The Compassion Whirlpool

[Jaunty Guitar Music]

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

Mike: We've had the opportunity to chat with Lynn McLaughlin and Karen Iverson Riggers from Ebb and Flow Connections Cooperative in northeast Wisconsin a couple of times over the past year.

Mike: I've really enjoyed the conversations with these ladies and we've had several great conversations about how we all cope with feelings in our lives. We wanna continue that today with the discussion about a topic really close to my heart, and that's compassion fatigue, especially for those in the helping professions.

Mike: Welcome back ladies. How are you?

Karen: Great. Thanks for having us.

Mike: Wow. I I really enjoy these. If you look at the three of us, we're on Zoom. For those of you listening, it looks like all three of us have been outside. It's so refreshing, isn't it?

Lynn: Yes.

Karen: Yeah.

Mike: For the of you listening to other parts of the world, when you record these in February in Wisconsin, there's a look about all of us. That's not good.

Lynn: [laugh] There is no glow.

Karen: There's no glow.

Mike: There's a pale pink pastiness to those of us who are of that persuasion, right?

Karen: [laugh]

Mike: Well, you know, the last time we chatted, we talked about emotions expressed in the workplace, which I thought was interesting and I wanted to get in more depth with that today.

Mike: Let's say I'm a helper, a teacher, a social worker, a nurse, a therapist. Here's the first question. How do I not take work home with me?

Karen: So I gestured a great quote the other day, and I'm gonna paraphrase it, right? It says something like, "We can't expect to hold the level of trauma and loss we are experiencing and witnessing and not be affected. It's like trying to walk through water without getting wet." And so I think there is some you know, when you talk about taking it home with you, right?

Karen: Lots of times we hear, "I've heard this in my working life", right? Like, you set these boundaries, you leave it at work, you don't take it home with you. And I think. There is some harm that's done with that when we're asked to disconnect, to separate our humanity, to not honor the feelings that have come up and emotions that have come up for us in the work that we're doing.

Karen: So I think there's a difference between taking folks stories home with us, right, carrying their stories. There's a difference between that, right? Which is something that I would say, oh, that's the piece that we set down, right? It's not for us to own, but what is for us to own, to navigate is the emotions and feelings that come up for us to honor those, right?

Karen: And often we can't do that in the moment of our day. When we're supporting other people, a lot of times, like we're, we're working to be the ground for them, right?

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Karen: We're working to hold space for them, and there's not always space for our emotion, for our feeling. And so thinking about how we take that home with us, [laugh] if that makes sense, how do we take that home with us to, to honor the emotions and feelings that have come up for us as we're navigating these these spaces where we're supporting healing for others.

Mike: That does make sense, Lynn. You know, we hear that all the time. Leave it at the door. Right. And you know what Karen just said is well, yeah, that's impossible. So let's do away with that. That makes sense to me.

Lynn: I think that's the greatest misconception, especially in the service world, nonprofit world is that we can compartmentalize ourselves as human beings.

Lynn: And the reality is we can't, you know, that whole, just hold the front for the person you're serving. But then you go home and you never take that blinder down and you take whatever emotions have built up and you put 'em in your backpack and you get up and you do it the next day, and you do it the next day and you do it the next day.

Lynn: And all of these emotions are captured in your body and unprocessed. And there is so much research and science out there right now around what happens when we do that. And there's physical disease and there's, you know, mental health challenges and there's substance use and there's, you know, suicide and all of these things because we keep putting it in the backpack instead of creating a system or a world where we can be fully human.

Lynn: In the moment and process the emotion as we go through our day. And, you know, I, I think there's gonna be a lot of time required initially because people are so disconnected from their emotions. But when we invest that time and the ability to do that on an ongoing basis, we're gonna see health increase.

Lynn: We're gonna see, you know, mental health get better. I just, I firmly believe it. It's at the root of so much of our dis-ease in our country.

Mike: Yeah. I think everybody's got a leaky backpack and [laugh] that's caused...

Lynn: Yeah.

Mike: A lot of our problems. Well, part of the reason I, I, I wanted to do this was I was reading a study and it got me thinking and the study compared, okay, we ready?

Mike: Cognitive empathy with emotional empathy. And so as I was reading this first of all the term cognitive empathy Karen sounds like an oxymoron.

