Take Heart

Common Ground: Finding Authentic Connection As Special Needs Moms.

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 2 • Episode 70

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Finding connection as a special needs parent can be a challenge. This week, Sara, Amy, and Carrie share about authentic connection, what to do with conflict, and ideas on finding the support and friendship you need.

January 25, 2022; Ep. 70

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:18-     Intro
  • 1:24-     Isolation
  • 3:24-     Lies We Believe
  • 8:22-     Authenticity
  • 9:35-     All Things To All People
  • 14:14-   When People Walk Away
  • 22:00-   Communication Goes Both Ways
  • 25:20-   Creating Community
  • 31:30-   Finding Common Ground
  • 35:46-  Prayer
  • 37:01-   Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

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Carrie M Holt  0:18  
Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to offer encouragement give hope and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. As we explore monthly themes share inspiring stories and practical tips, our desire is to continue to serve you and new listeners. You are missing out. If you are not subscribing to our monthly newsletter. It releases the last day of the month, and it includes a Spotify playlist and a monthly prayer around our theme for the month. Both are extremely encouraging. We could also use your help. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while or even if you're new and something has resonated deeply with you, would you consider leaving a positive review? This allows our podcast to be more visible to others. Lastly, did you know that we have a full transcript of all of our episodes on our website?  So if you prefer reading to listening or know someone who does, this full transcript is available, and you can find that at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com/episodes. Amy Sara, and I want to thank you for joining us today. 

Carrie M Holt  1:24 
In this month of January, we have been talking about loneliness, and today we are going to talk about friendship for you, mama. First of all, I just want to mention that we all have times where we feel very isolated and alone. I can remember one time being at an amusement park with our kids when they were little and our son wasn't allowed to get on this little kid ride that had motorcycles. There was just this whole thing with it. I remember standing in the middle of that amusement park, sobbing with tears, feeling like no one can understand this. All we want to do is just do something simple, like ride a small ride at this amusement park, and they won't even let my son on. I feel like you all can relate to that. You can relate to feeling very isolated. I do feel like there's this deep desire of our hearts to be understood, and a lie that Satan wants us to believe is that we are alone and that no one understands us. I just want to remind you today, first of all, that God does. Because of Christ, we are never alone, that we've been bought with a price. The Holy Spirit resides in us, and He will never leave you nor forsake you. Secondly, I just also want to say that Sara, Amy, and I are here for you and to connect with you. We want you to know that you are not alone in this journey. Today in our collaborative, we're going to just be talking about having some real raw conversations about special needs moms and friendship. My first question for our group today is how do you find true friends? What are some tips that you guys can share about working through friendships as a special needs parent? Sara, do you want to start us?

Sara Clime  3:24  
Yeah. First I would like to talk about what you said about how Satan wants us to feel that we're alone, we're not worthy, no one wants to be with us. That's something that he puts in our heads. I would say first of all if you're trying to make some deep, true authentic connections is to start in prayer and ask God to remove that fear because you're worthy of being known. He's going to put people in your life that's going to appreciate you. That would be my first step. I think that we forget that. I think we just forget. I need to be social, I need to be this, and I have high social anxiety, so that fear is something that I've learned to pray to go into it. To say, I know, it's not you, it's Satan that's trying to deter me from this. I think that's a good starting point. I would say just start with people that you know. You have no idea who God is bringing into your life. All three of us met in a writer's group. We didn't join it as special needs parents, we joined it as writers, and we just happened to connect on the special needs aspect of things. Keep that open-mindedness that because you're a special needs parent does not mean that that's the only part of you that is worthy to get to know.

Carrie M Holt  4:56  
Yeah, definitely. I love how you said that. I think sometimes, at least I do, and maybe you're listening and you can relate to this. I often am assuming the worst about people, instead of assuming the best, instead of thinking that they do want to have a connection with me, they do want to seek out a true friendship with me. I think sometimes we go into it with our guard up. We go into it with our armor on, and expecting everything to go wrong and expecting these interactions and these connections and friendships that there's going to be a lot of misunderstanding in them. I think we have to go in with the mindset that God designed us for relationships, not only with him but with other people, that's why we have the church. That's why we have the church body that extends outside the four walls of a building, so I think we have to go into it with a different mindset.

