Season 2, Episode 2: Charles Meeks and Carmen Llanos

On this episode we talk with Charles Meeks and Carmen Llanos about their contributions to the Spring issue of the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability.

Charles' creative piece reflects theologically upon his lived experience of depression and taking the anti-depressant Wellbutrin. Carmen's paper presents an outline of a program called "Swearing Circles" which is based on the model of listening circles, (but instead of listening, you swear!).

Watch the podcast on Youtube with closed captions here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r19qibBYFUk

You can read their pieces here: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cjtmhd/issue/view/230

 

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Transcript

Welcome to the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast, hosted by Miriam Spies and Amy Panton, which comes out of the Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability. We both live and work lands that have been homes and remain
homes to the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron Wendat, the Neutral; and the Ojibway/Chippewa peoples and other peoples who have cared for the land. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work on this land and are mindful of the need to repair broken covenants. This podcast is an opportunity to model how faith communities 
can engage in theological and spiritual conversations around madness and cripness. If you need a full transcript you can find videos on our Youtube channel. We want to say before we
begin that topics and conversations we are raising throughout our time together are often
hard! They are hard for mad and crip people ourselves and hard for our families and loved
ones. So, do what you need to do to take care of yourselves, your bodies, minds, and hearts.
And now, here is our episode.

Welcome to this episode of the Mad and Crip Theology Podcast. We are delighted to be joined today by two of our contributors Charles and Carmen so welcome to you both!

Thank you. Thank you. Yes we're so glad that you're both here and we were just talking before we started recording that we're all sort of in the same area like geographically so we're all enjoying this beautiful spring day finally after like the freakish snow we had recently we can enjoy some beautiful weather so uh what we usually do at the start of the podcast is just ask our um ask you guys to introduce yourselves if you don't mind and just let us know your name and your pronouns sort of like your work or your location where you find yourself right now and then if you could also give us a visual description of yourself that would be great just for our folks who who need that so Carmen I’m going to ask you to start if you don't mind! Sure my name is Carmen Llanos my pronouns are she/her um I work as a Spiritual Care Practitioner at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto and I am also the minister of community development at Birchfield Bluffs United Church in Scarborough um so I do a lot of work in the hospital with different kind of patients and I’m focused on one of my areas is mental health and how to uh as my article you know to provide support for people who are grieving and who are experiencing losses or having spiritual or emotional issues they're dealing with and my connection to the journal was through a course that I took at Emmanuel College and I I wrote a paper as a project and then in it turned into something bigger and more "researchy" so that's when uh I had Amy and Miriam said you know let's publish it so I was very happy about it and I wear glasses I have short what like white let's hold on peppery hair um I have a big mouthand I smile a lot and I’m wearing right now at top with uh red white and blue stripes.

Thanks so much Carmen and we do love it when things turn more "researchy" I like that that's the best thing I’ve heard all day so thank you and welcome and Charles would you mind introducing yourself? Sure uh my name is Charles Meeks my pronouns are he/him uh visually I’m a white man with a a brown beard and circular glasses and I’m wearing headphones and I’m wearing a checkered shirt that's kind of greenish and salmon-ish in in color I don't really know what colors these are um but yeah um so I uh I do a lot of things I guess um my sort of like day job is uh is I work for the Anglican diocese of Niagara um based here in Hamilton Ontario and I do a couple things at the moment I’m the editor of the diocesan newspaper but I’m primarily the coordinator for the Niagara School for Missional Leadership which is um an initiative started by our bishop bishop Susan Bell and we're just sort of exploring how to share knowledge um about about missional approaches to to you know to life to the church um in this diocese so I I do a lot of the the nuts and bolts coordinating of that I also teach as an adjunct for several institutions um uh most recently um for Wycliffe College where I did my PhD and I um yeah I I think and write and study sort of vaguely theological things but but a lot of my work has sort of been on connecting uh early church theology to modern theology particularly around the sacraments um and I’ve most recently started thinking a lot more about uh the role of mental health and and how how that functions um as you know we understand ourselves as complicated humans and um yeah so I so my first piece is sort of a personal real reflection on on my own journey through that and uh and I’m working on something further um about the sacraments and mental health but uh I my brother is a registered psychotherapist so uh I’ve I’ve sort of been uh marinating in this stuff uh secondhand I guess for quite a while but um yeah it's it's good to be here and talk about this stuff and I’m excited about you know connecting with with folks who have also been thinking about these things. Well welcome to you both thank you so much.

