 Hi, thanks for staying out late. My name's Lydia Nommish-Mitt. I am the Chicago Chief Rep for PAL, which is the Parent Artist Advocacy League. And I am here to host this lovely panel called How Your Theater Can Become More Equitable, a more equitable employer of parents and caregivers, which is kind of a mouthful. And we have this lovely panel of artists. I'm gonna go maybe down the row and introduce you each. This is Sarah and for me. I asked you for your first name and I didn't ask you for your last name. Oh, yeah, because my last name was super fun. Natalie Goldie. Natalie Goldie. Sometimes it's Glade, because out of correct. Yeah, mm-hmm, it sure is. So Natalie is an actor, writer, producer, and newly appointed director of operations at Piatra Vista, and most recently, mother of a four and a half month old Delight. Oh my God. That was a huge problem at this very moment. So good job getting out of the house this evening. But let me point out. Thank you. Next we have Gaby Randall Bent, who is director, dramaturg, mother, and PhD candidate. And that's making me tired just listing all of those things. And most recently, the newly appointed associate artistic director of the court theater, hello. Yes. Woo! Next we have Kate Wellum, who oversees all foundation, government, and corporate giving at the Goodman Theater, as well as operations in the development department, while also raising two children age one and five, so a little fantastic. Here is co-founder of On Our Team and the creator of Pay Equity Standards, a certification system that recognizes arts organizations that center fair and equitable pay. Thank you for that. She's also the associate director of programs at Lawyers for the Creative Arts, Illinois' only pro bono legal services organization for the arts. Here's our lovely director, who you already saw. I'm the director of the cleanup, obviously. And she's also the accessibility coordinator for Broken Nose Theater. So like, world's colliding, I feel like, with accessibility and talking about parenting. I should also mention, I'm also a parent, if that's not obvious. I didn't mention my own children. They are hopefully asleep. I don't know. I don't know. They're 11 and seven and seven, because like in, I've already forgotten the character's name by the way, like Julie in the play. Somebody has twins in the play. Julie has twins in the play and I was like, that's a lot. Anyway, so, I'm gonna just go down the line and just quickly tell us, like when did theater and parenting first intersect for you? Some of us, maybe it was longer ago, some of us very, very recently. So, what has that looked like for you? Go. I chose the wrong seat. I should not be like this. I won't pick you first. I'm a teacher, so I'll make sure that I divide. I appreciate that. At 2021, October, founder of those pregnant, I was working on a TV set at the time doing COVID safety. And I was immediately falling asleep at like three in the afternoon. Like I couldn't cope with it. Our schedules were 15 hour days. And I was in a long distance marriage and I was like, you know, starting winter. So I was like, this is terrible. And so I had like a combination of like a negative, positive experience, like simultaneously. I was in a sketch group that I was pining to come back to after I finished with the TV show that I ended up quitting early, like two weeks early because I just couldn't do it anymore. And then without any job prospects, I was just like, quit. Because I needed to quit and there was nothing there for me. So I was like, I'm going to come back to my sketch group and I'll just write until I can't write anymore. You know, I'll get that creative outlet done and then I'll go be a mom. And the kind of like initial response from the group was like, oh, congratulations. I mean, are you gonna be able to do that while you're pregnant? And you know, immediately I'm offended. And I'm like, what? I'm not dying. I'm having a baby. I'll be fine. I can still use my hands to type. And my feet still work. I'm good. It just, it was like immediately this kind of like static. And then I ended up getting pushed out of the group in January. So like, I got to do like two shows with them. And then, I don't know, like the vibe was just off. So I got kicked off that. I got kicked off of a lead part in a film. Which was like a portal in a mutual decision. But also, they still haven't filmed yet. So it's like, okay, but now it's not my part anymore. It's like, whatever, it's fine. And then at the same time, Wendy Mateo and Lauren Diaz from Entrevista just like took me in. I was like in the middle of filming Guitar Thief, which is like the last project I did. And I got pregnant during that project. This is a very long answer. Anyway, I was like crying in her car basically. Like she was driving us from location to location. And just letting her know what my situation was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Like I'm pregnant. I don't really know anybody in this town in terms of family. And she, like after that, like her and Lorena reached out to me. And we're like, hey, do you like to do theater stuff? And do you like to