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Welcome to the Fire Inside Her. A brave space to share stories of navigating life transitions with authenticity. Using our inner fire to light the way and self care as our loyal travel companion. I'm your host, Diane Schroeder, and I'm so grateful you are here.

One of my core childhood memories of my dad was his interest, more like his obsession with World War two. Movies, books, and documentaries, he was one of the most knowledgeable people about history, specifically World War two, that I have ever known. His dad was a lieutenant in the Marines and an f four u pilot who was killed in the South Pacific during a training flight while landing on an aircraft carrier. The f four u plane was nicknamed the widowmaker because so many pilots died, and they couldn't see when they landed. They had to rely solely on their instruments to land on a floating ship in the middle of the ocean. My dad was only four months old when grandpa was killed. My mom's dad was a lieutenant in the army on the European front during World War two. He survived the combat and came home, but was not the same man post war.

During COVID, mom found the paperwork explaining his silver star, bronze star, and purple hearts, yes, that is plural, that he received during his tour. The trauma he experienced, witnessed, and led his men through is difficult for me to wrap my head around. I didn't know grandpa Meyer well because he passed away from lung cancer when I was only eight. Mom said he didn't really start talking about the war till the end of his life. So much to carry for forty years. Becky Ellis is the author of Little Avalanches, a memoir about her highly decorated World War two veteran father and her experience as the daughter of a veteran and a veteran of the war fought at home post war. This interview is vulnerable and insightful and highlights the power of sharing stories, asking questions, and listening with an open heart. The courage to be curious and willing to forgive and make meaning of a difficult childhood.

I know that I wish I had the opportunity to do this with my father before he passed away. And one more thing before we dive in. The show is going on sabbatical, and the best way to stay connected and receive updates is to sign up for my mostly regular emails at the fire inside her Com forward slash newsletter. I look forward to staying connected. Well, welcome today. I am very excited to introduce you to Becky Ellis, who is an author and has recently written a memoir called Little Avalanches. And I'm really excited to dive into this because it's just such a heartwarming story about fathers and daughters. So, Becky, welcome to our show.

Thank you so much for having me, Diane. I'm happy to be here.

I can't wait to dive in. But before we do, I just want to know what is your favorite holiday tradition?

I was just asked this, so I'm prepped. Thank goodness. I had kind of a traumatic childhood, and Christmas was always hard because my dad always cried at Christmas. Mhmm. But my mom baked these cookies that are persimmon cookies, and it's kind of a comfort that I attached to, like, being by her side, baking in the kitchen, and just smelling the warmth of cinnamon and nutmeg throughout the house. And so we always bake persimmon cookies, and my mom now has a persimmon tree. And I have these orange jewels ripening on my counter because they have to get really, really mushy, and people think they've gone bad, but they're going good. So I bake persimmon cookies with my daughters from this super old, ratty, messy recipe card.

I love that so much. I bake peanut brittle that I used to make with my grandma. Same thing. I have different recipe cards because she got dementia. And so she started rewriting her recipes. And fortunately, we had to grab the ones we had because some of them got lost. And I use the same spoon that she used Aw. When I was little.

So I thank you for sharing that. There is something magical about passing on those holiday traditions.

Yes. I have three daughters, but when my middle daughter was asked to bring in a family heirloom on, like, family heritage day or something, she dug inside my recipe box and pulled out that recipe. And she took a recipe card, an old may hold recipe card, and this is our family heirloom.

I love it. In my opinion, recipe cards are really priceless because it has the handwriting. It has the, you know, all the stories, sometimes the mess from cooking. So, yes, that's fabulous. Well, it's a perfect segue because you had mentioned that your father struggled around Christmas time and cried. So let's go back. Let's time travel back to the seventies and a little bit about the relationship between you and your father.

Yeah. I loved my father, but I feared my father too. He was a man to be revered, and he was also pretty scary. And when I was a kid, it was the seventies, and other people were learning to roller skate, listening to disco, go. And I was learning to shoot a gun and getting my teeth drilled without Novocaine, stuff like that. And my dad, he wanted us to be tough as old nails and prepared, but we didn't really know what he wanted us to be prepared for because he would not talk about his time in combat.

Right. And so he was a World War two veteran. Yes. And that's a thirty year time span, essentially, between when he came home from the war and your childhood. Is that ish math close enough? Yeah. Yeah. That's close. Okay.