We'll jump into our first question which is for both of you you speak about the significance and frustration and anger in your work and we wondered if you might share about how you experience your faith helping or hurting how you express these emotions and we wondered if Charles you might begin? Sure yeah.

Yeah frustration and anger are two of those emotions that I think um get really sidelined from Christian experience uh I mean and really sort of life experience in in general uh you know certain portions of of the human population are told that anger and frustration are it's sort of inappropriate with their you know presentation of of gender and self and and identity and um yeah and I don't think Christianity has helped that very much at all uh I think I’ve been privileged as sort of as a man to to be allowed to be anger angry in certain ways and I think in a lot of ways that's um it's actually kind of championed that idea of righteous anger uh and I think the problem though in my own experience is that anger and frustration are usually seen as expressions of power and um and for me I have felt the most deeply when I have felt the least powerful like I have the least control over what's happening in my life uh whether it's external circumstances or it's sort of the way I’m I’m processing what's happening around me and trying to handle emotions and um yeah I usually you know anger and frustration ends up as the first uh outburst uh before I’ve had proper time to process emotions and um which which means that I’m not thinking spiritually at all sometimes when I’m angry so it's been a it's been a journey for a really long time to think through actually how learning how to process my emotions uh rel relates to my understanding of you know what what is the spirit doing right now and um and a lot of time I you know I I think most recently I’ve been thinking about how how the Spirit kind of baptizes uh those emotions when when when I can reflect honestly and realize that it's not just self-righteousness it's not it's not just egoism uh for why I’m angry uh I you know I sound like this perhaps overly reflective pious monk but I you know I’m that's not me at all it's this is just stuff I’ve been I’ve been thinking through and and yeah so I get I mean I guess the the the simple answer then after all that caveat uh work is is that my spirituality has helped me be okay with my anger as a as a way of expressing my like true inner feelings but it's also helped me not let that anger control the way I see myself or the way I see whatever situation um yeah I guess that's what I would say there.

Thank you Charles for sharing the role of anger. And Carmen?

Yes I’m with Charles 100 percent about anger um like for me um I’ve always been told you know that uh anger is not a good feeling it's a bad thing and uh in my faith tradition like it was the opposite to love and it was the opposite to what the Christian people should do but Jesus got angry and I’m like I think that we should think about that in my tradition like Jesus got angry so why he was modelling for us that anger is okay and for me it's like what do we do with anger is the problem so I think that anger is a healthy feeling and when I deal with people that blame themselves or feel guilty because they are experiencing anger uh very understandably they are angry because a lot of people that I encounter are really experiencing a lot of challenges in their lives so I when they think like you know this is not Christian or this goes against you know my beliefs and I said well God gave you feelings gave you all of them so if it's okay to be happy it's okay to be sad and it's okay to be angry and you know it's what we do with that anger so for me anger is like a red light a blinking thing uh "wow wow" a siren that tells me there's something wrong so what is wrong and it's for me an opportunity to uh address whatever is happening so why I’m angry did something uh offended me uh did I say did I see something that was unjust um what triggered this anger and if somebody says to me something and I reply back then it's maybe not the way that I would address it but in a different way so it's a I don't know if I’m explaining myself but for me uh angry anger is a good thing it's a warning sign that there's something happening that we need to address and the same way that but we don't when we're happy we're never oh I’m so happy why am I so happy? Oh that is this good to be happy? Right? But I think that anger uh it's it's not like extreme anger like right it's like feeling that I am feeling angry why is this happening what should I do about it? So yeah and it comes always from frustration about circumstances in people's lives or things like yeah all that stuff.