Sara Clime  6:03  
Yeah, I really like that, Carrie, because I think we often carry that one person that we weren't their cup of tea. We did not connect. They were not picking up what I was putting down, and I carried that interaction, or maybe that lack of friendship or lack of connection into future relationships. I always have that in the back of my mind, where so-and-so really didn't like me, or they didn't like this about me. We have to let that go too. I like that.

Amy J. Brown  6:38  
I would say that it's not a one size fits all friendship. Each person in our life may bring a different aspect of what we need in friends. I think one of the lies we have is that we don't need the connection. No one's going to understand. That's a way that Satan isolates us too. I have friends who aren't special needs moms, but I go to them for different reasons. One friend is a mental health nurse, so I'm calling her all the time saying, "Okay, what do I do about this?" She doesn't know what it's like to live my life, but she loves me and knows how to support me. I think part of finding a friendship is realizing that not one person is going to meet all the needs that you have. If you have a new mom in your life and you need advice on how to do a certain therapy or do a certain kind of way to take care of your child. That's one kind of friendship, but another kind of friendship is the one that understands the grief or the anger. You also need to have friends that you can say anything to, but that requires some authenticity, which is hard. I found friendship in the most unlikely places because I was willing to be a little authentic about what I was struggling with. Now, I am not the kind of person that tells all. I'm not. I guess I've gotten kind of an intuition a bit about people that I can possibly say, Hey, this is what I'm going through. I'm amazed sometimes at the connections I make with people who aren't even special needs parents because of that.

Carrie M Holt  8:21  
I love what you said, Amy, about that authenticity, I think sometimes we are afraid to open up ourselves to let people in and to let people know, our struggles because I think again, kind of a theme that's reoccurring, is we believe the lie that we're always supposed to be okay, and that everything is supposed to be okay. I think another thing that you said is just that I think sometimes at least I struggle with this is that we expect all of our friendships to be the same, and they're not the same. You have to let people be who they are. Right? You have different relationships with different people as you said. You do have that one special needs friend who truly gets it and who has walked us on a really similar journey as you. But then you might have another one who, she's not a special needs mom, but you know, she's there to help ground you in different ways. I think that's really important.

Sara Clime  9:35  
Because you can put a lot of pressure on one person by expecting them to be everything. I don't want to speak for everybody, but at least for me, as a little girl, I thought, well, I need a best friend. I mean, you see it in the movies, you see it socially and we're marketed to believe that we're supposed to have this one connection or your husband is your soulmate, and he's everything. He's not my best friend. That's not his job. He is one of my best friends, but he's not my best friend. He's not my only. I honestly don't even like the term best friend, because I don't think that there is such a thing, in my opinion. You just put so much pressure on one person to be everything to you. I have one friend, seriously, probably if I had to label her, I would probably call her my gluten-free friend. She is always like, "Are you eating gluten?" because she can tell in my face or the way I'm hacking or stuff like that. That's just part of our friendship. That's not something that you guys provide for me. It's just a give and take. You have to be intentional with people too, and get to know them, see what they have to offer, see what their strengths are, and pull on that. Then they can pull on your strengths as well.

Amy J. Brown  10:59  
We don't have to be all things to all people. You find that one friend, and you're thinking, okay, now I have to do all the things right. That puts pressure on us, and that wears us out. We can take that same advice and apply that to how we are friends with other people. Because I know, for me, an example would be a friend at church needs a meal, and I'm already thinking okay, I should do it, cuz I'm her friend, but I can't do it because I have all these appointments and therapies. Trying to figure that out for ourselves, I think takes a lot of pressure on friendship too and it becomes more natural. Sara, when you were saying that it made me think that all parts of the body work in different ways. We're all different parts of the body of Christ. That's how friendships can work, too. I liked what you said about how we don't need to have a best friend because I do think we've read that in all our literature. It's like, oh, I need to have one. Anne Shirley needed a Diana, I need one too.

Sara Clime  11:53  
I immediately went to Thelma and Louise. That's where I go. Ever since we're little girls, somebody else needs to have the other part of the heart necklace. It just doesn't work that way. I mean, it's just not that way. I think too, that other people are going to put that pressure on you as well. There have been people in my life that have expected me to be all things to them. That's just not who I am. I'm not going to be available 24/7. I won't talk on the phone, I don't want to talk on the phone, and it's okay not to be that for everybody too.