So tell us a little bit about your dad's experience that you knew of when you were a kid, if anything, and then how it informed your life to the point where you actually had the conversation with him as he grew older?

I didn't know much about his experience. I knew there was a war, and I knew he was in it. And I knew he had a whole bunch of medals that he wouldn't talk about. And that's about it. Now and then, he was an alcoholic. And now and then, when he was drunk, always on Christmas, he would fire out super scary stories, sort of like machine gun fire, rapid fire, and then it would stop abruptly. And he wouldn't explain any of it. Mhmm.

It was scary stuff. It was stuff he didn't wanna be telling us, but that came out. So I didn't really know much about it. And when he was 89, he came to visit me. You know, when I was growing up, I loved him, like I said. Like, any daughter wants to love their father and be loved by their father, but we had a distant relationship because it was really hard to reach him. It was like a glacier that wouldn't crack open with a pickaxe, basically. So he would visit me a couple times a year in my home in Portland, Oregon.

And when he was 89, we were having lunch during one of his visits, and I was making him a sandwich in the kitchen. And he looked across the kitchen and asked, do we have any issues to clear up? I was like, oh my gosh. We have so many issues. Yeah. At first, I thought he was talking about that day. Like, I had done something that made him think I was upset or angry because my dad didn't talk about five years ago or five minutes ago. Mhmm.

But

he I recognized he was talking about the past, and I wanted to hear about the war. And he resisted, and he resisted hard. Mhmm. But he kind of raised me in his likeness to be persistent and relentless. So there we were at the kitchen table eating a tuna sandwich back and forth, and he eventually opened up and started sharing with me.

Oh my gosh. So much wrapped into just these few opening minutes. As a retired first responder, I have a different perspective of PTSD and hanging on to horrible things and the traumas that we carry. And yet I was raised in a time where initially at the beginning of my career, we didn't talk about it. But towards the end, there was great healing and we realized, you know, the fire service as a whole and public safety responders that we had to talk about it because suicide rates were so high and depression rates and just how it kind of pops up in random ways. So I hear your story and I'm like, man, he carried that for much longer than thirty years. He carried that for the bulk of his life because how old was he when he entered the war?

He was 18. So he carried it. He didn't talk about it for 70.

When you hear that, that's so heavy to carry. And also the impact that it had on you because you're carrying it for him as well, and no one's really talking about it. And you don't even know what you're carrying. You just know that you're kind of afraid of your dad. He's a little intimidating. And I'm curious to know what is the story that you told yourself growing up under his shadow before you guys had the conversation?

You know, my dad was scary, but I could also feel like, we suffered. We suffered a lot, but he also suffered too. And we could all feel that suffering and that struggle going on inside him, but there were no words to put to it we didn't understand. So the story I told myself was my dad's messed up. Like, he's controlling, and he can't be controlled. He can't control himself. And the story wasn't solidified. It wasn't even clear because I didn't know.

Like I said, I knew he had been to war, but that's pretty much all I really understood about it. Mhmm. And I think that I would be angry with my father. And I think the story I told myself was that he could control himself, that he was choosing to be like this. I think that's the story I told myself.

That makes sense because try to understand and make meaning, and that you can hold two things to be true at the same time. You can love your dad and be scared of him. You can understand that he's impacts everyone, yet he's still your dad. Is that something that you learned how to juggle and manage for most of your life?

Well, I think the ability to hold paradox is a sign of mental health. Mhmm. And I'm sure there were moments when I wasn't super healthy either. Because when a parent experiences something traumatic and it affects their behavior, the child is impacted with secondary trauma. But when they act out on that behavior, then the child is also traumatized. It is still hard for me to say I had a traumatic childhood because I think, oh, come on. It wasn't that bad. It certainly wasn't as bad as my dad being on the battlefield.

Like, I could survive that. Like, his story was always so much bigger than my story. Yeah. But I can hold it now. And, yeah, I always feared him, and I always revered him. And there was love in there too. So Yeah. It's messy.

I've been practicing mental health for a long time.

Right. You didn't even know it. Probably, it was just, oh, that's what I'm learning. So as you guys started talking and sharing, how did that shift your relationship, not just with him, but how did it change you?