Yeah thanks Carmen that's really helpful and I was I know we're gonna come back to talk a little bit about your your swearing circle um project that you submitted to the journal and was published but I was just thinking while you were talking how you know a lot of people are told they need to go to anger management you know anger management therapy or whatever and we don't really have anger like teaching people how to be angry you know we don't have that kind of thing happening it's like I know growing up and in the sort of Christian circles I grew up in it was like yeah you are not supposed to be angry you're supposed to be like this like like flat line all the time but also happy you know like when you go to youth group retreats and stuff you're supposed to be like the most happy and stuff anyway um yes but we'll come back to talk about Carmen's swearing circles in a in a bit so so thanks uh both for those insights and so Charles I’m gonna ask you a question now about your piece that you submitted um to the journal and so your's, like you said was a very personal reflective piece and um about your journey with taking Wellbutrin and uh your mother's journey as well and um so uh for those who haven't had a chance to take a peek at our journal yet uh what we ask all of our authors to do is they would they submit something they write something and then they also put an author's note in which gives a little bit of a like pulling back the curtain kind of like a little behind the scene peek something they want our uh readers to know about the piece and so um Charles and your authors note you talk about how you've stopped taking the Wellbutrin but that depression is still around you and you you call it "hanging out of your back pocket" and I wanted to know uh Miriam and I were pondering when we were making up questions to ask you both have you completely closed the door to going back on these medications in the future? um and why or why not? Yeah I I have I’ve definitely not closed the door um I think it's for me yeah one of the reasons Wellbutrin was such a Godsend for me was because um I think in my own ability to to sort of cope and to process traumatic things kind of happening around me um you know well Wellbutrin uh took the edge off which is a phrase I don't I don't know I I I try not to use carelessly because I think I think yeah that can be applied to many substances but but for me truly that's sort of what it was about and when I described my ability to to think and process um and especially you know dealing with some traumatic things right in the middle of my PhD which is already stressful enough right um uh yeah Wellbutrin was sort of a first step in seeing like okay can can we clear the fog? Can we uh can we can we you know can I give myself more of a leg up for processing what's happening? And and and thinking critically and uh identifying emotional responses to things um so one of the reasons I stopped taking Wellbutrin is because my life circumstances changed uh I got out of a very unhealthy relationship I I moved to Canada um to finish my program um and and after some time and readjusting to new environments I realized like actually you know now that many of the external circumstances have changed um that's that's been sort of enough of a help um and um I I want to be clear it's not because I It's not because I view uh medication as as uh like a crutch that should be gotten rid of as soon as possible or anything like that I think that's the tradition I was raised in and steeped in uh was that medication was was bad that's what happened to people who couldn't cut it in reality right? Even though I discovered later that that my own mother had been taking antidepressants for so long and I never knew and then even you know when she was on her deathbed she was she was still being prescribed them um so I you know I called depression "hanging out in my back pocket" as sort of a um a way of acknowledging that um that it is something that uh that sticks with you it's not just being sad right? Uh and you know all of us in in this Zoom room know that that's not what depression is but but most people especially in in Christian circles don't fully understand it and I think we're also dealing with a real divide in a population where you know the economy is failing and global warming is going to destroy the planet and there's a lot of bad stuff happening and people of older generations tend to generalize and say well they're just sad because their avocado toast is more expensive you know and uh but I think I think things are starting to turn and we're starting to realize that actually it you know it's a comment it's a combination of our own physical chemistry and and the circumstances around us that uh you know who to thunk that it's complicated you know uh you can't just make yourself be happy in the same way that you can't just get a job and have that solve your problems you know? Um so it's um I I think I I think of medication like Wellbutrin as uh you know going forward as like another resource in my toolbox and um and I wish that was the way more people sort of thought about medication in particular is it's it's another resource in the same way that we look at like I don't know new developments in like running shoe technology as a resource or new developments in uh meditation techniques as ways to be more grounded and find wellness you know um medication functions in the same way for us um as as ways that we're all sort of together as humans trying to be better more full versions of ourselves so yeah.

I just want to say something uh like I agree with you with the stigmatization of uh medication for mental health uh because you know people who take a baby aspirin every day for their heart condition they are they share that people who take medication for other illnesses other issues other struggles they are not ashamed or talk of talking about that and they don't think it's a bad thing but there's all that stigma about medication in the mental health area yeah. Absolutely yeah. And we're grateful for our authors in this issue who have come out and spoken about their experiences with medication to kind of think without shame about taking it.

Thank you Charles. And Carmen we wondered if you could tell us about the current climate in the hospital with the pandemic continuing even though it's getting better it's not over and how have the staff been telling you that they are feeling? How would your Swearing Circles be of help to them?

Okay the current climate uh don't tell anybody else but it's a secret uh it's not different from what it was a year ago two years ago when the pandemic started uh unfortunately when we feel that oh this is over then it comes back to bite us in the butt. So um unfortunately the climate it's also about frustration anger so it's a recurrent theme it's all over Canada the uh health care providers are exhausted and uh you know staff feel tired overworked.

