 All right. Well, welcome everybody. Welcome to Brain Club. Nice to see so many returning folks and new folks today. I'm Mel Hauser. I use she, they pronouns on the executive director here at All Brains Belong. So they will be having a book chat about the book together by Dr. Vivek Murthy. Brain Club, of course, is our weekly community education space where we provide education about neurodiversity and related topics of inclusion. It's a way that we bring people together based on a shared vision of what's possible as we define and reimagine health and community for people with all types of brains. In so doing, to contribute to systems change by shifting social norms. This is a place where people can collectively learn and unlearn together and promote new ways of thinking and being in order to collectively change the world. And although All Brains Belong has a lot of different types of programs, this one is not for medical or mental health advice. It's not a support group. It's not a place to discuss or solve individual specific problems or process individual trauma. This is an education space tonight. That being said, all forms of participation are okay here. You can have your video on or off. And even if it's on, we don't expect anything of you. We certainly do not need you to sit still or look at the camera or, you know, any of those neuronormative constructs. So please feel free to walk, move, fidget, stim, snack, take breaks, whatever needs doing. And you're welcome to communicate in any way you are most comfortable. You can unmute and use mouth words you can type in the chat. Sarah, would you be able to take over letting folks in from the waiting room? Yes, I've been doing it. Yep. Okay, great. Awesome. So, in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, we feel that safety comes first for everyone. And so sometimes the topics that we talk about sometimes they connect to, you know, really, really distressing memories really distressing experiences. We just ask that you discuss the impact of those experiences, not the events themselves. And this is going to be a lots of lots of space and time for discussion today and so just balancing individual needs and the collective needs of the group. Close captioning is enabled. You just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. And depending on your version of zoom, you might see the live transcript close captioning icon but if not look for the more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles and you can do the same and choose hide subtitles if you want to turn them off. And that's my visual support to open the chat box so I'll actually see it if anybody's using it. All right, cool. And just to preview before we get into tonight. Thanks Lizzie Lizzie made a slide to preview. Next month's brain club our theme is systems change from the ground up. And we have a variety of community panels I think it's going to be a really really good series of brain clubs. We'll be discussing the book together by Dr. Vivek Murthy who was the surgeon general of the United States from 2014 to 2017. And the themes of this book are around the importance of human connection and the hidden impact of loneliness on health. Usually a book chat there's a mixture of books you read the book or not read the book and everyone's welcome, everything in between. But the idea being that, you know, after understanding the hidden impact of loneliness the book also then gets into the social power of community and different ways of building community. First, I'd love to introduce our guest facilitator tonight. Suzanne Richmond is an educator former faculty at Goddard College, and a spiritual care provider. She's also the founder of the hummingbird center which is a retreat center in central Vermont, built to help people come together and cultivate a sacred and a full path forward. So thank you Suzanne for for being with us today. I'm happy to be with you. Suzanne, I wonder, because before I like I before I get into like some some slides and quotes I put together. You're the person who brought this book to my attention. What led to you doing that? Wonderful question. You brought the possibility of a healing community to my attention. First, you did that under a tree at the state house you and Sarah and many members of all brains belong. And I was lucky enough to show up one summer sultry summer night and notice what kind of deep interconnected my cereal webs you and all brains belong and everyone who's part of all brains belong had woven together. When I stepped under that tree with you all, the healing power of community was already intact. You had a task before you though that was not as much exploration with patients, but exploration with funders to support all brains belong. And I remember you thinking like you were kind of scratching your head and you were thinking, how do I demonstrate the medical necessity of connection. The way we do medicine and healing with all brains belong so that we can generate the funds we need to create a well supported enterprise. And so I kind of thought, I bet you there's some great research on that and indeed there is a lot of research about the way we connect with each other. Fully influences the way our body senses the environment which fully impacts our immune system and all the wonderful things Sarah taught about last week. We need each other to be healthy, but you needed data, you needed data driven materials. So I went to the book and I combed through it with a fine tooth comb and I was thinking about all brains belong. And I underlined a bunch of sections in there which spoke to me as the medical scientific evidence for what you're already doing to build community healing and health. That's what led me to read the book to underline the lines in the book to give you the book. And here we are. And maybe that helped you talk the medical scientific talk to your funders. I don't know, but here we are the book was worth the read anyway. Look is amazing. Thank