do admin stuff? Is that something you feel comfortable doing? And she's like, yeah, I can do that. And they just like took me in like a wounded bird. Like it was phenomenal. Like they've really taken care of me. And it's so yeah, simultaneous negative positive experience coupled with long distance husband who is back. So it's great. Oh. I love the story with L.K. I'm happy to see you. Yeah, I am. It was nice. The baby was born. And that's all in the closet. Okay, go. Okay, I'm ready. So I have a, yeah. So he's two and like three months, which matters because I also have a 10 month old. Oh. And I don't want you to, I don't want you to, I don't want you all to have to do the magic. Son was born August 2020, which means that I found out I was pregnant. We, my husband is from the UK. We went and for Christmas and told his family. And then we went to Paris and then we came back and we had all of these plans. And then we didn't do any of that. And I think that that more than anything is colored by experience. In that I actually got to do more than I ever could have done because everything happened in my living room for a year and a half. And so we were present and really sort of together as a family, two together. So then there were four of us. So three, four, four a year and a half. And so I think now I am just now figuring out what it means to be doing the work and to be parenting at the same time. And before everything was just sort of a jumble. And I think the thing that has been such a gift for me is that I have this new position. We have a new, a very old house, we're talking about it, but it's new to us. We had all these big life changes happen at the same time that the whole world changed. And so nothing is normal, which means that everything is on the table. And so my first time back in the rehearsal room after my daughter, I was just like, well, here are the options, like five day weeks, daytime tech. And my production manager was like, cool. And my first show back after my son, I was like, I'm gonna have to do this whole thing on a yoga ball. And they're like, great, should we dress it in black? And I was like, yes, and her name is Beatrice. And so I feel like I get to live in this place of opportunity and of calling shots that I am very grateful for because I know it's very different than what came before and what happened before. But also it's scary because I don't know what's right. Like I don't know what's possible. And so we spend a lot of time waiting it, which is also good. Yeah. I just, all these pandemic babies, I, that's gotta be so hard. I can't even imagine. Like having a kid August, 2020, I was like, well, at least it's not March. Like, I was like, we're lucky. But then it hit me one day when I picked him up from daycare and I just looked at his classroom and I was like, y'all are the babies. Like this is like, you're the, like this whole class is the moment. And they all have their little masks on. Like they're two now. And so they have to wear masks. It's crazy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. So my, my eldest just turned five, like last week. So I'm still getting my mouth around that. But I had an awesome experience. I, as part of my fundraising life, have relationships with a lot of lead funders around town and I was so incredibly lucky to be coming through as a cohort that Goodman sort of just behind the women who had the first babies. And so they were there to be my supervisors and my mentors and to hold the door and not that everything was done but that like the ground had been softened a little bit. And I have a very clear memory of going to visit a little garrity at the Cheney Foundation who is delightful and is sort of retiring. And I am sorry that to anyone who didn't get to know her. But I was five or six months pregnant and doing the thing you start to have to do where you go, so I'm pregnant. So I'm not gonna be around for like three months for a while here and then I'll be back and I sort of did that whole spiel and I said, but then that'll be handled and things will go back to normal. She's a mom. She looked at me and she went, no. That's great. I'm so happy for you, but no. And it was this, I don't know why it was a surprise to me, but it was this moment of like, right, right, two decades, that's the commitment here. And I think I did a lot of recalibrating and my boss who's got, just sent a kid to college, talks about she sort of had women she leaned on and has adages like childcare is a problem that is never solved. You will always be resolving it. So just accept that. Which I find really helpful, actually. So I am so lucky and so blessed to have those mentors and those role models and those people who came right ahead of me. Because anything I've achieved has been on the heels of something they did first. That's amazing. But I don't understand, I mean, my oldest is about to turn 12 and I still don't understand how anybody ever features out childcare. It is the most impossible thing you do with them. I don't know. I mean, I've been here for almost 12 years, so I guess it's been a while. No, it's impossible. Yeah, it's impossible. Yeah. So