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Who Is Lauren Castle — and Why This Podcast Exists · The Lauren Castle Show

• Lauren Castle: A big reason that I think this podcast is only just now coming out and being released. Despite having thought about launching this podcast for years at this point, and you know, going down and talking about functional medicine for pharmacists and all of these things, it was like sometimes you have to live life first to get. mind the lessons and the gold and the gems to then be able to share with other people. And I really feel like that was the case for me, that I sort of needed to just live my life first rather than publishing it all on the internet in today's world as we often do. Welcome to the Loren Castle Show, a podcast for people on a path to well-being, body, mind, heart, and soul. Join us for conversations at the intersection of pharmacy, functional medicine, and psychedelics. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling inspired to step into your power, speak your truth, and live your most authentic life. Let's begin. Welcome to episode one of the Lauren Castle Show. In today's episode, I want to walk you through a little bit about what this podcast entails and I thought the first place I'd like to start is just with the name. So why the Lauren Castle Show? I actually considered calling this podcast the Dr. Lauren Show or the Functional Medicine Pharmacist Show. But at the end of the day, this podcast is personal. It's not intended to be medical advice from me to you. It's really meant to be my journey and my story as a human. That has been on this journey of health and well-being through body, mind, heart, and soul for the last 13 plus years. But really and truly, when I think about my journey from becoming a pharmacist, moving into functional medicine, and ultimately in discovering psychedelics, this has all been deeply personal. So That's where we're going to start, is what actually got me into pharmacy in the first place. So growing up, I always knew I wanted to help people, as most pharmacists and people who enter medical professions do. But I was very squeamish of like needles, particularly. I would pass out anytime I had to go get blood drawn or get shots at the doctor's office. And so I knew that I wanted something that I didn't have to actually touch people and. I ended up getting a job as a pharmacy technician ⁓ at an independent pharmacy in my hometown of Monroe, Michigan. And it was a perfect match. It was like organized chaos is sort of how I felt. And I just really enjoyed it. And so I applied to pharmacy school at a few different places, Ferris State, Ohio Northern and Finlay University. But Ohio Northern was like the perfect place. ⁓ it was a zero six program. They were super well established. I had ⁓ connections and professors that I knew that worked there, and so it just made sense. So that was how I got into pharmacy school. Fun fact, I also considered being a veterinarian at one point and a nuclear physicist. ⁓ my dad actually works in nuclear power, and so I got to work in nuclear power plants during my summers off from pharmacy school. But I ended up choosing pharmacy and thought that I was going to own my own pharmacy one day. That was my plan. I loved working in the independent pharmacy and just had that sort of entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, to have my own business. But when I was in pharmacy school, I actually met my husband. and that was how I ended up joining Walmart. So I got an internship with Walmart in the summer after my fourth year. And that led me to moving down to Dayton, Ohio and starting my career. And never in a million years would have expected that I would have enjoyed working for Walmart so much. But that first summer, it just it felt like working in an independent pharmacy, except that I had all of the resources of the world's largest company at my back. ⁓ The recruiters who were at the college fair, like, I just loved their energy. They were so happy and friendly and fun. And I was like, I want to drink the blue Kool-Aid. Like, let me in. And so that was something else that sort of wove through all of my years working there. Was I was really involved as an intern with doing like career fairs and figuring out you know, how to network with all of the leaders in the company and just I just loved all of it. And so I had shared my story in a corporate like newsletter that was just about Walmart's 50th anniversary and ended up getting picked up by the home office newsletter. And then like our VP of health and wellness sent it out to the whole company. And my boss's boss's boss was like, ⁓ my gosh, this is like one of our interns in our area. And that was the moment that I realized, wait a second, I'm one person out of two million people, and my story matters. Like, wow, okay, there's something here for me. So that began my journey of climbing the corporate ladder. but shortly after we graduated pharmacy school, I was working as a pharmacy manager in Springfield, Ohio, like just super excited. And my husband actually got the call from his company that we were going to Michigan. ⁓ we were being relocated. And so I was really grateful that I had done all of that networking because it allowed me to then be able to get a job at another pharmacy and become a pharmacy manager in Michigan. But it was in Michigan that we actually discovered functional medicine. So I tell this story a lot when I'm talking to pharmacists ⁓ about how we discovered functional medicine because I find many people discover it through their own personal journey or the health journey of a loved one. And so, you know, I hearken back to calling this the the Lauren Castle show instead of the Dr. Lauren show because I discovered functional medicine not as a pharmacist or as, you know, a doctor of