 The first chapter of my book is without death, there are no ashes to rise from. How to remember who the fuck you are, because you have to remember who the fuck you are. And you can't do that without ceremoniously. And I mean this, killing off what is no longer serving you. Breakups have left me suicidal, physically suicidal, spiritually suicidal, emotionally suicidal. And it wasn't until I realized that killing myself would accomplish nothing. It was a lot of other things that I needed to kill off. The people pleasing, the insecurity, the internalizing of other people's behavior, stuff like that. You know, I didn't wanna just say, well, kill it off. Well, love yourself. You know, do this. I point out exactly how you go about doing that. Write out everything that it is that you are no longer willing to tolerate. Forgetting other people in yourself. And use that as fuel. Sometimes it's the only way to get through to people in that position. And you have to smack them around for them to start looking at things in another way and to give up on the pity party that they're having with themselves, looking to dull the pain that is going on. And we want to help people, but they need to be able to lift themselves up or they're gonna continue that relationship in another form with somebody else. Or worse, how they were treated, they might end up treating their next relationship, the next person they're with in that manner as a sort of revenge, thinking that they're getting better with themselves. To make those changes where they can be a better person and then finally be in relationships that are healthy, change is going to need to be made and growth needs to happen. And I just got a big dose over the weekend of just how people fear change. I had two friends over the weekend that I was hanging out with who both complained of the same thing. We're now all getting older, I'm 48. So they're complaining about how they feel in the morning, not thinking clearly and not being as productive. And both of them, I know don't have good diet. So I mentioned, hey, have you ever thought about taking sugar from your diet? Maybe giving up the soda, the pushback that I had gotten over just that. I didn't tell them to reconfigure their diet and they hit the gym and I was like, if you take sugar out of your diet, I will guarantee you will feel better, you'll look better and you'll think clearly. And that was too much of a change in a task. They both looked at me as if I was out of my mind and then cast me off is a health nut. Well, you have to be a health nut because that's the only way they can continue on with a habit that they know deep down is not really great. And the thing is, is when you're not happy in your own life, you're gonna hold on to any little crumb of satiation. And I talk about this in the book. These are people, whether it's relationally or it's in their diet, they're focusing more on the high of satiation than the shame of starvation. If we all went out into the desert and didn't eat for four days and someone gave us a piece of moldy bread, I guarantee you that bread would bring us back to life. And we wouldn't believe anyone that said it was moldy. We'd say, there's no way mold could make me feel this good. We're focusing more on the high of satiation than, oh my gosh, how starving did I have to be for that piece of moldy bread to bring me back to life? Life is messy, it's complicated. And the one thing that I always try to be, especially in my line of work, I see so many people and they're like, I got it all figured out. I went through a bad breakup. I lost all my money, I Uber drove, and now I'm doing a TED talk. And you should listen to me. It's not about that. Not only do they set themselves up for never being able to make a mistake because then they get crucified when they do because inevitably we all will, we're human. They're not on the journey with their people, with their community. And so they're creating a dependency. It's like they're creating almost like a cult or a religion. They want people to be dependent on them. They want people to follow them, so to speak. I still get insecure. I still get very defensive when someone says Natasha, put down the ice cream sandwich because I love it. I still get very scared and have times where I don't feel like I could carry on. But the difference between me now and when I was highly toxic myself is that those very normal human emotions no longer permeate to the point of paralysis. That's where you need to get. And I can take criticism, whether it's constructive criticism or it's just fueled in hate or whatever it may be. And I can take compliments too and understand that this isn't about me. This is actually a gift into looking into a window of the relationship someone has with themselves. So when people get defensive about sugar, they're giving you the gift of what's going on between the relationship that they have with themselves. And no one is going to be in a relationship with anyone who treats them any worse than they are already consistently treating themselves.