department to pursue a higher purpose for her life. Six months after leaving she was living in the room above the garage at her parents' house, her wife left her, and she had no source of income. She felt like she had nothing to show for her life and the memories of past successes haunted her as she asked herself how this was possible.
While alone, she recalled a major event in her life, when she responded to an active shooter on May 31, 2019, at Building 2 in the Virginia Beach municipal complex. She thought of all the other dangerous calls she responded to both on SWAT and as a patrol officer. She realized she was in the midst of an existential crisis and needed answers.
This scenario was very familiar to her because she had already spent the majority of her life seeking answers to questions about her purpose as a result of being adopted. This environment she found herself in served as a catalyst for finding the answers to questions she hadn't come up with yet, namely how to deal with excruciating internal pain in her life. Although Hanson lacked a spiritual practice until two months before this book was written, she writes about how developing a relationship with God, which she refers to as Infinite Intelligence, transformed her life and taught her how to overcome pain in the world. She wrote this book because it felt true to her purpose. She wrote it for you so that you can experience impactful parts of her journey in the hopes that her journey helps you navigate through pain in your journey.
This book reveals what is possible with a strong mindset built around discipline, commitment, forgiveness, and faith as Hanson uses her past and present situations to explore her values and define herself. Hanson does a great job exposing her inner voice in a way that will help you understand how your own ways of thinking are setting limitations on you. The most powerful part of this book is how she artfully describes how she overcame her own resistance to find true self-love. The peace that her self-love brought her is the reason why she vulnerably reveals her wounds to the reader. She hopes that you will be inspired to courageously face your own inner pain to find self-love and attain inner peace. If you have no clue how it's possible for you to find self-love then you'll find what you're looking for in this book in what Laura calls the "Lavender and Honey Exercise."
Laura wrote this memoir shortly after her wife moved out and you will feel like you're right there alongside her in her journey as she discovers who she is in the process of healing. She reveals that after her wife left she set out to prove that she was unworthy of unconditional love. Her past is examined for proof and she dives deep into her experiences with abandonment for evidence. In doing so, she explores many painful past experiences, connected with being adopted, being a lesbian, divorcing her first wife, witnessing suicides, and the tragedy of an active shooter. It's apparent that she comes to terms with and heals from these events as she organizes her thoughts in the pages of this book.
The reader can also see Laura's faith growing stronger as she reveals the way God strengthens her patience and growth through hope and faith. Laura grew up without religion and took an agnostic approach to life up until two months before this was written, and she is transparent about her former lack of spirituality. This transparency helps to demonstrate how fascinating it is that her new relationship with God is ultimately responsible for her finally finding self-love and inner peace. Her relationship with God is strong and personal, and it's very intriguing to read about how the two communicate with each other in this journey.
This book is a must-read for anyone who knows what it's like to not belong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667871332

Book preview

Dedication

Right now I don’t know who will be the first person to read this book, but I do know with certainty that I am supposed to write this book right now for you. I sat down to write this book, and I will not stop writing until it is done because you need me and I will not let you down. I will follow my purpose and do as I am meant to, with a nod to the fact I had no intention of starting this book at this point in my life, yet here it is. The words on these pages are dedicated to you. Yes, you. Who else could they possibly be for? With that said, I am so certain that you doubt the likelihood of me truly writing this book specifically for you, so I will clarify.

This is for you: the cop, the athlete, the black, the right, the lesbian, the cheater, the mother, the alone, the thug, the white, the nerd, the murderer, the dog mom, the sexual assault victim, the artist, the father who walked out, the genius, the one in the military, the innocent, the fat, the counsel member, the runner, the homeless, the woman, the racist, the spiritual, the Republican, the drunk driver, the strong, the American, the alcoholic, the teammate, the loved, the gay, the Muslim, the emotional, the guilty, the liar, the student, the accepting, the criminal, the man, the foreigner, the wrong, the religious, the misunderstood, the father, the Democrat, the drug addict, the rich, the chef, the lost, the protester, the dumb, the President, the actress, the adopted, the worthless, the reader, and the listener.

I am a friend.

Author’s Note

This is my story about my life and therefore everything is from my perspective. That also means that no one can take this story from me, because it is mine. To properly tell my story it was essential to include details from experiences that contributed to defining who I am. As I was writing this book, I stopped and questioned whether or not to include experiences that some people in my life will view as unfavorable to them. Ultimately, I decided that I must not filter or dilute the story of my life simply to keep someone else happy. Further, diluting my story in this way would be equivalent to omitting an essential component to a formula that is needed for anyone looking to follow my process to get a similar end result.

