Intentionally Ever After

with guest Michele Muldoon Dotto

June 23, 2021 Season 1 Episode 22
Intentionally Ever After
with guest Michele Muldoon Dotto
Show Notes Transcript

Michele Muldoon Dotto is a wife, mom, attorney, and trauma survivor. When she was 29, her parents died in a murder suicide, and in an instant she found herself overcome with responsibility, anger, grief and change. Now, twelve years later, Michele is on the road to taking back her life, being fully transparent in her relationships, and most of all, learning the power of forgiveness.

If you would like to have your own intentional conversation with Joe, either on or off the air, visit https://www.joebukartek.com/contact

Check out more episodes at intentionallyeverafter.com

Post production/editing services by Jupiter Productions

Joe Bukartek empowers people to live intentionally. As host of the podcast, Intentionally Ever After [www.IntentionallyEverAfter.com], Joe is an ultramarathon runner and pickleball enthusiast, living at the beach with his family as part of his own curated intentional lifestyle.

As a board certified Intentional Lifestyle Coach, Joe helps individuals to have lives and careers that are wildly more fulfilling. Ready to curate a life of intention? Connect with Joe on his website [www.joebukartek.com] or LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/joebukartek/.]

Joe also helps emerging adults build lifelong success beyond the nest in his specialized program, Intention to Launch. This results-driven partnership guides participants as they prepare to leave home and discover their ideal lives. Ready to launch? Check out [www.IntentionToLaunch.com]

If you would like to have your own intentional conversation with Joe, either on or off the air, visit https://www.joebukartek.com/contact

