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Amanda Levitt is an activist and scholar working to dismantle fatphobia and highlight the ways fat stigma shows up in society. Central to her work is exposing how racism and capitalism generate conditions that shame fat people about their bodies. Amanda tells Claire how the rise of social media has made body shame inescapable in society, how finding a supportive community helped her combat the body shaming she’s experienced throughout her life, and what we can do to challenge the societal norms that lead to body shaming in the first place.

Resources from the show

• Listen to Fat Theory Book Club, a podcast hosted by scholar and activist Amanda Levitt.
• Read Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings
• Read Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo
• Read This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture by Whitney Phillips

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Marc Brackett, Claire Bidwell-Smith

Claire Bidwell-Smith  00:00

What is one thing someone listening today can do to change their relationship with something they feel shame around?

Marc Brackett  00:07

What I would say is, be the curious scientist about it, stand as the observer of it. And, you know, you as the individual are not shame, right, shame is an experience. It’s a feeling, as we said, that is put upon us. So by observing it, and understanding, you know, where it came from, and making having the ability to make the attribution, you know, I’m feeling this way, most likely, because of the way this person, you know, treated me or what they said about me. And then realizing that we don’t have to give people that much power. You know, that we can own our emotional lives, especially as adults. And so I think just that reframing of it can transform people’s lives.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  01:15

Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell Smith. Welcome to New Day. Seamus, one of the most complex emotions we’ll experience in our lives, and the discomfort around it can be even more deeply rooted when it’s tied to trauma we experienced in childhood. So how do we change our relationship with shame? My guest today, Mark Brackett has spent years tackling that question. As a research psychologist and a professor at Yale University. Mark studies how shame impacts our lives and our bodies. In his book permission to feel he delves deep into shame, and how he processes his own trauma around the abuse he experienced as a child. This is the third episode from our series this month looking at how shame impacts our lives, we’re also exploring how shame shows up in our relationships with our body, in our sex lives, and in our financial decisions. This conversation with Mark covers how to combat shame we carry from our experiences in our childhood. There’s so many valuable lessons, but one that I’ll highlight here is the idea that we don’t have to arbitrarily bind ourselves to the extremely difficult task of fully ridding ourselves of shame. Mark, also share some tips on how parents can talk to their children about emotions in ways that don’t generate shame for them, or reinforce other emotional feelings that may already exist there. Here’s our conversation.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  02:43

Hi, Mark, it’s so good to see you again.

Marc Brackett  02:45

You too, how are you?

Claire Bidwell-Smith  02:46

I’m good. I’m also a little, I have a cold. So I’m not my best self. But I think you and I still have a lot to bring. And we always have a good conversation. So I’m excited to meet with you. Thanks for meeting with us in the chaos of moving, it’s all good. Well, I would love for you to start by telling us anywhere about your kind of first experiences of shame or understanding how shame was affecting your life. And I’ll just remind everyone, that you’re the author of one of my favorite books with one of my favorite titles called permission to feel.

Marc Brackett  03:20

Thank you. Well, it’s interesting, because I’ve been doing a lot of just thinking in my own writing, and in the next phase of my own development, and have just recognized, you know, deeply elements of shame, you know, that I’ve experienced throughout my life. You know, and it’s different, as you know, from guilt, and other kinds of, you know, self-conscious emotions. Because, you know, from the perspective that I take, you know, shame was put upon us, you know, we’re not born feeling shame, right things happen in our lives. And people who..

Claire Bidwell-Smith  03:57

That’s such an important thing to remind people of, you know, it is put upon us.

Marc Brackett  04:02

It’s put upon us, someone else decides that they’re going to have a decision over how you feel about yourself. And, unfortunately, they win sometimes, because in my perspective, we’re not teaching children, right how to sift through the information, you know, that people are saying to them. And, and obviously, the adults who are raising teaching kids need to be more developed, so that they don’t create these kinds of experiences for kids. But with that said, I would say, you know, as you know, you know, a little part of my story stems from my abuse as a child and just, you know, being a victim of sexual abuse at an early age, and disclosing that abuse after five years of it and being bullied as a result of it for me was, you know, In the most profound experience of shame that I’m still coping with.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  05:05

At what point were you able to recognize that feeling as shame?

