Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Rachel Sage (Part 1 of 3)

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Guest: Rachel Sage (Part 1 of 3) · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:01
  Rachel Sage is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice located in Baltimore, Maryland, and licensed to practice in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Rachel received a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in fine arts from Towson University. They are an INDRIA approved provider and approved consultant, hold ASH certification in clinical hypnosis, and fully trained in deep brain reorienting. Rachel teaches as a member of professional training program faculty at the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation and is former faculty at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Rachel primarily provides therapy to folks who experience symptoms of severe complex dissociation and or who have endured organized extreme abuse and often including ritual abuse and mind control.
• 2:00
  Rachel has experience working with a wide variety of populations in various settings such as harm reduction mobile services, Baltimore City Hall, community outpatient clinics, shelters, and private practice. In addition to their clinical work, Rachel also provides consultation to other mental health practitioners for both EMDR therapy and complex dissociation. When Rachel isn't engaged in their clinical practice, you can often find them hanging out with their dogs, doing hot yoga, or at a local metal or folk punk show. Welcome Rachel Sage. Hello.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Hold on. Hi.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. I am so excited to see you.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Likewise. I feel like I feel like we've been through some things. I know. Right?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Like, I can't even start this like a normal interview. I have to just make these things explicit because it's so real.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: At the beginning, you and I went through class together is how we met originally. Oh, yeah. And then you joined as faculty also. We have been on some committees with all the committee things. And then we've worked together in different ways and so I'm so excited that you're here today.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yay! I'm so excited to be here and like a teeny bit nervous but stoked.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So brave, So brave. Yeah.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Sure. Super organic. Obviously, you have your specialties, and I think you're a safe person to talk about OEA stuff if you want to. We can go where you want. Yeah.
• 3:46
  I always trust the process and what comes up organically is the best. It's always what's most important, and I just trust that.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: We'll probably start with just introducing a little bit. Have very carefully referenced it because I'm, like, already on the website of, like, clinicians to watch and all the things just because of my guests. And because different things have happened, I have only been really careful, but also I'm kind of over that. Like that's part of my, I'm at in therapy and reclaiming myself and my life is I'm just done. I'm done being bullied.
• 4:22
  And so I just wanna say the things. I wanna help make things explicit, both for survivors safely as we can, of course, but then also for the clinicians who treat them. It's a pretty even mix from what we can tell.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: There's a background for me of like shiny, happy culture, which I have talked about on the podcast and that being appropriated by church, which I have not talked about directly on the podcast, but I'm about to. And so, like, I am out of all of that, but that journey has been very public without me saying who because of, like, lead legal retribution and an active abuser case that is happening in court. So I don't mind talking about it, but it might come up as part of, like, the narrative for listeners in the timeline because there's a little bit of holding space I have to do for that. Okay. It's totally okay.
• 5:27
  I don't need to, like, overfocus on it, but, like, in the context of some of those culty dynamics that it's not just, oh, Satan this. Like, that it's so much broader. So as we broaden that and talk about it anyway, I might reference some of those things.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Great. That sounds awesome. I'm happy to kinda talk really broadly about it. But one quick thing, I do have a senior pug in my office.
• 5:55
  So if there's any weird noises, it's not me, and I might announce that on the recording just in case it comes through so that nobody's wondering what that weird snorting might be. Hey. My name's Rachel Sage. I am a clinical social worker in Baltimore, Maryland, and I'm licensed to work in, both Maryland and Pennsylvania. I currently work in private practice, and I primarily work with folks who experience DID or other symptoms of complex dissociation, many or most of whom have a organized extreme abuse or Ramcoa history.
• 6:51
  In addition to that, I teach for ISSTD's PTP program. I'm a EMDREA consultant and certified in clinical hypnosis and also fully trained up in deep brain reorienting. So most of my practice is providing individual psychotherapy to adults who experience complex dissociation, and I also provide consultations clinicians who either work in this area or are interested in learning about working in this area. So yeah, that's a little bit about me professionally, but when I'm not working, I have a greyhound and a senior pug who I love to hang out with a lot. I've got a pretty fluid hot yoga practice, and I really, really, really love vegan cooking.