Check out more episodes at intentionallyeverafter.com

The best success of my life so far beyond my marriage, which is something separate, but it's what I'm most proud of, knowing that they [my siblings] are okay. And if that I had something sort of part in that. This is Intentionally Ever After. Join Intentional Lifestyle coach Joe Bukartek for a series of personal conversations and coaching sessions with various people about how living with intention shows up for them. Greetings, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Intentionally Ever After. Today, I am very excited to chat with my friend Michelle Muldoon. Dotto. Michelle, welcome. Thank you. Yes. Michelle, will you kindly introduce yourself to folks? Sure. So I am a wife and a mom. I'm 41 years old. I'm an estate planning attorney. I've been practicing law since 2004, and I have had a path that has kind of forced me to overcome anything. So I am feeling as if I kind of started that process now, and I am here to talk about it. Yeah. I'm very excited to hear from you on this as well. So thank you again for joining me today. Very briefly, what is an estate planning attorney? Exactly? So an estate planning attorney is somebody who helps people plan what will happen with their things and their assets and their family at the time that they passed away and then down the road, they also help that family settle the estate of the one who has passed. So I help with the planning and then I help with the subsequent transactions after a person has passed away. It's very rewarding work. I really feel like I am kind of helping ease people's minds because it's a nerve wracking thought and very scary thought that one day you're not going to be here and you want to make sure you leave your loved ones with a path forward and not an over complicated scenario. And I enjoy it. I enjoy talking to people about it and teaching people and telling people the options that they have. And then I also help people who are transitioning into long term care. If they're going into a nursing home and they're facing, like, a medical bill of $10,000 a month, I help protect some of that money and make sure that they don't go bankrupt going into a nurse. Wow. Yeah. I can imagine the peace of mind that you give folks from this general area of uncertainty around death and planning for it and just a lot of unanswered questions that folks have or maybe never considered. And then they get to meet with you and be like, oh, right. It's going to be okay. It's going to be hard on my family no matter what, when I but I can ease the burden by making this paperwork transactional part of it as easy as possible. And if I have money that I can pass down, I can do that responsibly and make sure that it's going to the right people and where it should go at the right time in the right manner. So it's interesting work. Interesting work. It sounds like very intentional work. One might say it is very intentional work. You also plan for what happens when you become disabled? Well, I guess up until you're about 68 or so, you have a higher chance of becoming disabled than you do of passing away. So part of an estate plan is preparing documents so that somebody can help you with your finances and somebody can help you with your medical decisions if you're incapacitated, if you can't communicate, if you can't make those decisions, or if you can't carry out transactions. And those documents are good to have because they avoid illegal guardianship. In most instances, they can avoid illegal guardianship, which is really a process where you can lose your dignity. You can become under the control of somebody else by creating power of attorney documents to take effect. If you become disabled, you can avoid that and still retain some control. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Taking some mental notes here. Yeah. I know that's a loaded a lot of information right there. That's what I get for asking what you do. But it's better than I don't know. To me, there's a lot I build personal relationships with my clients, which I really like. Yeah. It seems very rewarding. Yeah. What does it mean to live intentionally? I'm kind of taking off my attorney talking about this part of it. I think it is living transparently and being transparent in your relationships, being transparent with your attention and kind of recognizing your own fault and your own strength and sharing those with people so that they know who you are and then also being able to recognize those in others. What do you mean by that last part? Recognizing them in others, I guess maybe accepting people for their strengths and weaknesses and trying to see through actions as being attributable to a person and not attributable to a fault or a character flow, if that makes any sense. I don't know. We need transparency, I think. How does that connect with the idea of vulnerability? Oh, I think they go hand in hand. I think if you are going to be transparent with other people, you have to be very vulnerable and you have to allow that feeling. You have to become comfortable without feeling, which is really hard. I think it's hard for a lot of people. It's been hard for me, but I found that it's harder trying to hide if you're trying to brush something aside or not acknowledge or go with the flow, with the feeling, that almost becomes a full time job, I think. Yeah. Tell me more about that, please. So I'm a person who runs very anxious. I have a lot of anxiety, and there are times when I'm scared where it kind of turns into, like a cycle. I worry that my anxiety makes me appear aloof or makes me appear like I don't want to be part of the group or I don't want to talk to people. And it's normally because I'm trapped in my own mind, I'm kind of worrying about something I said 5 minutes ago or whether or not I have something to lend to a conversation. And then because I'm not talking, I think, oh, well, now they think I'm a stop or now they think that I'm not interested. So I decided in my life to become more transparent and say to people, I run anxious. This is how I am sometimes. And I am a very sincere and open person. And if there's ever any moment that you feel like I'm being rude or not social or something along those lines, it's probably because of my anxiety. Please ask me. Yeah. Wow. It sounds like previously, prior to calling that out, that the effect would kind of snowball. You'd be concerned about this and then you're concerned about being concerned about this, and then it just kind of compounds. And I imagine it wasn't easy to start saying aloud, I run anxious. No. Because again, that's extremely