Carrie M Holt  12:36  
Yeah, I think another thing too, is, maybe we carry this over from our teenage years, but we feel like we have to have this huge group of friends. You have to be the most popular and have all these people around you. I tend to be kind of in the middle of an introvert and extrovert, and so it takes me a while to get comfortable. Then I tend to want a lot more connections, but what that does on the flip side is it burns me out. I have to keep up with this person, and I have to care about this person. Then you get empathy fatigue and care fatigue, and we can't really afford that as special needs moms. I think we have to be aware of what relationships are life-giving, and what relationships are life-draining and invest in the ones that are life-giving, knowing that we always don't want to be on the receiving end. I'm not saying that we're always on the receiving end, but that we're choosing our friendships and our relationships wisely. So I guess one of the next questions that are kind of a hard thing to talk about is what do you do when people move in and out of your life? I don't want to say necessarily that you lost a friend. I know there can be volatile situations and conflict and things like that sometimes, but what do we do? Let's talk to that mom who has maybe lost a friend over her child's diagnosis, and they've walked out of her life. what do you what advice would you give her?

Amy J. Brown  14:14  
I can speak to this one. I'm thinking a little bit about my own experience with having kids that have pretty significant behavior issues. There have been many times where one of my children has made a friend and is quickly lost a friend themselves. I have some good friends that just didn't understand what was happening in our family. Not only the behavior, but the way that I had to handle the behavior was different than I would have handled it with other children. There was a lot of, what I perceived as judgment and not understanding, and also being frustrated that we couldn't do typical things that everybody else could do because an impromptu trip to the beach or to go to lunch is really hard to do with behavioral issues, because they get so dysregulated very quickly. I remember one time a friend was coming, and I had gone to see my counselor, and I was getting myself all in a big tizzy about how she didn't understand and how she was constantly making comments about, like my life, and how I felt like I couldn't continue that friendship because it was negative. My therapist said, you know, you just have to be honest about what's really going on in your life. She said, unless they live in your house, you can't expect them to know, so if you're not telling them, they're not going to know what's going on. That would be my first thing is just try to keep the communication open. Maybe there's just a misunderstanding, maybe there's something they don't see because they don't live in your house. I've said it before, I didn't understand what was going on in my house half the time, so why would I assume anybody else would. I think this comes back once again to being authentic, and having connection and being honest, and then if that friendship still doesn't hold out, because of whatever reasons, then we have to let that go. It's hard, and ask God to bring somebody else into our life. If you're constantly having to justify your life, that's not a life-giving friendship. But first, let me go back and say, I would say that you need to be honest. Even say to them, "I don't need you to solve this right now. I know you don't understand this but..." That's hard to do. But that kind of stuff, a lot of times, will take you deeper into a friendship, I think when you're willing, to be honest.

Sara Clime  16:48 
Amy, I like what you said that sometimes it's just a misunderstanding. Because I've noticed a lot of friendships where I've thought that it's just because my life is too difficult or this and this. Ken Sande in his book, The Peacemaker, talks about the majority of conflicts start with misunderstandings or miscommunication. To be authentic and vulnerable, and just approach that person in a very loving way, gentle way and say, "I could be completely wrong, but this is how I feel. I know that's not the kind of person you are." Just open that dialogue with them. That will open it up. It's a really good book, I would recommend it. We'll put that link in the show notes. It's called The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict by Ken Sande. It goes through anything just within yourself and other people. A lot of it is just that misunderstanding with people. They just don't understand. We have to understand as well, that a lot of people don't want to ask. They don't want to appear voyeuristic. They don't want to, "Well, if she's having a good day, I don't want to bring up bad stuff." It's kind of like asking somebody who's quit smoking. How are you doing with smoking? You know you don't want to bring it up if they're doing fine with it. First, just to see if there's a misunderstanding like Amy said. If there's not, and it is too difficult for them, release your grasp on that friendship, let it go.