Marc Brackett  05:12

You know, it’s funny because like all of our work, right as adult is retrospective, right? Now I have language for it, I didn’t have language for it, the language I had for as a child was I hate myself, you know, there’s something wrong with me, I’m not good enough. And that metastasized like cancer into all aspects of my life, academics, sports, relationships, and so it kind of bled into my general self-worth. And, you know, as you know, you know, a big part of my story is that I had an uncle, who was by some wave of a magic wand writing a curriculum to teach kids about feelings. And he used me as his guinea pig, when I was that young teenager, and we started getting language, you know, using words to describe these experiences and defining them and talking about his experiences with them and my experiences with them. But I would say that I probably even with that did not have a clear understanding of these concepts until I was in my late 20s. In, you know, my doctoral program, because, you know, we just, you know, you learn a word, and then you move on. And then when you start studying these concepts and comparing them to other concepts, they become, you know, more real.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  06:38

How do you define shame?

Marc Brackett  06:41

I mean, at the simplest level, I think it’s diminished self-worth. That’s big enough.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  06:49

No, I know, I’m just letting it sink in. It those are three simple words on some level. And yet, it’s that the effect that has is profound on a person.

Marc Brackett  07:01

Yeah, it shows up everywhere. You know, I mean, I think some people might have, you know, domain specific shame. But I think many of us, you know, it kind of leaks into other aspects of our lives. And I think because it’s put upon us, oftentimes, at a very young age, what happens is that we get a lot of time to rehearse all the reasons why we’re not good enough. And we don’t get enough time combating that, you know, sifting through it. And so it just like I said, I’m metastasizes. And I, you know, I’m a scientist, so I think about as a brain. And so the more you know, the more you say to yourself, I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough, I’m too this I’m too that I’m this, whatever it is, it just, that’s the that becomes your automatic go to.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  07:56

And what are the what are the ramifications of internalizing shame? You know, like, how does it play out in our lives? What are the behaviors that results? You know, what are the things that happen to us when we’re experiencing shame?

Marc Brackett  08:10

Yeah, and I think, for that, you know, depends on your contexts, right? And so for me, you know, I had two parents who loved me dearly, I knew they loved me, but my mother had her own issues around shame, and she had terrible anxiety. And, you know, truth is, she was always having a nervous breakdown, as a kid, you know, I can’t take it, I’m losing it. And she locked herself in a room and, you know, drink a lot of alcohol. And my father, you know, was a survivor, and his own right, you know, grew up a very dysfunctional family and had a lot of anger and didn’t have an emotion education. And so, I share that, because when you don’t have adults in your environment, who are looking, you know, and appraising your situation, nor are they emotionally available, right? What happens is that it has to go somewhere. So for me, it went into an eating disorder. For me, it went into self-hatred. For me, it went into a distorted reality, you know, of who I was, you know, in terms of I was a victim of sexual abuse. I also knew from a very young age, that I was gay. And I conflated those two things, you know, and which is not helpful to your healthy development. And so it manifests itself in having very low self-esteem, not knowing really how to build and maintain good relationships.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  09:43

I had my first real experience, deep experience of shame was strangely after my mother died, you know, my stories. My parents both died when I was young, but when I was 18, my mom died and over the next few years, I had developed this deep sense of shame around not having a mother not having, you know, a parent and it and it expanded as my father died. And, you know, even now, today, it’s continued in some ways, you know, I watch my adult contemporaries with their parents who are still living or other moms at school who have their moms picking up their kids. And there’s this weird feeling that I get sometimes of shame of feeling like, there’s something wrong with me for not having parents. And it’s been something I’ve kind of struggled to even understand because it’s kind of disenfranchised in a way, you know, it wasn’t. It’s not the typical things that we think about when we feel shame about our bodies or about abuse. Have you ever heard about that feeling of shame around grief?