you. Thank you for all all of this. And because of my own executive functioning. I read the, I think it took me like a year to read read the book. I'm so glad that I did and I'm going to share share some passages that stood out. Nice. All right, here we go. So, as, as Suzanne said, we know that loneliness and social isolation are bad for health. Dr. Murphy distinguishes between isolation and loneliness where loneliness. It can't be is distinct so you can be isolated but not necessarily lonely loneliness. He defines as the subjective emotional state of being alone resulting in internal discomfort. And we know that so many people feel alone in so many different settings. And despite this. Dr. Murphy writes social connection stands out as a largely unrecognized and underappreciated force for addressing many of the critical problems we're dealing with, both as individuals and as a society. He discusses driving factors for loneliness being shame and fear shame and fear conspire to turn loneliness into a self perpetuating condition, triggering self doubt, which in turn lower self esteem and discourages us from reaching out for help. Over time, this vicious cycle may convince us that we don't matter to anyone and that we're unworthy of love that should say, driving us ever inward and away from the very relationships we need most. Further, he says that the combination of loneliness and stigma create a cascade of consequences that affect not only personal health, but also the health of society. I wonder how that's landing on on folks. I could say that people in the United States, no matter what type of brain and neuro identities we have and functions we have is said that people in our country are the loneliest people of all countries. So, all of us to some degree are impacted by that social field. All of us feel some isolation, some shame, some fear. All of us feel the awkwardness around connectivity. And this, this slide is, is not pointing to the finger at one. But I think as a culture and as a society, we're all in this bath of sorts. We're less at different times in our lives. Sarah says in the chat I think it's difficult in this culture of rugged individualism to reach out for help when you need it. Right I mean we talk about it brain club, often about unlearning the myth of independence and normalizing interdependence and the book talks quite a bit about interdependence the idea of being connected to and relying on other people. That is what we need. Dr. Murphy further describes the paradox of loneliness, when we become chronically lonely. Most of us are inclined to withdraw. And there's research that shows that loneliness changes threat perception this reminds me very much of what Sarah presented a few weeks ago. We push people away and see risk and threat in social opportunities. And the hyper vigilance that comes also creates intense preoccupation with our own needs and security, which can appear to others as self involvement. And there's a quote for researcher Steve Cole, human beings are great assets to other human beings, but they can also be great threats. Dan, I think you had some questions you wanted to pose. I love this, this sad, sad image. I've been that person. I've been that one holding my knees to my chest. And my imagination creates another image next to it. If I were able to draw on the screen, and it would be of this same woman sitting on a park bench on one side of the park bench opened and leaning back. And she would put her arm out and wait for someone to come by so she could listen to them. Because on one hand, we close ourselves up like this figure in the image. And on the other hand, sometimes we can open ourselves wide to let others in. And so I want to explore that the movement between when we feel shut down, closed down, unconnected and not belonging. And when we can begin to create spaces of membership and belonging rather than othering. So, one of the questions I have for all of us. For the moment, my, my visual prompts are not so high tech, let's see if that shows. I don't know if you can see it, let's see. There we go. My question, one of my questions of the many that I carry in my life is, how do we build a social architecture of belonging? Knowing that there is a pandemic of loneliness. And another way to say that statement is how do we build connectivity and conviviality, rather than alienation and competition. And one of the things I wanted to offer is a quick glimpse of how another culture builds connectivity other than this one we're part of. And then I want to move into deep dialogue with all of you. So, I think I was in my 30s when I was invited to go on a health project in West, in East Africa. And we were living in the territory of the Maasai, which is Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania. And I was staying with a man who would fly Cessnas into the remote Maasai villages to bring healthcare and bring immunizations and help stitch up kids if they got snagged by a lion or a thorn bush. He was an amazing man and a deep healer. And he told the story, and I'm getting really distracted seeing my face there, but I will look at you all. Thank you, darling. He told the story of when the village comes together to gather to have community meetings. The men, the women, the children, they all come from multiple directions of the compound. And they all bring with them a blade of grass or a reed. And an elder is sitting in the middle of the compound under the tree with a cow horn. And everybody one at a time puts the blade of grass in the cow horn. And if somebody does not put the blade of grass in the cow horn or the reed, that means that person is hurting. That person needs to be seen, heard and recognized and held by the community. And so all attention is given to the one who is the most alienated or the most unpeaceful or maybe feeling the most vulnerable. And Pat, who was my friend who I was visiting who flies the Cessnas into these villages to do the medical care. He said