pharmacy, but as a wife. Like as a wife with a husband who I love dearly and I wanted to help him get better and I was out of tools. Like basically I was like, they probably could give you some Zyrtech and some Xanax and some Fentermine because this is Detroit in like 2015 and that is essentially what everyone was on. And I knew that that wasn't the goal, right? Like we were doing everything right. To live a healthy life in terms of trying to eat healthy food according to the food pyramid, right? So things like whole wheat bread and skim milk. ⁓ we were trying to go work out at the gym. We're trying to get enough sleep, but those basic lifestyle things weren't moving the needle for us. And that was where we found this flyer in the mail for an integrative wellness center. And All of the symptoms that they had listed described all of his issues perfectly. So it was like gut issues, brain fog, fatigue, ⁓ sinus issues, you know, no one specific diagnosis, but this sort of collection of symptoms. And so he went in and signed up for this 12-week program. We paid out of pocket for it. It was actually led by a chiropractor who was trained in functional medicine. And started this elimination diet and did a whole bunch of labs that I had never heard of in pharmacy school for things like food sensitivity testing. And it turned out he had candida overgrowth. So candida was something I had only understood as what happens if you're immunocompromised. You can get these fungal overgrowths. But in this case, we're talking about the microbiome and the fact that you can have. Different bacterial or fungal overgrowths in your gut that can cause a whole host of symptoms. And so once we figured out that sort of root cause for him, it completely changed the game. And we were able to treat that with more high-powered sort of herbal products. You can also use pharmaceuticals, but in this case, we were able to use products that had things like oregano in it. ⁓ and again, this is a little different than just. Taking some oregano and like adding it into your food. These are professional quality supplements. And so that's what sort of intrigued me as well about this functional medicine approach is that it's taking natural medicine, but using it in a modern way. And it's also looking at more sort of cutting-edge types of testing that can look at things like your microbiome or your immune system or neurotransmitter metabolites, right? And really give you a much bigger picture. So functional medicine completely transformed his health. And that was the moment I knew I need to learn how to do this. So at the time I was exploring master's programs. I was considering doing an MBA or an MPH because I knew that I wanted to have this sort of bigger impact in again, climbing the corporate ladder and like making a difference. At a larger scale in terms of public health working at Walmart. But as I was researching different functional medicine certifications, none of them quite felt like they were going to translate very well in terms of being widely recognized or accepted in the sort of mainstream medical world. So I actually found a master's of science in human nutrition and functional medicine through the University of Western States. And it was in partnership with the Institute for Functional Medicine. So it was perfect. It was literally like everything that I wanted to learn in a master's program that I felt like would give me that sort of credibility, which side note, I did not do a residency post pharmacy school. If you're not familiar, pharmacists normally do ⁓ six years. Up to eight years even of training to become a pharmacist, and then can do an additional one or two years of residency. So I had considered doing a residency either in like a business related field. So there's like pharmacy administration, residencies where you graduate with an MBA or like a master's in, you know, pharmacy administration, leadership. I'd considered doing a residency with NCPA, which was the National Community Pharmacists Association. there's also fellowships with groups like the Ohio Pharmacists Association. So I was really involved in running associations during pharmacy school. And that was a path that I had considered, but I already had everything lined up with Walmart and just decided to trust that and go with it. The other more clinical path, if I had to have Chosen a clinical path would have been actually in psychiatry. psychiatric pharmacy as a whole field. There's actually all different specialties for pharmacists, ⁓ everything from geriatrics and cardiology to just what we call pharmacotherapy, or there's ambulatory care, which is like primary care, and so many more. Like they're literally adding more specialties every year. but Psychiatry was something I was really fascinated by out of all of my clinical modules that we did and clinical rotations. ⁓ I joke that I was one of the B's and C's get arm D's students, but my psych rotation and psych residence or psych rotation and psych module were the ones that I really kind of just thrived the most and was like fascinated by it. And some of that comes from my own personal story as well. Of my mom having alcoholism and struggling with mental health. And so I think there was just something in me that knew this was important. And I didn't quite know why yet, but later on I would find out. So back to Michigan doing that master's program, we ended up moving again from Detroit to Flint, Michigan. This is 2016 during the water crisis. So now I was kind of just immersed in this area of figuring out heavy metal detoxification, right? Things that again, we really didn't touch on in pharmacy school, but that are a huge part of the functional medicine process in terms of understanding someone's environment, their lifestyle factors, potential toxic exposures. Like this is just standard workup. And so It