Angry frustrated...

And unfortunately also they feel helpless and hopeless and it's like there's nothing that uh regular people can do to change the system because you know it's a something that is happening all over Canada and and all over the world the pandemic has affected everybody especially in the health care system so from the beginning where there was no PPE available and uh countries were struggling to get stuff for their own people um to not having to now having the vaccines okay but then still that struggle about you know mutations and all that and when the waves hit and I think that also frustration you know uh for how things have been handled and uh seeing that you know at least we are still wearing masks in hospitals but knowing that if the next wave is here um why we are not (not WE) why other people are not doing something to keep everybody safe because it's not only about uh working in healthcare but our families we want our friends we want you know everybody to be safe and if what people some people don't understand is that having you know those waves what it makes is continues to add more pressure um and staff also get sick and then there's less people to take care of an increasing number of patients that need more care and it's allowing other people who needed care not being able to come to the hospital to get the care they needed so some people are coming even sicker than they would if they had not been so many restrictions because of covid so I think that the Swearing Circles will help people to vent to uh and because we are also in some cultures we deal with anger the same way with swearing so swearing is bad and you know it's like it's not okay and I’ve had so many times and either in ministry at the church or at the hospital when people are like very prudent and people that usually they express themselves by swearing they use these euphemisms like crap or things like that and they're like oh sorry like it's okay you know I’m a human being like I don't tell anybody that I swear too but uh those people that know me know that I do and a lot of I think a lot of I’m gonna uh out a lot of uh my colleagues in the United Church and in Spiritual Care I think that most of us swear a lot so it I think it's it's a it's helpful to uh express feelings not to use them to go against people to use them as you know uh insulting people but because uh the swear words are stored in a different place than a regular words and they are used to express emotions so we expressing our emotions uh there's nothing that compares when something goes bad than a big oh fuck! Right? If I say oh crap it's not the same I’m thinking about the word and I’m accessing the regular word but you know shit like come on so it comes from the emotional part of me it's allowing me to express to vent. If I say oh poop! Like what's that? Like that doesn't help that's just my front lobe choosing the right word so it helps so uh yeah I think that most of the Swearing Circles is a way for people to vent and it can be with swearing words or whatever words for them are helpful to express their feelings of anger because usually we go easily and fast to the sadness so I feel sad about this and we are open about it yeah I feel we are a lot of words that can explain how upset how sad how um teary we were but when we are angry is like we have more difficult expressing our anger and then if you want the swearing words then it's like a double whammy so.

Thank you Carmen. I think that's the first time we've sweared on the podcast we swore on the podcast so that's fucking amazing. Now we get to we need we get to like tick that little box on YouTube that's like does this contain explicit content but I had to I was debating I was debating I’m like should I should I not? But you know this is about Swearing Circles so you know it is what I’m sorry if you have to tick the box. No no it will give me great glee you can't run ads on it now that's the only thing yeah that's okay!

Um Carmen I wanted to ask you just as a follow-up so uh I know you and I were talking kind of offline about the idea of like actually implementing some of your Swearing Circles ideas in the hospital how's that been going? So um I have been in conversations with a couple of people um I have I know someone from a research perspective that has asked me if we would like to discuss how to uh do a trial so uh she's going through the paper right now and she saw that she thought that there were a lot of good uh things in there and uh so we are gonna have some conversations next week about it and see if there's any way that we can take that to practice I’ve also talked to uh someone in the neural science neural marketing they do all these things that put things in your brain uh from a university in Spain and um and it's like very fascinating and they do a lot of neural stuff I don't really understand what it is but they put you these things and in your head and then they can analyze those areas of your brain that are active and they do that with oxygen it's not electrical I don't know so they're also interested and see how if we could measure something if there's something that we could do but at this point we have there's still this still there in the air but uh there's some um interest about it and I’m like oh that's fucking good! It's so good I never thought that this would go anywhere it might go somewhere so yeah I’m I’m happy about it. Oh that's so cool thanks for sharing that I’ll keep you posted here please share whatever we do with them so we can share them with people here very cool thank you. So we at this point in the podcast is usually like our favourite part because we get to ask you both to talk to each other about each other's work so we just wanted to see if there's any questions you had for one another or any like ideas that you wanted to share about each other's pieces so maybe Charles I’ll ask you to begin is there anything that you any questions you want to raise for Carmen or anything you want to mention? I uh I well first I mean yeah it's so fascinating I love this and I hope it really does take off um yeah I agree with you it seems like such a simple thing and yet uh the fact that we have not allowed space for Swearing Circles and things like this is just kind of baffling but um I I love the way through this study that that you read the scriptural text and it's sort of rooting human identity and like you almost have to say like look see this stuff is in the Bible too uh as a way to kind of like uh connect with the folks that need to be convinced of this most and um I just want I wanted to ask especially because you bring up the the book of Lamentations and and I I’ve recently been connecting especially with the Psalms uh in thinking through sort of the fullness of human emotion that is really embraced in scripture so I am this isn't a very good question I’m sorry but I just wonder if if there's anything that you wanted to talk more about about your connection with with lament and anger and expressions of uh yeah just like raw human emotion in in the biblical text that you didn't have room to you know put in in this paper? Well I think that there's a lot that can be said uh about Lamentations and uh for me what I enjoy the most when I talk about it but when I read about it is us communicating with God directly that's a dialogue with God this is not oh God is this or God is that it's like God listen to me um I’m going through this! Why I’m going through this? Why are you putting me through this?

