RISE Above Your Self

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0:44 Denzel Washington, welcome to inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Thomas, Welcome to the show. It's good to be here, Doctor Doug. It's thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's great and you're so lucky to have an easy last name Brown. Trygall Branson enough times and you'll realize where I go by, doctor Doug. Yeah, yeah, a little bit, I understand. Funny enough, like Thomas is my middle name and my first name is Chris, and for the longest time, Yeah, I decided to go by my middle name. Once Chris Brown, the R.

1:24 And B singer, became a big name before he beat up his girlfriend at the time, Rihanna. But when I was in film school, every single time I would call up an order film, they would always make fun of me. So I was like, all right, I'm going by my middle name, going by Tomas us. I actually do that too. I know it's not my birth announcement. It was just call me dog. But my first name's after my my dad, Norman, but it was just always just call me Doug. So that's where I'm at. To right, all right, Well let's say page with that, okay. So, Hey, I'd love for you to share with the audience your journey. I think that would be really turned outus for you to do that. And I also talk a little bit about your book. But then we'll get into the contents a little bit later and really start talking about some things.

2:09 Well, I think like it's important to bring up the book because the book is about the journey exactly. Yeah. So my book is called twenty twelve A Bicycle Odyssey, seven thousand mile bicycle journey for suicide awareness and the healing power of art. So back in two thousand and one, I lost my brother Mark Brown to suicide. And in two thousand, roughly twenty ten, I had I had known about this guy, but I met I met a buddy. I met a guy named Zach, and he lost his brother Sean to suicide. And I believe that was in two thousand and six. And before before I had met Zach, I didn't I had never known anybody who lost somebody to suicide. I probably knew a lot of people, but they hadn't shared it with me right And and it was just a little fortunitous of the connection between Zach and I. You know, I was working, I was at the time where we were both working for a parks uh department for a community park system, and I was working at the park that my brother had worked at when he died, and I I had known Zach and I had known about each other within the park system because.

3:28 It's you know, it's it's it's it's like a small town. Everybody knows who everybody is, even. If you don't work with them on a daily basis. But it wasn't until a day that Zach filled in to cover a shift for one of my co workers. Then him and I really got a chance to know each other and talk, and I think we both took a shine to each. Other relatively early. It was right fast forward a couple of months. We decided to meet up and just get some coffee and and and hang out and get to know each other a little bit better. And he was reading a book that I had been reading. He was reading the second book in the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn. I had just finished Ishmael and I was reading the Story of b which is the second book in the series, and he was reading My Ishmael, And so we had that to like start our conversation with. I really enjoyed Daniel Quinn's He really puts an emphasis on the importance of knowing your story, your personal story, the cultural story, a national story, a world story, the specie story. Just a massive emphasis on the It's like a level of self awareness that I really appreciated.

4:49 And so Zach, you know, asked me like he had known that. I'd been going through some emotional turmoil and he asked me what it was, and even though this was about nine years after my brother had died, I was still I finally started going through therapy and working through that trauma and among other things that had shaped my life in a negative way. And so I told him about my brother and his suicide. A few hours go by, we're still hanging out and he's like, Hey, I just want to let you know my brother died of suicide too, And so we just had that connection that you know, when you have a share trauma with somebody, you don't really have to talk about it too much. It's like if you're having a bad day, you could just look at the person and they know they know some of the background that can contribute to that bad day. So it was just like this knowing having somebody in my life and knowing about that pain was.

5:51 So helpful. I later found out that the hit This is where the fortuita stuff. Not only did Zach and I like our friendship build like really start at the place that my brother used to work at, but Zach and my brother shared the same birthday, so it was like, you know, we met each other. At the place where my brother worked at. We were both reading the same book on the night that we really made a connection, and then he had the same birthday as my brother, and I knew at the time that, like, there's something to this friendship. It wasn't just about chasing chasing women, playing basketball together and drinking getting together and drinking beers. It was some a little bit deeper than this. And I was dating a woman at the time who was a pin up model for a online pin up for alternative beauty.