Karen: Yes. [laugh]

Karen: Yeah. The first time I, I heard that, I was like, wait, hold up. Because empathy is all about, right. This idea of feeling with, of connecting at the level of emotion and emotions are a. They're in a separate part of our brain than the quote unquote thinking part, right?

Karen: This frontal, frontal part, which was the last part of our human brain to develop. The emotion feeling part developed before that. And so those are separate parts. So this idea of saying like, I can think about how you're feeling without stepping into feeling the feeling. Right. So it's an interesting idea and I kind of understood what the author was saying, right?

Karen: In terms of. Working to support people. And this is some of the work that we do around figuring out emotional boundaries, which is something we don't talk about a lot. This idea of, especially I'm, I am an empath, I am a highly sensitive person. I am very sensitive to recognizing the emotions of others and even kind of, I would just call it, feeling the energy of emotions of others.

Karen: And I've had to do a lot of work and I'm not always good at it. It's, it's really hard. In figuring out what the emotional boundaries are. And what I mean by that is like, what's my emotion? What's your emotion? And then allowing for like, I don't have to carry your emotion or take any, in my words, like take any responsibility for it.

Karen: Right? That's yours. This is my emotion.

Mike: Yeah. Well, and, and that's, I think that's what we're talking about, right? Lynn? If I'm gonna connect with you, I have to feel. Otherwise we just have this, whatever. I don't know what it would be. I, I think this is where helpers get into trouble in their own lives. So where is the boundary between feeling for you and internalizing your stresses and making of my own?

Mike: That's the healthy part, I think. Right,

Lynn: Right. And like Karen said, it's incredibly difficult as you're hearing stories of pain. And I think there's a, there's a real correlation between. When a person is telling you a story, and let's say there's a lot of loss and grief, and they're expressing a lot of sadness, there's an opportunity to figure out what your comfort level is with that amount of loss, and if you are able to sit with them at that level of loss.

Lynn: It dissipates as you feel it with them, and I've experienced this, but if I'm uncomfortable sitting with anger, sitting with, you know, deep, deep loss and sadness I'm gonna take that with me because I don't wanna feel it. So if I am able to feel it with the person when they're describing it, and I know what that emotion is, I mean, I literally can be with someone in that space, wish them the very best, like send them, send them good juju and love and walk away and not take it with me.

Lynn: And it's because of my comfort level with the level of emotion that people are expressing. Like I said, I think there is a lot of, you hear the story and you get angry about it, but you're not comfortable expressing anger, so then you put it in your backpack. It's kind of that same, same mindset, but it's when a person is expressing a story or emotion, what is your relationship with the emotion they're sharing?

Lynn: And it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's complicated and it's not, you know, because I think in so many different areas of life, there's that connection between being an individual and being part of community or Brené Brown says "We're able to connect with others to the level we can connect with ourselves, and if we're uncomfortable with what someone is sharing, we can have that emotion."

Lynn: But oftentimes, if we take it home, there's probably unresolved grief and anger within us as well.

Mike: Karen, how do I, how do I get comfortable with it? I'm, I'm thinking, you know, I, I, I'm thinking about when I was doing family therapy and somebody would be sitting there and they would start to cry and you could tell the entire family was so uncomfortable with whatever that pain was.

Mike: So they would oftentimes do something to get people angry again, cuz they were really comfortable with anger. [laugh]

Karen: Yeah.

Mike: But, but they were uncomfortable with that. So how do we get comfortable with the range of different feelings that we're gonna experience?

Karen: Yes.

Karen: Ooh, I love this question. I love this question.

Karen: So when I talk about this, you know, I can talk about it from the lens of my own personal experience, and that is that it's a practice.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Karen: It is a practice. And I say that because. Here are the things that I want to bring to my practice. One is like a whole load of self-compassion. Because I have learned about emotion in all different ways.

Karen: I've learned it from my family of origin. I've learned it from my culture. I learned it in school. I learned about, you know, I was shown or I was told explicitly what emotions were okay or not okay, right. In those contexts. And so then we start to internalize those messages. So, you know, I can talk about like journey with anger, right?

Karen: Which was not really shown in my house ever. My parents were very cautious about not showing that. And so then I was like, oh, we don't show anger. Like we don't do that. Right.

Mike: That's a lot of people.