Marc Brackett  10:47

Yeah. You know, I lost my mom when I was young as well. It wasn’t my experience of shame. But I watched my mother die, feeling shame, that she had pancreatic cancer, and that, you know, that she could not continue to be our mother. And, you know, it’s interesting, my mother, I think, died very quickly when she was when she got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And I just saw her disappear. And it was very painful for me, because I was studying psychology at the time, it was studying Buddhism, and, you know, and trying to apply those principles to my relationship with my mother. And I watched her just not wanting to look in the mirror, she refused to, she wanted to cover all the mirrors in the house, because she did not want to see herself losing her body. And I just wish it could have been different for her, you know, that you can see that in so many people who have, you know, challenges with their physical appearance, you know, and again, that’s been put upon them by other people.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  12:20

I think for me the silence around grief and the lack of acknowledgement of what a huge thing it is to lose a parent, at that age or any age was what created shame for me, you know, people just not wanting to recognize or see what I was going through and then feeling like, well, I shouldn’t be going through this, then if it’s not a recognized thing. And so then that was where the shame kind of internalized.

Marc Brackett  12:46

I just want to say one thing, you know, about that, you know, that coming from the work that I do in education, and in my writing, is that, you know, we have deemed shame, a weakness. And when it’s an experience, you know, that needs to be discussed and addressed. And, you know, there’s nothing we shouldn’t feel ashamed of our shame. We have feelings about our feelings, right? And oftentimes that shame comes out as anger, right? It comes out as fear.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  13:19

I was just going to ask you, what is shame often disguised as.

Marc Brackett  13:22

Anger, fear, primarily. And when you think about the effects of shame, which happens oftentimes from bullying kind of experiences, and broadly speaking, you know, that’s about sexual orientation, race, and disability, the list goes on, or the distorted views of people who raise us and teach us about who we should be. We oftentimes think that people who feel that way, like, Mark, you’re a man and he’s 53 years old, you’ve got a doctorate, 4 you want to center, like, get over your shame, you know, you know, come on, toughen up. And you know, that’s the problems of toxic masculinity in our society. And my hope is that we can, can think about shame as an experience, in a shame that I felt will probably never go away. But my relationship to my shame can really change. And I always want to approach these concepts that are heavy with hope. Because when we learn how to understand those experiences, we can use them really wisely, to improve our lives and also make the world a better place for other people.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  14:41

I love that, I love there’s a lot of freedom and liberation and the idea that we don’t have to make the shame go away. And for some of us, we never will be able to accomplish that, but we can change our relationship to it. That’s really profound. And when I’m thinking about when we get to that point in our lives where we’re ready to address shame, and begin to work on it and change that relationship, what are some of the beginning steps? I mean, for me, it sounds like it might be as basic as just recognizing that we have shame.

Marc Brackett  15:13

Yeah, it’s naming it. So you have a language that describes the experience, you know, and obviously, I come at it from the perspective of my book, which is, you have the permission to feel shame. And, like all emotions, there are no good ones, or bad ones, you know, shame kind of feels like it’s always a bad emotion, just because it’s, it’s so painful. But we can’t control our environment, you know, we can’t control as a five year old, you know, being a victim of bullying or abuse, it’s very hard to say things like, you know, who do you think you are talking to me that way, I love myself stay away, you know, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re this, you’re that we can do that our brains are, we’re not cognitively able to even do that. And so we’re never going to be 100% prepared to deal with all the craziness, you know, that will come in front of us. But we can, as I said, a moment ago, create environments where there’s less of it, right, where other people like, are paying attention to the way people talk to us and treat us and saying, hey, wait a minute, like, that’s not cool, you know, couples, and, you know, parents of children can be more attentive and listening to the words that people are saying, the way a father or a mother might talk to their child about, you know, their physical appearance, or what they’re wearing, or how they speak or, you know, whatever it might be. So there are prevention measures, for sure. But again, I don’t want to deny myself my shame, because I’ll be honest with you, my shame is a motivating factor in my life. For the listeners, you know, like some defense mechanism, there’s one that’s called sublimation. And I feel in many ways, you know, I am trying to sublimate all of my kind of very painful experiences, into like, creating the conditioned for the next wave of children to not have to go through it as much. And so, again, these experiences come without us asking them to come. And our job is to be good listeners, and social supporters.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  17:30

You know, I’m thinking about my kids. And as much as I can create an incredible environment at home, which I’m sure I make mistakes in as well. But even as much as I can teach them language or role model, just you know, self-worth and value and all of those things, they still go out into the world and, you know, receive messages back all the time. And they’re preteens and teens, and like that, that realm at school is brutal. And so there’s, there’s no way that I can imagine fully protecting them from that. But I think at the same time, there’s some value in learning how to have a relationship with shame, you know, and find positive growth from it.

