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Finding Peace in Autism: Embracing Non-Speaking Parenting Experiences with Donna Ross-Jones · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: There were certain things I said to myself all the time and that was that I can't. I gotta keep walking through the valley. I can't pitch a tent. I can't freaking furnish it. I don't have time.
• 0:09
  Speaker B: Like literally there's no time.
• 0:11
  Speaker A: There's no time. There's just go. And there is just figuring out what is the best way for you to navigate it. How do you navigate the unimaginable? How do you navigate the unreasonable? How do you navigate the. To a question mark with other disabilities. This is one of the things that was most stunning to me. And again, the preparation of getting stronger. Having been kicked, knowing I can survive was critical through this process. I knew I would survive because I had proof. You know, the journey had given me proof. Okay, they hit you, but look, you do it so you 100% of your. It comes true. Opposed to a concept. That's what time gives you.
• 0:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker A: And you'll get to know that. I think everyone ends up knowing that keeping you up.
• 1:02
  Speaker B: Or was it, you know.
• 1:04
  Speaker A: No. Yesterday was a tough day. I had two friends lose their children. One is another ASD mom lost her son. That's Nixon. I'm so. I had another friend since high school who was an equestrian and we rode. You know, I had horses before. She did another crazy parallel. But anyway, she is a endurance competitor and she goes around the state and takes her horse and they ride and they do competition. They were on a very big mountain. He misstepped. They went down. She went down about 100ft rolling with him. Him over her. And then it took three days to find her horse. So yesterday that was a. Was a. I was just like, I just have to go out and take a walk.
• 1:48
  Speaker B: You just have to get through to yesterday.
• 1:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it didn't. And it brought up things. You know, we're always. Nick having also the comorbid condition of epilepsy. That's a life or death thing.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:00
  Speaker A: But in many ways the day to day autism is the same grief. So it was a very big grief day. It brought up my horse, slid on the side of a mountain. I wasn't on it. And broke its neck and died. How could my friend from all since middle school end up having a. The same. I mean it's. It's wild.
• 2:18
  Speaker B: Those things do. Absolutely.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: So a lot was triggered.
• 2:22
  Speaker B: The connectivity of grief in the process of both the grief of the life you thought you would have led as a mother, but also the grief of different parts of your life and how it threads back to the now is what I'm hearing you say too. Those moments where you think though that was a heavy phase or an experience that weighed and changed the way I live. And then when it happens to someone in your life in a parallel, you think, wow, it adds dimension to that. And I don't know if it's positive or negative. I don't think it's either. I think it's just the fullness of being that it does.
• 2:59
  Speaker A: I think if you. Life is whatever's happening. And that's the hardest cognitive distortion to get past. It isn't what you saw in the book. It isn't necessarily what you expected. It's only what's happening. Grief to me is its own thread because it is the gift that keeps on giving with this diagnosis. Right. And it surprises us and it pops up in all places and places when you simply take out life's ordinary milestones.
• 3:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:26
  Speaker A: That those are the things that we build our life around. There's this phase and this phase. And again, none of them promised. But all expected. Correct.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: None drop. All expected.
• 3:37
  Speaker A: They're all normal. Like we have schools because kids go to school and graduate and that's normal.
• 3:42
  Speaker B: We get our driver's license around.
• 3:45
  Speaker A: There are stores for wedding dresses.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Speaker A: Wedding rings. There's all these things that are. They are supposed to be normal for life. So the grief that keeps on giving. Never. That piece in itself never really stops.
• 3:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:59
  Speaker A: And for that I would say I have. No. You just sit in it and feel it. When it comes to. And then give your. I give myself a minute and then I keep going. Because I see it for what it is. I see it for unmet expectation.
• 4:13
  Speaker B: It is.
• 4:13
  Speaker A: And I see that expectations can take us out because they're not real. They're what we expected. They're not real. So we spend a lot of time. I think. And I've never said this the way you've just gotten it from me. We have to spend a lot of time getting back to what is.