it was quite amazing that everybody in the village would check in with the person who withheld their reed or their grass. And I ask myself, when do we do that in our culture? How do we come together so that we can all put our grass or our reed in the cow horn and know that we're all ready to be together? How do we dissolve the alienation and the hurt? How do we dissolve the other ring? So I wanted to ask if anybody else wanted to tell a story of when you saw others being welcomed in or when you especially yourself felt welcomed in. And it can be any kind of story. You can put a few sentences on the chat or maybe one of you feels like saying something about a special time when you didn't feel lonely or you didn't feel alienated. You can take a few more deep breaths with this question because it might be bringing up the sense that it's rare in your life. Or like myself, I don't talk a lot in public but I am very curious if anyone has even a smidge of a story when you noticed somebody creating an environment where it felt like there was more belonging than less. Either for you or for somebody else. Yeah. So thank you. This is really amazing. I was just at a workshop and I am often uncomfortable in social situations and it was one of these places where there were lots of tables and everybody had lunch together. And there was one day where I just didn't have the courage to go up to a table and say, can I join you? So I sat alone hoping someone would join me and nobody did. And, you know, maybe I was putting out a vibe that I wanted, I don't know, but it was really hard. And so the next meal I just walked up to a table and of course no one ever says no, right? But it was this hurdle of getting through it. And then the next day someone came up and said, can I join you? I was this back and forth and I was watching it the whole time and it was really like this pain and joy and pain and joy, but a very great learning experience of just, you know, most people are compassionate and don't want you to feel alone. And that's kind of what came out of it. So anyway, the PS is that one of the roomies that I had was sort of staying in her room and I invited her to come on a walk with us. And it kind of changed her experience because I think she was also feeling the same thing. So thank you for bringing this up. It's really gorgeous. What a really gorgeous to use your word story. It's quite visual. I could I could be there with you as you told it. And like the social architecture of places where we eat can be really difficult at times. I walk into the wayside, for example, and I see a lot of single people sitting by themselves eating their whatever they've ordered, you know, and fish and chips. And there's a part of me that just wants to sit down next to them and create conversation. I also don't want to invade their space. So it's not simple to navigate what you just described you navigated. And it sounds like you were experimenting a great deal in that process of, hmm, what will happen if I sit here? And then what does it feel like to have somebody sit here when there was no one there before? And then, hmm, what will happen if I reach out to my roomie to say, would you like to? You know, again, experimenting and what I'm hearing is a lot of self awareness and a lot of dignity and a lot of sensitivity and empathy and grace that you practiced because you're listening to yourself and listening to the others around you. And you're you're working with shaping a space and there's a lot of improv that goes with shaping a space like that and experimental process. And now that you've described that, how in your life might you continue to experiment with that kind of social architecture of building connectivity, connection, relationship? Do you see yourself having more courage or curiosity? Okay, there. I think I'm just going to, I live, you know, I'm pretty solitary anyway, but when I go out in the world, I think my attunement will be heightened to what other peoples are experiencing. And, you know, particularly just really looking at inclusiveness more these days and understanding how painful it can be to not be included, you know, for some people. So, yeah. And I really want to also read Sierra's comment in the chat that I think connects to what Gail just said that support and belonging looks so different for different people. And I think there's a lot of assuming on how others, especially marginalized groups want to be included, instead of finding out what does belonging really feel like for each individual person. Thank you, Sierra. That's really important. And I think what we try to do here and in Brain Club is like this, this social experiment in a way. It's the idea of the social architecture Brain Club, I think, is the idea of creating multiple ways of participating with the idea that, you know, if, if observation is a completely valid form of participation. And typing in the chat having your video on or off, you know, having direct communication, not and just like because there's not going to be one one way Sierra. Yeah, I, I just wanted to elaborate on that I think you know I, I grew up in a family that really love throwing lots of parties and my way I like to interact at parties now that I'm, you know, old enough and realize this is to sit and watch and listen and be quiet and kind of passive and that was always really thought of as oh you're not having fun you're not enjoying yourself. Let me come pull you out and pull you into the center. And it made me assume that I didn't like parties and I didn't like hanging out with people and that's not the case it's just I never, you know what when you don't have that. When you don't have the experience of what does belonging look like in a way that feels good for me it's really hard to imagine that when all you've experienced is, you know, the scary cafeteria lunchroom in middle school or whatever that looks like. So true. So true. And it is so much about like who is the architect. And in what is