Marc Brackett  18:08

It’s the only way out of it, because otherwise, it eats us. So we just, nobody wants that for anybody. And, and so it’s, you know, I always say, you know, when I do my presentations for families, I always end by saying, it’s our moral obligation, right, to ensure that every child gets an emotion education, which means that it’s our moral obligation, as the adults who are raising teaching kids to be the best possible role models for them. And I say that with like, conviction, because I mean, that, by the way, this is developmental for adults, too. You know, as you know, I am 53, I’m a full professor at Yale, you know, I have, you know, quote, unquote, as people say, I’ve made it, you know, whatever that means, I still don’t feel that way. I feel like I have another 100 years trying to figure out what the heck I’m doing with my life. Same. Putting that aside for a minute. I have parents who you know, and other adults who listen to me speak and they say things like, oh my gosh, like I can never be, you know, as vulnerable as you are, the way you talk about your childhood experiences and stuff like that. Like I had one father say to me, I can’t believe how open you are about, you know, the effects of bullying on your development. And I said, well, it really had a profound experience. And it lasted for many, many years for me, because the shame that I experienced from the abuse, gotten worse, because I went on public television as a 12 year old to try to, you know, I don’t know how this happened. But my parents had met the psychiatrist who was writing a book about pedophilia, and they convinced me to be a spokesperson, which was developmentally not appropriate, just putting that out there. And so I go on channel nine public television news. And so now Not only did my neighborhood know what happened to me, but the whole community knows about what happened to Mark, this is 1980.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  20:07

Wow, I didn’t know this part of your story.

Marc Brackett  20:10

I didn’t want to make my book completely autobiographical. And so that resulted in triple the shame.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  20:16

That leads me to another aspect of shame in that when people encounter difficult emotions that come up for themselves, maybe hearing a story like that, or thinking about it, it causes them to feel some custom amount of their own shame and fear, which then, you know, exacerbates everything and changes their behavior, that kind of ripple effect, right?

Marc Brackett  20:41

100%. And I think what happened is that, you know, emotional intelligence wasn’t a concept than 1980. You know, obviously, there was psychology, but the emotion system is one that is a signal system. And if your body and brain are not prepared for the signals, what happens? You shut down. And so I think, when people learned from my story about my experience, you know, firstly, that’s, you know, sexual abuse is just like something I’m talking about anyway, you know, and then all of a sudden, like, this is a kid who, you know, they knew or know, and people are freaked out to have, like, how do you help Mark feel safe and comfortable and included? I don’t know, I don’t know what to say I don’t what to do. So what am I gonna do alienate, separate, deny, suppress, and who ends up being the victim? Well, the child becomes doubly victim, right? Because they have their own psychological experience of trying to cope with and then the world around them doesn’t know how to deal with it. And now, it’s like, double victimization in many ways.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  21:51

What do you think about secrecy and shame? I mean, I’m thinking about you kind of really coming out with your story and your truth and your experience. There’s this other realm of when we hold things in, or when we are transparent about them and make ourselves vulnerable? Do we have to come out with our stories in order to move through some of that shame, or in this, like, in this case, which was age inappropriate, it seems like it caused more damage