when you read the introductions, right? I did not include my children in my introduction. And that is kind of like my metaphor for parenting. I definitely heard stories and had friends whose careers ended when they had children. And so I hid my pregnancy until about seven months and then kind of only worked with people who would like accept and welcome a costume designer that was my background. And then two weeks after my 10-year-old was born. Born at 10, no. Um. Two weeks after he was born, I started my first tech. And it was definitely a choice that I wanted to do as a tenacious person who cares about my artistic practice and wanting to be my own person. And that's how my life really didn't change having kids. I took him everywhere with me. And then I also have a four-year-old. I took her everywhere with me, mostly working admin by that point. But yeah, I mean, definitely worked with companies that were good with parents, welcomed children in tech and rehearsals and all of that. But had friends that did not have those experiences with the companies they worked with. Yeah. And when we met, we worked together. And I think those tweens were like two and a three? Yeah. Is that right? A collaboration? Oh, right. It was some sketchbook. I don't know when it was. Well, I mean, collaboration is a great example, right? Yeah. Like kids everywhere. Oh, I had a kid in tech. I had an actor like babysitting his nephew. He's like, can I bring him tech? I was like, yeah, my kid's not gonna be there. So I need to hold some kid. I don't know. That's right. What about you, John? I don't have a second, but I have a two-year-old that I have. I have two and nine months, essentially. So he was January, 2020. So he was eight weeks old. And then the world shut down. So yeah, we also had all sorts of plans. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I took into a strike at like six weeks old. Like, you know, I was still fixing. Yeah. Yeah. That was fine. I mean, it was more to like, look, here he is, he exists. Okay, now daddy, come take him home. It was more like introducing him to the company. But I mean, they're just, for me, because the pandemic and motherhood coincided. So closely. This is my first full production back working on something. Yeah, I just wasn't sure if I wanted to try and navigate the walkers. But this show was very close to my lived experience and resonated very deeply. And I just really wanted to be able to be involved with telling the story. So I took a chance, I'm trying to figure it out. Figure out the childcare and figure out everything else. It won't be, but it's been better with support than it would have been without because I think if I'd done it with a different company or in different circumstances, it would not have been. So, I mean, speaking about, that sort of goes to my next question anyway, which is what specific things have theaters done to make your work possible easier? So what were some of the specific things on the show done that happened with prop? Yeah, I mean, well, for one, they offered a childcare stipend in addition to the stipend, which is huge. I mean, my husband is, we don't have the kind of relationship where he is a nine to five and so you can watch the kid her evening or like that's not, he's a clinical psychologist. So I, there was a lot of childcare to cover for us. And so yeah, that made it possible if it really, I don't think it would. That's amazing. And that was an offer, all right, right? That was, yeah. I mean, back in the day, that wasn't heard of. Well, I mean, I love that it's even a thing. It's a show about kids, about parenting, well, not about the kids, it was about early childhood caregiving. And I know there's at least one parent in the cast. Two parents, yeah. Both Lucy and Lynette are parents. Okay, she'll enjoy that, outstanding. And we have, you know, parents on the team out in our playwright alley, it's my parent. Obviously. Austin designer as well as parents. Oh, yeah. So we do. Okay, so let's just, what about anyone else? What's something that a theater company or any related employer has done to sort of make your work possible? Can I jump in? Yeah, jump in. The whole conversation about it's hard to figure out childcare. Part of that is the financial piece. And I have to talk about pay equity. But the floor of supporting parents is paying them a fair and equitable, thriving wage. We talk about a living wage, right? Well, that's a keep on working wage because you can't save your kids' college fund or retirement or these sorts of things. And I don't know if people know what theater workers make, but often it is sub-minimum wages, you know, 1099 contracts and all that comes with that. And so, you know, like all the extra things that companies can do on top of that are great, but it's not paying a fair and equitable wage that is in line with life. You know, it's kind of like the fluff that covers up what's actually happening below. Yeah, I understand. And, man. Yeah? During my maternity, just when things were starting to get kind of shaky, my husband was still unemployed because his contracted end, there's a lot of context there, his