It Can Be a Wonderful Life

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome, everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction brought to you by Westwords Consulting and the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: Many of us just got through the holiday season, spending hours joyfully interacting with friends and loved ones. God, that sounded sarcastic.

Mike: But just a casual glance at social media tells you that not everything everywhere is tinsel and Christmas cookies in every household. We're going to discuss getting and staying healthy when surrounded by disease, disinformation, and dysfunction with our favorite returning guest, Guida Brown.

Mike: Guida is the principal for Guided by Guida and serves as a community relations consultant for U. S. Drug Testing Laboratories in Des Plaines, Illinois. She has been an adjunct faculty member for Carthage College, University of Wisconsin Parkside, Concordia University, and Gateway Technical College. Guida is also certified by the state of Wisconsin as a substance abuse counselor, a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder trainer, and an intoxicated driver program assessor. She's also a Kenosha, Wisconsin County Board supervisor.

Mike: Welcome back Guida.

Guida: Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Well,, thanks for doing this. I know we were chatting and we were talking about the holidays and well, first, how were your holidays?

Guida: So I know here I'm supposed to say how great they were.

Mike: Well, no, no, I didn't.

Mike: I don't know. Were they?

Guida: They were, they helped me to walk into this interview. How's that?

Mike: Well, you texted me on Christmas Day, so I gotta assume I wasn't the first thought on Christmas Day.

Guida: Well, yeah Christmas Day was really laid back. We normally have plans with David's family, my husband, and this year due to babies and moving that was not a thing.

Guida: So we ended up staying home and watching football and I read, so, and David's son came and visited us, so that was low key and, and actually very nice.

Mike: My favorite Christmas Day activity is to do an additional half an hour on the stationary bike. So that's been my thing forever. You know, when the kids go to visit their mom.

Mike: Well, you know, you and I think, grew up in similar households. So growing up, the holidays are weird. When you're a little kid and you're surrounded by drinking, you see weird stuff, right?

Guida: You do. And add to it when there's not a ton of money.

Mike: Mm hmm.

Guida: As of the drinking. So the history in my family, we basically have two generations of kids.

Guida: I have sisters who are 10 years older and more 19 up to 19 and then one sister who's three years older. And so we had two different generations and. When my older sisters were being raised, that was when my father was the main breadwinner and not bringing that money home necessarily. And so I remember my working mother, and Christmases with my working mother, but even my mom would tell us stories about how in, she was a first generation immigrant to America from Italy.

Guida: My grandparents were both from Italy. And my mom would talk about how they had to plan for money, right? And so if they thought they weren't going to have money at the end of the year, they would celebrate St. Nick's Day on December 6th. And then otherwise they would celebrate Christmas. Otherwise they would celebrate the epiphany. And so for her, and so it sort of came down, not to that degree, because we always had great gifts for Christmas and, you know, I have these vivid memories of wonderful coming down and having a whole table set, the kids table, it turned out to be because there were too many of us.

Guida: But at the time it was the table set up in the living room with the little chairs and the little tea set on it and how wonderful that was. And I also remember, you know, the Christmas I got my baby doll and ripped her head off in like five seconds and took it to my sister in two pieces and it's like, (crying) can you help me?

Guida: I was a destructive child. But so, those stories being told, or even like, we have lobster every Christmas Eve. And the reason we have lobster every Christmas Eve is, A, we were born, we were raised Catholic. Old generation Catholics, they didn't have, Italians didn't, Catholics couldn't eat fish on Christmas Eve.

Guida: I mean, sorry, couldn't eat meat on Christmas Eve. There was a prohibition. You couldn't eat meat on Christmas Eve. So that's where the Feast of the Seven Fishes comes from in the Italian culture. But when my older sisters were little, my mom had to feed them tuna fish and macaroni and cheese because there was no money to buy good stuff. And so as my mom became the breadwinner, she bought us lobster and shrimp and said, never again. So I always use this, my sister and I argue, my sister hosts Christmas Eve and we argue every year. And sometimes that argument starts as early as August as to whether or not we're going to have lobster.

Guida: And I buy the lobster. I don't prepare it, but I buy it. And so I'm like, oh well, good, let's get this conversation out of the way so we don't have to fight in November about whether or not we're having lobster because I just insist that that tradition carry on because that was so much of my growing up, was my mom saying, never again, I'm not going to live like this again.