Karen: And so I feel anger. Yeah. That's a lot of people when I feel anger. Then there's this internalized message, like, you don't get angry.

Karen: And also being female identifying, right? Like women don't get angry. Right? Women don't get angry. So we come to this practice, right? So we know we're carrying all of this. So we come with self-compassion around our relationship with emotion. And then the practice is sitting with the emotion. So an emotion if we really feel it all the way through its cycle, lasts 90 seconds.

Karen: And the first time I heard that, I was like, that's not possible. I have felt emotions for days! But what happens is we start to feel uncomfortable, and when we start to feel uncomfortable, we do these creative and brilliant strategies that we call emotional protective strategies. They're the things that we do so we don't feel, right, so we, we don't have to deal with it as comfort.

Karen: We pick up our phone, right as scroll through through social media. We use sarcasm, right? We we get really busy, really busy so we don't have to stop and be with ourself. There are all sorts of things that we do, so we start to feel this emotion. We start to get uncomfortable, and then we try to avoid the emotion, but when we lean into that discomfort a little bit and just allow it and listen and feel the feeling.

Karen: So a lot of the work that I've done on my journey has been a lot of therapy and a lot of the therapy that I've done has been thinking therapy. Changing thoughts, which has been helpful in a lot of ways, but you can't think your way out of feelings. They have to be felt and experienced. And so this practice has been uncomfortable.

Karen: It's been scary. And also so incredibly powerful because a lot of times what happens is I'll allow some time in my day to just really check in with myself, like how am I feeling? And I allow for the feelings to come. And those feelings give me really amazing information about what I need. And often our feelings are expressing an unmet need.

Karen: And it might be the unmet need is we need to slow down, or the unmet need is we need something to be validated or the unmet need is we need some compassion and just like a great big hug of ourself to say like, I see you and I see you hurting. So those feelings often express unmet needs, but until we really like pause long enough, and I said 90 seconds, it's not long.

Karen: I'm not sitting for like hours at a time. It's, it's a couple minutes, right, that I slow down to really ask myself, how are you feeling? And then to validate whatever you're feeling is okay. Whatever you're feeling is okay. It's not right, it's not wrong. It's not good. It's not bad. It is, and it's giving me information.

Karen: It's giving me information about something I need to know about myself or the world around me.

Mike: Okay. So Lynn, I'm a teacher. I'm a nurse, I'm a therapist, right? And I'm. I'm going one after another, after another. I mean, I have teachers tell me, yeah, I'd like to be able to go to the bathroom at some point today, right?

Mike: Let alone process all the stuff that I'm feeling from administration and from the kids and families and the school board and the public and everything else. So now it's the end of my day. How do I, how do I sit in those feelings and not. Like what? What should I do? Like specifically, what should I do at the end of the day?

Lynn: So my answer's gonna be twofold. First of all, the system's broken. [laugh] They're actually, the system's working exactly as it intended in that you come to work, you be robotic, you produce, and then you leave and you can be human outside of that situation. So the biggest fix in my mind is fix the system so we can slow down during the day and take time to do that.

Lynn: Because even unpacking eight hours worth of emotion is a lot.

Mike: Yeah.

Lynn: And by allowing that time to like regroup during the day, people are actually going to be able. And I hate say to do more, but they're gonna have a better interaction because they're more in touch with who they're, but if the situation is the end of the day, my thought would be to do, we do a 90 second check-in, and I, like Karen said, I think there is opportunity to build in 90 seconds.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Lynn: And just say, what am I feeling? What is it teaching me? What do I need? And to actually set a timer, and I'm gonna tell you it's really uncomfortable. To sit still for 90 seconds. And number one, try to figure out what you're feeling because a lot of us are so disconnected that they, what goes through our mind during that 90 seconds is, I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling.

Lynn: There must be something wrong with me. I'm not feeling anything. I should really be feeling something. Why am I not feeling, you know [laugh], instead of actually being silent long enough to really figure it out. And there's nothing wrong with that. We've been conditioned to not be in touch with it. So when Karen was talking about how important it is to take that time and to extend self-compassion as we're learning, there is, again, I'm gonna bring up Brené Brown.

Lynn: Her book, "Atlas of the Heart" is all about emotion and what happens when we don't express emotion, and how do these nuanced emotions show up? You know, I think when people think emotion, they think. Mad. Sad. Glad.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Lynn: Afraid. And there's so many nuances on all of those and we don't have the language for it.