If I were to dilute my story then I might as well not tell any of my story. At the risk of making some people unhappy, I must give my perspective so that other people may have the opportunity to grow from my experiences and see what I attribute to being responsible for shaping me into the person I am today. With that said, there is no one in this book whom I hate or believe to be completely bad. Further, it is not my responsibility to judge people.

I believe that people can play different roles in different people’s lives. Someone who presents themselves as a thorn in my side may very well be a ray of sunshine to someone else. I believe it’s possible they were intentionally, yet unknowingly, put into my life to help me learn a lesson. I fully believe that I am currently, have been in the past, and will continue to play an unfavorable role in others’ lives as well. To that I suggest they too write a book and include the details of how I have inspired them. Whether it’s negative inspiration or positive inspiration, growth is still occurring!

I am not perfect and I am no better than anyone else. I want to add that regardless of whether I had a few or many unpleasant experiences with them, there were still a few or many pleasant times with them as well. I find it a disservice to human kind to sweep the unpleasant interactions under the rug because those are the moments where real growth is occurring. Further, it leads people to feeling isolated when they encounter hardship and everyone around them seems to be doing fine. It also mutes people and prevents them from speaking up because they don’t want to be the only one who seems to have a problem. When writing this book I decided I would not contribute to this false illusion, I knew in order to sing my heart’s song I needed to reveal the key notes, both high and low.

A down and dirty example is that I wanted to get into energetic breaching on the SWAT Team ever since I saw the senior guys blow a door off the hinges in training one day. It was freaking awesome! I thought my obstacle was that I wasn’t really into mechanical breaching, because I didn’t see why the smallest and weakest person on the team should be the go-to for putting keys (rams) through doors, especially when there was a guy who was 6’2" 260 pounds who absolutely loved doing it. Either way, I thought I could be an effective energetic breacher because that required intelligence, attention to detail, and enough strength to depress a detonator. I could be just as effective at energetic breaching as the biggest guy on the team, but I couldn’t fill those shoes in the mechanical breaching realm.

As sergeants changed throughout my time on the team, so did the process for getting to go to the training for becoming an energetic breacher. I tailored my approach and did what they said I needed to and yet my supervisor, who already had a track record of placing limitations on me, told me flat out during my yearly evaluation energetic breaching just isn’t in your future. At the time I was pissed. Not only because he said with certainty that I would not be allowed to step into this responsibility, but because I had been previously shut down and told it was because of my approach. That led me to being pissed that I had changed my approach to play the game their way and still got shut down. There are times to keep going through perceived limitations and sometimes when you know you know. Well this was the straw that broke the camel’s back with this supervisor, and so I started shifting my energy away from the team and into looking for opportunities that would help me grow.

I tell this story because I could label him as a bad person, especially by this point, but I don’t. Instead I look at him as being a thorn in my side who appeared to me as someone who constantly got in my way. He was an obstacle put into my life because I needed the opportunity created for me to push myself to be more and have more than I had in my current situation. He played this role both times he was my supervisor; the first time led me to getting on SWAT and the second time led me to leaving the police department all together and pursuing my passion, my purpose in life. At the end of the day, how could I not be grateful he was a part of my life? This has nothing to do with who he is personally, or who he is to anyone other than me.

If you are that supervisor, or find yourself in an equal position in this book, I encourage you to shift your perspective from being defensive or upset to realizing that without you I could not have become who I am today and this book would not have been written. Further, if there is one positive thing I am certain I see in you, it is persistence. Be encouraged to know that I am certain that persistence is absolutely essential in order to become successful and reach any goals you may set for yourself. Finally, in completing the book, you will rest assured that I welcome the bad times just as equally as I welcome the good times, if not more, and therefore you will know that I have no malice toward you, only gratitude.

Chapter 1:

Laura the Cop

People get this idea that police officers need to do their job, and this is the root of misunderstanding for the officers and the profession. A police officer is not under contract and may walk off the job and never come back at any point, therefore, they do their job because they want to. It is something the public misunderstands, the city or state for which they work misunderstands, and something the command staff loses sight of over time. This misunderstanding leads to police officers being taken for granted as they are extremely under-appreciated; in addition to being the most hated and heavily-scrutinized professionals in America when they don’t perform to perfection, or rather to the public’s idea of perfection.