vulnerable. Right. To say that this is something that one might consider to be a fault, like what is wrong with me, but how freeing it sounds to be able to put that out there and be like, this is who I am. It's become incredibly free and having almost like a canned explanation for it or something that I can open with knowing, like this is what I'm going to say. And this might help you understand who I am. Right. It's made the whole process easier of explaining kind of who I am. Yeah. No, I really like that. I really like the way that sounds. And what it does too is it allows you to control the narrative. Right. Because in the absence of knowing why something is the way it is, why someone is the way they are, we tend to fill it with assumptions, with whatever. Right. And you're not allowing that to happen by saying I run anxious. Exactly. Right. And you are controlling your narrative in that sense. But, you know, I never looked at it that way. I never looked at it as me taking control of a scenario or somebody else's assumptions. But I guess it does have that effect. It's actually me trying to control my own anxiety and not control somebody else. But if it works both ways, it's great. Yes. Right. It's a simple tool that gets both things done. Not that we need to necessarily concern ourselves with what other people think of us. Right. That's never going to turn out 100% in our favor. People are going to do what they do, think what they think. But just talk about alleviating as much concern as possible from the beginning, hey, this is who I am. And not only that, but you're inviting people into the conversation like, hey, let me know. Exactly. It sounds pretty intentional. Yeah. I found that if I kind of put myself out there and let the chips fall, then I can have a stronger connection with people. And I can leave an interaction or leave a gathering knowing that I was true to myself. Now I don't do it with people who I meet professionally or with people who I've just met. I do it with people who I kind of explain myself with people who I feel like I could have a connection with their consciousness. Yeah. There's a certain level of trust. It sounds like you build up before you can express that vulnerability. Yes. Is there a version of I run anxious that you could use or do use, maybe in a professional setting or with people you've just met? I should, but I haven't said that yet. But what I will do if it's somebody who has just met in a professional setting, if I walk away from an interaction wondering if I said something that was offensive or it wasn't a true representation of myself or the intention with which I was speaking, I'll clarify it. I'll send them a text or an email and say, oh, I just wanted to circle back on XYZ and this is where I was coming from, or this is what I meant. And rather than putting my anxiety out there, I'll just say, I hope I didn't cause a feeling of a negative feeling by saying something. And this is what I intended. Yeah. So I think managing my anxiety has become almost like a full time job to me. Well, it sounds like you're managing it differently than you once did. It sounds like it's not actually an easier load to carry around, but you have a simpler method to use sometimes with the statement, I run anxious. Yeah. I'm just wondering when it might make sense to have a version of that in a professional setting that would feel appropriate to use. I really like the phrase. That's why I keep coming back to it. I think it's brilliant. Languaging, I think is very important. Yes. The words we choose to use in many contexts. But I'm just thinking this could work in settings where you need someone for the first time or in a professional setting somehow. I think there might be room somewhere in there for that, but just food for thought, planning the seed out there. I think it should be something I brainstorm. I like the idea of it. I want in a professional setting, which has been hard for me to develop over the years. I try to make sure that I remain somewhat in control of a meeting or remain in control of a professional relationship with a client. Totally. So that is the scenario where I don't want to really make myself vulnerable. Totally. I appreciate that. But would suggest that is you remain in control because you're controlling the narrative from the beginning. That's true. That's true, right? Yeah. I run a little anxious and this is how it's going to go, right? That's true. I do appreciate you not wanting to reveal fully vulnerable to this person you just met, in particular with a professional context. So there are boundaries to consider there. I think there's something there. I think there's something there. I like that. I want to explore them more. Cool. Perhaps we'll put a pin in that and we'll revisit that one. I think that would be great. Cool. Now, if we can, I'd like to circle back to something you brought up very vaguely in your intro about you've gone down a certain path in your life. Yes. Wondering if you feel comfortable sharing that. Sure. And I think it really kind of is a great segue into why I've become a more transparent person and why I've decided to live with kind of putting myself out there. So when I was 29, which was twelve years ago, my parents died tragically. They passed into murder suicide. It was kind of very public in Delaware. Delaware is a small state. A lot of people know each other. It can become somewhat incestual in somewhere. So when it happened, it was all over the news and people just knew. And I felt somewhat like I had to explain that to a lot of people. However, when it happened, I was 29, my brother was 17, my sister was 21. And we were all kind of, of course, shell shocked by it. I felt a huge responsibility to take care and see my brother and sister through adulthood. And I need that my primary focus. And I had to there was nobody else who's really going to do it. It's something I had always promised to my mom. She always said, you'll look out for your brother and sister, right? If anything ever happens to me, you'll do this. And I always had to promise that. So I did it. And I put my life on pause for a long time to do it. I stopped working. I was, at the time in a really great position in my career. I was a trust attorney. I was administering trust for very high net wealth people, super celebrities. And I felt and I focused on kind of making sure that my brother and sister were going to be okay and that this was not going to cause them to go off track and realize. And it took a lot of energy and a lot of it was very emotionally taxing for a long time. And twelve years later, I have actually, as