Carrie M Holt  18:23  
That's what I was going to say too, as I think about Matthew 18, just going to that person and facing just that decision of like, is this worth fighting for? Is this friendship worth having these conversations? Honestly, I feel like true friendship is not true friendship without a little bit of conflict. Iron sharpens iron. Right? If you are unable to continue that friendship, then you have to ask yourself, is it time to let this go? I want to encourage our listeners to let it go with the idea that you aren't going to hold that bitterness inside of you because that's going to hurt you. I'm not saying that you're not going to feel pain and loss and grief over that relationship leaving. I think that we have to grieve that, you've heard me talk about this on the podcast many times. I feel like we have to take that pain to the Lord, and we have to grieve that loss of friendship, but every time you feel angry about that you just pray and ask the Lord to help heal your heart over that relationship, so you don't carry that bitterness. Because that's gonna hurt you more than that's going to hurt another person, the other person.

Sara Clime  19:49  
Yeah, I would also say that it might not be that the friendship is dwindling or fizzling out or however you want to label it because of the special needs aspect. My oldest son who's neurotypical, able-bodied, we had friends growing up because he was playing baseball, and then he started playing soccer. Well, those friendships changed because your life changed. We were talking earlier, Carrie, you were talking about the worst-case scenario, and I think we all do that to a point. We all think, what am I doing to cause this? We all feel like it's something that we have done. It's not always about the special needs aspect. It could just very well be that your life is changing. Their lives are changing. They have things to do. It might not always be about your child too. I just caution on that as well.

Carrie M Holt  20:49  
Yeah, definitely. Amy, do you have anything to add to that?

Amy J. Brown  20:54  
I was just thinking when you guys were talking that I heard somebody say that special needs parenting is Olympic level parenting. So in the same way, I think sometimes we have Olympic-level friendships. We have to maybe go the extra mile to have those hard conversations, and that's just part of it. We have to keep trying and keep reconnecting.  I'm not trying to say that other people don't have those difficulties, because we all have difficulties in relationships, but we have some added challenges. It may take some added work to make a friendship work or to find a friend. I was also going to say that sometimes the preconceived notions about our life need to be dispelled. I can't do everything that everybody else can do, but then everybody assumes I can never do anything. I cannot tell you how many times people said we were going to ask you, but we just thought you couldn't do it. It goes both ways, but it all goes back to that authenticity and being honest about what we need.

Carrie M Holt  21:59  
I would encourage our listeners who maybe don't have special needs children, don't be afraid to ask those questions to us, and to find a way to make it work. I know it is the same thing, with having a child in a wheelchair. People don't typically invite us over because I don't think they want to put us in an awkward position, or they just assume that we can't get him in their house. I think it's important to, again, like you said, we need to continue to dispel those misconceptions that we can't ever do things or that we don't want to make that effort to do it. I think on the flip side, we have to be honest, and say when it's not within our mental capacity to think about this. I can't do this right now, but please ask us again, or let's set this up at a time when you know, my son isn't in the hospital, or I'm not thinking about this right now because I've got so much going on medically. I think the theme is that authenticity, and being willing on both ends to ask those questions and extend those invitations, and be willing to be into the lives of families who have children with special needs, and to be a friend. On the other side that we're honest and we also show them, and I don't want to say educate, but that is kind of the way we do it - to educate people. Hey, we can get this ramp, we can do this thing, and I think that's important, too.

Sara Clime  23:41  
When you were talking, something sparked. When you were saying, please ask me again, when my son's not in the hospital, or my daughter's not in the hospital, or we're out of this treatment plan or whatever the case might be. I would also encourage when your child is out of the hospital, reach back out, and say hey, can you grab a cup of coffee, or whatever fits in your life? Hey, can you come and sit on my back porch because I really can't go more than five feet away from my house at any given time for the foreseeable future? Can you come over? They might say no, and it might not fit into their schedule. That's okay. Asking them, will let them know, hey, I really want to spend time with you, let's figure something out. It will at least open that dialogue back up because I have one particular friend that I'm thinking of where I had said no so many times and I didn't leave that door open like you suggested, Carrie, and she then thought she must not be interested in being my friend anymore. She thought she wasn't my cup of tea. It really wasn't that; it just was for a period of time I couldn't do anything and so on. As Carrie said,  suggest that they talk to you, but then also be the one to initiate that because I think, Carrie, you were the one that said earlier, we can't expect for them to always come to us. We are part of that friendship, and so we have an obligation to work at that as well.