• 4:29
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 4:30
  Speaker A: And getting back out of how it should be. And I've had people ask me, did you ever say why you? Or never? I can say I never said why me. I never say why me. For the good things that I get. I don't say why me for the negative things I get. And I've all. Or the challenging things are negative. Some said I've never done that. Because I for some reason I do get that. Why not you? Because I believe it on the upside. And that consistency of thinking kind of goes with grief that you have to just try to find the part that is good, the part that is, is working. Someone said something to me once that was good. It was helpful that I was talking about something with regard to Nick. And they said, yeah, but you don't have to worry about Nick being out there drinking, hanging out with the wrong kids, getting in a car crash. I'm like, yeah, yeah, okay. Let me find some things to be grateful for, because sometimes you don't feel great.
• 5:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think that grief, in the way that you express it, in the expectations, reminds me of orientation to reality. And I think that having Millie and Mac oriented me to the realness of my life. There was no longer the story I told myself. There was no longer the float of 24 hours and thinking like, oh, gosh, I can't believe how fast a week went by. And we have this. Then we've got that going on, we're traveling. That no longer existed. And it was a loss. I always say, I never want to compare it to physical loss, but the loss of being able to tell yourself the lightness of being was stripped. And I can look now and go, I know that I feel more alive than I would have if I didn't have Million Mac. Or maybe that was not. Maybe I do believe that they were meant to be mine and they were meant to. I was meant. I was chosen to be their mother and live this life.
• 6:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:28
  Speaker B: I can't imagine what the other alternative, you know, is or was. You're good. I think I was meant to have the process of that loss in my life for sure.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: Well, again, I think it does make us. Nobody asks for adversity. Nobody says, let me get in the front of the line and get my adversity because I want to.
• 6:51
  Speaker B: Right.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: You don't do it.
• 6:54
  Speaker B: You didn't write that on your. On your. On your wish list. Yeah, when you were eight.
• 6:58
  Speaker A: I want it to have really a sucky couple of years. I really. I want to be annihilated. I want to have.
• 7:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like, whatever. Whatever. You can figuratively rip me apart. Just. I'll choose that. Let's do that.
• 7:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, let's do that. But we don't get in that line. But we also don't become anything if we don't. We just don't. I mean, I've heard a lot in the last few years about the most important human strength is resiliency more than anything. And that's a muscle. It's not a given. So the person. I liked who I was before Nick, but I could not see the world how I see it. If not for Nick, I couldn't see. And a quick story that comes up is this whole idea that we become invisible. I don't know if you have this experience. People don't really want to look at you. They really don't want to engage with you. And a lot of people tell themselves they're doing that for you.
• 7:54
  Speaker B: Right? Like, I don't want to disrupt. She's got it.
• 7:56
  Speaker A: Like, yeah, I don't want to make her uncomfortable. I really. Staring at them. Like, I'm curious and I'm staring at them, or I'm judging them, or I'm saying not nice things. But I don't want to ask. I don't want to do that. And I was in the airport, this probably 10 years ago, with a friend of mine who I considered to be very evolved, very aware, great person. And I looked over and there was this young guy, probably maybe 20, and he lost both of his arms from here down. So he had two. I don't know what you call the. The automated arms, but he had two. And you know when you're in the airport or different restaurants, how they have the curved glass that you can look in, that's a refrigerator, but it's rounded. It's not a flat shop. So he grabbed a beverage. It slides down. He can't get it to cook. Yeah, he drops it. Everyone's just kind of staring. And I'm like, okay, let's just go deal with this. Let's go and pick it up and help. And then he came, and I said, well, sit with us. And I said to my friend, I said, I'm going to ask him what happened. They're like, no, don't do that.
• 9:02
  Speaker B: Why not?
• 9:03
  Speaker A: I was like, why not? He says, no, you'll make them uncomfortable. I said, no, you don't understand. Everybody wants to be seen. And one of the things with our kids and living in this world is we're now living in something that's so intense, but we're also not being seen at the same time. We're not having our milestones. People aren't seeing us. People are judging us. It's a disability. We don't know how it. How it came to be. We don't know how to cure it. We navigate systems of care that are survival the fittest. To give all that to someone, if you don't have resiliency, you do not have a choice but to build it.