What we all know but are unwilling to admit is that there is a human behind the badge. Police officers themselves are even guilty of this amnesia as they refuse to face the trauma they consistently encounter, fearing that if they face it or take steps to heal then they will be perceived as weak. Even though many officers are unwilling to face their trauma, they are still aware they are holding onto a piece of it within them and allow it to eat away at them. Alcohol, adultery, over-eating, getting tattoos and gym obsessions are common coping mechanisms that an overwhelming majority of officers turn to in order to push the trauma further down within so that it is far away from the surface. For many, these are the only things that truly give them any feeling of support.

In addition, officers are forced to have some of the darkest humor around that only other first responders and those in the military can truly identify with. Somewhere along the road, the idea of a Thin Blue Line was created which is the idea of brotherhood (and sisterhood). The Thin Blue Line is an ideal of a support system that says I got your six. Although sometimes I got your six it is translated to mean I took your wife behind your six, oh, and I also took the flashlight you left in the cruiser during your last shift. Regardless of the misinterpretation, it probably saves more lives than it is given credit for. I say this because even though it is a support system, the majority of officers do not turn to each other to cope with what they face on the job, but it is reassuring to know that there are others like them who are going through the same battles.

The closest thing to coping is getting together and drinking heavily while talking about nothing but the job as if life doesn’t exist at all beyond being a police officer. These nights are also not focused on working through traumatic experiences through camaraderie. The topics are usually about ridiculous things other officers did recently, and then there’s that guy or gal who obsessively talks about every single traffic stop or drug arrest they made while no one else cares and wonders if that person forgot everyone else there is also a cop.

During my 7 years and 10 months on the job I too participated in these nights, as well as in the coping mechanisms. I am not passing judgment on any officer or myself for any of it, because it is not my place to judge or tell people how to live their lives. I refer to it as a coping mechanism, but really it is a survival mechanism. In a profession where talking about feelings is perceived as weakness what else should they do to manage the endless post traumatic stress?

Most don’t get any support from home because their idea of heroism extends to include protecting their families from knowing the reality of the community they live in. This is done in the hope that their family can live with the false sense of security that the American middle and upper classes are privileged to do. Those who share some stories still hold back because they know they can’t truly detail the danger they encountered on their last shift to their wife, husband, or kids. Their families already fear that every time they leave the house will be the last time they see them, so it would be cruel to validate that by telling stories of the fights they were involved in, or the guns they found on traffic stops, or the endless people who tell them they wish they die while having the means to carry out that wish. The officer tells himself or herself that he or she is strong enough to handle the weight and refuse to share the load with his or her family. While this is a noble concept, it leads to emotional separation and problems in the home life as the family feels that the officer is distant and closed off. Meanwhile the officer feels that he or she isn’t receiving the support he or she truly needs.

I used to think I had it good because I only dated cops (I was one of those). I was deceiving myself. Sure it was good that I could support my girlfriend/wife and receive support in return for what was experienced on the job, but the downside was I truly understood the extent to which her life was in danger, and vice versa. I had been in the same neighborhoods, on the same traffic stops, and on the same calls for service and I truly wondered if I would ever see her again.

Those who have heard their loved ones in distress over a police radio know the feeling that I’m recreating in my stomach right now as I remember those times. Every spouse or significant other also likely knows what it feels like to be on the phone with their loved one and in the background hear the emergency tones come in. Following the tones, they hear a dispatcher detailing a violent call for service, and then their loved one says to them they have to get off the phone because they’re responding to it. So then the spouse is left at home, in silence, not knowing if their loved one is safe. I lived in the precinct where my loved one patrolled, so my worry was amplified by the number of patrol cars I could hear racing down the roads nearby, going lights and sirens to get to that same call. This was further amplified if I heard ambulances or firetrucks responding too, as my mind went to the worst case scenario of my spouse being hurt and I nervously wondered if that’s why they were responding.

Sometimes the officer calls afterward to say they’re safe, because they know their spouse is at home worried. Other times one call for service leads to another and the officer doesn’t get a break long enough to check back in, so the spouse at home is already visualizing the funeral while getting through the second or third beer or glass of wine and doesn’t know what to say when their kids asks if mommy or daddy is okay.

I don’t have the answer for why talking about feelings is perceived as a weakness. Possibly because it started as a male-only profession, and is still male-dominated today. Possibly because of officers constantly working around citizens with mental health struggles and seeing those people’s lives spiral out of control or end up in a mental hospital. Possibly because of fear that they will be seen as unable to perform their duties because of their mental state and therefore lose their gun and badge, which is everything to them. Possibly because anyone who tests the waters and shows feelings is often made fun of because laughter is the defense mechanism cops always turn to first to cover up their initial discomfort. Possibly because some of them have suppressed their feelings for so long that they no longer know how to express them.