So my dad reached a point in his story that was so absolutely horrible, and this is in the book, that I couldn't even comprehend it. And it was the first time I really saw my father for who he was, not for the man I wanted him to be or needed him to be. I saw him without my own desires and needs on him. And I saw he was a distant husband, a wounded veteran, and a lonely man, and it was the first time in my life I felt empathy for him. I probably felt every other emotion except empathy, and I finally felt empathy for him. And that seeing him apart from me as someone that had his own life apart from mine is when really everything shifted. And I think it's rare that we see our parents, our partners, or our children without our needs and desires placed on them. And once I was able to do that with my dad, I was really able to move through the world like that.

You know, like, the person that's cut me off in traffic, it really has nothing to do with me. It has to do with their own needs, their own desires, not mine. And it really shifted in the way I am in the world and how much empathy and compassion I have for other people.

Thank you so much for sharing that. I as you're saying that, you know, I think about my parents and how my dad passed away almost five years ago, and I still struggle to see him as separate from being my dad. And even though I know a lot of the trauma he experienced and, really, everything had nothing to do with me, it's that impact. And so I'm trying really hard to work through that with my mom as she gets older and as, you know, like, letting go of so many things. And I think that's really hard as children with our parents to do that of our generation because they didn't have the tools that we have access to and how to communicate. You know, if I were to ask my mom some of those challenging questions, I feel like I get more frustrated than she does because I just want her to answer. And I don't know that she knows how to answer them or doesn't even really understand what the answers are. It takes so much courage, and I just have so much respect for that.

And I'm curious to know how did it impact not just how you move through the world, but how you parent with your daughters and how you have conversations within your family.

Well, it's all wrapped up and tied together. I first wanna acknowledge it's really hard work. You know, my mom is 94, and I still find myself attaching to how I want her to live right now, not how she wants to live. And it's super, super hard for me to let go of my own desires for her, and I just have to always keep telling myself, nope. Nope. This is her life. This is her choice. So it's hard.

It's not really answering questions, I think. It's more about sharing our stories. And when I understand my mom and her story and why she wants to live the way she does, it's so much easier for me to be able to let go of that. And I think it's the same for my children because there's a story that when my brother and sister and I get together you know, when siblings get together and families gather and kids are around and adults and grandparents and everything, they're you say things like, oh, yeah. Remember the time Shana got drunk on the boat? And everyone says, oh, yeah. That time. And you move on. Well, I raised my children because of my childhood and the alcohol consumption of my childhood.

The way I raised my children was you don't drink until you're 21. Until you're legally allowed, then we can have a glass of wine together or whatever. But not until then, not in the house. I was pretty strict. And once my children read my memoir, they finally went, oh, we get it. One of my daughters said, I always thought Shana, who's my sister, was 21 when she got drunk on the boat. But she was five years old, and she almost drowned. And so they finally clicked like, oh, now we understand you.

Now we understand why you're like this. And I think it's that storytelling. Silence is not golden. Silence separates us, and stories bring us together, and conversation connects us. And that is where it's at. That, I think, is where we can live much more empathetically and compassionately and connected to each other is in sharing our deeper stories with each other.

Yes. A question about that. Why do you think it is challenging for some people to share their stories? I agree with everything that you've said. I think story I love telling stories and your struggle, your story can really be a light for someone else that might be struggling, and you just never know who you're gonna impact. Why is it so challenging for people to share their stories? I think there

are a lot of reasons. I think some stories are about shame. Like, I don't wanna tell you what I did because you're gonna think different of me. There's shame. There's protection. I know a lot of veterans don't share their stories because they don't wanna burden other people with it. And me with my daughters, I wanted to protect them. I didn't wanna tell them about all this stuff that happened in my childhood, not because I was ashamed or I want was gonna burden them, but I wanted to kinda protect them from realizing that the world can be horrible and scary sometimes.

And that's not helpful. It's not helpful for any of those reasons. And we all know that it's not helpful, but it's super hard to share our stories. We've gotta just open ourselves up and be vulnerable. And it's getting to vulnerability, right, to feel safe enough where you feel like, okay, I can be vulnerable now.

Yes. And to just vulnerability is I believe in it, and I think the world would be a better place if people could just be vulnerable. And I know for me personally, and I don't know how my listeners feel that it feels very exposed to be vulnerable. So if I am vulnerable and I share a story, like when I gave my TEDx talk, I I was very vulnerable. And then for like a week later and even still to this day, three years later, I'm like, oh, gosh. That was that was a lot. Like, I just felt like I was raw and exposed. And I don't know how to what advice to tell people other than it gets easier the more you do it.