• 7:50
  So thank you for having me, Emma.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're here.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be here.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So there's so many things I wanna talk to you about today, and you have some really specialized skills. So I wanna give as much time to that as possible. And also, I still wanna know you as a person. So how did you even start studying or getting into treating trauma and dissociation?
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I am so glad you asked this question. So, actually, before I'm a clinical social worker, I was a practicing artist and metalsmith. So I got my BFA in metalsmithing and jewelry design and my MFA in studio art where I was, like, making all sorts of, like, inflatable sculptures and wearable sculptures. And I came to I'm originally from Buffalo, New York, but moved to the Baltimore area to go to grad school for my MFA. And as I was moving through that process, I was living in a kind of rough and tumble neighborhood.
• 9:00
  And I started doing a lot of community based work. And I realized, oh, I actually think I really like this. You know, I was working on the Baltimore City Mobile Needle Exchange, like volunteering and doing a lot of kinda, like, on the ground work with street based sex workers, kinda providing harm reduction tool kits and did a little bit of, like, side side work with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and gathering data about street based sex workers who used injection drugs. And my position there was for de escalation in terms of folks being triggered by some of the questions, and I wasn't trained at all to actually be managing that. And boy, oh, boy, was I ever in some interesting situations when I was kinda doing the interviews and then deescalating with kinda controlling figures who would get upset that, you know, I maybe had a certain participant in my car.
• 10:13
  And that led me into working with an organization out of University of Maryland called Star Trek. I believe they're still around now, and I think that they're operating statewide. And they do HIV and STI testing, education, outreach, helping, like, leading folks to treatment for youth and young adults who are, you know, a part of the LGBTQIA plus community. And as I was doing that work, I started to go back to school to become a social worker. So made my way through my MSW and my first job out of school, I was working in a horrible community health clinic.
• 11:02
  I would never recommend that anybody go there, except that lots of folks don't have the resources to go anywhere else. And this client came in. They had just been released from the hospital. They'd recently been kicked out of a halfway house. If my memory serves me, they struggled with alcohol misuse and I believe other substances, but it's it's been a while now.
• 11:33
  Really, really tall, white, cis male. And I did the intake and he starts to tell me about other, and these are his words not mine, other personalities that he has and how it was so and so's fault that the halfway house that he was in was ransacked, that he didn't do it, this other person did it. And I asked about, you know, some of the other, as he referred to, personalities and within, you know, him. And he gave me a couple of names. And I'm a brand new provisionally licensed social worker, which means I'm, you know, working under supervision.
• 12:20
  I don't have a ton of experience yet. And I go to the clinical director and I said, Hey, I think this patient that got referred here from hospital might have DID. You know, this might be a little out of my scope. What do you think? And she says, oh, no.
• 12:45
  No. No. No. No. No.
• 12:47
  Do not have the capacity to do that here. I'm gonna go check with the psychiatrist, but this is just totally out of our wheelhouse. And I said, well, okay. And keep in mind, it's a Friday afternoon, and so that's important. And she goes and asks the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist informs her and I together that people with DID are dangerous and violent and that this person needs to be referred out to shelter immediately, and that we could not keep him in the housing that that community based clinic had due to, you know, the likely diagnosis based off of my initial assessment.
• 13:31
  So I was instructed to complete the assessment and to try to find a shelter. Well, here's the problem. On a Friday afternoon, at this point, it's, you know, nearing the end of the close of business day. I called a number of shelters, and they were all either completely full or it was beyond the time where somebody could be admitted. And this person would have to wait until Monday.
• 14:00
  And I knew that he would never well, I did not I didn't know. I did not think that he would be able to manage being in a Baltimore City shelter. He wasn't from the city. He it was just his stature and demeanor. I just didn't think he'd be able to make it through a weekend even.