contracted end is in St. Louis, but he didn't have a new job yet. So I was on moms and babies, which absolute lifesaver for anyone watching in Illinois, they will pay for everything. Everything. I looked at the bill, it was like $12,500 and I didn't pay a fucking cent. So, moms and babies. So I got on insurance real easy, but then the Atravista, Lola Wendy, they were like, so for maternity leave, we can't, because that was part-time at that time, we can't offer you actual maternity leave. What we can do is... Let's keep going, just keep going. We can still pay you half of what you were normally working for every paycheck until you come out. And I was like, that's great. And I didn't ask for that. I never put that on their plate or was like, God, I'm joining you for something. They just saw that I had a need and they took care of it. And that made it easier to come back. Yeah, and that sort of chimes with finding a home where people are supported of parents and understand what the needs are and then choosing to give them your talent and work and self. Our entire staff has parents. It's amazing. And like, we're all moms, we all get it. And it's amazing. I love that. I mean, I think that, to Natalie's point, I hesitate to call it community because that also is insidious in ways that sort of takes advantage of what they talked about in the show, the sort of expectation of maternity leave. But I do think that having near peer models, like really sort of like mothering shamelessly, I think is one of the only reasons that I'm where I am. Right? Like, the Jen Goddard who's a production manager at court, my first show there, she was pregnant. And I wasn't even thinking about anything. But like, it was in my head in a way that now, this many years later, five or six years later, like my son wears most of her kids clothes, right? And so like that, and then those clothes get passed on to my good friends who I just co-directed a show with. I was pregnant during my last tech, and then she was pregnant during our tech, right? And so like when somebody says, are you okay? Do you need to take a break? Do what you need? Kids are welcome. It's not, it matters who says that. And so I think like, I think that's the point hiring and paying and empowering parents, and in my experience, mothers especially, not just so that you get their sort of maternal instincts and labor, but that also like they have the voice to say, I see where you are. I see what's going on. Like, you don't have to explain anything to me. Yeah, I think makes a lot of things that feel impossible, much more. Mothering? What is it, mothering shamelessly? I'm gonna steal that phrase. That makes my heart just like sing. Because this is what, I don't know, my kids are older, so this is what I was hoping for when I was little and I would bring, you know, just say like, no, this is what it is. Here's the baby, we have to take a break at this time. I can't come to this, you know, like just putting it out there and being visible. And that that hopefully creates more space. Okay, I'm gonna move forward. In your current role, or roles, what structures do you see in place to support parent artists? I'll start, and I'll help. Oh, the Goodman has a pile of resources, and then I acknowledge that, and then a lot of what we're able to do is become that. I, and the Goodman is, just to give you a sense, we have about 180 employees and we contract about 500 artists a year. So when we talk about two support parents, we're talking about a lot of different working environments. So I actually, for this panel, bugged a couple of people around the theater to work in areas that I don't work in about like, hey, I sort of know, but can I fact check what I think I know? So, and there is formal policy and there is culture, right? So we have eliminated 10 out of 12s. We are union everywhere, so pay is set, and we actually can't offer some of those extra perks because of the way the contracts are set. We can change working conditions. So we've eliminated 10 out of 12s. We're working towards a five day rehearsal week for Emory Shale, regardless of who's on it. We are much more flexible than we used to be about contracted artist conflicts. We have an actor in Christmas Carol right now whose kids are gonna come stay at the theater because that's what that actor needs. On the admin side, it's been a big mental progress, but currently you can get 12 weeks of paid parental leave. 