was a really amazing opportunity to sort of start using my training in real time and talking to people about nutrition right there in the pharmacy. So as I was getting more immersed in the functional medicine realm, I started teaching other pharmacists about functional medicine. So I was speaking at the Ohio Pharmacists Association. and that was where I launched our little Facebook group back in 2017 with. like 30 pharmacists in it, which it grew to 500 pharmacists within a year. And as of today, we're at almost 5,000 pharmacists. So the movement has really continued to expand. ⁓ and then I was speaking at the Michigan Pharmacist Association, and that was where I launched our blog and our website for the Functional Medicine Pharmacist Alliance. So I started these just as a sort of hobby or a passion project. never with any intention of it becoming what it is today, you know, in terms of monetizing it or building a business around it or quitting my job in order to lead this organization. But life just has a way of taking you on a journey where you need to go. And if you can trust that calling, then it's gonna be an incredible journey. So I got started with Doing FMPHA on the side, I got promoted again. I was a clinical pharmacy manager for the Metro Detroit area, overseeing 13 stores. And in that role, I was able to actually implement more clinical services for point-of-care testing for the state of Michigan, which was just, again, really exciting, right? Being able to actually check a patient's glucose level in their cholesterol panel and combine that with my functional medicine training to say, you know. Just because you're in the quote unquote normal range doesn't mean that it's optimal. And here's all the things that we can do to start improving not just these numbers, but what the numbers mean, right? The metabolic dysfunction that's actually happening beneath the surface that we want to catch before it becomes full-blown diabetes or leads to something like heart disease. So it was just really exciting to be able to be in that type of role. but As life would have it, there was more corporate restructurings this time that brought us back to Ohio. And so there was kind of a pivot point there that I could have left Walmart and gone all in on functional medicine and gone into working for another independent pharmacy. I really considered that path. But as fate would have it, There was one market health and wellness director position that opened up right back in Dayton, Ohio, where we were relocating to. And I again had done the networking that I needed to do to know who the regional was that had just gotten promoted. And it all just clicked and I was able to get that position. But at the same time that we were. getting married and moving back to Ohio and taking on this new role and finishing my master's degree and growing an organization, my mom officially got diagnosed with liver cirrhosis. And I literally flew from Detroit, Michigan, when I was doing a tour with the VP of Health and Wellness and interviewing for my market director role to South Carolina to the ICU, where she had patorenal syndrome and a collapsed lung. And we didn't think she was gonna make it out of the hospital. But if there's anything I could say about my mom, is that she was truly a cat with nine lives. Like, I don't know of any human being that has had more ICU stays and come out alive than that woman did. But she made it out. And that moment began a four year journey of caregiving for her, of again, working through the corporate ladder. and really growing FMPHA on the side. And it was incredible. ⁓ and of course, the pandemic. So fast forward a little bit, 2019, I get this opportunity to go to Walmart's headquarters, our home office in Arkansas, and present on my vision for functional medicine in Walmart Health. And we sort of had this green light to go ahead and start building the concept for what would be a Walmart cafe. So we would have healthy food and nutrition classes, ⁓ cooking classes, we'd have nutritionists that would be working as part of the team with primary care, behavioral health, dentist, optometrist, and of course pharmacists, and sort of really bridging the gap between what happens when someone would leave the clinic. with a new prescription and diagnosis and all of these things, and then have to go out and start shopping without having any knowledge of what they actually need to purchase, to buy, to cook for themselves to help reverse that disease. So that was the concept, this whole like integrative health model and sort of bringing in this functional medicine approach. And we were this close to launching our first store in the beginning of 2020, but Yeah, the the silver lining is that, you know, had we launched it and then the pandemic happened, it all would have been shut down anyways. So I always talk about in our boot camp that the timing is always divine, right? And some people will say rejection is protection. And I absolutely feel like that was the case in this scenario because yeah, it it didn't work out like we wanted it to, but it made me realize in that moment that I couldn't put all of my eggs in one basket and hope that some corporation was going to make my dreams come true for me. So that was the moment that I came home and I started F and PHA. And there was another moment in that time period that we were at a functional pharmacy symposium and someone had actually asked me, like, how do I join your organization? Like they literally were handing me a credit card and saying, like, I want to be part of this. And that was also the the sort of moment that I realized, okay, there's something here that we need to actually take seriously and and grow. So I came back to Ohio from that project. Again, it was just crazy. It was crazy for everyone to live through the pandemic for those two years of 