Marc Brackett  22:24

in the way that it was, you know, in the way that it was communicated, because it was made public and there was no systems to support my healthy development back then. I would argue that shame that is not dealt with, with the support of others will, as I said earlier, metastasize. It’s too complex for a child to deal with it on their own. Right, whenever you’re talking about someone’s self-esteem and self-worth, you can solve it on your own. My hunch, is that unexpressed shame, will lead to a very difficult life. What I’m finding is that people are desperate for better strategies for regulating their feelings. And I think that, once we, you know, there is that, you know, name it detainment thing that you want to label it, it helps. But I think that people, you know, when we say things like, talk about your feelings to someone that you trust, there’s the how to, and we don’t really teach people how to do that, how do you approach someone say, I want to talk to you about this? And then what is the person who is getting who’s, you know, who’s the recipient of that information? You know, they have their own life experiences, their own relationship with those concepts that are being presented to them? And are they prepared to be a good listener, to not try to fix it to you know, be that as I say, compassionate emotion scientists to co explores with that person, you know, strategies that might be helpful. It’s work and I just think that like, what frustrates me most you know about my own field, is that we still think of this as add on secondary ancillary, not as a core subject like math, science and language arts. And when you see the research in terms of the predictive validity, you know, in terms of what I mean by that is like how these skills show up in our adult lives in the benefits of them. You start realizing like we need to put more effort and time in this this is not soft skill. This is hard skill.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  25:03

How does one go about changing this relationship with shame? Whether they are becoming more open about their experience with it or not, or doing it, you know, as self-work or in private therapy? How do we go about beginning to change that relationship?

Marc Brackett  25:22

I think what’s happened in our world is that with social media, with people working multiple jobs with, you know, the chaos with politics, the chaos, and the difficulties we’ve had as a society around race, and, you know, war and Ukraine, and now it’s monkey pox. And before that was COVID, like, we’re endlessly activated as adults, and which makes us less present, which makes us less attentive, which makes us less present, which makes us less able to have conversations and see, you know, our lovers and our children. And so from my perspective, we’ve got to figure out how to change larger systems in our society. I started my curriculum with my uncle. And it was a curriculum for middle schoolers, because that’s when I was suffering. And he was a middle school teacher, and it just worked out. And we failed terrifically. And it was, the truth is, we failed, often, now that I think about it because of the shame that teachers had about their own development. And so we’d have teachers say things like, well, I’m anxious, and my father was anxious, and I can’t talk about anxiety in the classroom, and this is not gonna work for me. And then I had teachers my job, and that’s talk to students about feelings, this is gonna open up Pandora’s box. And everybody’s arguing about why not to do the work that Mike and I were trying to get people to do. And that’s when I realized, guess what, the adults are a problem. It’s not the kids, the kids are going to do just fine if the adults but you know, create the conditions for them to develop in a healthy way. And then, you know, we started working on adult development, the teachers, and then families, and then leaders of schools, because they determine whether or not this stuff gets implemented or not. And then now, my career, you know, I have this project right now that I call making Connecticut, the first emotionally intelligent state. And it’s like policymakers and government officials, and I want everybody to have the common language, the set of tools, and the understanding of these skills, that I think that we can get change.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  27:29

Because when you can regulate your emotions, when you can have a healthy relationship with things like shame and anxiety, and fear, you can be a more productive person, you know, you can be a healthier person, you can learn all of the other subjects in more, you know, in depth ways and retain information and use all of it, but first having to be in that place where you can do that. Because if you’re in a state of, you know, emotional distress, how can you be learning anything?

Marc Brackett  27:58

You know, we didn’t know that, you know, I was a failing student. And I joke about that sometimes, you know, during my presentations, which is, you know, literally, like failed in fifth and sixth grade, many subject areas. And it makes sense, you know, I was in like, survival mode, man. You know, like, that shame took over pretty quickly in terms of, you know, my ability to sit in a class like math, where I’m being bullied by the kids sitting next to me, like, how the heck do you concentrate? When somebody’s whispering in your ear? They’re going to beat you up after school.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  28:36

Right. Of course, you can’t do your math at that point.

Marc Brackett  28:39

I’m like, who’s gonna be my friend? Right? You know, why isn’t the teacher noticing what’s happening to me and paying doing something about it? Like I’m alone here, help me out. Going back to your primary goal today, which is to talk about shame. Until we label the experience clearly, like think about that for a minute. I come home from school, and I’m like, You’re my mom, Claire. And I’m like, I hate you. And I hate school. And you think because of my behavior that I’m angry, right? Or frustrated, you know, and you’re like, who do you think you are? This is what happened to me, like go to your room, wait till your father gets home, that whole thing. Now that my father comes on, what do you think you are talking about that way I can tell you if you don’t stop doing that mark, this is going to be big trouble. Meanwhile, what they don’t know is that true story is on the bus ride home. Kids were spitting on me. And imagine the shame that you feel as a child when someone is like literally crawling on top of the bus and drooling on you. And you are perilous because the other kids are edging and on. And that’s what I went through. You know, and I haven’t thought about that one in my 20 years by the way. Thanks for activating all my shame memories.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  29:55

And so like you just brought back some school best memories. If that makes you feel any better.

