“Strength” is a multifaceted word. Often times it denotes a sense of isolation or individuality -we see individuals, entities, and classify them, sometimes unjustly, as weak or strong. This misunderstanding of strength is harmful and dangerous, and Steve Littlefield of Halifax knows better. He understands that strength often comes in numbers and in packages looking a lot like community, family, and facing your biggest challenges with plans and tools instead of coping mechanisms.
The things that qualify Littlefield as someone who knows about strength and survival ca bring even the most resilient of people to dark places. War, emergencies, death, danger, injury -the heaviest things a person can carry, and all of it on repeat -day after day, year after year. Littlefield, however, has found his way through it all and, along the way, has found what works for him. He also knows that it might work for others, too.
Littlefield grew up in Halifax and, as of April 2026, is a retired Army Sergeant First Class with over 25 years of military experience. His combat deployments included Iraq in 2004 and Afghanistan in 2010. Littlefield also served as a Commander and Fire Marshal for the 179th and 180th Engineer Detachments during the COVID-19 pandemic. After military service, he served as a corrections officer and a police officer on Cape Cod, and he is the current Veteran Service Officer for Halifax as well as pursuing his masters in Mental Health Counseling from Bridgewater State University. In addition to this, Littlefield is the founder of The Veterans Next Step Foundation -a nonprofit dedicated to supporting veterans with mental health services and emergency assistance. He is also the Operations Manager for The Anchor Within Counseling and Wellness Center. His debut book, The Rucksack We Carry -A Field Manual for Veterans and First Responders, was released June 1 of 2026 with the aim of helping people in these intense professions learn to feel comfortable with and seek out assistance with their mental health.
When Littlefield joined the army in 2000, he could not have adequately imagined what would be asked of him. “These fields of work teach you how to accumulate this weight on your shoulders, they don’t teach you how to set it down or that it is okay to need help carrying it,” Littlefield explains. In addition to the trauma witnessed and experienced in combat duty, serving in local law enforcement and emergency services locally comes with its own mental health cost. “We are there for what is, often, the worst day of peoples lives. That starts to accumulate in you and leaves negative physical symptoms. We are there to be the help, and so sometimes it is hard to need the help,” says Littlefield.
Upon returning from overseas military service, Littlefield found himself consumed with managing chronic PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Experiences in combat and under high pressure situations day and night left Littlefield at a loss as to how one navigates daily life with decades of accumulated stress and, as his book calls them, “unthinkable moments” that people would give anything to forget living and thriving freely inside the mind and manifesting as physical maladies. “After I returned home, I started to think about mental health in a new way. I thought less about the clinical side and more about how responsibility, stress, trauma, and the quiet accumulation of pressures build over time. I wanted to not only understand these things, I wanted to do something about them,” Littlefield explains.
Littlefield also found himself at a crossroads in life about what was going to come next for him and his family after two decades of high-stress, high-risk professions. “I was staring into the next chapter of life and in reflecting on what I was transitioning from, I began to write down experiences and feelings and thoughts for myself. I wrote things that had been sitting in me for a while that needed to work themselves out onto paper. It was never intended to be the beginnings of a book, but that is where it took me,” says Littlefield.
Once Littlefield was made the Veteran Services Officer for Halifax and began to connect with fellow veterans in the community, he realized his feelings and experiences were obviously common among service members -past and present, but he was made acutely aware that they were not dealt with, acknowledged, or discussed freely within these circles of people who were, nevertheless, suffering. In addition to journaling his thoughts and experiences, he began to share these experiences, struggles, and triumphs with others. This ignited a passion to try to help change the way mental health is viewed and dealt with in military and law enforcement services.
Littlefield states, “Overall, there are better mental health services in the military and law enforcement fields, but the problem is there is still such a stigma around mental health and in needing help to manage it. It is seen as weakness to ask for help or admit that you need it.” According to the latest data, over 30% of veterans meet the criteria for mental health disorders as opposed to 19% of the general population. The suicide rate for veterans is 57% higher in the general adult population than the non-military serving population. These are numbers based entirely off of people who have sought help or are being treated -many of which are not -therefore, accurate percentages are much higher for these statistics.
Littlefield decided it was time to do more than journal and talk with others, and began pursuing a masters in mental health counseling. With his experiences and perspectives in the fields of military and law enforcement, combined with a higher education in the field of mental health, Littlefield is equipped to relate to, as well as understand and advise, in a way that someone who hasn’t experienced such high levels of prolonged trauma and stress might not be able to do. “The things I am learning can help others overcome and cope and they give me insight that is needed in the field,” he says,” I want to help others answer the question, ‘What do we do with all this?’ and facilitate people feeling comfortable enough to ask for help and follow through on it.”
After a year of writing down his thoughts and experiences, combined with the knowledge accumulating as a graduate student, Littlefield decided to self-publish his book. “When I am passionate about something I get really focused, so it was a relatively quick process, but within a year I published the book. It was released June 1. I got software that helped me format for publication and had to learn on the fly, but it worked out and it has been well received.”
