Kristi Miedecke Chose Family over the Badge: A Cop's Transition Journey

Paul Pantani
Dec 1, 2025
15 min read

Updated: Jan 8

Finding Purpose and Identity After Service as an LMFT

In episode 224 of the Transition Drill Podcast, transition usually starts as a small pull that says the life you’ve been living isn’t the only one you’re meant to live; sometimes you have to choose family over career. For many first responders and military veterans, that pull comes after years of service, trauma, identity shifts, and the pressure to keep moving without ever asking what it’s costing you. This is where the real struggle begins. What do you do when the the uniform no longer defines who you are, and the quiet moments at home feel harder than anything you faced in the field. In this powerful story of transformation, former San Diego Police Officer Kristi Miedecke opens the door on what it really means to walk away from the job, face your own mind, confront identity loss, and build a new purpose from the ground up. If you’re wrestling with life after service, this journey might help you see where your next mission actually begins.

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Born Into the Badge

Growing Up Blue, Falling Apart, and Fighting Her Way Back to Purpose

Kristi never grew up wondering what police work looked like. She was raised inside it. Her dad spent three decades as a San Diego Police Officer, and her mom started in dispatch before stepping into patrol herself. The house had scanners running, terminology she understood before most kids could spell it, and family friends who showed up in uniform before birthday parties. Police work was normal. Police work was family. And even as a kid, she knew she was wired for something different than a standard life behind a desk.

She was the one who wanted to move, to test herself, to experience a rush. She played sports hard, chased competition, and preferred chaos over quiet. That made sense in her world. She watched cops come home exhausted, bruised, sometimes shaken, but always with purpose. They belonged to something larger than themselves. That was what she wanted, even if she could not name it back then. She looked at normal jobs and felt nothing. But when the lights on a patrol car lit up a street, something sparked inside her.

Her early childhood carried structure, discipline, and clear examples of service. But right as she hit adulthood, her foundation shattered. Her parents’ divorce was ugly, loud, and draining. Instead of transitioning into her college years like most people her age, she was navigating a disintegrating home. She ended up living alone at the house where she grew up, surrounded by memories of what used to be a full family. On paper she was a college student, but in reality she was drifting. Drinking became easier than studying. Isolation felt safer than structure. She was enrolled in community college, but she was barely showing up. Life blurred into one long stretch of nights that felt empty and mornings that felt pointless.

She still believed she would someday be a cop, but she was doing nothing to earn that future. And then came the phone call. Her former college soccer coach rang her and cut straight through the fog. He asked her what she was doing with her life, why she was throwing away her talent, and why she had stopped caring. That moment cracked something open. Someone saw past her excuses. Someone knew she was tougher than the life she had fallen into. That was enough to jolt her forward.

She went back to the soccer field. Back to class. Back to discipline. She realized that structure does not cage you, it gives you momentum. A simple call became the turning point. She rebuilt her habits, fixed her grades, and committed to pushing herself again. Soon, she left California entirely to play soccer at Ottawa University in Kansas. That single decision changed everything.

Kansas was not glamorous. It was cold, unfamiliar, and financially brutal. She worked multiple jobs just to afford life. There was a night she cried because she could not afford a loaf of bread. But with every sacrifice, grit was being built. The weight of survival was shaping her into someone stronger than she knew she could be. She learned that resilience does not come from winning, it comes from hanging on when most people would quit.

Even while grinding through school, she already knew where she wanted to go next. Psychology became her path, because helping others made sense to her. But underneath it all, the purpose never changed. She wanted a badge. She wanted to serve. She wanted a life of meaning. The law enforcement world had raised her, and she was determined to earn her way back into it. That shaped every decision she made going forward. At Ottawa she focused on finishing her degree, keeping her record clean, and coming home ready to pursue San Diego PD. When graduation finally came, she was ready.

Her classmates celebrated the finish line. For her, it was a starting line. She had fallen apart once, rebuilt herself from the ground up, and found a way to regain direction. She packed her car, pointed it toward California, and came back to pursue the life she knew she was meant to live.

At that point, she did not know how hard the journey would get. She did not know that wearing the badge would change her mind, her identity, and her family. And she definitely did not know that giving up the badge later on would force her to rebuild herself all over again. But she carried one lesson forward from that early stage of her life: if you want purpose, you have to fight for it. And she was ready for the next fight.