Regardless of the reason why, suppressing their emotions is detrimental to the health of the person behind the badge, although you’ll never hear that from them because, as a whole, they are truly this country’s most mentally tough employees and they will tell you I’m fine. An example of this was on full display after an active shooter at Building 2, in which everyone afterward walked around like they were fine and it was back to business as usual as soon as the building had been cleared. I’m serious. Immediately after responding to an active shooter where 12 people were killed and another 5 shot, to include a sergeant who was one of our own, officers went back to the street and started handling calls the way they always did. Those who didn’t go back to the street now had the duty of staying inside the building next to the deceased, and for hours they had to listen to the ringing of abandoned cell phones as families called to see if their loved ones were DOA, all in the name of protecting the crime scene. Then there were those of us who carried on to execute a search warrant at the suspect’s residence to continue the investigation.

It personally took me two months and a failing marriage to first acknowledge I may have been affected by the incident. I went to counseling but still didn’t really understand the gravity of that event; I initially went to make my wife happy. For a while, I only trusted one person well enough on the SWAT team, or the entire 800 officer department for that matter, to admit I was going to counseling, and I only trusted him because he was going too. I trusted every guy on that team to have my back to keep me from getting killed, but exposing myself in a way that could be perceived as weak was a big no-no for me. I fought too hard to get where I was and to not be perceived as a weak female, and I was not about to give that up for one call for service.

My inability to be emotionally vulnerable with men I considered to be brothers, and whose wives and children I considered to be my extended family, should speak volumes to the unlikelihood that officers on patrol or in other units were able to be vulnerable with each other to get the support they needed for that event or any other event, for which there are many.

It took months of counseling to identify the troubling thoughts I had about Building 2. It’s important to mention I didn’t obsess over the incident. However, I knew that traumatic events never go away, and I was determined to keep working at it and facing it until I was confident it under control. There’s never any true confirmation of this, but the best way I can tell is to hear the words Building 2 or VB Strong or wait for May 31st to roll around and then check in with myself to see what emotions are circulating.

The most noteworthy of these thoughts was ‘why did I go in?’ This question randomly came to me when I was out hiking by myself in North Carolina, six months after leaving the department. I suppose this time I was in nature’s therapy because I was out hiking trying to sort through problems in my second marriage. Back in the Virginia Beach counseling, I had brought up my confusion over why some officers thought their duty was to set a perimeter and not go inside, but I never questioned why I went in because the answer was clearly because I’m on SWAT and that’s what we do.

I pondered this as I walked through the woods, and entertained it more than I would have if I was still on the team or working for the department. Surprisingly, the answer came to me pretty quickly and I was surprisingly honest with myself. As soon as I said it, I believed it and accepted it as my explanation for why I went in because it felt true to my heart. It was anti-climatic because it seemed obvious, but claiming it, really owning it, empowered me in unsuspecting ways. When I got home I wrote a letter to my counselor to tell her about my discovery. I knew other officers went to see her and I hoped that my own discovery could possibly be helpful in their healing. The letter read:

I know you charge by the hour for communication, but you said to keep in touch so I’m taking some of your time to do so. Doctor’s orders right?! First things first, thank you. Thank you for the strong mind you helped me find within; I needed you and you brought me so much strength and I will always be grateful. The second half of 2021 has been a year of self-development for me and I can confidently say I have been moving in the right direction since I saw you last. Although I could write for pages, I want to respect your time so I’ll just share this realization I had one day when I was out hiking recently.

My Building 2 Realization: I thought it was very probable I could die that day. And I know my struggle in the aftermath was comparing my actions to that of others’. The driving factor of me entering that building, though unrealized at the time and up until now, was that it was worth dying that day for the officers I entered that building with and for the love I have for myself as a person. Selfishly, it was not for the employees whom I had never met before or their families. While that answer sounds good, it’s a beauty pageant world peace answer. In that moment, I loved who I was, meaning I admired my strength, my courage, and my fearlessness more than I honored my fear. And so internally, my allegiance remained with fearlessness because I could not abandon the woman I was. And I could not live without those qualities, which I would have been forced to do had I not gone in, hid, or lost myself to panic. Those qualities are essential to me, and make me who I am, and what I love about me.

This realization has brought me so much self love and even allowed me to overcome my fear of other people abandoning me. I am now giving myself permission to love myself, to see my worth, and feel deserving of love. Now I realize that I am the only one who needs to not abandon me in order for me to be fulfilled. As long as I believe in myself, like, and love myself I will reach my full potential in this life.

Keep taking excellent care of my brothers and sisters, they need you too.