the, you know, the dominant culture the dominant neuro brain culture, forgive me I don't have all the wonderful language you all have at the ready for myself. But each of us have the power to be part of the design team of those spaces, including as I was so grateful to hear a few weeks ago with Sarah Sarah's presentation. For some of us going out into those spaces is especially difficult. Those of us who were much more introverted. Those of us who get along just fine with companionship with ourselves. It is very much what kind of structural spaces do we want to create to sense belonging with ourselves and with each other, because belonging is also an inside job. As we were, as Mel was mentioning earlier, the subjectivity of one can be alone and not be so lonely, one can be alone and be very lonely. But when you're designing the kind of space you need, what does that look like? What are the, maybe another person wants to say something about a unique environment that did fit you, or that you helped shape to fit yourself, or that you might have even helped shape to welcome another into it. Is there anybody else who has an experience they want to share? You cut it out, Mel, Mel just said. I always do the thing where I mute myself and speak in the wrong order, so Monique, go for it. I saw your lips. And I wasn't watching a busy meeting. Hi, this is Monique here. Oh, I'm muted. I'm muted, right? Oh, you're good. No, you were great. Beautiful, I hear you. Okay. Well, I just, this February marked six years of me being housebound, so I do not spend time with people. It's very fleeting when I do spend time in person with people. And that's okay. I'm 85% of the time because I am by nature a solitary person. And I enjoy solitude and I enjoy silence. But sometimes it gets a bit hairy. So about maybe two years ago, I started just reaching out to people in my life and saying, Hey, can we just, can we spend an hour, sometimes we spend three hours, can we spend an hour, I need to do something. And I just, I don't want to do it alone. Can we just spend an hour in Zoom? And our cameras don't even, we do leave our cameras on, but I'm like, I give the option. We don't even need to have our cameras on. We'll be muted, listen to your own music or be silent or whatever and let's just do our own things. But let's know that somewhere someone's hanging out with me and I'm hanging out with you. And so I have a group of people that I can do that with, I can. And then we now actually gather on Sunday afternoons and spend time together online, just doing our own thing. Whatever that is, sometimes people take a nap. Like it's just, it's just really wonderful or they log in and they go for a walk and then they come back to say, Ciao. So that's how I, that's one of the ways that I cultivate community. And this brain club here is a place where I have felt welcome, like from the moment I landed in this space, I have felt welcome and understood, which is just such a unique experience to be understood. Yeah. Thank you. I could cry. I was wondering how long it would take until somebody could, until somebody mentioned all brains belong as as a space where they felt so welcomed, you know, a very healthy, open, welcoming environment. And I love your language around cultivating community, the use of that phrase cultivating community. And you're doing that together. And that's the name of the book. And you created and cultivated community when you asked a friend to hang out with you using the technology of co zooming while you were doing your own thing. And that's very insightful request. And now look at what, what's that, what that can turn into the Sunday gathering space. And there's a neuroscientist whose name escapes me for the moment Dan Siegel, that's who he is. And he talks about the social field. And the social field is so much bigger than being in the same embodied room together. And the social field is current and present and vibrating when you intend it, when you bring it upon yourselves with your friends when you co zoom and hang out and do your own thing. Like, I fully believe we're creating that social field, whether we're in the same room or not, or whether we're just in the same alignment as you talked about. So there's other deep research around guarding each other's solitude. And I feel honored to witness your solitude in your home. And I feel like you're my guardian and I'm your guardian anytime you're alone and I might think of you or anytime I'm alone and you might think of me. And we're guarding each other's solitude as well. And that's a place of being with each other without needing to be in a complex social web that might be overwhelming to our sensory systems. So, cool. I'm glad that all brains belong feels like immediately a welcoming place where you felt understood course it does. I'd like to connect this discussion to the research on what's known about why this matters. So, Dr Helen Stokes Lamper wrote social isolation and loneliness are akin to a chronic long term condition in terms of the impact they have on patients health and well being. And yet of course, this is often ignored and perpetuated by the healthcare system. Often at least the folks a lot of the folks that we know have had the experience of feeling invalidated dismissed like the opposite of feeling understood by their healthcare through their health care experiences and the impact the impact of that can be can be so profound. And that's why you know it all brains belong. We say that healthcare is more than medical care. People come here because they're looking for social connection. Many of the people, if not most of the people feel like I don't have it I don't know how to have it I, I'm not the kind of person who can go to a group and like be comfortable there. But it turns out when, and I think Suzanne to your point about like the architecture the intentional design of a space, even a virtual space, like that's really what, what we have been, I think, co creating and so