2020 and 2021. And anyone who was caregiving during that time period of not being able to see your loved ones and, you know, having to just be patient as much as we could and work with the parameters that we were given, ⁓ it was really hard. And that was sort of the beginning of my own health journey. So I obviously was like burning the candle at every end. But on top of all of that, I had also been working out with a bodybuilding coach, not with the intention to compete, but just with the intention of like getting really strong and fit. ⁓ But it wasn't in the healthiest way. And so behind the scenes, my hormones were a wreck. I'd also been on birth control for 15 years at that point. And finally was starting to realize that okay, maybe this isn't the best thing. You know, I think as a pharmacist, we feel so empowered by modern medicine. And certainly For me, it felt like birth control was like the greatest invention ever, right? It regulates your cycles and, you know, makes you have all of this extra energy. At least for me, I felt that way. But once I realized that it really was just sort of covering up my natural physiology, then I started to question, like, okay, maybe this isn't The best option for me anymore. So I'm super grateful that I had another fellow pharmacist friend who kind of walked me through the approach to natural family planning and tracking your cycles with an aura ring and the natural cycles app. And ultimately going off of birth control, it then took a whole year for my cycles to return. And I went the conventional route, right? Tried to work with my OBGYN and ask her about things like a Dutch test. And she's like, Nope, that's not a validated test. That's not evidence-based. When really and truly the company itself is doing all sorts of testing on, you know, how these work and what we're looking at. And just because it's not something that, you know, is your your standard blood work test. Those tests weren't giving us the full picture, right? It wasn't until we looked at the metabolites and we could really see what was going on that I realized, ⁓ yeah, my hormone levels are in the tank. So it was a process of reading lots of books again, not as Dr. Lauren, but just as Lauren Castle, the patient this time, and going on my own health journey to. Build back my hormone levels and my health and my vitality. And it took a lot of focus on like cutting out alcohol. That was a huge one for me. I honestly was a huge like craft beer aficionado and all the things. And, you know, I think a lot of millennials probably can resonate with this, but alcohol was a really big part of. my college experience. And, you know, despite having a mom who struggled with alcoholism, I never was at that point. But certainly binge drinking was very regular. and that takes a toll on your health. And so it got to a point that I just couldn't ignore the signs anymore of, you know, the research coming out of like alcohol is not a health food. No, your glass of wine is not actually healthy for you, which Again, wine subscriptions during COVID, right? Like all the things. and just realizing that that wasn't serving me anymore. So totally cut out alcohol. It's actually been over three years now, alcohol free, and really focusing in on nourishing my body with all the healthy foods that I could eat and like truly having to force myself to eat. And, you know, part of that is like your metabolism and everything starts to kind of backfire on you. And eating enough food is a challenge ⁓ when you're at that level of depletion. So fast forward a little bit more. I also went through acupuncture in an attempt to regulate my cycles. And ⁓ my doctor tried to diagnose me with PCOS, which I completely didn't. Fit the picture of, and thank goodness we've now renamed that condition as PMOS. so following my intuition, following my gut, doing all the things that I knew I needed to do, ⁓ and not just accepting, you know, what was given to me, which was here, just take this madroxy progesterone prescription and we'll just stimulate your cycle again. And I'm like, That's not gonna work if you don't have estrogen building up a lining. So in the end, my cycles came back the month after my mom passed away in September of 2021. And I think that moment is what told me everything I needed to know. That really and truly our bodies are so wise. They know exactly what they're doing. They are designed to keep us safe. They are designed to give us signals and messages that we translate as symptoms and think that they're just something to cover up when really it's our body's way of communicating exactly what needs attention. So from that point, I felt like I finally had my physical health back. But that was where my mental health really began to deteriorate. And my mom passing away, I'd never witnessed death before. Sure, I had grandparents that had passed before, but I wasn't present for that. This was truly the first time that I was with someone as they crossed that threshold. And I can look back at it now and realize that is why it was so impactful. But at the time, it just felt like my world was falling apart. And so I'd actually taken a step back from my work at Walmart. My boss was the one who identified that, hey, I think you need to take a little break, like for yourself for caregiving. and so I already had all the paperwork set aside, ready to go. And thankfully I was able to take 10 weeks of FMLA and go through an intensive outpatient program, which I Had never been to a day of therapy in my life ⁓ up until that. And then I went in for three hours a day, three days a week. So we played catch up on therapy, but I learned so many amazing tools that really just laid the foundation for what was coming next. So ACT, DBT, CBT, like all the things, you know, in a group setting and really just again, not as Dr. Lauren as Lauren Castle, the