Lynn: A lot of times, because there has been such a lack of education, we don't have the language to even describe what's going on within us. And that's not a shortcoming or a defect. That's the way we were conditioned. And having that compassion to start unpacking that a little bit and looking at all those nuances is really powerful.

Mike: That's interesting cuz I think that you know, if you ask somebody in the moment, what are you feeling? You, you tend to get a response, oh, I'm really ticked off. And then if they think about it for a minute, they might come back and say, yeah, I'm overwhelmed. Well, the cures for being ticked off are pretty much different than the needs of feeling overwhelmed.

Mike: So that sitting and allows you to feel. You don't always have to have a solution, but at least you can narrow it down to I'm not just feeling angry all the time.

Karen: Yeah, yeah, and, and especially when you get to kind of complicated emotions, or we'll call them umbrellas. Anxiety is a really good example, right.

Karen: A lot of, you know, people will say, I'm

Karen: feeling anxious. And then you start to unpack what's underneath the anxious. And sometimes it's fear and sometimes it's sadness, and sometimes it's anger and sometimes it's overwhelm. And sometimes it's that, right? Like, and when we start to develop this relationship with sitting with how we're feeling, often these kind of layers emerge, right?

Karen: I thought I was feeling angry. I'm really feeling deep sadness.

Mike: Mm.

Karen: I mean, I, I think about like, this just hap like this is just happening right now in my life, right? I'm really angry about a situation that's happening, but underneath that is really some really deep sadness.

Mike: And you don't always have to have the cure right away.

Karen: I don't. And often when we talk about feelings, like we talk about removing the, the judgment or labels around them as good or bad, or right or wrong. The feeling just is. The feeling just is, and sometimes it's enough to just validate it.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Karen: To say like, I see you sadness. Like I see you just, just like I would for like my seven year old.

Karen: Right. When Ari's feeling sad, like. I give Ari a big hug and just like sit with Ari. Right? And what if we did that for ourselves? I don't try to, I don't try to fix it. Like a lot of the things are unfixable, right? [laugh] A lot of the things are unfixable. I just allow for that sadness to be there and for it to be validated.

Karen: Like, I see you. I see it.

Mike: Yeah. Well, popsicles help a lot, so.

Karen: Oh, popsicles help. Bandaids magical. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. [laugh] You know the, in the study I was reading, the social psychology researchers described, they were talking about the emotional empathy, right? And they described it in three parts. First part was feeling the same emotion as the other person.

Mike: I have a question about that in a minute. Second is feeling our own distress in response to their pain. And third was feeling compassion towards the other person. The first thing I thought when I read this is feeling the same emotion. I don't, can we do that? I mean, Lynn, do I know what you're feeling, even if I know what you're feeling?

Mike: Is it the same for both of us?

Lynn: Honestly, I, I don't think it matters. [laugh]

Mike: Oh, okay.

Mike: Oh, that's good we can do away with that then.

Lynn: As the person is sharing a story, I'm entitled to have my own emotion.

Mike: Yeah.

Lynn: And allowing space for that. And I think that's where it gets hard is when we're told "You are here for the other person and basically you don't exist. You are just here for them."

Lynn: And I think that's where it can get, it can get really, really hard keeping our emotions at bay. We need to allow for that. I thought it was interesting, the feeling, the distress. I would bet there's another label for that emotion. Like either you're feeling deep sadness with them or fear or anger or, you know, I, distress is an interesting word.

Lynn: I was trying to like embody distress and there's another emotional label for that and that's where. You don't have to know the feeling that I have. Like you might not know the depth of sadness that I'm feeling, but you're empathetically, you're going to feel some level of sadness and that's, I don't know how to describe it other than so much of it is intuitive.

Lynn: And as we, as we. Have more years on this earth. My breadth of experiences and the emotion attached to them, the empathy comes in. But even that's not really true because kids have an incredible amount of empathy for people. Like if something happens and they're angry because their friend was hurt, or you know, there's always that. There's always two people in two emotions.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Lynn: But I think being with someone and being able, I think one of the most powerful things we can do is validate a person's reality. And if they're expressing something and it's bringing up anger in them, it's to validate what they're expressing and the anger they're expressing and, and telling them, I see you, I hear you. I believe you.