Proving She Belonged

Academy Pressure, Patrol Life, and Building an Identity in Uniform

When Kristi came home from Kansas with her degree in psychology, she didn’t waste time. She moved back in with her dad, picked up work at a golf course, and set her sights on one target. She wanted to be a San Diego Police Officer. Not just any officer and not in any department. Only San Diego. It was home. It had history. And she wanted to serve the same streets she grew up on. She applied, held her breath, and got the news she had been fighting for. She was hired.

Walking into the police academy was like stepping into a proving ground. She was one of only a few women in the class, and she could feel eyes on her from the very first day. Some of it was curiosity, some was doubt, and some was the kind of silent judgment that cannot be proven but is always felt. She had prepared for this career, but the academy quickly made it clear that preparation is never enough. She found herself grinding harder than she expected during defensive tactics and firearms training. Some instructors openly wondered whether she was meant to be in this line of work. Those words cut deep, but they also ignited something in her. She refused to be written off. Quitting was never an option.

During defensive tactics training, she was pushed so hard that she got knocked unconscious during a drill. She woke up to the smell of ammonia and the sound of someone telling her to get back on her feet. She wasn’t asked whether she wanted to continue, she was expected to continue. And she did. That moment became a quiet declaration. She would not get run out of this job. She would earn her place.

The academy brought her a challenge she didn’t anticipate: she met her future husband. They began carpooling, then training together, and over time their lives started aligning around the same goal. Two young officers in training with the same hope, the same stress, and the same potential future. Neither of them knew just how complicated it would eventually become, but at the start, they were united by the same purpose. They wanted to serve and they were willing to sacrifice to do it.

Patrol life came next, and it came fast. First Central, then Northwestern. Graveyards. Calls stacking up. Field training officers breathing down her neck while trying to shape her instincts. The job was hectic, but she handled it the only way she knew how. She worked. She asked questions. She paid attention. She pushed herself to keep up with the pace. She had a partner named Brett who was built like a hunter. He loved pursuit. He loved the chase. She respected that instinct, but her strength showed up in different ways. She was methodical. She could write paper quickly and cleanly. She paid attention to details. Together they made a balanced team, one chasing suspects in alleys and one making sure the case held up in court. She didn’t have to be like anyone else, she only had to be good at her role. In time, she was.

Patrol became her home. Chargers games. Padres games. Overtime shifts. DUI drivers testing her patience at three in the morning. People calling the police to solve problems they couldn’t solve themselves. The city never slept and neither did her thoughts. She learned how to take control of chaos, how to read people, how to adjust when a situation shifted unexpectedly. She started to carry that quiet confidence that only comes from repetition. This job wasn’t just something she did. It was who she was becoming.

Later she was selected to work with PERT, pairing with a mental health clinician on calls involving individuals in crisis. This was a turning point. She began to see the gaps between what officers were trained to do and what people in crisis actually needed. She heard a phrase often: clear the call. But she wanted to understand the person behind the call. She began recognizing anxiety, trauma, and grief before she knew how to label any of it clinically. Those long nights riding with a clinician turned into lessons she would draw from years later when she stepped into a therapy room. At that time she didn’t know she was preparing for her future career, but looking back, the groundwork was being set.

All the while, real life was building around her. She married her academy classmate. They bought a home in North County. And the reality of being a two-cop household began to surface. One had to work while the other slept. Court dates didn’t care about naps. Sleep didn’t follow a schedule. Their marriage stood strong, but they were already learning a difficult truth. Serving as a police officer takes a toll that most people never see. Serving as two police officers under the same roof takes even more.

She had found her identity. She belonged in the job. She was respected. And in uniform, everything made sense. But eventually, a simple question rose to the surface. Could two people serve the city, raise children, and still hold on to the life they were trying to build together? That question wouldn’t leave her alone. It followed her into the next chapter. And eventually, it demanded an answer.

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Walking Away From the Dream Job

Leaving the Department, Losing Herself, and Facing the Silence She Tried to Outrun

The moment came quietly, not through a dramatic breakdown but through practical math that refused to be ignored. She and her husband were both cops working opposite shifts, sleeping at odd hours, and trying to plan life around courts, callouts, and the randomness of emergency work. Then came their first child. Two officers turned into two parents, but the job didn’t slow down and the schedule didn’t adjust. They tried to make it work. They tried to rotate, trade shifts, manage time, and squeeze family into whatever space was left. But one simple problem kept rising. There were too many hours when one parent was gone and the other was asleep. There were too many days when she’d see her husband or see her child, but not both.