of last month, finally settled everything having to do with my parents passing. So I feel like it is truly behind me because there is really no more. My life is not entangled by it anymore. They owned some real estate. I sold the last piece last month, and I feel so free from that. Congratulations. Thank you. I had to help clean up a crime scene which was incredibly detrimental, I think, to my mental health. I think it's what has caused me to become such an anxious person. But it was a very violent way that they passed. It was a stabbing, and it was in the home we grew up in. It was also a home that my dad had built. He was a stone Mason, and it was my brother and sister's home. And I felt like I had this responsibility to stay in the home and honor this home that my father had built and honor the memories that were made there and not just walk away from it because of the events that happened there. So I handled cleaning up the crunchy, and I didn't do it myself. We had the company come in, but I managed that and dealt with they did not do a very good job. And I for a long time after I found remnants of what happened that day. And it caused me to have a really bad post traumatic stress disorder for years. And I didn't really realize it, but I was running. I was easily startled. I was running anxious every day and not really opening up to people as to why. So if I would be driving to work, if I saw an animal on the side of the road who had been struck by a car, it would derail me for the whole day. When I settled their estate, the amount of mail that would come was astronomical. There were two people in their 50s who were successful, and my dad owned a business. My mom was the nursing professor. And the amount of paperwork I had to handle it was just ungodly. And so for a long time after I ignored the mail and I ignored New York, and I'm an attorney, and that is not a good mix. So I had to really do a lot of work to become past that and to rise above that. And it took a lot of time it took most of my 30 to really overcome what happened. I can't imagine. I truly can't imagine. Okay, well, you shouldn't have to, and nobody should. It's such a unique set of circumstances. At one point when it happened, I kind of Googled like, okay, who else in the world has done this? Who else in the world has handled this right? And nobody has. But I think that's attributable to anybody who's grieving or anybody who is kind of a victim to the tragic death. There's not a book on how to handle it. And even if there was, your pain is uniquely yours. Yes, truly, from the way every single aspect of it you've mentioned so many extreme shifts of transitions, right from your changing of roles to the way it happened to what happened to your life the moment after and from then on, and how to process and how you engage with the world. And it's no wonder that it took a while for you to feel like you were able to get to the next part of it. Yeah. And there are some days still where I can be thrown back into the throat of those beginning days. Something can happen. But now I think I have tools to help me get out of that. So like birthdays, holidays, the anniversary of the day that it happened, it can be very transforming. I can be thrown back into that time. But I think work that I've done most recently, probably over the past five years, has allowed me to step out. If I get stuck in that moment, to step out of the moment and be more intentional with where I am and what I'm doing, what do you find to be most helpful to help bring you? It sounds like you're talking about bringing you back to the present moment. Is that what you're referring to? Okay. What do you find to be most helpful there? I think looking around me and realizing just pausing and looking around and seeing I'm no longer living in the house that they lived in. We've moved. I've had two children since then. And realizing that is over, that part of my life is not happening anymore. Something that a therapist said to me right after it happened. I went to grief therapy, and it was incredibly helpful. And what I was stuck in after it happened was the way that my mom passed. She brutally attacked. She was scared. She was attacked by the one person who is supposed to protect you. And I could not get that vision out of my mind. And I knew in the house where things happened. I knew in the house where she died, I would lay down on the floor and just kind of try to be with her and imagine how she felt. And I could not move past that. And I was talking to my grief counselor about that, and it was the best thing anybody could have said. She said, that moment is over. Your mom is not suffering anymore. She has passed, and she is wherever you attribute her being, she's in heaven. She is in a better place. Or you can just know she's not suffering or hurting anymore. And that hearing that was like, oh, my God, you're right. Because in my mind, she was suspended in this awful moment. And so taking that, taking that and applying it to where I am now. I'm not in 2011 anymore, which is when it happened. I am not trying to hold together a family anymore. Make sure that my brother and sister are okay anymore. I have done that. That is over. And I'm here now. And doing that and pausing and thinking that way is what takes me out of that moment. You've been so many things to so many people. Okay. Thank you. Do you not see it that way? I do. It was not what I wanted to be and because of that, I worry if I've been like a pain or like a thorn in their side. I just wanted to be my brother and sister's older sister. I wanted to be the older sister who could get them alcohol if they wanted to enter my older sister. I never wanted to be in charge of their money, of their schooling. I never wanted it. So it sounds like you're saying you're no longer having to do that for them. No, I'm not. They're both married. They have their homes, they have their careers, and they're successful and happy. And I feel that it's probably the best success of my life so far beyond my marriage, which is something separate, but it's what I'm most proud of, knowing that they are okay and that I had some sort of part in that. Yeah. That's not a small thing. No. It's very layered and it's very complicated. But I'm happy now to be able to be just what does that look like moving forward for you? What do you want it to look like? Well, I think that they're in the area or the time of their life where they would like to have kids, so I get to be a fun aunt buying alcohol. No. Now that I'm 40, I would never do that. And just spending time together and not feeling like I have to coach them through