• 14:24
  And so I asked the clinical supervisor there, you know, what to do, and she said, figure it out. And so I called a bunch of places trying to get him a referral. In the end, his mom who lived about three or four hours away was able to come and get him. However, I was left in the clinic by myself with no other staff. So supposedly, we have this, you know, horrifically violent person there, and they all left me alone with him.
• 14:59
  And, he didn't seem violent to me, but it's sort of the principle of the thing, you know, that you shouldn't really leave a brand new social worker alone in a clinic with one patient at all. And I looked at him and I said, I'm so sorry. And I'd asked my clinical supervisor what to do, and she said, well, you have to close the clinic, and I can't be there. So you're just gonna have to have him wait outside for his mom to pick him up. And so I went and got him, I think three or four cans of seltzer water that we had in the fridge.
• 15:36
  It was a really hot summer day here, definitely in the low one hundreds in terms of temperature, if my memory is correct. And I had to leave work. And I had to leave him. And in that moment, I still have my handwritten notes to this day of the names of his different parts or self states. And that day I decided I am never going to let this happen to anybody ever again.
• 16:04
  And that's how I got into this work.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: That is such a powerful story of not just I know so much, but the lived experience of people, of humans. These are the stories that we are trying to dent to, trying to bridge the gap so that we can care for people. And it's one of the reasons I love you so much. How did you get from that moment leaving that day to ISSTD?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Sure. So I had actually started my EMDR therapy training while I was still an MSW. Training is cheaper if you do it when you're a student. There's usually discounts for that. And I had made it through already the, like, first three days of the basic training, so the level one portion of it.
• 17:05
  And they went over they they didn't really cover dissociation at all other than going through the DES tube, which now we know isn't nearly sufficient on its own before providing therapy, but that's another story, and I'm getting ahead of myself. And I remember reading through Francine Shapiro's text and noticing all of the cautions about dissociation that were listed there but that were not covered in the training or were not covered adequately enough in the training. And so I thought, well, I'm really interested in using this modality that I am learning is supposedly highly effective for complex trauma, but the patient population that I'm hoping to work with, it could be really dangerous for them. So I guess I have to go get trained up on both. And that is effectively how I found ISSTD.
• 18:05
  And then I started moving through their PTP program, and that's how we met.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I think that's amazing. And it's so fun to have a friend from class where we've sort of grown up together professionally and to look back and see how far we've come, I think is one of my favorite things about the PTP classes, that when you start that level one course, that's just about complex trauma, we don't even get to dissociative disorders until level two. And to see the folks that we're teaching grow so much, like the only people in those classes are people who already care so much because they're already licensed, they're already working, they're graduate. Like, this isn't just for CEs. This isn't just for a license.
• 18:55
  These are people who are going overboard in a healthy, good, intentional seeking out kind of way to be adequately prepared to care for our folks that we work with. And to watch them come with that passion and care and then grow in knowledge experience and wisdom, it is why I still teach there. Like, is an amazing experience.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I love teaching for PTP. The students are awesome, and it feels really amazing to be able to contribute to the learning for the program that I guess I credit a lot of my education and growth too. So I'm, you know, very grateful for that program and all of the trainings that are there.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: I think it is good that we're there too, because we're diversifying things a bit. Obviously in the online conversation, one of the things that in many fields for therapy, right, there's this cis male whiteness kind of, how are we incorporating everybody else who's not male or who's not white? And when I did the podcast, it outed me by default as someone with lived experience. Then since then, being more in touch and as part of my own healing with my indigenous background or things like that, and bringing those experiences to the table. And then when we are participating in the committees, we also get to participate in who's presenting.
• 20:51
  And it's really been those years since we started doing that, that now that is starting to come to fruition. You're seeing the conferences change. You're seeing the conferences have a more diverse presentation and things like that. And then now we have you also, who is not a white cis male presenting person.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Kind of the opposite. So I know your listeners can't see me. I was kind of hoping this might come up. One of my clients it's super cute. One of my clients calls me a little goblin.