Mike: You know, that's so similar. I've told my kids, and I just had a discussion with my son last night. We were talking about Kwik Trip corn dogs. And I said, I've never had a corn dog in my life and I will not eat hot dogs. And he looks at me. I don't know if he didn't remember this or whatever, but that was the meat we could afford if we could afford meat.

Mike: And so once I got to where I lived by myself, I said, I'll never eat a hot dog again. And I haven't. And it's that thing, right? It's a mental thing where, you know, I'm not going back to where we used to be.

Guida: Right, yup.

Mike: Well, you said your mom was a breadwinner. Where was your dad in all this?

Guida: You know, (laugh) in my childhood brain, I feel as though, and this is my argument about inpatient treatment.

Guida: I feel like my father was inpatient treatment every 60 days. Like, you know, 28 days in, 32 days out. 28 days in, 32 days out. I know it wasn't that often, but it was pretty often. And he died in active addiction. He ended up with cancer. Died young. I was only 22 years old.

Mike: Well, you shared I think it was on Christmas, your text you shared with me, something I hadn't heard before, which is one of your memories is him leaning up against a tree, or...

Guida: Knocking it over.

Mike: Knocking a tree over, sorry.

Guida: That was part of our traditions, (laugh) not dad knocking the Christmas tree over, but when you think about this now, right, so we would have a live tree, and we would always decorate the live tree on Christmas Eve. Think that through now, right? In your, in your adult brain, it's because that's when you could get a tree for cheap or free.

Mike: Absolutely.

Guida: Right. But in my childhood brain, it was like that, again, that was the tradition.

Mike: That's the tradition.

Guida: And so eventually we ended up with an artificial tree. And yeah dad spent a lot of time intoxicated. And especially around the holidays because my mom would not have liquor in the house. My father had... He drank beer and that was, you know, the, he's got to have beer. He's going to go into withdrawal.

Guida: So my mother would allow beer. And again, this is another, in my pea brain as a child, I never realized my father was drunk 100 percent of the time, 100 percent of the time. And I didn't know it because you knew regular dad and drunk dad and drunk dad was anytime he had... Brandy was his liquor of choice and anytime he had brandy all bets were off but he was always drunk and so as I started in the field and started and I was like oh my gosh of course it was you add the brandy and so my mom knew that instinctively, I'm sure she didn't understand the biological aspect of it, but she knew it instinctively so he always had beer in the house.

Guida: He was always allowed to drink beer you know, when he wasn't supposed to be in recovery. But he was not allowed to have the hard liquor at the holidays, the hard liquor was more readily available. And so, yeah, one year Dad just fell into the tree and knocked it over. And again, money. We taped it with duct tape. (laugh)

Guida: And then every year, like it would be like, you know, crooked on the top and then you'd have to straighten it and eventually we got a new Christmas tree. But yeah, that and waking up on Christmas morning to open the presents and having somebody sleep on the couch and wondering who, you know, like sneaking in ready to open presents.

Guida: And it was like, Who's that guy on the couch? You know, my dad's friends who had gotten intoxicated and couldn't drive. And so, and usually they were the the old guys we knew. You know, sometimes it was kind of stranger danger, rarely. And, again, my father was a wonderful man. And I really think that has affected me in a way that other people don't have that luxury.

Guida: I was never afraid of my father. My father was never abusive. I was never afraid of my father's friends. And so it wasn't like I grew up in an environment of fear or violence. It was just that my father had the disease of addiction. And I consider that a real blessing because now as an adult, I recognize the disease of addiction.

Guida: All that other stuff that goes with it, that's not addiction. Like somebody asked me one time, like, how do you excuse what they do when they're drunk? And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, well, you know, People with cancer don't abuse their kids. I said people with addiction don't abuse their kids.

Guida: Abusers abuse their kids, right? It doesn't, they don't go hand in hand and I was blessed to see that in my father. And so I was actually joking with David about this interview and the things that, my father wasn't perfect and I'm not saying I don't have a seven on the adverse childhood experiences or a six on a good day.