• 9:43
  Speaker B: Right? You have to build it.
• 9:45
  Speaker A: You have to build it. And I can't think of anything. And this is because I don't know, this is to my level of understanding that would drive a moment. Are human to become more resilient than this journey because you take it or it takes you.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: Oh I've gotten really quiet with myself about like evolutionary biology from a maternal standpoint.
• 10:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Speaker B: Because I think that. I think that being given children like Nick and Millie and Matt tap into something very primal. And we, we want to keep our kids safe and happy and, and. And lead like we are mother duck. Right. Like they see us and they imprint. And it is so powerful. When I look back and think of how much I did do at first when I thought I had absolutely nothing left. Like I don't know how I got up to nurse an 8 day old when Millie was literally just diagnosed. Like I don't. I don't even have. I don't have words to describe what that felt like. And yet here I am talking to you on June 11, 2025. Right. I don't understand how. How that primal urge to continue on where it comes from.
• 11:01
  Speaker A: I think it's a gift.
• 11:02
  Speaker B: So deep. Yeah.
• 11:04
  Speaker A: It's a gift. I don't think because you can have a child that you necessarily get it. So I think it's a lot harder for some people that aren't than others.
• 11:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:13
  Speaker A: Think that the amount of time and this I hope won't surprise someone. But it ends up being okay if when you were so in the moment, which you have to be in the moment with these kids. It's not like, hey, you know Junior, sit down and wait in front of the tv. I'll be there after I get my makeup on. I'll see you after my shower. Everything is like this.
• 11:38
  Speaker B: So that is a 911 call.
• 11:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you will. Not a lot will be gone. The memory will not be. I don't know. A single mom whose memory is a steady threat because you just doing what you said. It's primal, it's survival. It's in the moment. And it's also the best thing because just keep being in that moment. Just one minute. One minute. A lot of our life is like a 12 step program.
• 12:08
  Speaker B: Totally. I mean so true.
• 12:11
  Speaker A: That's so true. It really is. And you gotta find something that tethers you. There's. It's so funny. I guess I was meant to say this. So at one point it was so much that I felt like lint. I didn't feel like I was going anywhere.
• 12:27
  Speaker B: Right.
• 12:28
  Speaker A: I was just doing and being and.
• 12:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Speaker A: And I Felt like lint. I was just like floating. And the day was gone and the week was gone and the month was gone. I didn't know what happened. And I wasn't like making what had been my life. You make a goal, you set a plan, you work your plan well, I could not do that anymore. The whole ability to do that and I tell moms, don't feel bad, that goes out the window. Every part of you that did anything to routine or structure based on you, bye, bye, gone. Which is a great gift. And maybe we'll circle back to that. But from the standpoint of lint, at one point I took. That's so funny. I have some here. I felt so much like lint. And I didn't write anything on it. I put post its all around the house on cupboards. And it was just my note. You're not woman, you're here, you're present. So I saw it like, okay, I'm here, I'm okay. I'm here, I'm okay. And I let. They were probably around the house for months. And I was like, okay, yeah, I'm good. I know I'm here. I know I'm okay. I know whatever this looks like is how it's supposed to be. I'm just moving through something that's not familiar. Correct. It's not that it's bad, it's just not familiar. And I am not in control in the ways that I was used to being in control. It's true, someone took that, but that it was okay. So I literally used notes.
• 13:55
  Speaker B: When you think back to those times where the post it notes were around and you can recall that and tell this boarding on a show. Who was Donna back then? Like, as Donna, like when you say you were, I had to remind myself I was here. My parallel was, I remember one time, like literally doing this to my face. Like, I'm. This is me, right? Where, where were you in your body? Were you in your head a lot? Were you in your stomach? Was it. Was it pain in your heart? Was it just the general feeling of just getting by?