• 21:31
  And so I'm really heavily modified. Right? I'm very, very heavily tattooed. I have bright green hair. My ears are sort of shaped like orc ears.
• 21:50
  And I one of the things that I was sort of nervous about transitioning into this field was what's my appearance gonna like, how is that gonna sit? You know? Being an artist, that makes sense. But coming into a field that appears more conservative and I'm, you know, I'm I'm a I'm Jewish culturally, not religiously, but I was I was raised Jewish. I had a bat mitzvah.
• 22:24
  I'm nonbinary. So there's those other kinda, you know, identity aspects. And for me, body modification, there's a lot of things wrapped up into it, but it's an expression of my nonbinaryness. And I was really, really worried about am is anyone gonna wanna work with me? Like, how am I gonna are clients gonna clients gonna be okay with this?
• 22:54
  And as I've been growing and moving through the field, I've also kind of wondered professionally, is this gonna land okay? I joke all the time with friends of mine who don't do this work, and I'll I'll say like, yeah. I run with a bunch of white coats. You know? That's my kinda joke term for the psychiatrist.
• 23:14
  And how caught off guard a lot of folks are in the field when when I start to talk. And I think that's based off of initial judgments and appearances. And I won't lie. It has I've definitely faced a fair bit of discrimination from a number of different organizations who were going to maybe bring me in to teach or facilitate or whatever that on paper and coming with professional recommendations, you know, looked really good. And a lot of those cases, they even hired me on sort of regardless.
• 24:01
  But then when push came to shove, if a learner expressed that something about my exterior made them feel uncomfortable, I was asked to cover up or to wear my hair in a certain way so that some implants that I have would be covered and not as visible so it wouldn't be as disturbing for learners. And I left those organizations because of the mistreatment. And I find that actually being heavily modified in doing this work, it really helps. I think it I do not have the lived experience most of the folks that I work with. I mean, you know, I certainly have trauma.
• 24:54
  But not the type of trauma that most of the that I work with have experienced. And I think that there's a felt sense of understanding otherness, though, that is there. And, you know, I'm really grateful for how this decision and drive to participate in, you know, heavy modification, which is a personal decision I I made and started getting into when I was 16. And how it sort of evolved and helped me to move through the work in terms of relating to the folks that come to me to be their therapist or even the folks that come to see me for consultation. I'm trying to send a message that you don't have to be a old white cis het dude to do this work and that this work can be possible for everybody who really wants to lean in.
• 26:01
  You know, I understand that there's barriers of, you know, access to education and finances. And so I want to honor that those are things that can get in the way for folks and make this really challenging. But in terms of identity, anybody can do this. And that diversity is a really really valuable asset.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I think that especially with everything happening in the world around us that's such an important reminder and I so appreciate your courage for listeners who want to see Rachel not in a warrior kind of way because that's rude and offensive but all of our guest speakers have their picture and bio up on the blog at systemspeakpodcast.com and your picture is there, but they also can come to trainings come to conferences and meet you as a person and ask what you have to offer clinically and I love it so much. I also want to circle back to something you just said that I did not know about you, which was about your Jewishness, which we don't have to go into right now, but I just found out last year that I have Jewish heritage.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And so
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: it has been an epic journey for me of sorting that out. What is heritage? What is culture? I spent so much time in The Middle East. It's like my body already knew it, even though I didn't know it.
• 27:26
  My kids were raised on all the holidays. And so it's been a question for me, which starts us in our topic, I guess today, but unexpectedly, the question for me personally, the last year has really been, how do I, I'm going say the word integrate, which is like so careful of a word, right? But incorporate and include that in my experience without it being cult y, without it being shiny happy, which I do not mean any disrespect to Jewishness. Mean, as part of my own healing because of my background. And it has been a whole fascinating side quest, which we could talk about another time, but this is what listeners know, and they know that it wasn't last year because time.