So that deep emotional connection to God as God is listening to us is uh acknowledging that God listens to us and that God suffers with us and uh for me a suffering God it's one of the most incredible powerful signs of grace um a God that suffers with us and we and loves us so much that we can say what the fuck God? Like like I don't even have worship I don't know if I need to swear worse I don't know how just to express this right now right it's like I’m suffering I’m going through all of this and and come on God right come on!

And now you're listening do something help me understand or make me understand or take things in a different way uh I’m struggling and you know I’m a child of yours so that lament and that cry to God for help for support to uh at least knowing that God is listening and that God is suffering with you and I think that it's a and being scripture being um out there for us to understand that it is okay to be mad at God to be upset with God it's a human reaction it's a human emotion and God gave us all those feelings and that's what I don't know. Thank you yeah that's yeah beautifully said I think yeah I I um one of the earliest commentaries that I’ve read on Job uh which was written in the sort of like late fourth century it's really stuck out to me because the the commentator says that the reason Job was able to to meet God face to face at the end was not because he did all the virtuous things and was sort of like granted an audience as a reward but it was because Job was willing to to cry out to God honestly and I just love that the irony is that this commentary comes from a figure that was later condemned as a heretic but but I I think they read the text better than a lot of the a lot of the orthodox commentaries on job makes sense yeah right yeah!

Wow so I would like to uh um mention Charles that uh when I read what you wrote first of all I thank you for your openness um vulnerability and I see a lot of grief there's so much grief on your paper and your writing and the way that you describe the events in your life and how they have affected you and how they have impacted you I think that it's beautiful and the way you wrote it the way you addressed things uh I find that like it's written from the heart and I appreciate your honesty and being sincere and sharing your feelings about the things that have happened in your life. Thanks yeah yeah it's a weird feeling to be honest when I’m used to putting academic distance between myself and whatever I write and publish so it's uh it's a bit bizarre but I yeah yeah I think what you've said about grief is is is yeah is you've hit the nail on the head there like it's it's a lot about carrying grief processing loss and situations throughout my life and I mean that's sort of what we're all doing in certain ways it's just learning how to do that and one of these days I want to write something on the sort of lost opportunity that the church has been given through the pandemic to grieve corporately um but uh yeah I I’m afraid I'll put too much of myself into it I don't know still thinking about that but thank you that yeah that's very kind of you to say!

Just a follow up how did it feel not having the academic distance? How did that feel and writing and then publishing this?

It felt very uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah I I don't know I think I’ve reached a point in my life you know I’m I’m nearly 40 now and I’ve spent my life weaving in and out of different ecclesial circles and academic circles but there's so little honesty about us as human beings um in the church and in seminaries and things and I was really struck

one of my one of my thesis advisors was was Ephriam Radner and and in the in the intro to to one of his newest books he talks about his own battle with suicide in his family and his own experience and I just sort of realized like I I kind of I don't I don't want to wait until I am at his point in his academic career to be honest um that's that's a you know I respect his choice um but but I feel like I feel like there's not enough time now to for folks like us like why are so many academics in particular this sort who get who who are depressed and who are trying to I mean so many of us are just trying to process our own childhoods in in some in some way right and some of us do it theologically some of us do it through you know spiritual care and therapy and other realms but but we're all very very hurt and broken people who hurt and break other people and uh and yeah so I guess I’m just putting myself out there in a certain way and I I’m happy to have the the mouthpiece and I’m I’m privileged to have that and I I hope other people uh feel the same that they could be honest and open about that stuff yeah. We are so grateful for both of your honesty about frustration and anger and hope

it's important and related to that we wondered about how you take care of yourself during this work? And maybe Carmen will begin with you.