many of you that they've been part of this journey all throughout you know and so invaluable to that co creation process, because it's like what what would it look like if we know that we all have different brains and different brains of different needs. What would it look like to design social connection that really could work for everybody. In a way that acknowledges that everyone has different access needs and that conflicting access needs are inevitable, because we know we know the power of that connection. And I think as it relates to brain club I think what we hear often is that when, when, when folks hear their own experiences reflected back to them like through the stories of other people that experience of feeling understood less alone. But that is social connection. It just doesn't look the same for everyone. I wonder if anybody has thoughts, thoughts about that like the idea of even like asynchronous social connection, you know, through storytelling or even like, if I read a book and someone described something I'm like oh me too. There's there's something that can be can be really powerful about that but but coming together and you know hearing hearing from other people who are saying things at brain club or you know, other places that that resonate with you what's what's the impact on on belonging. There's comments in the chat around connecting about, you know areas of passion special interests monotropic foci. You know, really when you bring people together based on shared interests and normalize that there's multiple ways of interacting about those interests. That's really important. The richness of all brains belong as an as an innovation towards learning about what belonging looks like for brains neurodiverse brains neurodiverse people diverse people. I love that question. And I, I feel like you're so open to feedback from everybody just asking the question you just asked Mel. Is I can't see the chat maybe there's a whole waterfall or cascade of people responding or not but there it is. I'm also curious I hold that same question like, how do we stretch. How would, how could all brains belong stretch to create even greater belonging, because we're the experiment is opening and it's not done. I think one thing I talked about a lot and Suzanne what you were saying about you know finding, finding belonging and community that meets your like sensory needs and that type of stuff. How, what it looks like to try to find belonging and community when you're in burnout and when you're starting from a place of, you know, if I'm starting from a place of I have a deficit in my dopamine or energy or spoons or whatever we're using if I'm starting at a place where I'm at a deficit of that. How to create belonging and community when everything feels like it takes energy to put in to really get energy out. I think that is like, you know the idea of like with chronic pain a lot tends to talk about you know exercise is going to be helpful for pain but you can't exercise if you're in pain you need to, you know it's, it's really hard to do one without doing the other. That's not a, not an answer but there's more questions. Beautiful. Just naming that is really important right because I think, you know, there's so many people in that situation but think about like Sierra we, we are having those conversations all day long. You don't know that other people are having those conversations all day long so like, you know you come to a group medical appointment or you come to bring club and you hear somebody like, you know I don't have enough spoons or bandwidth to interact with other humans like, oh, I thought I was only one. That's just part of the equation, and that you know fluctuating capacity for anything and tolerance of stimuli and stimuli that you like. It can be difficult. Monique. I'm going back to know what you open with about being alone together. And that is kind of my that is like the sweetest of sweetness for me. When I can be with somebody and we're quiet and we're parallel play body doubling. Those are my golden moments in life and the word belonging together community. It could be my own bias but I feel like they are inherently extroverted and exuberant and exclamation mark and annoying. So, I just want to my own perspective of community belonging together is quiet is still soft subtle. I don't think that that's valued in our society. I'm thinking of that book quiet right now that book is coming to mind and how quiet people are not valued in our society. That aspect of a personality, everybody gets quiet aspects, of course, but that aspect of the personality is not honored or practiced very often. Yeah, just making a point. Yeah. Check. Absolutely right and this is all part of niche construction the idea of learning about your brain and designing a life that works for your brain, you know, I have the kind of brain that really needs quiet and not interacting with other people for hours and hours and hours and hours to recharge and if I don't get it to Sierra's point about burnout it's it's all it's all connected. Reading in the chat. Paul says it wasn't until brain club that I learned about access needs and began understanding my own. I guess I realized now I'm seeking more parallel play and relationships. It seems like a lot of work to retrofit this new aspect of me into established relationships. This place however is awesome. It resonates with me a lot, Paul, and you know some it depends on the relationship sometimes relationships can be retrofit and sometimes they can't. But you can't go backwards you can't unlearn what you discover about yourself it's your access feeds. And they're valid every single one of them. The critique of the book is really important. You know I think this was like a neurotypical surgeon general. And so you're raising really important points. And I think he would appreciate a letter. I mean there's just ways to stretch the research canon that's out there so it's not going to feel like an insult