• 14:23
  Speaker A: It was all survival. It was all survival. Be enough, do enough, be enough, do enough. If you don't do enough, if you can't be enough, your kids and your family will be okay. Yeah, yeah, that was. That was it. And what we haven't talked about at all is when you have a typical sibling. I was fortunate to have a. A physician who's a friend who also works with this population, but she was also a sibling. And she said don't forget about your dog. I was like, I won't. But I went into this journey doing everything I could that I could see to do to make sure that I was doing okay with her too. That I was still parenting her, that she didn't feel lost. And the consequence of that. And this was a good thing for me. This was not a problem. Was I was last on the list because the guilt. If I for you to do something for me, it meant now I didn't do something for one of them. And if I wasn't having to do for Nick because his neck, Wisconsin, he's a 24. 7 supervision kiddo. Period. If we weren't doing for him, then I hadn't. He needed to have.
• 15:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker A: So that narrative of being enough all the time was massive. And here's something that just now happened within the last couple weeks. All during that journey, my daughter was diagnosed with depression. Her dad left. I'm thinking it's all that she always had bits of things. But she never had, like a diagnosis. I always thought she had, like oppositional defiance disorder. And she's brilliant. She got my mother's iq. It's really tough to raise really smart kids. Take a really smart kid. Take a weird family life. Take this. And you don't. Sure.
• 16:15
  Speaker B: You're not describing my oldest child right now.
• 16:18
  Speaker A: I think I am. So I'm not imagining. Especially girls who present so different. There's no part of me that's imagining that she might be on the spectrum at all. I'm just thinking this kid's a freaking handful. And in many ways, she was harder to parent than Nick because of her defiance. I'm mad at you. I'm going in my room and I'll see you. I'll be going down in the middle of the night to get food. And I won't be talking to you for a week.
• 16:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:42
  Speaker A: She was very emotionally hard for me. I wanted her to be okay all the time. She was my one. I needed to be okay. She was my one. I believe would be okay.
• 16:50
  Speaker B: Right.
• 16:51
  Speaker A: And what I know today, that I really would say lovingly to moms and I'm learning how to say it to me, is very recently for me thinking I'd managed. I hadn't done perfect. It sucked. But I'd done okay. That I had loved her through everything I done okay. She says to me, my entire life is fucked up. He ruined my life. You guys ruined my life. And that's why I'm so screwed up to them.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: I heard something very similar A few.
• 17:18
  Speaker A: Weeks ago, when I picked my little. Shredded me up off the floor, really was. I went to talk to. I know this may sound silly, but I went to gratitude because I said, okay, Donna, you were so fortunate that you did keep loving her. Yes, you never stopped. You did keep doing to the best your ability. Which then my daughter said, you know what? I'm not. I'm angry with you. I'm mad at you because I know you always did your best. Yes, I know you were doing your best. But somebody had to get the short end of the stick, and it was me. And we think in our thinking and our doing and our being, that we'll be able to do enough. And the only thing that's true, which circles back to the beginning of this conversation, is what is.
• 18:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:02
  Speaker A: And her what is was distorted. And there was nothing for me to undo that. You could not undo the distortion because the distortion was you. And you could not ask a child to not feel it. Yes, no matter. But you can give them love, which they'll feel too, but you can't. We both feel the distortion. I was still feeding myself. Correct. Was that I did enough that she didn't have this experience. Well, she did.
• 18:28
  Speaker B: She did.
• 18:28
  Speaker A: She no longer, as a little kid, could just come and sit in my bed and I would read to her because it was always filled with the screaming brother. We didn't have a regular dinner table because it always had AIDS at it. And laminated things and charts and binders and books and people and meetings.
• 18:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:47
  Speaker A: We didn't have a normal household. There was a therapist and therapists in this house every day, all day, and they weren't there, even though the attention they were giving was essential. Kids can't distinguish, and neither can many adults, negative attention from positive attention. No attention.
• 19:03
  Speaker B: No. It's just attention.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: He still was just. It didn't matter why. He still was sucking up.
• 19:12
  Speaker B: He was in receipt. He was in receipt of that.