Okay so um I use humour uh to care for my soul so I have different ways that I care for myself and my soul my mind and I should I body but I’m not going to the gym right now but I should um that's another issue uh so I use humour I like a good laugh I think laughter is one of the best medicines and it's free so also for me separating work with life outside of work my personal life um spending time with my three dogs my yorkies um spending time with my wife not so much seeing people lately because of covid but you know having friends uh enjoying you know focusing on the on what uh I usually tell uh people like taking one day at a time so it's sometimes easier to say than to do it it's easier said than done but I try that so I try to uh focus in on the here and now and say okay what can I do now that can help me deal with a stressful situation or you know something that I might need to heal from or to work with and music also helps me so on my way home I usually play music that I like and I sing and people look at me because I’m like moving and jumping and singing and that also gives me more even more pleasure so yeah I think music, family personal life, and laughter uh and also you know talking to God um about and praying for people um so you know asking God to continue to support me and to bless me as all the people bless me and as I bless others so um talking to God is also a good way for me and sometimes yeah get angry and say to God why is this happening to this person?

So yeah.

Yeah soul care oof I should probably do more of that uh no I yeah I'm so I’m also a candidate for ordination in the in the diocese of Niagara here so I I get asked this question a lot and uh I

I think um yeah part of it is learning I I yeah I’m not saying this first because I’m more pious I’m just saying it because it's I’m just thinking about it but uh yeah learning how to how to pray again I think every year I need to re-learn how to pray and and currently I’m I’m learning how to pray based on inviting Christ to minister through me rather than uh than me trying to be the number one and in my life and um and that's yeah that's been very difficult um I think the other thing uh the other bit of soul care is thanks to my therapist uh learning how to be gentle uh to myself when I think through situations and I think through how I process them and respond to them and yeah the complex emotions I have about a lot of stuff I think it's um yeah maybe it sounds too nebulous to some folks maybe who are going to be listening or watching this but um treating myself more gently means actually just allowing myself this space to to be messy with life and and to realize that um yeah actually you know I I don't want to throw around a hundred dollar words but but you know like my own Christology is being reshaped through my understanding of Christ’s humanity and uh and Carmen this is why so much of what you're saying is has been resonating with me because thinking through just the absolute nonsense that Jesus faced as a human being and and the grief that he experienced when Lazarus dies and when he's like at Gethsemane and when he's betrayed and and then the times where he's rejoicing like a "mad" person you know you know quote unquote uh you know the way the pharisees saw him uh I just think like oh like life is so big and complex and I need to allow myself to to to be sloppy and and and human like that and academics are so not good at that and especially academics training to be ordained uh you know but um but that's not what human life is like and uh and so yeah this is this is this is the the season I’m in uh to use that terrible cliche uh the Christians love but but it's just the phase of life right now it's just learning how to how to be okay with myself.

Well thanks so much Charles that sounds like a lifelong journey that all of us are on I think trying to accept ourselves and and let other people see our mess so and I’m saying that as a person whose house is very dirty right now so I didn't use the blurring filter behind us anyway okay um so we just we're aware of time um we just wanted just to see if either of you had any sort of last minute thoughts that you wanted to share with our listeners before we go Carmen is there anything?

Not that I can't think of! Okay. But I I added enough swearing words and you have to tick the box so well, we wish you the best with the Swearing Circles I hope that we can follow up with you um maybe later this year and you can let us know how things are going so thank you thank you yeah and and Charles is there anything?

Oh I think you're muted there you go yeah uh sorry can you say it again? I think you're muted there. Oh sorry! I was just uh yeah I think I’ve said enough okay okay yeah I’m very grateful for this time to to chat with all of you and yeah I think this is awesome. Okay and and we hope to follow up with you again too I hope that that both of you will write for the journal again and uh well thank you so much for being here today we really appreciate you taking the time to be with us so thank you so much! Thanks Amy and Miriam! Thank you!