Carrie M Holt  25:20  
Yeah. I loved earlier, Amy, how you talked about Olympic-level parenting. I think one of the things that we do end up having to do is, we sometimes have to either start a support group or join a support group, whether that's online or in-person to create a community, around us. What advice would you give to our listeners about creating that community around you? Maybe it is a support group that meets once a month, or maybe it's a group at a church. What advice would you give to our listeners about creating a community for them? I just want to say this. Sometimes it's hard because we have to do it. We have to be the initiators of this, so what advice would you give about that?

Sara Clime  26:19  
I don't want to be negative about this topic, but in my specific instance, I want to speak to this. My son's diagnosis does not fall in line with what is typical of a child with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. So I've actually had other Duchenne parents, and I know I have we have some listeners that are Duchenne parents, and they can probably understand and other diagnoses can understand. I think there's a saying, "If you've met one child with special needs, you've met one child with special needs." I was part of groups when he was first diagnosed online because that's really where I had to go. I didn't know anybody local, but I was online, and people ask questions about milestones. My child is walking much longer than normal, than the typical child with Duchenne walks. I've actually had people ask me, Well, are you sure that you're actually a "Duchenne mom?" I actually had that quoted to me. Then I was in another group that was really negative, it was just a lot of venting, there wasn't a lot of positivity there, and I had to make the choice to leave. All of that to say, just because your child has a diagnosis, and you find a group online does not mean that that's the group that you need to be in. It's okay to unfollow. It's okay to leave a conversation. It's okay to not be a part of that group and find another. I'm actually in another group for a completely different diagnosis, but I understand them more, and they understand me, and it's more faith-based. That's what I would suggest is just because you might have the behavioral diagnosis, or the physical diagnosis, whatever it might be, doesn't mean that that's exactly where you need to be. Be open to what you need. You're there to help other people. Sure. But you're also there to get something out of it, and you can't keep pouring from an empty cup kind of thing.

Amy J. Brown  28:25  
I really like what you said, Sara, because we don't want to be in spaces that are negative if it's not what we need. Support groups specifically, I have a couple of things to say. First of all, for the mom with a neurodiverse child, the diagnosis is sometimes hard to find, so you may be thinking, I don't know what the diagnosis is so I can't join a group, but start somewhere. Kind of look at the ethos of the group. Is the group faith-based? Is it positive? I've been in groups that are just really hard to be in because everybody's venting and they should have a place to vent, but my life was really hard, and I didn't want to read another hard story. Look at the flavor of the group, and don't not join a group just because, as Sara said, it's not your diagnosis, because you will glean from those things. I also think that pretty quickly you can find in a group the people's comments you always read, right? I always read this lady's comments, she really has a lot to say, so reach out to that person. Reach out to somebody and say, who lives in this state and who can I get together with? For the moms of kids with the neurodiverse, just start somewhere. That's my first comment. My second comment is, as we're thinking about starting support groups or finding community, I think it's really important to take a step back and say what do I need, once again. I'm 98% introverted, I'm never going to want to be in a big group of people. I hate that. That's so not my jam. I remember a couple of years ago, I sat down because I didn't know that many RAD moms, and I thought, Okay, what do I need? Well, first of all, I need a friend that can "soul" journey with me. She doesn't even have to be a special needs mom, somebody who can hear all my doubts, all my struggles with faith. Somebody I can soul journey with together, and my relationship with God. Okay, now I need a friend, I can say literally anything to, and she won't judge me. I need somebody that's just practical, somebody that can help me figure out therapies and treatments. What I did in that situation is I reached out to our adoption social worker, and said, "Who do you know, that I can talk to?" Recently, I was in a support group for transracial adoptive parents. I think I told Sara, I don't want to go because I'm probably the oldest mom, which I was. I had the oldest kid, which I did. They all have cute little four-year-olds, and I have a teenager with a lot of issues. But that group, I didn't make friends, I'm not friends with any of them now. But that group served the purpose of what I needed in that period, which was understanding a little bit more about transracial adoption. So to recap, for the listener: figure out what you need, try a bunch of different things, and be true to the things you know. If you're not an extrovert, don't think oh, a support group only means a bunch of people that I have to connect with all the time. Find out what works for you and your personality and how God made you.