• 19:15
  Speaker A: And that's a huge parent that is. I just keep loving, not being perfect, not fixing. Bless. My daughter talks to me. I was talking to one of the doctors on Nick's behavioral team, and I heard him say a couple times he had a sibling with autism. And after Evan, my daughter said this to me. I asked him in a meeting about Nick. I said, well, how are you with your parents? He says, we're not good. And I said. I said, okay, tell me about that. And he said, they could have done better. I was invisible. And they don't acknowledge him. I was like, wow. Well, at Least I cannot be that. I can't. There is nothing for me to do about having done my best, which is the other thing. Do your best, whatever that is, however you define it. Because that's all you'll have. That's all you'll have and that's all you control. And it will make a difference. I do believe that. Will it make the difference that we think still. Will it still give us our fairy tale? Absolutely.
• 20:12
  Speaker B: I have no idea what my oldest is going to say when she's 25, 30, 40 years old. I know as a 42 year old in my own growth as a daughter that there is something that clicks in midlife in a different way that you say my parents, I do believe they were trying their best. I really do. And whatever they modeled to me has allowed me in middle life to show up and do the same. And it doesn't mean my heart doesn't break for what is not for my oldest yet. There are some things that I believe I've been able to allow to just hang out and they don't land yet. And they, and they, they just are, as you said, it just is. And try telling that to a 12 and a half year old girl and letting her express as you let your daughter express that anger and say, I still love you so much. It's. I, I don't know what it's like to be you. I can only imagine it's really darn hard.
• 21:09
  Speaker A: And that sucks.
• 21:10
  Speaker B: And I'm so sorry. And I'm still here.
• 21:13
  Speaker A: And go right to it.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:15
  Speaker A: Just let go of the guilt, let go of the shame, let go of the I didn't do it all and just get right to being in their shoes.
• 21:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:23
  Speaker A: And then you have some healing. Other guy was talking to the doctor who. With his parents. They don't talk, the parents, because they're not wrong. They're correct when they say, hey, your brother needed this, you were okay. They're not wrong. They're just not able to see.
• 21:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker A: And again, all we can do is love them all through it. Just keep loving them, keep showing up, keep trying to not make it. I mean, it's all about us anyway. Everything we do is about us. Even if the reason for the, about us is for a good reason.
• 21:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. We're all the star of the show. I mean, I said to my oldest, you know, she was really on fire about something, you know, about life and everything. And I thought to myself, and I said it out loud, sweetie, the fact that you have the ability to shout this and feel so undone. And I can be here and say, I still love you. I hope you know that that's a gift because the fact that you're even shouting this to me, I know you want to slap me for even saying this right now. That is a gift because I don't have that with your, with your siblings. And so thank you for expressing that to me because it's, I mean, that's a hard thing to say right when you are getting this vitriol, you know, spewed at you. But then you think their prefrontal cortex is not closed and you know, no.
• 22:41
  Speaker A: There'S a lot going on.
• 22:42
  Speaker B: There's so much going on.
• 22:43
  Speaker A: There is. And even though, like I kept, I kept my daughter in therapy, even though, even though she lied to the therapist, she's like, I don't want to be here. These people are stupid.
• 22:52
  Speaker B: Gosh. Same. Yeah.
• 22:52
  Speaker A: She wouldn't really talk to them, but they were all things. Like when she went to university, I was like, let me put you in a dorm because you need time away from your brother.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker A: There were so many things that they didn't show up the way I thought they were. But again, the giving, the making, the effort, it's still embedded somewhere. It kept it from being completely cattywompus. It's why she and I can go through that. And we're okay. We're incredibly close and they will heal, she will grow. But that's just another area of letting go of how we think it should be and how we think it is that I don't think we get to talk about enough. Because also when you're still in it and they're young, you don't know. I know people. It seems like a lot of the families who have down syndrome kids, it's very different.
• 23:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:43
  Speaker A: Those siblings are close with their down syndrome kids. Very different dynamic. Our kids with all the behavioral stuff and they can't be cute and cuddly and most of the time.
• 23:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker A: Our siblings do not come out the same.
• 24:01
  Speaker B: No. No. And it's so apparent to me, even the non verbal communication between my typical oldest and her siblings, there is that chasm of two and a half years between each is getting greater and greater from the naked eye. And the process, like as you said, each chapter of your daughter's development and my oldest, it's.
• 24:30
  Speaker A: It's.