patient now in the same behavioral health seat that my mom was in for who her group therapy just two years before. Life kind of has a way of bringing things full circle. After those 10 weeks of behavioral health therapy, everything seemed like it was slowly improving. I had managed to get through without needing to go on medications, even though every week they would give you the opportunity to meet with a psychiatrist and ask if you wanted to start medication. And for me, the answer was always, no, I don't think I need to. I think I'm learning the tools that I need and I'm feeling the grief and I'm working through it. So I ultimately stepped down from my role at Walmart after those 10 weeks and moved into a marketing position, actually. I was still PRN, meaning like part-time as a pharmacist. but then I also got to work for a company called Brand Networks leading Walmart's ⁓ influencer program for associates. And it was my sort of first step into kind of pulling back from the corporate ladder and starting the descent. and this role just gave me an opportunity to work from home remotely and to peek behind the scenes of what it takes to run marketing for the largest company in the world, which was pretty cool. ⁓ and I figured that would be great experience to kind of add to my resume, right? I had all of this clinical an operational business, but now I was gonna have the marketing side of things as well. So I entered that role and thought that I would stay there for as long as I could because it was really fun. But by that summer, maybe like nine months in, two things happened. One, I had already burned through all of my PTO, ⁓ because the world opened back up and I was going to conferences and events and traveling again. And I wasn't even gonna be able to go to like my own event that I was hosting in the fall for the functional pharmacy symposium because I didn't have enough BTO. So that was number one. And number two, all of my anxiety came crashing back down. So despite having stayed in therapy, it just I could feel it all coming back and A little more context, you know, whenever I was still working at Walmart, the early signs of anxiety and depression for me was like my inbox was overflowing. Like I could not compose a single email. I could not leave my house in the mornings to like get to my stores. Like I would just, I felt like I had cement blocks on my feet and it was like nope. I can't do it. Like I can't leave the house. I can't open my laptop. Like I can't do the things. Like the only thing I could get myself to do was like I need to go check on mom and then I need to get to the store. And I was lucky if I could get myself up and out of the house by 9 a.m., 10 a.m. Right. When it's like normally your work day, you're already doing all the things by then. So I was feeling that sense of overwhelm coming back in. And it was starting to impede my ability to do my job. Like I could not create PowerPoints. Like I was literally going crazy, feeling like I'm losing it. Like I just can't do this. And it was creating like these heart palpitations again, which I would get at Walmart when I'd have to walk into a store to have a difficult conversation with someone. Like, and I just I was like, ⁓ my gosh, like now what? I I have optimized all my hormones. I have figured out all my nutrition. I am like physically in perfect health. And mentally, I have now exhausted my options. I have done all the things in terms of mental health treatments outside of going on prescription medications, which again, no shame, no shade for anyone who. Chooses that path and it works for them. Like I fully believe medications can be life saving for people. If that is where they're at in their life and that feels aligned for them. But I knew for me that that was not the answer, that that was not going to be the solution I needed. There was something else underneath that this wasn't just a chemical imbalance, which we've now completely completely debunked that as not even the case of how depression and anxiety works. It's a bio-psychosocial process that happens. And yeah, I just, I was like, this, there's gotta be another way. And that summer is when Michael Pollins documentary on how to change your mind got released. So I watched it and I also had three separate friends who I happen to have conversations with. Who shared with me that they had worked with psychedelics in different forms. Some had gone to retreats, others had worked with microdosing. And I just started to get curious about it. And I was very closed off to the idea of psychedelics before. Like, I'm a licensed pharmacist, there's no way I'm not losing my job over this. Like, this is illegal, all the things. But at the end of the day, I really sat with it and decided that, you know what, maybe there's something here for me and I'm going to explore this. and so I had a break in between my careers, essentially, where I was stepping away from brand networks and I was gonna be returning to work as a full-time pharmacist. But there was this little pocket window of time that I was like, okay, this is the moment that. I can try this and see if there's something here for me. And so I had my own psychedelic experience, and it completely changed everything that I knew or understood or thought I knew about the world. And from that moment, it was like this awakening again, right? Of like, wow, I've lived my whole life. on autopilot and just going with the flow and going through the motions and climbing the corporate ladder. And, you know, it took losing my mom and then having this experience to feel like the veil was just sort of lifted. And I realized just how sacred life really is and how absolutely miraculous it is to even be here as a human. ⁓ Living this life, like, wow, what a gift that we take for granted. And so yet again I found myself at this sort of crossroads