100% paid leave insurance covered holding, which is pretty exciting. And you can also do things, you can accrue up to six weeks of sick and care leave essentially, and we have short term disability leave. So when you start talking about partly the leave and the baby having and that stuff, but also the physicals and the dentist appointments and the, my kid has the sniffles and I can't send them to the police town and give me half an hour to figure out what the situation is. All that stuff helps, but I would also say, and I was talking to our artistic producer, Melchia Stampley about this, and she was saying, and I think it's a great point, so I'm amplifying here, that it matters who's on the other side of the table. She's a parent. And that generally no one wants to bring their kid to work. Right? No one woke up this morning and was like, I'd rather do it on a baby to do the job I'm passionate about and I would rather do my job with a kid, buddy me the whole time, like that's no one's plan. So if someone is coming to say, can I leave early, can I come in late, can I bring my kid to rehearsal, can I bring my kid to tech, whatever it is, you're their last resort. And having people in positions of authority who get that helps tremendously. I, my awesome boss talks all the time super transparently about, I gotta leave at 4.30 today, I got soccer pickup. I'll see you on email, like that's the deal. And it makes it so much easier to say, hey, I'm gonna be at 10 instead of nine because I have to go to the pediatrician this morning or whatever the deal is. She's like, cool, see you then. We're also a hybrid workplace now. So everybody on salary, on staff, is only expected to be in three out of five days a week. And there are parents who have more complicated situations who are basically work from home as much as they want. So there's a lot of pieces and we're still thinking about how to do it better but that's where we're at. Can I jump in? Because I hear a lot of like support for parents who are on staff. And then you think of like the artists who are creating the work and mostly not entirely but their freelance contract work, new safety net, you know? And it just, you know, maternity leave's awesome. Being able to leave early is great but like that's not given to most working theater artists. Yeah, I mean, I think what our hope was with this panel is having like a variety of like from prop to the good men. Maybe it's okay. You know, what are the structures that are in place and what can't, what more can we do? I mean, and the thing is like the more places like the good men, places like the court are putting these policies and structures and cultures in place, like that's gonna, I think in a way it kind of trickled up, right? Because I think it did start with, it feels to me anyway, like it started with artists and it started with people really advocating. And maybe that's me with my advocacy hat on, thinking that we did more than we did. But I think it's also going to show like, oh, this is the expectation. The court's not doing 10 out of 12, so what the why am I gonna do a 10 out of 12 here? Like, so you know, I think it's all, it's a matter of scale like everything else, but 100%, I think freelance artists have it the hardest, right, in terms of not having a stable job and not having those longer term things like benefits and maternity leave and even sick leave. Absolutely. I don't know the structure. Yeah, I think not to belabor the point, but yes, court is also in the position, especially through the relationship with the University of Chicago, right? Where staff members have access to an incredible breadth of resources. There also, I think, is something about relationships that actually to me are the types of things that make policy versus the other way around, right? And so what it means to have a, I was thinking about this too in relationship to this panel, right? Five hour or five day work weeks, straight sixes, which are like, it's my favorite phrase in the world. 10 out of 12 is gone. Not that eight out of 10s are easy. They're still really freaking high, still dark all the time when you're outside. But like, not just doing them, but like understanding who that's for and why, right? Like, and that to me, I think is the work of like the relationality with folks that I think we're not to the point yet, but you start saying, okay, this artist is like, we have more artists around who are more women, especially mothers who are in their mid thirties. All right, and then into their forties who are a part of our relationships and we understand what the need is. We understand what the ask is. We understand what the shows are that we're programming. We understand what the lift is. We understand, and I think that to me feels really important is that it's not just about sort of like blanket policy, but it's about saying we can make changes because you're invited here and also because you're here, we understand what the consequences of those changes are and that drives what the work is and how it grows and gets better, right? Like, I think it would be easy to say this process like was perfect, right? Because it was all these parents and everybody knew what they were doing and everybody knew why you wanted to do it, but like it's actually sort of about the trying. It's about saying actually, this is what our priorities are because these are the people in the room and it's not gonna be perfect this time, but being made a priority I think matters in a lot of ways. In terms of structure, I feel like it's the culture, right? The culture at our offices is we're all moms, so we all understand when you're sending out emails at nine p.m. And you try to catch up on work that you haven't been able to do because you only have your kid in daycare for two days a week and you're packing everything into two