Guida: I do, but I didn't grow up fearing for anything or wanting for anything. And so now moving forward, when I sit at the Christmas table with people who have addictions, with people who have active addictions. I look at that like it's a disease. And it's the same as sitting at the table with somebody who's got dementia or Alzheimer's or, you know, yeah, it's annoying, right?

Guida: It is so annoying. How many times do I have to tell you the same story? How many times do I have to answer that question? I had an experience this weekend. The tone of voice that somebody was using with me. And I literally said, Why are you using that tone of voice with me? Oh, what do you know? And I was like, why, why are you taught?

Guida: Well, I believe that the person has some maybe early onset dementia, can't remember things, can't appropriately disagree, older person. But I'm not going to say, well, that's it. That's it! I'm never going to have a meal with that person again. Right? It, that doesn't make sense. We understand that when it comes to other diseases. But when it comes to this disease of addiction that we all say we believe is a disease, but we don't treat it like it's a disease, right? If you would just stop drinking, then Christmas would be fine. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, actually, you know what? It wouldn't, right? All the other stuff that goes with that.

Guida: You can't just stop drinking, right? You can't just stop smoking and think your cancer's cured. You can't just stop drinking and think your alcoholism is cured. So, I really think that it has to do with believing addiction is a disease. Recognizing it for what it is. And then, yeah, setting our boundaries. I have many times said, okay, we're done! (laugh)

Guida: We have to go home now.

Mike: Yup, yup.

Guida: Time to leave! But I've also made choices to not do that because of other people I care about who are enduring the same, or who you know it's Christmas, and as my one sister says, you don't talk about Uncle Jack's alcoholism at the Christmas table. You just don't. You don't bring it up there.

Guida: And that's not to say I don't bring it up other times, but how many times do you bring up somebody's illness that they're not doing anything about, right? I mean, they know, right? Everybody in my family knows who has the addiction. The person who has the addiction, knows they have the addiction. And my saying, hey, you gonna get that checked out?

Guida: Hey, I think you should go to counsel. Hey. It does no good. All that does is make me the person they don't want to talk to, or the person they don't even want at the Christmas table, right? So I just, I say it once, twice, if it comes up again, you know, but not at the Christmas table, not during the holidays, not, you know, Hey, I counted your drinks for you and you've been drinking too much.

Mike: Okay. There's, there's so much in that three minutes, right? Let's, so let me break it down just a little bit. Let's go backwards, because there's a lot of enabling and boundary crossing that took place when you were younger. And then as you become an adult, how do you learn, and you started to allude to that, how do you learn where that healthy boundary is, and to not enable, but take care of yourself and still maintain some kind of relationship with those people?

Mike: Because, as you said, oftentimes the squeaky wheel becomes the black sheep of the family.

Guida: Yeah, so, I think, and again, I will credit this to my father, it is not about me. It is not about, no one is getting drunk at Christmas because of me. And they may tell me it's because of me, but they are not getting drunk at Christmas because of me.

Guida: They are not using it at Christmas because of me, right? And they are not using it at any time because of me. And I have been criticized and insulted and by friends and strangers alike, family friends and strangers alike, and I'm like, eh, okay. It is not about me. And so when, you know, you've seen those things like, what would you tell your younger self?

Guida: It is not about me. It is 100 percent not about me. And so recognizing that and being able to say, Okay, okay. I always thought that David, my husband, was codependent. And then I realized, no he's not. He's just helpful. Codependency is when you start resenting helping other people. Being helpful is when it makes you feel good to help other people, right?

Guida: And so David will help anybody. Strangers, friends, anybody. All they have to do is say, Hey, and he's like, Yes, what, what can I do for you? He does not resent that. One time he was walking through the park or he was coming to see me. There was a guy walking through a park carrying a great big heavy backpack.

Guida: David said, Hey, can I help you carry that backpack? And the guy was like, Yeah. David grabs a backpack and he was like, Yeah, that, that six pack was really heavy. (laugh) Okay. So, but David's like, Oh, okay, I guess I'm carrying somebody's beer. So the idea that the enabling, what stops making you feel good when, when you're working harder on somebody else than they are working on themselves.

Guida: Enabling them, right? But so, that's at Christmas time at the dinner table, you know, when you're getting together when it's not appropriate to talk. I'm not working on you at all. You're clearly not working on you. I'm not going to assert my energy to tell you what I know is truth. You don't even care.