decisions or step out of the relationship that I want with them and put on almost like an authoritative hat and do that. I didn't like any of that. Right. So now I don't have to do that. Well, this sounds like a new phase for you. It is. So that's why I really wanted to chat today, because I feel like I'm at this part where I'm ready to embrace my life again. I'm ready to just focus on myself and my family and my career. And I've learned a lot about forgiveness, and I think that I've been able to put that in action, and I feel like I have a lot to say about it. So I'm kind of starting with you. Well, thank you. I'm so excited. All right. I'm going to ask you right off, how does one how do you specifically put forgiveness into action? Well, I don't think it's something that you can just decide to do. I think that it's something that you have to come to. But I've had to forgive the disruption that it caused my life. I had to forgive my dad for what he did. I had to forgive my mom for having a part of it, because these things don't happen in a vacuum. There was two people played part of it. I've had to forgive myself for maybe missteps. I felt that I've taken along the way, and I realized that holding on to the anger and holding on to the anxiety over it, it's not helping me move on. So I've had to make just a decision to accept who my parents were, what caused that event and loved them anyway and honor their memory anyway. Because being angry wasn't helping. It was toxic and it wasn't helping me. It was bringing me back to that moment. And I wasn't able to if I found myself getting angry, I was not able to stay present where I am now, having moved past it is forgiveness in this instance or in these instances, is it a moment or is it a process? I think it's a process. I think it ends and flows. I think that there are some days still when I'm 41 and just finally feel like I'm getting my career back. And I'm like people who I went to law school with, they've come so far, and I'm kind of starting fresh because I took some time off. So there are times when I'm resentful. But in the process of grieving, I've learned to forgive. So you've mentioned you've had to forgive, but it doesn't sound like one has to. But if one doesn't, then you're carrying it around with you be carrying around the resentment. Right. And you chose that. You are no longer willing to just carry that around because I think you said it was toxic. Yes. I've done reading and I've done some work on what forgiveness means. And I think some schools of thought or that a person can't make you feel a certain way, only you can feel a certain way. So if somebody breaks up with you and they make you feel unwanted and lonely and they've shattered your self confidence, typically you would say they can't make you feel that way, only you are responsible for that feeling. And that's supposed to be a step in the forgiveness journey, realizing and owning your feelings. In this instance, the actions took my whole life off, of course. And so, yes, I was grieving and yes, I was lonely, but it also made me press pause on my life. And so I couldn't take ownership of that because I had no control over that. So I had to realize that I had to kind of become a more empathetic person and look and see why this happened and what caused this and try to understand that my dad had no control over it either. And I think that if he knew what he was doing and the effect that it would have, he would have never done what he did. So looking at it from his point of view allowed me to forgive him because otherwise I was not moving on. Like I said, when it was toxic, it caused me to be more of a victim to his actions than I wanted to be. Yeah. I'm wondering if I can share this philosophy with you. It's part of my own philosophy, not uniquely mine, but wondering what you think of it, that everyone at any given point is doing the best that they can. But it may not always be good enough. I like that. I think that's very true. I say that a lot that you're doing, like to myself or to my kids, you're doing the best that you can. But taking it a step further thing, but it might not be good enough, adds a layer of accountability and responsibility to it, which is important. I think the reason I thought of it as you were explaining, and it has to do with feeling less like a victim to certain things as well, which is, I think, what your point was, not feeling victim to it, and when you were able to forgive, it made you feel less like a victim to it. It sounds like yeah. I think in the moment that my parents passed, my dad was trying to do the best that he could. It was not good enough. But I think I can say that in this part of my life and journey, I'm doing the best that I can handling what happened, and finally, it's good enough. I somewhat you've certainly come a long way from everything you've been explaining. Well, thank you. I hope it makes sense. What if it doesn't? What if it doesn't? Who cares? Well, I don't want listeners to feel like they're wasting their time because I'm here. I want to jump to this question, and it may feel out of place, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What area in your life feels just about perfect? I think my marriage I feel like my marriage is just about perfect. I'm married to a wonderful man, and I know that, and I honor that. And he makes me feel honored and loved every day, and we communicate so well and just enjoy each other's company so that there's nothing about it I would change. So I feel like if you're defining perfection, I don't know if it could get better. So to me, that sounds pretty damn perfect. Yeah, it does sound pretty damn perfect. For what it's worth, the question is, in quotes for the word perfect, it's meant to be self defined. So I think you do a brilliant job of that. I was in therapy once, and the therapist asked me to talk about my husband, and I just kind of burst into tears because I love him so much and love the person that he is, and he's the most selfless person I've ever met, and I feel so lucky to have him and to have found him and that he loves me. I just feel so blessed and lucky to have him and realizing that one day it was a lot. And I don't think I had ever thought about it in that way. Didn't seem like you had the luxury of focusing on that, given everything that was foisted upon you. That's true. It did. We were married at the time, and it caused us to have to stop focusing on ourselves and put our energy into other people and cleaning up a giant mess. But he was wonderful and he still is and he's still here. And it put a lot of faith I think it restored a lot