days, right? There are days where we have late meetings and I have to go to those meetings and I just bring the kid in from daycare and Lolo just grabs my kid and whisks her away and she's like, all right, geeky time, you know? I don't even have to worry about her in that office. There's toys, there's a bucket of toys in our office. We have, I think we have juice boxes in there. We've had the husbands even come in. Everyone just, our space is, we're a much smaller staff. I think we exude a big presence, but we're significantly small administrative office and we're doing the same things on our stages, right? We're hiring smaller casts, so that allows us also, not that we don't wanna do bigger shows, right? But by being able to focus in on these smaller shows, we're able to focus in that budget on same thing, eight out of 10s where we would offer these stipends to our casts, we're able to honestly cater to their needs and it's because we're so painfully aware of how hard it is to be parent. We have something called No Work Fridays, it's total bullshit. Like it's a real No Work Friday, like we're just trying not to have meetings, right? But it's really a day where either you're gonna work or you're not, the expectation is not really there. We know that your kid is coming home hot or maybe you wanna have an extra day with your kid, that's not just the weekend and that's completely understood and acceptable. That is, for me, the structure that we have is that it permeates through our walls, that this is a parent-run facility and we don't, I mean, I really need to finish this sentence, we're just, we're parents. Yeah. Wow, sounds like an amazing play, I'm gonna hang out. So what larger, small things could the theater industry do to dissolve some more of those barriers for parents working in theater? I know Elsa, what you're gonna say about the t-shirt. Artist job theater. Yeah, I mean, there's a huge equity divide between staff, administrators, freelance artists, no matter what company you look at. There's also a huge divide for gender, so the average male artist in Illinois makes about $62,000 a year. The average woman artist in Illinois makes about $45,000 a year. It's painful, right? This is like, I can't put numbers out loud. And you see this play out in lots of different ways, both, I think, a lot of people kind of like nodded to taking less work right when they had kids and those sorts of things, but also the way we pay feminized labor versus masculineized labor. And so you'll have large theaters downtown that pay carpenters like $31 an hour and custom shop workers $17 an hour. This was last September, I'm believing it's gotten better, but that's what makes up that divide. And so you have that kind of internally as staff and then you have at every single theater that hires freelance artists, actors, designers, technicians as they're needed, a divide of pay for those folks, the access to benefits they get, the time off, the security of knowing where the next paycheck is coming which is a huge thing to be able to plan and save and plan your future. So all that is a, it's a big problem and there's been good movement on it, but it's also not enough because people are living through this right now. Yeah. Wow. Thinking forward. Yeah, I have a lot of conversations with people. I agree we should start for a while. I have a lot of friends who are still in that world, but also in my fancy downtown desktop about parent issues that get cast as mother's issues. And I think I would love to get to a place where we acknowledge that most, not most, but many families have more than one parent. And there are artists of many gender identities who are parents and working, and yet it seems to be the women who mostly have these conversations. But I would also love to get to a place where we talk about how an eight out of 10 rather than a 10 out of 12 is helpful if you have a disability. You have to take breaks at regular times if you take insulin. You need to get off your prosthetic limbs at different intervals. Some of the things we're talking about, having the ability to check out midday or say I have a conflict with this rehearsal to go take your aging parent to the doctor. Like a lot of the things that parents need are also things that people in other categories need. And Lord knows some parents are also in those categories. So I would love to see the industry get to a place where we're talking about just humane working conditions for people with complicated lives. And it doesn't necessarily have to be about parenting or mothers as it's supposed to be. Yeah, I think that's something that how I sort of preached from the beginning is whatever you're doing to make work better for parents is going to make work better for everybody. Whether it's better scheduling, better pay, more predictability, better, better. And all of it makes everybody's life better. And what else? Thinking ahead to the future, what do you dream of? Yeah, I think that there's always the risk in advocacy when you identify a need that that becomes perceived as a pathology, right? And so like just like being black, just like being a woman, just like