6:43 It was called suicide Girls. It's just you know, women with tattoos, dyed. Hair, and piercings, and so I dubbed this woman and Zach my suicide friends, even. Though one was more of like the kind of like pretentious, edgy. Alternative beauty, and the other one was legitimate, like lost somebody to suicide. And those are where things get even weirder. Is that I was. I was at the time. I did a lot of photography on the side, and the woman asked me if I would shoot a suicide girl a Phoenix suicide Girls community gathering.

7:29 So I was like, yeah, sure, I'll do this. I don't really like club scenes or anything like that. It's not my speed, but I was doing it for her. Her and I were we had been seeing each other for a while, and I called Zach and I was like, hey, man, I need you to come hang out with me. Just just just kick it with me this place. This is a weird scene. And I'm just not I'm hiding behind the camera and I'm not really talking in to anybody. So he came out and I was Even though I was happy I had. This, I was I was dating this woman that I had a pretty decent relationship at the time with, and then you know, had somebody like Zach, somebody who understood where I was at emotionally. There was something inside me that was I felt like I was being called to something.

8:11 I just didn't know what that calling was, but it was deep down inside it was driving me crazy, and I just knew that I needed to do something. I just didn't know what it was. So I Zach came to the bar and we hung out and I told him about this thing that was nine at me. And as I was describing it to him, I talked about this journey that I had gone on four years previously before I had met him, where I walked I was. I was a cameraman and a production assistant for a documentary that followed a group of people that walked from Phoenix, Arizona, to. Washington, d C. Wow, there's a group of progressive Christians that basically excuse me as a group of progressive Christians that they didn't want to go and just like spread their theology. They wanted to find people that vehemently disagreed with them and then Okay, we disagree with each other on these things about sexuality and civil rights and other faiths, but let's see what we do agree and then we'll build a relationship, a positive relationship from there. Like that was their intention.

9:26 It didn't really go like that. It was more of like speaking to the choir literally. But I was turned on by that walk. Even though I'm not a Christian. I just felt like that the philosophy and the ideas I resonated with I needed to change something in my life at that time period, back in two thousand and six. So I did this walk across the country and I'm telling Zach about it in twenty ten and how it just changed my life and I wanted to do something else, and he's like, well, let's I think we should do something, and I was like, yeah, I think you're right. We came together for a reason. He's all, like, I wouldn't I wouldn't want to walk across the country, but I would ride my bike across the country. I was like yeah, He's like, hey, I think we should do it for our brothers. I was like, that was a brilliant idea.

10:13 I don't know why I didn't about myself. So we just decided to like ride our bikes across the country. I just found it like fitting. The two survivors two lost, two suicide. Loss survivors discussed the idea of riding their bicycles cross country for suicide awareness while at a suicide girls community party. It was probably like kind of a girl like like what. Tervice McKenna would call cosmic giggles that were just you couldn't I couldn't deny it. And you know, about six months later is when we made the decision, Okay, we're going to do this. And it took about thirteen months to put it all together.

10:59 Or and is it do the cold calls the called different crisis centers across the country, build a relationship and a partnership with the crisis center locally in Phoenix, create the route, do fundraising projects, get all of our gear and and then it was seven months of life on the road. Wow, seven months we support So it's not as crazy as it sounds, but I mean we. The support vehicle was in case somebody got injured, which was helpful because Zach did have like a back injury.

11:39 From North Carolina until about Philly, so I did. I was doing the writing every single day from Charlotte, North Carolina, all the way up to Philly, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So but it was, it was, it was an extraordinary experience that you know, by the time we had started, I had already come to terms with my trauma and my grief of losing my brother. But I was really interested in how other people, like, what their story was like, what was their relationship like with their loved ones that they lost, How did relationships change after they suffered that trauma and experienced that grief, and how how the community treated them as an individual, because you know, suicide has has a strong taboo connected to it, and I also wanted to learn like what people did to navigate their trauma and how to transcend that. And along the way we met an extraordinary activist therapists, people who had just low survivors who lost loved ones and lawmakers, and I think above all one of the things that I learned not only from the people that I met, but I learned what happiness means to me and how I what I should