Carrie M Holt  31:30  
Yeah, I love that. I was thinking, as you were speaking, as we just kind of have to think about our goals. What is the purpose of this? What do I need out of it? I would like to just speak to the listener who maybe whose child has a rare diagnosis. I can say that my son has Spina Bifida, and that's a very common diagnosis. It's one of the most common in the United States for a birth defect, but he went down a road less traveled when he ended up with a trach, a ventilator, and a feeding tube when he was six weeks old. When we left the hospital, I looked around at all of these local groups that met and thought I cannot connect with any of these people, because they're not dealing with nurses in their home and life-threatening situations. I mean, I had to learn how to give CPR through a trach when I left the hospital. God provided my one friend, whose son has a trach, a ventilator, and a feeding tube. Ironically, we were friends before we were even married, and so God certainly orchestrated that friendship. She and I looked at each other because her son has a rare form of SMA. There are 50 kids in the world with it. We said, "What is our common ground?" Our common ground is that our kids are medically fragile. Our common ground is that we have nurses in our home, which is a very unique beast to deal with. Our common ground is that our kids are in the hospital a lot, and so we decided to start an in-person support group. It wasn't very big. We set a time of the month that we were going to meet in a restaurant and grab coffee once a month. Then God just brought people to us. It might have been just through word of mouth, or we tried to have a picnic once a year. We tried to have a Christmas party once a year, so all the families could get to know each other. Those were just a couple things. So I would encourage you to look for the common ground that you have, whether it's a relationship in person with someone, like Amy said, "What do you need from that friendship?" or whether it's an online support group. One of my closest friends back when Yahoo groups were a thing. I met this lady, our kids were born like a month apart. Her son did not have a trach, did not have a ventilator, but he had had a lot of surgeries because he was born with some extra things besides Spina Bifida. We figured out that we did have a mutual friend through college, and we homeschool together. But it is amazing how God will orchestrate that. I think it just goes back to what Sara said in the beginning, and that is praying. God cares about you having an authentic connection. God cares about you not feeling isolated and for you having the support that you need in your life and asking him for it. Do you guys have any closing thoughts as we close out today?

Amy J. Brown  34:50  
I love you just want to add here that finding the common ground. We have way more common ground with people than we realize. You know, we've shared that the three of us met through a writing group. I have no idea what it's like to be frustrated when someone parks in the parking space where the wheelchair van is supposed to go. I've heard a lot about it from Carrie and Sara. I have no idea. They don't have any clue what it's like to have to lock up your knives and have alarms on the doors and cameras and dealing with the mental health issue, but that doesn't mean we don't have common ground. We come alongside each other. I will say too, back with Carrie on the prayer, I didn't know this friendship was going to happen in this writing group. I didn't know that God was going to orchestrate this. He did more than I could ask or imagine. As Carrie said, we're made for connection, so don't close yourself off because it doesn't look like do you think it should.

Carrie M Holt  35:46 
Alright, well, I would like to close with just a couple parts of a prayer from Every Moment Holy. I think you've probably heard us read from this book before. If you do not have it, I highly recommend it. They actually have two volumes now. One about grief and sorrow and then their first edition. We'll put the links in the show notes. This is actually a liturgy for leaving. And so as we leave you today, I would like to pray this prayer over you as our listeners. It says, 

"O Lord, make us ever mindful of one another, unto the end that we would labor in the days to come, as those who tend and encourage the stories of those around us by prayer and friendship and thoughtfulness and conversation, affirming and sharpening and amplifying one another's good works, unto the end that your body would be built up, and that your kingdom would be more fully realized in this world. Let us journey from here together, as the vessels of that mercy and as stewards of that wild and wondrous beauty that flows from the heart and mind of our Creator.”

Carrie M Holt  37:01 
Thank you for being with us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. Again, we are so grateful that you are walking on this journey with us. Our goal is that you never feel alone and that each week you can tune in and be comforted and know that you are not alone. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook. If you would like to continue the conversation with us today, or if you have questions or comments about this episode, please follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from our listeners. Thank you for listening and listen in next week as we start a new theme in the month of February.