The reason why my discovery for why I went in was so impactful to me was because it was the first time I had evidence that I loved myself. Even with the evidence, I was still skeptical and hesitant to believe it, which in hindsight I know to be because I didn’t love myself unconditionally yet. This was a catalyst for me opening up an investigation on myself to determine whether or not I truly loved myself. To be honest, I was out to prove that I didn’t love myself and I would attempt to do so through a thorough and complete examination of my life that would suggest there was a lack of sufficient supporting evidence to convict me of that charge.

I truly thought this case was closed before I really even got started working on it because a couple of days later my wife left me. Here I was, feeling abandoned yet again, which suggested there was evidently something wrong with me. I felt like love for me was always conditional, and any love I had for myself was conditional as a result.

After resigning from the police department, my wife and I had moved in with my parents in Winston-Salem, North Carolina because they offered to support us while we studied to get our real estate licenses. From May through September of 2021, we focused on getting through our classes and passing that exam. We lived in the room above the garage so we could maintain some independence, but it was still a continuous hit to our egos as we remembered the independence we used to have in our Virginia Beach life. The dynamic with my parents didn’t take long for me to feel like a child again, and for my wife too for that matter. Over time it was getting to both of us that we had to rely on my parents, which led us to feeling suffocated and trapped. I used to be proud of myself for working hard to earn a paycheck, owning a house, having good relationships with friends, providing for my wife, the list goes on. Now, I was proud of myself for studying and I had no proof that I would be successful in the real estate business, only hope. I know my wife was also overwhelmed by the same train of thought, although she never mentioned it.

The best thing I did was start listening to motivational videos on the internet during my workouts in the garage. I don’t even remember how or why I started doing it, but it would turn out to be more beneficial that I realized. At the time, I thought I was simply getting a pick-me-up to keep me focused on studying, but the more I listened, the more my thoughts started to align with the speakers’. This ended up being impactful on my state of mind when my wife left me because I already had momentum in the empowered mindset realm. I didn’t spend an excessive amount of time feeling sorry for myself, in fact I spent very little time doing this despite it being perceived as my second failed marriage within two years.

Before she left, I had committed myself to pursuing what I actually wanted to do which was stock trading and not real estate. When she left, I leaned heavily on the empowering words from the motivational videos and I was determined to not allow a heartbreak to stand in my way. I will say, this woman means the world to me so this was not easy, but it had to be done. There was no way I was going to let hard times crush me or even steer me off course. I recognized that whether I worked or didn’t work, she was still gone either way.

A week after proving to myself that I could focus on learning to trade without being heavily distracted or overwhelmed by the status of my marriage, I remembered about a book my best friend Ryan mentioned to me months prior, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The same book was also mentioned the in the book Mindset Secrets for Winning, which is written by Mark Minervini, the stock market wizard I wish to emulate. It only took a couple of days to finish reading Think and Grow Rich, and it proved to be the starting place for the inward investigation that I promised to myself a couple of weeks prior.

I started with an overview of why I went in to Building 2, and I figured I would do a quick recap of my career as a police officer to find the in depth answer. What I discovered was there was so much more, and that in order to answer this question I would have to look at the woman behind the badge, not just the woman who wore the badge.

Looking back, I was going in blind to the journey I was about to take on, because I had no clue where it was going to take me. It redirected the question from Why did I go in…to Building 2, to Why did I go in…to my mind to take a detailed look at my life. Then it dawned on me that regardless of my actions at Building 2, I still had to know if I loved myself. The journey was also far more rewarding and answered much more than if I love myself, it gave me answers on how to become successful in my overall life and how to approach getting my wife back. In the following chapters you will read about the key parts of my character that give me strength to endure any circumstance. If you’re seeking answers in your own journey, then this book is sure to provide them through my own discovery.

This is how I did it.

One step at a time.

Chapter 2:

My Mind

I think back to being in my childhood bedroom as a young girl who didn’t understand. I don’t look at this younger version of me through my present lens and say she was so naive, she didn’t understand. What I mean is, I know I used to be, and therefore am, that young girl. The one who was frequently overwhelmed with desperation to know things. The one who felt hurt, isolated, and devastated that she did not have the answers. I come back to the present and I ask, what is it that I was trying to understand then?

To be clear, I was not overwhelmed by needing to know the answers to my homework. The answers I sought were those to: Why am I so misunderstood? Why does it feel like no one hears me? Why am I in Poquoson, Virginia being raised by the Hansons and not with my biological family? Why me? Why am I so different, and in every imaginable way? Why am I