• 28:16
  It's been a couple years now. When Amazon released the shiny happy documentary that was my childhood on all the way through college getting away from that then having another church sort of appropriate that vulnerability again not talking about individuals because individuals that I encountered were very kind and very safe and also part of a system I don't think they understood. And that vulnerability getting appropriated into another organization for church that was what we would classify under high demand religion, which again, talking about what are we talking about, what are we not talking about. So even in that example with high demand religion, that is not the same as faith or disrespecting people's faith. This is a really specific experience.
• 29:12
  There are actually podcast episodes I recorded over a year ago, by the time this airs almost two years ago, that I have held onto because it is so scary to release them. Not because the content is scary, but because the sort of threat of retaliation, because of the natural consequences that result from talking about these things so directly. So kind of along those same lines, folks with organized extreme abuse in not necessarily those settings, but in other settings, which we'll get into, it can be so daunting to talk about for all kinds of reasons. There's a lot of bullying from abusers and oppressors to not talk about it at all, or we'll do this to you or this to you or this to you, which actually is like a meta of the meta, right? And there's also the wanting to be so, so careful with survivors that we don't wanna activate them.
• 30:16
  On the podcast, we try to say activating instead of triggered so that we're not using gun language or violence language. And so it becomes a tricksy thing where it's not necessarily addressed properly and also who and where and when is anything safe to talk about is one of the questions. But I know you. I feel safe with you. I have had other guests.
• 30:42
  Well, let me say that I think it was fall twenty nineteen. I did a very simple, in response to an email, a very simple, this is what ritual abuse is talking about kind of episode, but just very, very general. And then I've had other guests that referenced it like Warwick Middleton, Susan Peace Bennett, Ellen Lachter's been on, Neil Brick has been on. So I've had a few speakers or guests where they came and sort of kind of presented about it a little bit, but I did not ask a lot of questions. I did not let it get really specific because I was so struggling with safety and also, I'm sorry, this is such a spiel.
• 31:29
  That's okay. And also I have spent the last year extricating myself from dangerous situations and getting myself safe personally and politically and all the things. And I'm kind of over that being contained. I'm over being I am over being squashed down. I am over not being allowed to speak.
• 31:53
  There's so much of my core trauma that has to do with not being able to speak or being punished for testifying literally that one of the reasons the podcast is so powerful, I think is not just, Oh, Emma's awesome, is because it is a reclaiming of my voice. And this is just one of those topics that if we don't talk about it and give voice to the existence of this as some people's experience. It's okay that it doesn't apply to everyone. We're glad it doesn't apply to everyone, but it's such a specific thing. It's your skill set in intending to it.
• 32:32
  And it would be a dis dissociated experience for us as a community not to address it.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, I notice a pattern with, and I'm not gonna name any specifics now, of some organizations or training platforms being really afraid to address this topic. And I think for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons are things like frivolous lawsuits or judgment or concerns with accreditation. And it takes a lot of courage for the folks who have written about this to stick their necks out in that way because those are some of the risks that are there among many others that I haven't named.
• 33:27
  And some of the folks who you've mentioned that you've had on this podcast, specifically Ellen Lachter, who I adore and would consider a mentor of mine. I just think that she has her website and virtualabuse.org is a triumph. And you know, her her writing in a plethora of book chapters, it's just been so valuable. And one of the things I really appreciate about Ellen in particular, and there are other people who I believe have really contributed to this area of the field. But about Ellen in particular is her the attention that she pays to terminology, language, and definitions.
• 34:19
  So that's something that maybe we can get into or maybe not. But yeah, I just think that that's really important that when folks have experienced organized extreme abuse and have experienced torture based mind control tactics, that is not the same as somebody who has, you know, experienced just and I don't mean just to minimize, but who has experienced really horrific abuse, maybe in the household or or in a different setting, like a daycare or school or things like that. There's a different texture to the work and I think a different set of skills that are needed when folks come to see us who have experienced torture based mind control. And I think some clinicians want to just write that off or write it off as like, Oh, well, all torture is mind control or all sexual abuse is mind control. And I'm not so sure about that.