being, I don't know, a southerner. There are so many things that put me in identity categories that folks feel certain types of ways because of oppression and white supremacy and misogyny in the world. And those aren't pathologies, they are my experience and they're my identity, but they're, and so as I'm figuring out what it means for me to be a parent and what it means for me to be a mother, the more articulate I am about my experience, the more I feel the tendency to put that in a category that, a category, really like a category, right? And I think what you're offering is something that I feel genuinely, which is, and I love this idea of, not this idea, it's a thing we understand, like the feminization of labor, right? Like so much of my work is in traditionally masculine spaces and I'm like, I'm unabashedly feminine about my approach, I'm unabashedly feminist about my approach, I'm unabashedly black feminist about my approach because the default is not the only way or even the best way to operate. And so I think I often find myself talking about, talking about work weeks, talking about hours, talking about what you ask of people, not because I think that there are metrics that we should be striving towards, but because I have operated in my body for enough years to know that the world was not meant for me and so why would I try to augment things that aren't made for me, rather than articulate the world that I'd like to live in. And I think that that's the work and that is, again, it's not on a policy level, it's on a relational level, so that people start to actually live the thing that then they begin to demand. And so offerings, conversations, invitations are very different than mandates and dictates, but they're the ways that we learn what people need and they're the ways that we learn how people buy into an industry that we all learned that we can't live without but some of us also can't live with, right? So yeah, I just think that the work of identifying who we are and inviting people to bring their whole selves into a space and modeling that readily is the work of saying, okay, I'm dismantling the way things were not because they don't work for me, but because they actually don't work for any of us. And so let's start over and I'm gonna bring all of me, what do you have? And let's talk about it, let's not guess about it, let's be about it together and have juice boxes. Yeah, buckets of toys. Yeah, buckets of toys and like whatever else. I don't know what you need today. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh, I'm holding back here. You're holding back here, it's like, I don't know. It's just, it's just amazing, I want that. I think it's probably time to wrap up, I hope we haven't gone too late, I'm worried about it. Falling asleep, no, I'm just like. I don't have a little baby at home, I have no excuse. Any final thoughts? Just so, if I could just like double down on the culture thing, right? Like, so this is work that we as parents are doing, you know, to like change that culture and I think we really do need to focus in on changing this for people who have no idea what parenthood is. I still can vaguely remember, you know, pre-parenthood. Mm-hmm, I can't, it's foggy. It's just a little bit there, right? I can still remember just how much I put off having a kid because I knew and it did happen, I knew it would affect my career for the worse, in terms of like, I haven't actually been in front of a camera except this one, since I got pregnant, right? I knew that it would affect my relationship with all of the people that I used to love working with to the point where it's like isolating and you're alone, I'm gonna cry. I think, but it's that like, those are people who you hope they'll be there and then they're gone and it's nothing you did and it's nothing they did, it's just, now your lives are so different that you can't work together, it's crazy. So yeah, it's painful. I'm not sad about it anymore, it's just thinking about it. Like, it really does affect your ability to get back to work and honestly, I just wanna get back to work, I love my kid, I need to write stuff, I need to perform, I need to create because that's what I always wanted to do and I wanna be a mother, we should give it to wealth. So yeah, I really want to change that for people who are putting off having kids. Like, people are actually doing this because they don't see any other records, they don't see a future with a child and to know now what that is, I'm like, God, I wish I met her eight years ago. I wish I could have done it, but I didn't feel like I could because it's, of course, other moms up here, there's gotta be one to choose from. Wearing shamelessly is what I'm gonna take away from this panel and that is what it takes to build a world where you don't have to fear becoming a parent and just living whatever life you wanna live and fear that that's going to ruin your career and I know that I was told that it would, I don't know about everybody else but I definitely got that message loud and clear. So yeah, go out there and mother shamelessly, guys. Fantastic. All right, I think, I don't know.