Guida: You're not in a place to listen to me. Why would I bring that up? So I'm not going to enable that behavior. To the point where, I've been at family picnics where people will say to kids, little kids, hey, would you get me a beer? And I go, nope. They will not go get your own beer. Absolutely not. Go get your own beer.

Guida: Right? And, and yeah, people are like, how dare you tell that child, that little child to not get me a beer. I'm like, that's not appropriate. You want a beer, go get it.

Mike: Well, the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is people have heard you on the podcast before or who know you. You lean towards the more assertive side of human beings, right? (chuckle)

Guida: (laugh)

Mike: There's so many people in situations where there's addiction in the family who walk on eggshells so much. It's just the anxiety and the nervousness. They don't say anything to getting the beer, to everything else. And you go the other direction. It's like, you know, you're very blunt in that way.

Mike: And that's not an unhealthy way to live either. And that doesn't mean you love them any less.

Guida: No. And you know, people all the time are like, Oh, you're so mean. Oh, you're so blah. And I'm like, I can sleep at night.

Mike: Isn't it interesting how they define that as, mean? Mean? Okay, what was mean about saying you can get your own beer?

Guida: And I say, no, I'm honest. I'm honest. And I think it's really important what we model for kids, for other people. You know, I think about that all the time. Like, who do I want my grandchildren to see? Who do I want them to grow up to become? I don't want them to be in a codependent relationship where they're enabling bad behavior.

Guida: I want them to see somebody who says, hey, that's not appropriate. Don't talk to me in that tone of voice. Get your own beer. You know, time for us to go. This stopped being fun five minutes ago. It's time for us to go.

Mike: Yeah. And what's wrong with that? Nothing, right?

Guida: No, right? No. And so I have a friend, we talked about this.

Guida: She said, I don't think it's appropriate to ever cancel Christmas. Right? People are like, Christmas is cancelled! Dad's drunk again! Christmas is cancelled! And it's like, Christmas isn't cancelled! All you're doing is ruining your life. But because of this person's behavior. Christmas isn't cancelled. Set your boundaries.

Guida: And she told me, Mike, I love this story. She was having dinner, Christmas dinner, with friends and family and family adjacent. And one of the family adjacent members had addiction and was nodding off in the mashed potatoes. To the point where people were like, pushing her head up, pulling her back by her hair.

Guida: Yeah, and they're all eating and, you know, it's uncomfortable, right? It is horribly, horribly uncomfortable. So at some point, they take her to the ER, and the ER, they pump her stomach, they do whatever. She comes back to the table and they have dessert.

Mike: Oh my god. (laugh)

Guida: I love that story. I love that story. I'm like, Why not?

Guida: It's not about you. She's sick.

Guida: When somebody's sick, you help them. You help them get treatment. And if they choose not to get treatment, how many people do you know who continue to smoke cigarettes? How many people do you know who have type 2 diabetes and aren't managing their diet well.

Guida: How many people do you know who have asthma, who do things that, you know, all of that stuff. We don't shun them. We don't cancel holidays because of them. We figure out how we can endure that. And honestly, I mean, to me, I love traditions. I love the holidays. I love that it is the one time we're supposed to be decent to one another. (chuckle)

Guida: So be decent, be decent.

Mike: Well, okay, let me go there because I think when you talk about, I'm not having fun anymore. I stopped five minutes ago. Let's go. I hang around with, because of the nature of our work, people who work with other people, whether it be teachers, social workers, counselors. That's my biggest friend group.

Mike: I cannot believe the number of stories I've heard over the years of those people who are disrespected openly at family functions about what they do for a living, who they are as people. You don't work that hard. You're only working this. You know, you get paid too much. Who does that? And so at what point does that disrespect then cross the line?

Mike: You're like, well, okay, I know this is Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever, but I'm out of here.

Guida: See, okay, I would ask when those conversations start, what does the other person do? Because most of us just shrink into ourselves.

Mike: Yes, right.

Guida: Oh, me, I go, why are you talking to me like that?

Guida: Did you think that was a good tone of voice to use with it? You think that's an appropriate question to ask somebody? I'm not. It's not about me. It's about you. It's about you being inappropriate. It's about you being jealous. It's about you being rude. It's about you. It's not about my choices, and so I am not going to be defensive about my choices, and I think that's what happens.