She pumped breast milk in the station, squeezed minutes between calls, and tried to bring full effort to motherhood while still wearing the uniform. Those moments weren’t heroic, they were exhausting. The badge demanded focus. The baby needed presence. The department had expectations. The family needed love. Eventually it became clear that she couldn’t serve two missions at once. One was going to suffer, and it wasn’t going to be her child. She made the hardest decision of her life. She walked away from the badge to raise her family.

At first, it felt like sacrifice with purpose. She believed she was trading the job she loved for the role that mattered more. That helped carry her in the beginning. But very quickly, the silence rushed in. She was no longer Officer Miedecke. No more radio traffic. No more partners. No more shift banter. No more inside jokes. No camaraderie waiting at roll call. Instead, there were diapers, dishes, laundry, and a quiet house in North County while her husband drove south each day into a world she used to belong to.

Days felt long, and her identity began to unravel. People would ask what she did, and she’d answer, I used to be a cop. She didn’t mean to cling to those words, but they spoke louder than anything else inside her. Used to. The phrase that stings because it reminds you of something that felt permanent but turned out to be temporary. She was proud of the choice she made for her family, but pride doesn’t fill the space where purpose once lived. That emptiness began to spread.

She didn’t know anyone in their neighborhood. She wasn’t working with a team anymore. She didn’t have coworkers. Her entire social circle remained on the department, living a life she used to be part of. And when her husband came home from shift with stories from the road, she felt both happy for him and disconnected from everything that made her feel like herself. The badge was gone from her belt, but the ache of losing it stayed heavy on her chest.

Then came the second pregnancy. She noticed early that this one felt different. Something was shifting inside her, and she couldn’t describe it. After their daughter was born, the shift turned into a freefall. She struggled to bond, struggled to breathe, struggled to face the day. Panic attacks forced her to step outside the moment. Anxiety began dictating her decisions. She was juggling a newborn and potty training her son at the same time, and every day felt like she was barely hanging on. It wasn’t a lack of love. It was a lack of space inside her own mind.

Her in-laws saw it before she could fully admit it. One day, they watched a panic attack unfold in real time and gently sent her upstairs to lie down. That small moment of compassion left a lasting mark. Someone saw her unraveling. Someone realized she wasn’t okay. And deep down, she knew she couldn’t keep hiding it. She was exhausted, isolated, and unsure who she was without the job she left behind.

She started therapy. At first, she just needed to breathe again. She talked with her sister about how she felt like her brain was rotting, like she had no purpose except to survive the day. But therapy cracked open a door she had forgotten about. It reminded her she could still grow. It reminded her she was more than her uniform and more than her depression. Slowly, deliberately, she began reclaiming her sense of direction.

One day she told her therapist she wanted to pursue counseling. She had a degree in psychology, she had lived inside trauma and seen it firsthand, and she had started recognizing that healing others might be the path to healing herself. Her therapist told her to apply. She did. And when she clicked submit on that graduate school application, her life began to shift again.

It didn’t fix everything. Anxiety didn’t disappear overnight. Motherhood didn’t become easy. But the day she decided to move forward instead of just endure, her identity began to take shape again. She wasn’t going back to being a police officer, but she wasn’t going to be stuck either. She was building something new, something built on compassion instead of adrenaline, and something rooted in purpose instead of survival.

That was when hope started returning. Not loudly, not dramatically, but with the quiet strength of a person who had fallen apart once and refused to make that her final chapter. She didn’t know where this new road would lead, but she finally believed it was worth walking. The uniform was gone, but the purpose wasn’t. It had just changed shape.

A New Mission: Jiu Jitsu, Therapy, and Horses

Rebuilding Identity and Serving the Next Generation of Warriors

When Kristi began grad school, she didn’t step into it with perfect confidence. She stepped in with a shaky belief that she might still have something left to offer the world. That belief was enough. While raising her kids at home, she studied, wrote papers late at night, and slowly learned how to rebuild a career around the very thing that once left scars on her life. She didn’t plan to become a therapist for first responders and military veterans, but as her coursework deepened, she began to feel a familiar pull. She had seen trauma firsthand. She had lived inside the isolation, the pressure, and the identity struggle. Now she was studying it with clinical precision. She began to understand it on both sides, and that combination started to feel like a calling.