of okay, I'm now leaving behind the full-time work and going into running FMPHA full-time now and just Sticking with part-time pharmacy work, you know, to sort of supplement my income. But what really changed the game was whenever I went for my first retreat. ⁓ so January of 2023, I was invited down to Costa Rica, Consumania, and to participate in my first ceremonial retreat. So again, I Was raised in like a super Christian household. So the idea of going to do plant medicines in the jungle was very foreign to me. And yet I trusted that there was something there. I I just had this sense and this knowing that being in that group setting, being in that community sort of environment with other people in this healing journey and being led by a facilitator who could hold that space for us and guide us through this experience safely was really important. So I went down and had this incredible experience that again They say that psychedelics are ineffable, meaning you don't have the words to describe what happens. But I can truly say that it was exactly that. You know, I, long story short, really just got to reconnect with my mom in spirit, ⁓ which is where the body, mind, heart, and soul piece of this podcast really comes in. You know, there was so much. Basically like PTSD that I didn't even know I was living with. That, you know, I had done all of this mental health therapy, cognitive therapy to help address the thoughts, right? And the anxiety, but the trauma that was still in my my heart, right? That felt like this knife in my chest and that would just feel like my heart was breaking from grief at different moments. All of that finally lifted. And again, it was just so incredible to like have this felt sense of knowing like everything's going to be okay. And again, raised in a Christian church, fully believe in like heaven and Afterlife and all those types of things, but like to actually embody that experience, that is what psychedelics did for me. It took this sort of like esoteric out there sort of concept and made it very real in this reality. So it was life changing. And that sort of began my little Journey into understanding plant medicines and and working with different psychedelics over the next two years, which I'm not going to get into all of that in this like intro trailer episode. but I will say that a big reason that I think this podcast is only just now coming out and being released, despite having thought about launching this podcast for years at this point. And, you know, going down and talking about functional medicine for pharmacists and all of these things, it was like sometimes you have to live life first to mine the lessons and the gold and the gems to then be able to share with other people. And I really feel like that was the case for me, that I sort of needed to just live my life first rather than publishing it all on the internet. in today's world as we often do. And so I sit here now, June 5th, 2026, that I'm recording this first episode, feeling like I've been able to really integrate all of these lessons that I've learned on this journey, and that it's time to start sharing more of them with the rest of the world. But honestly, just with the people in my own community and my own life, my own family even, which I have to laugh. Like as I sit here and record this, I am actively thinking about my own family members, ⁓ because they've always been my biggest fans. And my mom certainly was my biggest fan. She would tell everyone, everywhere she went. That her daughter was Dr. Lauren Castle. And I used to cringe. I used to be like, ⁓ stop it, stop, mom. Like you're embarrassing me. But like, man, a mother's love. So I'm grateful for her and for all the lessons that she taught me. And, you know, I think we'll get into talking more about mental health over the course of this podcast and just how backwards we really have it in America and how much I wish if I could go back and get her into a trial for psychedelics. There's incredible data. I got to meet Matthew Johnson at MAPS conference in 2023 and hear about all the work that they're doing on using psilocybin for alcohol, you know, and Just how much it's helping people. And you know, I I also sometimes think that there are parallel timelines happening, and maybe in another lifetime that was the case. But, you know, that was the cool thing about my my ceremony in Costa Rica was it was like this sense that my mom finally got to do her healing right alongside me. That was sort of it was like her angelic self. getting to like heal and let go of everything that she had been through and that I had been through. And so, you know, people talk about having angels on their side or spirit guides or anything like that. And that's really how I see my mom now. So I know she's watching and just wanna say I love you. And sending love to all my family, my friends, and my community that we're building inside of F and PHA and the broader functional medicine space. I think that's what I love so much about this work that we're doing is that again, it's all deeply personal and I'm just honored for you to be joining me on this journey as well and listening to this episode. And hopefully you'll like and subscribe to the podcast and maybe share it with a friend if it resonates. But there's gonna be so much more to come. And we're just getting started. So thank you for tuning in to the first episode of the Lauren Castle Show. And we'll see you again in the coming weeks. That's it for this episode of the Lauren Castle Show. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you'll join us for the next one where you'll hear more stories from me and some of my amazing guests. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast no matter where you watch or listen, and check out our website, drorincastle.com and fmpha.org. We'll see you next time.