to feel like you're left out your experiences omitted. It doesn't matter to the author and it's really important all these comments that are just coming up right now. And ways we gather ourselves are every bit as important as ways we gather together, the ways we find in center and show up in our own self, where we do feel like we're recharged. And Sarah your question is kind of stunning I'm going to be sitting with that for a long time that when we you know when we run out how do we recharge if we're burnt out and how do we create what feels nourishing. And it's not always for sure I think in the all brains belong population and I'm I consider myself among y'all you know. I need enormous amounts of time to gather myself every day I live up in the hills and I hardly ever come down. So it is it's a really important question. And in my life one of the things I've learned and this is just my brain in terms of that question is one of my superpowers that I'm still honing is listening. And I like to listen to other people to learn. And I learn a lot about myself that way. And that somehow doesn't take a lot of energy, but I've noticed when I listen to other people who feel really burnt out. And they have an opportunity to explore inside of themselves what's going on and speak to the the hurt or the pain or the discomfort or the sense of feeling dishonored or not seen. They become more and more present as they name what's hurting. And so I've worked with a lot of health care like I've worked with a lot of nurses, for example, who are just at the point of just crying. And to sit and listen to what what ails them where the grief is how the grief feels in their body and then to join them so they don't feel so alone in those feelings. My experience is that the health care workers who have self identified as burnt out really benefit by being given the space to express their inside feelings. Because the institutions don't give the space for that. Why did you walk away from dominant health care centers? What was missing there? Why did you create all brains belong? What are you learning through creating what you needed to be able to thrive more and less and burn out a little less? That's a great question. I mean, I think what we when we started when we started all brains belong. We didn't really actually imagine this community village of learning and healing together. That was not part of the original construct. It evolved because the community co created itself. The original construct was like, let's have a health care practice where yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely there was going to be a community programs and people were going to come and make friends because that was really important. But along the way, it was our community that said, you know, no, we need a forum that we can, you know, develop shared language and come to understand our experiences better. And that was brain club. But you know, then our community says you got to do something about employment. You know, work is crushing me. It's ruining my life and you know, so now we address employment like it was really this evolving picture. And even the way we do medical care now is very different than, you know, two and a half years ago, in terms of now we do a lot of group based medical care. And what we have found is that, you know, our community members who participate in group medical visits, they understand their health better they understand their access needs better they feel better they make more progress. And that that was truly a co created model for health care delivery. And, and so Sears charming and I think that's one of the reasons that mutual aid is accessible models that it's an intent inherently community co created. Yeah. I apologize to you Sierra, my brain turned to Sarah when I was speaking of you Sierra and some of what you had said, forgive me. I respond to that funny I was scrolling in the chat being like what's Sarah asked a question. I didn't see the question. What I was going to say is that one of the things I hear a lot. And I think I saw it in the chat earlier, it's the idea that when you grow up being taught that there's one right way to think to learn to communicate to play to socialize when you're taught that explicitly or implicitly. When you're being an adult and you're still asking questions like what is the one correct way to make friends, because you were taught that there was a correct way to make friends. And I'm nice I see it with my seven year old I see like I've like seen other adults give, give, you know, neuro normative advice or I'm like, go ask them to play. Oh my god, don't do that. Anyway, so I think it the idea of when you have not had either a lot of or any positive social connection experiences, you show up. And it's kind of like what Gail described like going to the conference room lunch table and you're like, I just don't want to do this I'm gonna stay over here I'm gonna do my thing over here. And then you're like I really recognize and there's this gap between like I wish I didn't feel this way about being here at this table or so so but but but it's it's it's the idea that like I think people don't know that there's so many people for whom that's true. I don't know why I don't like what I don't know how to make a friend I know I'm lonely I know I'm isolated but like what do I do. I think it's about like showing up just showing up, taking a chance and showing up. And when you have that experience of showing up and if it goes well, then you have something to compare to and then you know that I think I think a lot of people you know you can say it's the environment it's not you it's the environment So until someone has the experience of having a positive social interaction. I don't think they believe me when I say that until they show up and they're like, oh, that didn't suck as much as usual. I guess you're right I guess different types of social groups feel different. It's not just me. It depends on the