Marc Brackett  30:01

Yeah, so we get punished for our behavior. Because we don’t know how to express our feeling.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  30:07

Yeah. And it just compounds. Yeah. And so

Marc Brackett  30:10

My point really was that unless the parent is able to be deactivated and present, while the kid is yelling and screaming that they hate them, because probably not they hate you, or there’s probably something that happened that we need to learn more about. But we get so activated when people yell at us and scream at us because we’re in self-protection mode. And then the question is, like, you know, I don’t think I ever in my life, share that experience of being drooled on with my family, ever.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  30:44

It’s such a fascinating topic. I feel like you know, it can just be unpacked and unpacked. Are there other? Are there other granular emotions with shame, you know, is shame like in a family? Or is it

Marc Brackett  30:59

Typically people clump it with embarrassment, right? Sometimes even guilt, but they’re, you know, obviously, they’re quite different. You know, if I said something, you know, in this conversation, like, oh, shit, you know, that would be kind of embarrassment, right? If I said something that may have hurt your feelings, you know, unintentionally, may actually feel terrible about them a little guilty, you know? And the shame is completely different, right? Because it’s  not my behavior. That’s the reason for it. It’s, it’s what happened, it’s the outside influence. And I think that’s part of the thing is helping parents distinguish, you know, what is the difference between shame and guilt? And embarrassment. And embarrassment is a, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Right? Actually, like, when you talk about it, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, I messed up, you know, and I can’t believe I did that, oh, my gosh, and I’m a human being, you know, and fabulous. Shame is more complex. But, again, we need to create a world where shame is not a bad thing, in terms of talking about it, you know, it’s a bad thing. I will just say, when we create the conditions for other people to feel it.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  32:24

Absolutely. Yeah. And I just want to reiterate that, you know, that it’s not a bad thing. And also that it’s not the goal, again, to get rid of it. It’s the goal, the goal is to change our relationship to it. Last question, what is one thing someone listening today can do to change their relationship with something they feel shame around?

Marc Brackett  32:46

What I would say, is, be the curious scientist about it, stand as the observer of it. And, you know, you as the individual are not shame, right? Shame is an experience, it’s a feeling, as we said, that is put upon us. So by observing it, and understanding, you know, where it came from, and making having the ability to make the attribution, you know, I’m feeling this way, most likely, because of the way this person treated me or what they said about me. And then realizing that we don’t have to give people that much power. You know, that we can own our emotional lives, especially as adults. And so I think just that reframing of it can transform people’s lives.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  33:46

I like that. Thank you so much for the work you’re doing. It’s so meaningful to our entire world.

Marc Brackett  33:53

Thank you so much.

Claire Bidwell-Smith  34:01

Changing our relationship to shame, how we interact with that emotion when it comes up, and how we embody it. All of those are things we can work on. We don’t have to give power to the people who shamed us or be restrained by shame that we feel. I think that’s an empowering lesson from this conversation. I also appreciate the note on how to support someone who’s processing their shame, to be the curious scientist as Marc put it, helping someone observe and understand where shame is coming from, and where it shows up in their body. Also, helping people understand the difference between shame, guilt and embarrassment can help them clarify what exactly they’re feeling. There’s so many takeaways from this conversation. Thanks again, Marc, for sharing with us and for all your important work on this. That’s it for today. Make sure you subscribe to the show so that you never miss an episode, because there are three episodes every week. Have a great weekend and see you Monday.

CREDITS  34:57

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our VP of weekly content is Steve Nelson. And our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me, Claire Bidwell Smith. NEW DAY is produced in partnership with the Well Being Trust, The Jed Foundation and Education Development Center. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me at clairebidwellsmith.com. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow NEW DAY listeners at facebook.com/groups/newdaypod. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts.  Thanks for listening. See you next week.