And knowing that it's your story to tell and what other people think of your story or anything like that is really not about you. It's about them. And knowing all of that now, how long did the like, I'm sure your dad you and your dad didn't cover everything over tuna fish sandwiches. Nope. But it start it, like, opened the door?

Yeah. It was a seven year conversation, really.

Oh, wow.

He kept talking to me about it until he died when he was 96. But, you know, vulnerability, it takes tremendous courage. We all think of it as, you know, it might be weakness or whatever because we feel weak when we're being vulnerable. But, really, if we come from a place of courage, like, okay. I'm gonna be the first one to start this. And I find in conversations, when I'm vulnerable first, then other people open up. And with my dad, when we had that conversation, I actually refused to be vulnerable first because I did not feel safe around him. And I wanted him to tell me about the war before I would share any of my issues with him because I knew he would treat my issues like a battlefield.

And I'm like, no. I'm not telling you. I'm not being vulnerable and sharing what it was like for this, that, or the other thing. You know? I'm getting my teeth drilled or having my little sister get drunk at five. I'm not gonna tell you that until you are vulnerable with me first. You know? And it's not that I'm proud of that. It's just that that was my relationship with him at the time, and it eventually opened and opened and opened. My heart honestly broke a thousand times when I was talking to my dad.

And, you know, I thought to myself, I don't want my heart to close again. I want it to stay broken open. And to live with a broken heart takes a ton of courage.

It certainly does. It absolutely does. I think because it exposes you, you're you're exposed like, that's where the cracks are. That's where the light shines through. I always say that. That's the beauty of where the cracks are in your heart is how you light up, you know, yourself and the world around you. I mean, a seven year conversation, how did he change during that time when he started to talk about it? How not only did he change, but how did your relationship change?

You know, he would not talk about the war at all. He wouldn't wear any paraphernalia of any kind. He was a doctor, and he had a tiny, tiny, little American flag pin that he would wear on his suit lapel, and that is it. That was the only evidence of any kind that he had been in a war associated with military at all. And then about a year and a half into our conversation, he showed up at the Portland Airport wearing a World War two veterans hat with his 13 medals little across the top. And I thought, oh my gosh. He's lost he's finally really lost his mind. Like, where's my dad? Like, he wouldn't talk about it.

Now he's broadcasting it on his forehead. Right. So I think that it really opened him up to kind of accept this part of himself and to work through some of this stuff. And I also know that he carried his survivor's guilt and the trauma to his last breath because I was with him, and I know that was still with him. In terms of our relationship, I think that we became so much closer, and I could say anything to my dad. I have been in therapy for a long time. And going through the process of talking to my dad, talking to my dad, my therapist one day said, well, now you have to ask your dad the hardest question. And I'm like, oh, what's that? He said, ask him if he loves you.

And I was like, oh, yeah. I don't wanna ask him that. Like, I know that I don't need to ask him that. But it was it was the thing I needed to ask. You know? Like, do you love me, dad? Just that simple question was so hard. But I was able to ask. I mean, it sounds weird, but to ask your parent, like, do you love me, and do you give me your blessing for whatever I'm gonna do in life? It's a hard, hard thing to ask a parent.

Oh, yeah. I can confidently say I never asked my dad that. Even on his deathbed, and I was there when he took his last breath, I did not ask him that. You know, he said he was proud of us and, you know, I I think that I didn't have that courage. And so I encourage anyone listening, ask that because I don't have many regrets. But I think asking that question and just getting that validation, like, I'm sure he said, of course, he loved you. Yeah. He did.

Of course, he does. You know, I think that's part of the stories we may tell ourselves is it's a rule. I used to joke. I never asked the question I didn't wanna hear the answer to.

Yeah. I did think I'm never gonna be tough enough or resilient enough or strong enough. I'm never gonna be enough for my dad. And so I walk around with this not enoughness. And I thought, well, I wasn't gonna be ever enough for him to really love me. And I always knew in my heart that he did. You know? Like, we know. And once I became a parent, I was like, well, he better love me.

You know? Because if he's a decent human being. But, you know, he had eight kids, and I was one of eight kids. And there were moments when I really wasn't sure.