As she moved further through her hours and fieldwork, something else was happening. She still felt restless. She needed movement. She needed something physical to counterbalance the mental load of coursework and parenting. A therapist suggested she try jiu jitsu. At first she dismissed the idea. Then she delayed it with excuses, including something as simple as not having her hair done and her toenails painted. She said it out loud, and her therapist gave her a look that stopped her mid-sentence. She painted her toenails, tied her hair up, and walked into the gym.

She never expected the impact jiu jitsu would have on her life. On the mat, there are no illusions. There’s only pressure, patience, movement, timing, and presence. She had to breathe when everything in her body wanted to tense up. She had to accept discomfort instead of fight it. In an unexpected way, jiu jitsu became a form of therapy. It quieted her mind. It demanded focus. It gave her space to reconnect with who she was when adrenaline wasn’t tied to trauma or duty. And most importantly, it gave her a new community. She didn’t feel like an outsider. She didn’t feel like the former cop or the struggling stay-at-home mom. On the mat, she was simply another person learning to adapt and evolve.

Over time she advanced through the ranks, built friendships, and started coaching fundamentals and kids’ classes. Teaching jiu jitsu gave her something powerful. It let her serve again. It let her guide others through struggle the way her coaches guided her. Long before her therapy career was complete, she was already practicing the thing that would become central to her mission. Helping others push forward.

She completed her hours, earned her license as a Marriage and Family Therapist, and started working with individuals battling anxiety, depression, identity loss, and trauma. Many were first responders and military veterans. They spoke a language she understood instinctively. They carried weight she recognized immediately. They sat across from her, trying to explain a pain that has no clean vocabulary. She didn’t need translation. She had lived it. Therapy became more than a profession. It became the place where she connected her past with her purpose.

Then came an opportunity that expanded her mission. She partnered with her friend Gina to build something new, something grounded in nature and evidence-based treatment. Together they helped launch Gaits to Healing, a program rooted in equine-assisted psychotherapy. They trained for certification in the EGALA model, bringing together three roles that form its foundation. A licensed clinician. An equine specialist. And the horses. The process isn’t about riding horses. It’s about interacting with them in structured ways that reveal patterns, pain points, guarded emotions, and ways the body holds tension without words. Horses read people with stunning accuracy. They respond to energy, stiffness, breathing, and posture. They can mirror anxiety, pick up on emotional barriers, and bring forward truths that often don’t surface in an office chair.

Through this work, Kristi found clarity. Horses don’t ask what your rank was. They don’t care whether you made arrests or earned medals. They only respond to who you are in the moment. For many first responders and veterans, that’s the hardest part. The uniform isn’t there to protect them. The radio isn’t crackling. Their badge isn’t on their belt. And suddenly they’re standing in silence, face to face with who they’ve become. That moment can be painful, but it can also be the beginning of real healing.

Gaits to Healing became more than a program. It became a bridge. A place where former officers, firefighters, paramedics, and veterans could reconnect with purpose. Kristi and the team created an environment where individuals could process trauma through movement, interaction, and structured support instead of relying solely on words. In time, peer support began developing naturally. People found shared experience without the pressure of therapy labels or job titles. Horses helped open the door, but community helped keep it open.

Kristi’s mission now runs through multiple channels. Therapy. Equine work. Peer support. Jiu jitsu. She’s building spaces where first responders and military veterans can heal without feeling like they’re being studied. She’s helping people who spent years serving others learn how to serve themselves. She’s guiding warriors into their next chapter, not by telling them who they should become, but by helping them remember they’re still capable of becoming someone more.

The badge may not be on her belt anymore, but service never left her. It just took on a new shape. And today, she walks beside those who are learning how to carry the weight of their past while building a future worth living. They’re not alone. They’re not broken. They’re in transition. And for the first time in a long time, that transition is leading somewhere worth going.

Closing Thoughts

Transition is not a finish line; it’s a test of who you are when the job is no longer your identity. Kristi’s journey proves that first responders and military veterans can rebuild purpose after service, even when the weight of trauma and isolation tries to keep them stuck. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting your past, it means learning how to live beyond it. If you’re facing your own shift away from the uniform, her story is proof that growth is possible and strength isn’t lost just because the mission changed. Keep going, keep asking for help, and don’t assume your best days are behind you.

CONNECT WITH KRISTI MIEDECKE

Website - Gaits to Healing

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