• 24:31
  Speaker B: The only constant is change. And then I will say that the chasm of those differences in how it looks and what it looks like to the outside world is so it gets greater and greater. And to know that, you know, we no longer can fit in at the playground meant for two to five year olds. And my daughter, my oldest knows that, you know, the sensitivity to even just being and saying. I get it. You'll learn one day that the world's reaction to you being exactly who you are is none of your business. And that's. That is. I'm so happy. I feel so. Again, flushed with gratitude that I know that at 42, it took a wild ride that I never would have chosen to retain. That.
• 25:16
  Speaker A: That's what we talked about. It all went through that, right? The ride that allows you to be here. You don't do it with. You know, it used to irritate me. People said, life is a journey. Why do people say that? And now I so get it. There's. There's nothing you can do about it. You either go through the journey and you grow or you. I guess you're lint or static.
• 25:38
  Speaker B: I mean, exactly. I mean, you know, what a great. Another word that aligns with lent, you know, static. It's. You're just static and you're just there. And I. I don't believe that we as human beings are meant to be static. I do not. And I think grit and resilience is never. I just. There's nothing that I would ever choose.
• 25:57
  Speaker A: To do that I am so with you.
• 25:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, as I shared with you when I first met you and talked to you for five minutes a few weeks ago, I. You exude you like Donna Ross Jones. You are someone. I mean, there is no one like you. What you. What the energy you give off through even a video and how you're writing and what you. What permeates through that and the gold thread of that, I. I believe is because of what you have lived and endured. And gosh, what a gift you are. Such a gift to this world from what you've given in the. The years before I got connected to you and autism day by day. And now through your writing and your latest chapter, I think this is. This is what life is meant to be. And I'm just so thankful for you being aligned in this arena that we did not choose to be in. And the gladiators are coming for us. But we're here.
• 26:46
  Speaker A: Imagine if we all got what we.
• 26:47
  Speaker B: Your bum shoulder is not going to hold up for that long, so we got to get that fixed.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: Yes. And what if we did get what we thought we wanted? How weird would that be?
• 26:56
  Speaker B: No, I don't even know who that Girl is no.
• 26:58
  Speaker A: And it was decided by maybe a 9 or 12 year old, I guess.
• 27:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Or as. Or as. In my baby book, my mom said, I think it was around fifth grade and I didn't grow up with much and I think I couldn't get something for school. Back to school. And my mom wrote in my baby book that I proclaimed at like the discount store, I'm going to marry a rich doctor one day so that I can get these things, you know, like, yeah, nine or 10 years old, I don't know.
• 27:24
  Speaker A: I think I was taken to a bar mitzvah and then told the grandmother I wanted to be Jewish. And my mother said, no, she doesn't. She wants the president.
• 27:32
  Speaker B: I love it. I love it.
• 27:33
  Speaker A: Right? Or where you weren't on that coat.
• 27:35
  Speaker B: From the mouse of babes. Thank you for being you. Thank you for sharing your journey.
• 27:39
  Speaker A: Thank you for being you.
• 27:40
  Speaker B: I'm so lucky to have you. And I think that this conversation again is going to fill the hearts of all of the other women and caregivers that are on similar journeys to us to show that we are more alike than we are different children. And one of the greatest gifts is the luxury that you and I would never have chosen is to get through this resilience and to keep, keep showing up and surfacing for ourselves.
• 28:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I never would have. If someone had told me, and I'll wrap with this one, that I would have been a writer, I would have said, I would have never believed them.
• 28:13
  Speaker B: Turned around and been like, who you.
• 28:14
  Speaker A: Talking to the thread to? Being a writer is what you just said. I'm really comfortable with the fact that I'm not unique. And what I mean by that is not that I'm not uniquely me, but that I'm living some experience that nobody else is living. No, correct. We're all frickin here. We're all being human. We're all living a human experience. And it's our ability to share that. That's what I think we're all obliged to do. It's why we're here. I think it's the only reason we land on this planet is to love, learn how to love and make a difference for other people. And thank you for letting me do that. And I'm happy to chat with you anytime.
• 28:51
  Speaker B: Love it. Well, that was quite an insurance episode. Until next time.
• 28:56
  Speaker A: Until next time.