Guida: I think so often we get defensive, or we get you know, that low self esteem that we all grew up with just rises up in a balloon above us, and we're like, all right, that's it, you know, and then we pout and we cry, and we're, especially family, right? I can be a 10 year old with my family, (snaps fingers) like that!

Guida: Like that! It amazes me. And I think I've finally probably grown out of that where they can say anything they want and I go, okay, okay. Or I just check out a conversations. I'm not gonna engage in this. I'm just not gonna engage in this. But I don't make it about me, because their being rude to me isn't about me.

Guida: Right?

Mike: It's amazing though, when you do things like, Why are you using that tone with me? And you're an aware person. The number of side looks you get from other family members, You know, the finger to the... (holds finger to lips) Shh! Don't rock the boat. Oh my God. Here we go. Here we go. Right? So you're getting the message that you now are the problem because you're going to stir the pot even though that person's holding the damn spoon.

Guida: And you know what? I've been in those where I say, you know what? I guess I'm upsetting things here. I should probably leave. Now, again, I refuse. Mike the stories I could tell you of the inappropriate comments, behaviors. Right before Thanksgiving I got a loved one told me to F off and I'm like, okay.

Guida: I didn't respond to it. Okay. All right. You own that. This isn't about me. This is about whatever's going on in your world, in your head, that's on you. And so we talk about waiting for the, or forgiving, forgiving people for the apology that never happened. Right? I do that so often. And I'm not trying to pat myself on the back.

Guida: I think it's a learned skill. All right. And so when my, it's always family members, it's almost always family members. When they act so inappropriately and then they have to, like, come back into the fold, we're always like, how's that gonna happen? What are they gonna say? Well, you know, and I'm like, I don't care.

Guida: You don't have to apologize to me. I had one experience where somebody got so unbelievably impaired. Like, I, given my years in the field, I had no idea what drugs were on board. Like, I was Googling and it's so, the worst I've, I was like, what is this? Who, what is this? Because this is not just drinking.

Guida: This is not just, and you know, literally like Googling, what mixing alcohol with this drug? And, really inappropriate behavior, really, you know, just explosive, bad, awful. And then that person came back into the fold and said, you know, I don't even know how it opened. I'm sorry. Or, hey, I missed you.

Guida: I think that's what it was. And, you know, I don't want to rehash what happened. And I said, I don't want to rehash what happened either, but no one, no one should ever get as shit faced as you were. And she said, I know. And that was the end of it.

Guida: Again, we address it. I'm not going to pretend you didn't act like that. I'm not going to pretend I'm the problem because you got intoxicated, high, whatever, whatever. You went off the rails. I'm not going to pretend it's me. I'm going to acknowledge it's you. And I think, Mike, because I have the professional capacity to recognize that, and I think that's the thing that's missing too, because so many of our family members don't have the professional capacity that they think, oh, it's you because you're the one bringing it up. No, it's not me. I'm the one bringing it up because I'm an expert. (laugh) I'm an expert. And the fact that you would deny my expertise tells me the problem is you.

Mike: Yeah, well, you know what? I just had this happen. Okay, I was driving my car with my son, Colin, who's 20 something years old, right? And I was taking him somewhere. This is like four weeks ago. And he turns to me and he goes, your car always sound like that? And I looked, what do you mean?

Mike: That noise in the front end. What front end? Your right front. I said, I drive a lot. I guess I'm unaware of it. Right? I just drive the freaking car. He knows about cars because it's a passion of his. I took my car in, and sure enough, I needed four new tires. That tire was cupping. He knew, right? Well, okay. We do that with cars.

Mike: We do that with heating. We do that with electricity. We do that with cooking. Why don't we do it with disease?

Guida: I say that all the time. Like if you ever went to a doctor and the doctor said you have cancer and you said no.

Mike: Yeah, I don't know.

Guida: Yeah, I think you're wrong. I know what cancer looks like.

Guida: My dad had cancer. I don't have that. Right? That doesn't even make any sense.

Mike: No.

Guida: Or if you go to a doctor and the doctor says yeah, you know, I think you have cancer. You might want to cut down on smoking, which is what so many people in the field of addictions do. Yeah, you have a mild substance use disorder.