Lynn: And not necessarily taking on the emotion, but I will definitely have emotion about what the story the person is sharing.

Mike: Well, and I think that second one, you, you hit on it, that distress one Karen, that's the burnout compassion fatigue one. Right. Is, is, it's hard. You know, you gotta know the warning signs to your own whirlpool.

Mike: Yeah. Is that, is that all right to say?

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think often one of those signs is disconnection, right? Everyone that I've ever met who has gone into a helping profession, goes in because they wanna work with their hearts. They deeply, deeply care about other people, right? We all wouldn't do this, this work if we didn't because [laugh] you, you're not gonna get rich doing, right?

Karen: Like the motivation is right, that we want to be there for other people and we wanna support other people. And so we walk in with this, I would say like big, bold vision of what it's gonna look like. And then we experience the reality, right? Of working within really difficult circumstances with limited resources, with problems that are just sticky, for lack of a better word, right?

Karen: Like these problems that are stacked on proper problems where we feel like we can't do anything about it, right? I'm describing like all these conditions that we're in. And then of course we're gonna feel overwhelmed. And of course we're gonna feel angry . We're gonna feel of these things.

Karen: And so often there is this kind of like curve that happens, right? We're feeling all of these things. It's too much. So we just like shut that down and disconnect. And I think that's when we often see compassion fatigue and burnout showing up. And it's, we show up, we're not patient, we take it out on other people, we blame other people.

Karen: We disconnect in other ways, whether that is using substances or like diving in, you know, deep to like social media addiction or there's all sorts of things. That happens for folks. And I would say, you know, what is the key? What, what, what is it that happens? It's disconnection. It's disconnection because it feels like it's too much.

Lynn: Yeah.

Karen: And so when we talk about compassion, fatigue, and burnout in this work, we talk about leaning into connection. Leaning into connection with ourselves.

Mike: Well, and those around us, Lynn, right. Who are healthy. I, I mean, given, you know, I, I see all these TikTok videos or YouTube videos where people quit.

Mike: That's the reaction to, because the system is broken and you just said, yeah, the system's broken. [laugh] So, given the fact that a lot of us, you know, if, if nurses are listening to this, I know what they're thinking. Cuz I've worked in a hospital, they're overwhelmed, they're understaffed, they're being asked to do more and more all the time.

Mike: Teachers, same deal same deal. Therapists are booked wall to wall right now, so the system isn't healthy. Is that all right? That's all right to say. So when you lean into yourself, you also have to find some kind of a support system I would think.

Lynn: Absolutely. And a support system that feeds you, hears you, values you, without trying to fix you, without trying to put a measurement to the level of whatever, you know, whether it's minimizing or invalidating, or dismissing what you're saying, recognizing that it, it's real for you no matter what it is, and really see and hear that person exactly as they are.

Lynn: And I think that's, you know, when I look at the work that Karen and I are doing, we've created a model called the Community Living Room model, which is non-clinical connection in community where people can come and just share. And there's no paperwork. And there's no judgment, and you can just come and be and connect.

Lynn: And that's, that's it. And that's, and that's it. And yet it's huge. We've got listeners that just listen. That's their role is to listen. Really listen, not think about how to fix, not think at all. Just listen.

Mike: So the first phrase that comes to to us, like, well, here's what you ought to do. [laugh]

Karen: Yeah.

Lynn: Absolutely.

Mike: Leave that one at the door.

Karen: Leave that one at the door. And the other one we haven't even unpacked or like touched for a second is around talking about self-care. Right. And so, so often, as soon as folks are like, I'm feeling compassion fatigue, I'm feeling burnout, I'm feeling right, like vicarious trauma, folks are like, oh, you need to, you need to go take care of your self-care. Right?

Karen: And it puts another burden on folks who are already feeling overwhelmed and then they're like, well, you know, something's wrong with me cuz I'm not doing enough self-care or right. And like, we, we have to unpack a little bit more around this construct of putting the burden on the individual and talking more about what it means to do these things in community and collectively.

Karen: Somebodys struggling. Then we like all open up our arms and wrap our arms around them. Not like, let's push you away and go away and take care of yourself.

Mike: And what you, no. I mean, think about it. I just thought about nine phrases right off the bat. You need to take more time for yourself. You need to take a vacation, you need to eat better, you need to exercise.