of faith in me towards people, because when your dad kills your mom, you really stop trusting people. And him assuring me every day that he wasn't going anywhere. He kind of stopped it in his truck. Yeah. That would have you question so many parameters that people just assume about life, about people. Right. Yeah. I happen to know Steve, and he's a good reminder that there are some goods good. There's some good out there. So now that you're able to feel like you're now able to focus on yourself and yourselves, what's next? What's part of what's next? What do you want more of? So we have a ten year old and we have fertility issues. Why don't we throw fertility issues in the mix of all? Let's do it. Let's add it. Yeah. So we never gave up, and we were told by our doctors to not give up, that this would happen. And with our doctor's encouragement, we kept going. And we now have an 18 month old son and a ten year old daughter. And we are really just kind of focusing on spending time with our kids and enjoying our free time with them. We're not interested in obviously, we're planning for retirement, we're planning for the future, but we are really just zeroed in on enjoying our weekends together, our nights together, our time together. And it's been wonderful. Yeah. That sounds like a pretty intentional approach as well. What if you said no to that has made a significant impact in your life? I think that brings it back to what we first talked about in the beginning of our chat. I've said no to trying to explain or put a mask on who I am and my anxiety and where I come from, because I think before I was trying to fudge my way through social interactions or relationship and try to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. And I am done with that. And I just am saying no to that now. Take me or leave me. Yes. If that makes sense. It makes total sense. Yeah. You're not interested in carrying around the concern and baggage of all that? No. I went through a time when my parents passed. It was lonely. Holidays were lonely. Nothing was the same. And I just wanted other people to like me so much because I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. At that point. We were still going through fertility issues, so even our family at home didn't feel complete. So I just wanted to be a part of something so badly that I would be whatever somebody else wanted me to be. And it was exhausting. And I was not being true to myself. And I just realized, I think having our son, I realized this is not worth it. I want to be transparent and I want to be authentic for him and for our daughter so that they know who their mom is and so that they don't turn into people. Pleasers. Yeah. No pressure, mom. But you're modeling for them, aren't you? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They watch everything. Sure. So I said no to that. I said no to being anybody but myself. Yeah. Who is someone that you admire and what you admire about them. So I'm going to say it's my husband. Yeah. You're allowed to repeat. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. He is unwaveringly patient. He is very good with people, which has caused him to be successful in life. He is sure of himself and confident in a way that is just inspiring to me because he doesn't question what other people think. It doesn't really seem to have an effect on him. He's generous with his time and his energy. He is just a wonderful, kind, genuine person. And I admire that so much. What do you imagine some people admire about you? I guess resilience if I listen or if I take note of things that people have said about me because my friends and the community have been so warm and kind to me over the years when they've seen that I've been struggling with something, or I've seen that I've been trying so hard to get pregnant or trying so hard to overcome what happened with my parents. People have been wonderful. It's really made me have a lot of faith in the human race because I've seen how nurturing and giving people are. But when they say something to me, it's always you're so strong or you're so determined or you're so resilient. So I think that's what people say. I hope that's what it sounds like. You kind of believe that about yourself, right? Yeah. I watched a movie once, and I can't remember what it was, but a man described a woman like a very strong, fierce woman as being incredibly capable, and that stuck with me. I want to be capable. I want to be capable of handling what life throws at me. So I think people see resilience, and what I want to see is capability. What else have we either not talked about or do you want to circle back to and share? You've got a lot of stuff, Michelle, and I really appreciate you sharing. I know. Oh, well, thank you for providing an outlet, I guess, to you. Is this type of material helpful teaching for clients? I'm sure it is. We chatted a little bit before. There may be some people who can relate to much of what you said, some of what you said, or maybe none of what you've said and shared about your life. But I think all of it is valuable for the folks who have not experienced what you've experienced to any degree to consider, at a minimum. Wow. This person who I just met or who I've seen walking past might be going through something in their life and I never would know that because when you're walking down the street, you don't carry those things as labels on the outside. You certainly don't. Right. But they're absolutely while you have done a lot of work not carrying around a lot of the baggage and toxicity of these situations, you do carry along the part of the experience. Right. And it turns into wisdom, it turns into perspective. Yeah. I have no doubt that someone out there will and multiple someone's, by the way. But I can't go as far as guaranteeing a number here. We'll definitely benefit from it. I certainly have benefited. So if no one else there's one person, one plus that has benefited from our conversation today. So genuinely, I truly appreciate you sharing being transparent. You're definitely practicing what you preach. I'm trying. Yeah. And Congratulations again for settling on the final properties and all the legal stuff and being able to as cleanly as possible move forward and start living a more excited and focused on your family of four. It's very exciting news. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. This has been intentionally ever after hosted by intentional lifestyle coach Joe Bukartek. If you would like to have your own intentional conversation with Joe on or off the air, visit intentionallyeverafter.com. Thanks for listening.