Guida: You might want to cut back on your drinking, (laugh) right? We would find a new doctor, and I firmly believe this, Mike. I know I've, just ad nauseum, we say we believe it's a disease, but we don't treat it like we believe it's a disease. And that infuriates me. It infuriates me that the people in the field are doing such a bad job addressing the diseases.

Guida: The disease of addiction, the disease of alcohol use disorder, the disease of cocaine use disorder, whatever. It's a disease. It's a disease. It's a disease. It's a disease. And the making light of addiction. I just got in a Facebook fight with somebody, stranger, you know, she said, I'm a recovering addict, which is like a knife in my heart, right?

Guida: I'm not going to correct you, whatever. And somebody, Oh, get addicted to learning. And I went back to the company and said, do better, do better. You can't be addicted to something positive, right? You, you can't, you, yes, you can. You can't, you're not addicted to learning unless it's causing negative consequences.

Guida: Addiction is a disease. Addiction is a disease. Addiction is a disease. And she comes back, this woman, stranger danger, comes back and says, oh, I have no problem with it because I'm a recovering addict. And I, and I'm like, Well, that's part of the problem, right? That's part of the problem. If we can't even call I don't know.

Guida: I know COVID has changed. It used to be, what, coronavirus? Now it's changed. We change our language and people accept that, but for the disease of addiction, we haven't, it has not been widely accepted.

Mike: Well, we change our language to justify our doing nothing. It's easy, you know, when, when, you know, you mentioned COVID, when people say, you got the jab.

Mike: I already know that there's an agenda for them in their entire life. So they don't really want to talk about what it does or whether it's a disease or not. You know, they're just have a judgment. So when people say, oh, that's bullshit, you know, about addiction, he doesn't have that big a problem. It's to justify they're not bringing it up.

Guida: Oh my gosh. I have the best quote. I jokingly said before we started, I spent two years during COVID reading, right? So I love reading. I love reading. And there's a book called, it's the third in a series, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect. So the first one is Everyone In My Family Is a Murderer.

Guida: Everyone, oh, this is the second, Everyone on the Train is a Suspect. Listen to this quote. Holidays are, after all, mostly extravagant charades with which to justify an addiction.

Guida: I read that, I underlined it, I sent it to myself last night so I would remember to say it. Right? We can get away with anything, again, because we have this propensity to not address the elephant in the living room. We don't talk about the elephant in the living room. Well, I can't see you. I can't even get around the elephant in the living room.

Guida: How do you want me to not talk about it? And again, I'm not going to sit there and it's not going to be the core conversation, but we have to acknowledge the elephant in the living room. Like at least leave it in the living room and let's all move into the kitchen. But we don't. We just sit there and pretend we don't even see it.

Guida: And we can't have relationships when we can't see one another and we can't talk to one another because this great big elephant is sitting there. And so, for me, that has been a huge change in my life to say, yeah, not appropriate. That is not appropriate.

Mike: You know, somebody a long time ago told me to keep these things to around a half an hour.

Mike: So, I'll give you this as a wrap.

Guida: Idiot! It was me! (raises hand) (laugh)

Mike: Yeah.

Mike: What I also find, and this is a great way to close this out, is by doing what you're suggesting, and while you might be a maple baseball bat and I'm a nerf, right, I'm still direct. Is that when push comes to shove, when you do address it, those folks who are in trouble oftentimes come to you in their recovery, and the relationship is incredibly strong because you never B. S. them to begin with.

Guida: Amen. Amen. Yeah.

Mike: Oh, all right. I'll let you have Amen is the last word, right?

Guida: (laugh) There you go.

Mike: Well let's do this again, but we'll do this before then, but let's do this again before next Thanksgiving when we can talk about Blackout Wednesday, Drinksgiving, all the way through. The increase in drunk driving goes up 156%, blah, blah, blah, right?

Mike: Because as a society, we don't recognize it either.

Mike: You know, you all know this, as always, there's links to Guided by Guida, and her resources attached to the podcast. And you really got to click on it, because her blogs that she writes are, one, entertaining, informative, and really thought provoking, and those of you who are professionals, it gives you some really interesting topics, I think, to talk about with your colleagues, at the very least.

Mike: Thanks so much for sharing the personal side of you today, Guida. We hope all of you can join us anytime you're able. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy, and, I don't know, pick a new family.