Mhmm. But it goes further than his war experience. I'm sure. There he had his own challenges when he entered the war at such a young age. Do you know anything about his history, his story before he entered the war? Even though that totally changed him and set his life in a different trajectory,

was there more to it? Yeah. There's a lot more to it. And the horrible thing that happened to him actually happened when he came back from the war and was the reaction of his parents to his return. Oh. And I won't go into the details, but that was the most horrible thing I've ever heard that happened. It was unimaginable to me what their response was to him. Of course, the story goes back. I mean, I could open I could open a rabbit hole for us, but his mother, my grandmother, Florence, was a sort of women's suffragette.

She was an aviation pioneer. She was the fourth woman in the world to get her instrument license in flying. She had was a commercial pilot, and she was this super, super high achiever. She was also a nurse anesthetist and a piano teacher. And my dad used to say everything she did was to get away from her Potawatomi heritage because she was one quarter Potawatomi Indian. Her grandmother was Potawatomi. And back at that time, people thought Native Americans were savage butchers, and that's also what they thought of infantrymen back in the nineteen forties. And so there's a lot wrapped up and tangled in that.

So my history goes way back to that of that, the toughness required and to survive all of that.

Mhmm. As you're talking about that, and I we spoke about this before it. I have Cherokee heritage, and my grandmother came from Oklahoma and Indian boarding school when she met my grandfather before he signed up for World War two and leaving her back in New York with three small girls, my mom being one of them. And, you know, as you talk about that, there's so much I think my grandma did the same thing, and I didn't ask her. She lived to almost a hundred, but so much course correction to be American and assimilate from the time she was so young that it was basically our heritage didn't really exist. Like, it was like, I know I look native, but she overcompensated to be a socialite in the community and always put together, and education was very important. And I I see that she did that to my mom to some extent and the damage that it caused. So I think it's important to it's not just your parents.

It's how were they raised. Where does the story go as you explore that in your life if you're ever curious? Because it doesn't just stop at one generation. It can go back several generations.

Absolutely. In fact, I I was really struggling with imposter syndrome not long ago. Pro I probably am today. You know? Who knows? But it has to do with the same thing you talked about your grandma. Education was super important to my family, and my dad said to me repeatedly, they can take away everything. His division freed a concentration camp in Germany, and so he saw a lot of horror. And he said, they, meaning anybody, can take away everything from you except your education. And that didn't only come from his experience in the war, but he used that as an example.

But it came all the way from my Potawatomi heritage. And I was thinking about this the other day, like, why I think I will never have enough education, never enough knowledge. And I do believe that knowledge is a starting point. Like, it's not something you ever finish. You grow your whole life and keep learning and learning, which I love. But it was this core value that was getting in the way because I thought of it as scarcity. Like, I will never have enough of it, sort of like some people feel about money. And I was like, oh, like, some people think they're never ever ever gonna have enough money.

I feel like I'm never ever ever gonna have enough education or knowledge. And I am like, that is getting my core value is actually getting in my way. And it was this weird kind of thing, and now we're back to the beginning of the paradox of holding two things. Right? Like, I want this, but it was making me feel like an imposter. Like, I'll never know enough to be able to talk about this subject completely because I can never have enough education.

Mhmm. And it's hard to, you know again, a lot of work, and it's hard to accept that. And I'm assuming once you kind of have connected these dots and you can go back and go down rabbit holes, it just did it make your life make more sense?

Absolutely. Yeah. And it also helps me see, oh, you know, that's actually my ego getting in the way. You know? And I just need to let it go. Right? Like, okay. Imposter syndrome is all about ego. Whether you're it's inflated or deflated. I'm like, I need to get over myself and just understand that that is ego driven and let it go.

Just let it go, which is hard.

How do you talk to your ego or do you talk to your ego? Do you acknowledge it? Do you I've named mine. My ego's name is Ginger, and she's such a pain in my ass sometimes. I'll be like, calm down, Ginger. Like, I got this. But I'm curious, how do you handle your ego? Because it's always there, and it can wreak havoc on your life.

Yeah. Being aware of it is the hardest thing. I've practiced yoga for thirty years, and I understand yoga jargon and a lot of different therapy jargon, a lot of the different jargons. But this idea of the seat of consciousness, I talk to my ego, not in the way I don't talk to it. I observe it. So I try to pretend like I'm sitting actually in a different chair watching myself and watching my ego have its way with me. And when I can sit in that seat of consciousness and observe how my ego is running the show in whatever particular moment, then I can try to let it go. I have a very critical judge inside, and so I try not to sit in that seat and judge what I'm doing.