group. What Sarah said the more we can share our vulnerabilities the more we can break down the shame and realize that we're most definitely not alone. Yeah, but it takes trust to get there right and if you've been burned. It doesn't feel safe to take that leap is I think when people are burned. They internalize the story often that it's their fault. Sarah, I saw you just turn your camera on do you want to chime in. Oh, I just love in the conversation. I mean, one of the two most, I think the two most fun things that and probably the proudest things in my life are are like 10 or so years ago. I got to be the director of a community wellness and recovery center for mental health stuff and mental health peer support and. I mean, it was so fun to like, think of all the ways that like, like I was lonely on Friday night. I never had a date I never had anywhere to go on holidays I never had. And so, in some ways it really became about me and that was a problem but but it was but it was so fun to think of all the ways that I felt excluded and marginalized, and then start to try to and start to, and, and then, and then in a lot of ways, but it also wasn't just about because, because we had, we just saw these incredible holiday parties because, and we were made a point of being open on holidays because, and it was just and we had a budget to do it so it was just like a blast to like, you know, be open on Christmas and and all the days that all the providers were closed, and have these magnificent Thanksgiving, you know, and just get the whole and just get like everybody he was in half of our community was homeless and half of our community was, you know, in the in, it was like sort of in the mental health system, and, you know, public housing stuff and, and, and so it was just it was fun to sort of like, have a little have some resources and then, and then think of all the things that the culture wasn't providing for our people and then be able to start to start to try to provide them and so and then 10 years later, when I'm like have no power and I'm marginalized because I've melted down, then trying to think of like, I have no energy and that was before zoom was popular, but we, but the only thing I could think of was I loved creating having this peer support thing, but I don't have any energy I don't have any resources. So, but it turned out that you could do like this, there was these conference call stuff was even before zoom so but you could have these conference calls. And so it was like, Okay, I think I can put something on Facebook and say, I don't have anything to do on Friday night. And I'm crazy. Anybody else feel crazy and wanted to do something on Friday night I mean it was just those kinds of things. And so we sort of started to get a network of people outside the norms, and it was based on, like, the thing that was required was really saying, I don't fit who the hell else doesn't fit. And this is what I finding. And because it was about like what I had to find what I could do for me, which meant that I would find other people to whom that also those things also appealed to because and you know there are other people who are who who couldn't take advantage of what we were offering for a zillion reasons. And what was offered. It was just that there were some people who were enough like me that calling in on a conference call on a Friday night was a hell of a lot because I was sitting around doing nothing. And then, you know, and we developed from there. So that anyway, that was sort of, but it really started with what, what I could do. And the hope that if I tried to do something and put out a call that there would be other people like me who would do something who would, who would respond and I got lucky. And that was incredibly validated. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I loved it. You know, the, the idea that you're creating what was missing in your life. And you're creating it in, you did it professionally for a long time and now you're doing it personally and interpersonally. It's Friday night. I'm feeling vulnerable or isolated. I don't need to be there are other people I can create community with and we can lift each other up in whatever way community looks like to you. Without it being one of those alienated, you know, overused words. Like there's no force field around what is community except what you create your your create your you create a lot in your life through its absence, you create what you need through its absence. And I think that's like so important. Like, because some of the times I some things I learned were because in my life I've learned because of what people what people gave me that was there. But some of the most important things have been about going into my own heart and soul and like what wasn't there and what did I need to fix it and how, how do, how do I begin to create that how do I begin to offer that so that it's, it exists in my world, but it needs to and maybe other people need me to need it to exist too. So how do how how how do how do I begin to make that of see if we can make that make that possible and if it's like what's happening here all brains belong I mean that's the whole premise that's what's so exciting about this place. Resonance, you got it. So exciting. Thank you all for letting me hang out with you guys tonight. This was amazing. I really am grateful to everyone for being here for participating in your own way and for being part of our community. I'll give you a preview of next week. I think that I haven't made the video yet, but it's a community panel of health care providers from the traditional system, who have been introduced to all the things. They're sharing about their experiences and discussing their views on what's wrong with health care and how patients can get what they need. So I've done, I've done most of the interviews so far and they're, they're pretty rich. So I look forward to sharing this with you next week. All right, see ya. Bye.