Mike: Well, thanks for putting more on my plate. Right? And you know, that doesn't mean that they're wrong, right? It means that that's not helpful.

Karen: Right. Or, or that those things aren't important. Those things are important. Right. That's not what I'm saying. I am, self-care is super important. What I'm saying is about the messaging around it that we then send to people when they're struggling, which is like, it's your fault and you're doing it wrong.

Mike: Oh!

Karen: Or you're not doing enough of it. And what we are, what we're talking about when we're in the face of compassion fatigue and burnout is seeing people, hearing them, validating what it is they're feeling and valuing them just as they are. Like, you are enough, just as you are. So that's the shift. Yeah.

Mike: And Lynn, also honoring their struggle.

Lynn: Absolutely. Absolutely. No matter what that looks like or feels like, based on our personal perception lens of the world. You know, it may be, and I think about this specifically with kids, and Karen and I have talked about this. When something happens to a child and it's insignificant to us, but they're having a meltdown.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Lynn: To be able to say, wow, I can tell that this is really frustrating for you and hard for you, instead of going, "Oh my God, this is not a big deal. Get over it! It's okay!" For that child, it's not okay and it's their first time experiencing something. And I think there are a lot we forget about that. Especially in adulthood when we have life experience that a lot of times their first time learners, and that can happen with adults too.

Lynn: You know, where they've never experienced something and or something is significantly hard for them and we're like, "Oh my God. It's not a big deal!" It is. And we need to honor the way the person is experiencing it.

Mike: Well, you know, wrapping a bow around this. A while back, this is a while back now. I had the duty, we had a sick pet.

Mike: And it wasn't gonna get better. And it became my job to put it down. And took it to the vet. And I'm by myself, right? Go into the room, do whatever, you know. And as the very nice people there, and they were terrific. Do their thing. I just let go and I was just weeping. They were great. You know, they, they hugged me, they patted me on the back and they're, they're like, we know that this is hard.

Mike: Having a a a pet is really, you know, they, they were going off on this. I'm like, you could have stopped at the hug, cuz what they didn't get was, it wasn't about the pet, it was about everything else in the last couple of years that I had also experienced, my mom had passed away. And, and several other losses, and all of a sudden I'm in this stupid little room and all of those losses hit me in the forehead, right?

Mike: Had nothing to do with the cat. It had to do with everything else. And so I guess, you know, I did what you suggested. I sat in my car like an idiot or maybe it's not an idiot. All right. I, I shouldn't say that, right? And I just sat there not for 90 seconds. I think I gave myself about six minutes, and then felt composed enough to go home.

Mike: Where I found that they had went to the shelter and got a new cat. So thank you very much. That did not cure the problem at all. Right. [laugh] Anyway, that's, sorry. Sorry if that's obtuse, but.

Karen: No, no, it was really helpful. Like that's a really helpful story to share because you brought something up like we don't know.

Karen: I don't know.

Mike: Correct.

Karen: I don't know. When you're talking about something that you're going through, it could be this moment or it could be all of these other things that you're carrying with you too. We don't know. Yeah.

Mike: And and walking in there. Yeah. I didn't realize that it would hit me, so yes. I thought I was doing a nice thing. Right?

Karen: Yeah.

Mike: And so sometimes all these feelings come at you. I can be teaching in the middle of a class. All of a sudden have a panic attack and I don't know where. I didn't anticipate that.

Karen: Yes.

Mike: Or, you know, think about my own relationship as I go from room to room and patient to patient, right? Yes. A lot of, well, you know, you ladies always bring things up that make me go, okay, we need another part.

Lynn: [laugh]

Karen: [ laugh]

Mike: So I, when, when I, I wrote, I just wrote down self-care. I can we do that?

Lynn: [laugh]

Mike: Can we do that?

Lynn: Yes, please!

Mike: All right.

Karen: Oh, yes, we can.

Lynn: That's a favorite, uh huh, right? That's a favorite.

Mike: Okay. Well look forward to that coming up folks in another few weeks. Thanks again. You know how this goes. There are links to Ebb and Flow connection, and these ladies on the end of the podcast here. And we really enjoy these conversations. Thanks so much for having them. And for those of you listening, listen in next time. You never know what we're gonna get into. Until then, we encourage you to stay safe and oh, a little foreshadowing. Take care of yourself.