I try to sit in that seat and just say, just let it go. What would happen if you just let go of that ego in this moment? Let's try to do that.

I love the kindness approach. I feel like that's definitely something I need to work towards. I usually get pretty frustrated with my ego, but I like that idea of just sitting back and being a little more kind and offering grace to it. Because I believe your ego is there to protect you, and it just doesn't it's on analog, and we're all in digital.

Yes. Because it's another part of the ego that's judging the ego. Exactly. I'm like, where is that seat of consciousness right now? I just wanna go sit in that chair.

Exactly. Just Just go to my happy place. So your book, Little Avalanches, I would love for you to explain how you approached writing this memoir, which is a little bit unique in memoir writing style.

Yeah. It is. My mentor had told me, you know, for years, she said, I don't know how you're gonna do this because this is not typical memoir. You're trying to write a biography and a memoir. You're trying to tell two stories, and memoir is usually one slice of one person's life. But I approached it many ways, and the way it ended up is that I wanted to give it to the reader the way I experienced life, which is I start with my childhood, and I run through my childhood without explaining anything about my dad or only what I knew about him is what the reader knows. So by the end of part one, most people despise my father, And then they get two pages into part two. And what I've been told is people are just flooded with empathy.

And they're not confronting me or my dad. They're actually confronting their own capacity for compassion and empathy. And so the second part kinda journals his wartime experience. It's very condensed and reduced. It's at 42 pages, and it moves super fast. And then part three is the conversation we had that starts at the kitchen table and kinda goes through how that impacted my life with my kids and my dad and shows me as a grown woman kind of putting all of this together and making meaning. And they say that adults take in memoir like children take in fairy tales as a practice, some type of psychological practice. And memoir is usually about survival.

And I feel like Little Avalanches is more of a memoir that is a road map to deeper conversation and understanding and to getting to know your past. So that's kind of what it's like.

I loved that so much. And at the time of recording this, I have not read it. My goal is to read it before I release this. So the intro will have all the because I I just what you're saying is so powerful, and I just I love it so much. And on a personal note, coming from a family of World War two veterans and the impact that trauma created, you know, just two generations removed. I feel like so many people that as World War II vets are dying and there's not many of them left, having these conversations, even with your parents, if you're listening, it's not too late to try to put some of those pieces together and to help understand your past. And it doesn't mean that you're defined by it or that you even have to stay in it. It just gives more clarity and understanding so you don't have to carry it anymore.

Right.

And it's any veteran, and it's anyone who's experienced any kind of trauma, which is everybody. Mhmm. Yeah. It's just that trying to understand each other and connect with each other on on a deeper level.

Well, and it just really also shines through your authentic self. And we all have this authenticity inside of us that we try to protect or the ego tries to protect and keep it because of vulnerability, because of all the reasons that we've been talking about. Yet it's just so much of a relief to just show the world who you are and show up to be who you are and love yourself and get to that point. I believe it can happen if you're willing to do the work and answer the hard questions and just be curious about it and not not be judgmental and not hold yourself beat up on yourself. But really through that lens of curiosity, I think it can really open a lot of doors moving forward.

Yeah. Absolutely. Since the book has been out in the world and, you know, friends of mine have have read it and acquaintances have read it, I feel much more deeply con they feel certainly much more deeply connected to me because now they realize, oh, now I know your story. And I, in turn, feel more connected to them because they're more willing to share because they feel that connection through the stories. You know, we're in a loneliness epidemic, and I feel like if we all could just start doing this, you know, with each other, we would not be quite as lonely.

I agree 100%, Becky. Thank you so much. I will link your book in the show notes, and you also have a Substack that I will link to so my listeners can follow as we wrap up this conversation. And I really do think I could talk to you forever about this because I have so many more questions. What is one piece of advice that you would give to my listeners who are turning this over in their brain? Like, I don't know if my story is that interesting or kind of dismissing or in denial, but their story matters.

So I believe we all have something that we're not talking about. Everyone has something, and that's the thing. That is the story that you need to tell or the conversation you need to have. Say the thing that you're not saying. Yes.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing parts of your story and talking about your dad and just, you know, really being vulnerable. And I think a lot of people are gonna hear this, and it's gonna crack some people open, and I think that's beautiful. Thank you for joining us. I am grateful you are here. If you're curious about how speaking to ourselves is a form of self care, head over to the fireinsideher.com/audio for a free recording on self care. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and be authentically you.