• 35:29
  I think that that might be an oversimplification and not honoring the and I'm going to use Ellen's phrasing here, the systematically induced and developed identities that are created with torture based mind control.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think in validating people's experiences, there are sort of these different categories of experiences where, because we dissociate, it is so easy to dismiss ours as being valid. And so one thing we talk about a lot on the podcast is how, or in PTP classes, is how complex trauma is different than just the physical or sexual abuse because of the relational component and folks with deprivation, meaning the good that's missing, the lack of protection, the lack of rescue, the lack of nurture, the lack of attunement, all of these kinds of things we know from those fMRI studies are more damaging even than just physical or sexual abuse alone. And then we also sort of have this, category of experiences where physical or sexual abuse can also be ritualized it being intentional mind So for example, someone whose experience repeats all the time. So if it, if the parent or caregiver is doing it, in the same pattern or in the same buildup from grooming to whatever the incident is, and that's following the same pattern and it's ritualized in that way, or if the child is dropped off somewhere and that has happened in that way where there's the same process of how the abuser has access to the child and that is ritualized in some way, whether that's a daycare or a church or something.
• 37:36
  But then there's also like what I was talking about with high demand religion, where mind control comes into it in a way that has some of those gaslighting features, some of those things, but it is designed for containment and control within, which is different than this extra layer that we're gonna specifically talk about today.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yep. I think you you definitely are pivoting us in the direction that we need to go. And I guess the only thing I'd add is that not only is it not only is it power and control that is being exerted over somebody, but that the intention is that it is long term power and control that is being implemented to in the in the abuser's view to to be lifelong. Right?
• 38:36
  And to prevent disclosure to keep that person coming back, right, for you know, to the group to follow through with whatever the demands are or the needs of the group are to prevent disclosure. And so, yeah, this this systematic the systematic inducement of of the long term control is it's a it's a whole different kind of work. I think that there's a lot of transferability between working with somebody who, Allison Miller, in her 2012 Healing the Unimaginable book uses the term organic systems to describe folks who did develop, dissociative adaptations because of, for example, growing up in a home where they were experiencing incestuous abuse when they were a kid. And that was the reasonable adaptation to that horrific experience versus some of the other terms like installed DID or oh, I'm trying to remember. There's another one that Frankish and Smith I think it was Valerie Senison in her book, but I can't pull it up in my brain right now.
• 40:04
  There's another term besides installed DID that they use in that book or, again, Ellen's term of systems that have been, you know, systematically induced and have had developed identities created. So the texture of the work is different, And I think that working with folks who are coming from a OEA or Ramcoa background requires additional skill sets and understanding beyond that of treating organic DID. And that is, I think, one of the the things that makes the work a little bit more challenging. There's lots of there's lots of things, but that's one of the things. And the baseline, I think, though, still for all of that is the therapeutic relationship.
• 40:59
  Right? You were talking earlier about, you know, the importance of feeling safe with somebody. And, you know, I I might personally say, like, safe enough because some folks might not ever be able to cultivate a true sense of feeling of safety. But to have that safe enough therapeutic relationship to even begin to start to do any of the other work that's required.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: That's so important, what you're saying about safe enough. And it's something that we have talked about on the podcast. And I think it's also important to emphasize that that may shift sometimes, not just over time, but depending on state shifts or different folks inside, what feels safe at different times is going to change depending on what experiences are. And so like even talking about feeling safe with you, I feel safe with you because I've been in the trenches with you as a student. Feel safe with you because I've been in the trenches with you as a committee member.
• 42:05
  I feel safe with you because I've seen evidence of your work and I've heard you speak about your work and I hear how you speak about people and the language you use and the identity and culture you bring with you. And these things for me add to safety so that we can even get to hard conversations. And also I've spent like what's gonna be the equivalent of a whole episode already not talking about what we're here to talk about today? Because it's that hard, right?
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: This conversation will be continued in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to us and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together.
• 43:20
  The link for the community is in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also care for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too.
• 43:47
  That's what peer support is all about. Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.