The Rucksack We Carry is not meant to be a book to treat or diagnose, it is a mental health manual comprised of experiences and learned tools specifically geared toward those serving or who have served in the military or law enforcement. A quote from the book reads: “Unlike an everyday backpack, a rucksack is built to carry heavy loads over long journeys -much like the professional lives we lead. Over time, even the best-fitting rucksack will dig into your shoulders and strain your back if you never stop to adjust it,” says Littlefield, ppxvii, The Rucksack We Carry.
Littlefield breaks down the levels of traumatic or heavy experiences into classifications based on intensity and/or danger of the event. There are “pebbles” which comprise of everyday wear and tear experiences that come with the job such as the never-ending radio chatter, broken military equipment that doesn’t ever seem to get fixed, or the third call in the middle of the night for a malfunctioning carbon-monoxide detector. These things are minor and don’t seem like much on their own, but the issue is their persistence with no let up.
Moving onto larger and more pressing burdens is the classification of “rocks”. These are heavier incidents that make a lasting impact on you. “Rocks” for these professions include things like a convoy that came back missing people and the following duty to inform the families of those lost, pulling someone out of a burning building only to realize they already passed away, or sitting with someone hearing their terminal diagnosis and watching their reaction. “You can still function with rocks in your rucksack,” says Littlefield, “but they are heavy and they make it really hard to do so.”
Lastly are what Littlefield calls “boulders”. These are life altering moments that physically alter your chemistry and mental health capacity. Examples of “boulders” personnel may have to carry are losing a friend or experiencing military sexual trauma, having to draw and use your weapon to take someone’s life, responding to a call as an EMT involving your own family or friends and not being able to help them, or any mass-casualty event where no matter your efforts, there were not enough resources to save everyone.
Following the classification of levels of trauma or stress experienced in these fields, Littlefield spends a great deal of time deconstructing and reconstructing how to manage and work through the aftermath of them -not shortsighted that the mental and physical responses of the individual are one and the same and connected. “In this line of work, sometimes it is seen as weak to admit that things have gotten too heavy to manage on a daily basis. I want people to see that not only is that not true, its dangerous. Ignoring trauma and mental health is like ignoring an infection,” Littlefield explains. In his book, Littlefield constructs a series of “myths” vs “reality checks” concerning common hindrances that come up with people avoiding dealing with their mental health. The unique aspect of this approach is that Littlefield can offer the reality check as someone who was the one checked by reality. “I did a lot of things the wrong way -I didn’t have the tools to cope at first and I made a lot of mistakes. This means I really know what doesn’t work as well as what can work for people.”
The Rucksack We Carry outlines the various levels of support needed in the healing process. “Of course, these things need to be dealt with first on an individual level -admittance, accountability, and finding ways to center yourself through things like breathing, mindfulness, and taking care of yourself. After that, it is about peer support from family and friends. Oftentimes, it is our spouse or sibling or parent who notices you aren’t yourself and brings it up. It is important to know how to let others see you and not get defensive when they take note of your struggles.
In addition to individual and peer/community/family support, Littlefield makes a clear statement that leadership in these fields holds a great responsibility for the mental state of those serving under them. “The leaders in these fields largely set the tone for how trauma and stress are dealt with. Unfortunately, many leaders out there still hold on to this myth that if you need help you are a weak link and a problem, and this might keep struggling people from seeking the help they need. A true leader is one who fosters an open dialogue and safe environment for people to share their reality -what they are really feeling and going through. Additionally, being a leader is a huge responsibility and stressor, and leaders in these fields need to realize they aren’t meant to entirely carry others rucksacks in addition to their own, they just need to let them know they don’t have to carry it alone.”
Littlefield covers the various steps in mental health recovery until the last and often most avoided step: Seeking professional help. “Again, people need to understand that if your body is unwell in any other way, you are normal and fine to go see a doctor dealing with those symptoms. Mental health is no different. There is no shame in calling in reinforcements -especially when we are dealing with things that the human mind is simply not meant to have to process and manage frequently. The truly courageous and brave thing to do is to ask for professional help. That is being strong -not refusal and denial that can end up hurting yourself and even those you love.
Littlefield concludes, “I just want to be able to help others -not in an entirely clinical way, but as a friend with compassion and understanding. I want people to know that things like this are not meant to be handled alone, and that there are so many people going through similar things. It is important to talk about them and share ways we have found to get through them. It takes true courage to cope.” If there is a theme noticed when speaking with Littlefield, it is his frequent use of the word “help”, and jumping from decades of high-stress careers that took a great personal toll, to education and awareness so that others wouldn’t have to feel alone, proves him a hero of the most needed and best kind -the empath.
For more information on where to purchase the book, The Rucksack We Carry, as well as upcoming events prompting the book, please visit: www.therucksackwecarry.com