13:10 what I should do in order, you know, to live a more fulfilled life. So really kind of like opened me up, and it was, it was, it was a very eye opening experience. Uh And and and helped me cultivate self awareness. That's yeah. I mean that's great. And you know a couple of things that you brought up and and perhaps we can talk about both because we're we're talking about suicide awareness, all right. And and obviously, and I don't know, you know how young you were or any of that, or if you really had an understanding of what happened to your brother and ultimately what what caused that to occur. I just lost a nephew last month in suicide. So he and he left three daughters, younger daughters, and so you know, I think about them also and talk and you know, as you were talking, and think about how how do we overcome or how do we get past those emotions that are gonna live with us? Obviously, you know, for a tremendous amount of time, our whole lifetime. But how do we get to the point where it's not effectiveness emotionally and yet we still are honoring that individual and recognizing what happens. So, from a standpoint of suicide prevention, what what have you learned?

14:29 And or is that really an area that you got into well. I mean, I think when it comes to any type of loss, suicides is more Confusingly, it hurts when you lose a loved one, you know, they die in a car accident, they die from a disease. Suicide is a little bit more confusing because there could be a lot of anger and you're angry towards the person that's gone, So it can just it could be a lot of different emotions. I apologize sorry, but I think one of the best things that you could do.

15:10 Is just sit with somebody who's grieving. Don't ask what can I do to me? What can I do? As as meaningless as thoughts and prayers, it doesn't do anything. It kind of like absolves the person from having like, hey, I'm putting in I'm thinking about you. But I think like the biggest thing you could do for anybody that is grieving, you just show up. If you ask them what can I do for you? They're not they're not in any particular. State of mind to give you direction on how to take care of them.

15:51 Show up. If they ask you to leave, then leave and then maybe show up again a week later. But show up. Bring them some food, encourage them to eat. Ask if you can help them clean their house of while you're there, help them with laundry. It's all these things that when you're in the. Midst of this crisis, the day to day things that you have to do in order to survive as a human being, you're not in that. You're you're in a storm. And it's just it's helpful for for people to just show up. And if and and even if they just listen to you talk incooherently. You know, there's nothing you can say that's going to take away a person's pain.

16:34 So you know, just sit, sit there and listen. It doesn't matter if it makes sense. It doesn't have to. They like, emotion is void. Of logic most of the time, so and and and especially when it's a traumatic emotion, it's it's it's chaos. So just be there. And sit with them and be the calm, the calmness within the chaos in colder hand. Listen good to them cry, you know, maybe. Help them clean up and say, hey, you go sleep, You go to sleep, or you take a nap, or you just laying there and scream and stare at the ceiling. I'm going to do your dishes well.

17:17 And on your journey, as you met with these different people who had had someone and you know, had a loved one take their life, my question is did you discover that many many developed some sense of guilt and so forth about why would I let that happen? Or I mean, does that tend to be part of what can happen for some people that they really take that internally and feel some type of responsibility when in fact they probably have no responsibility. Yeah, I mean, everybody's going to go through it. It's the word it could have should have, scrap that people find themselves in, and you just need to throw that what it could have should have into the garbage because the only thing that you need to concentrate on is what is that's all and what is is that that person's gone. You can't go back in time and change things all right, the what it could have should have is a war is a is a form of self torment. Uh, and it's it doesn't serve you in the end, it's a go ahead.

18:33 Yeah, how old was your brother? My brother? My brother was twenty nine years old. He was two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, and I was twenty. Four and and so you know, and I know that because we just went through this with my family as you as you went on that journey, which when you talk about suicide prevention, you know, we're talking about how do we as individuals, as family members, as friends, and so forth, how do we help someone who may be contemplating that, and how do we help those to really not get in that position of considering it. Is that something you got into at all on your journey and understanding, well, there's.

19:22 A couple layers of that. If you're somebody that lost somebody to suicide, and I'm thinking of your nephew's three children, there's a saying that prevention for the next postvention is the prevention for the next generation. So if you lost someone to suicide, getting therapy, either one on one or a support group in a group setting is paramount. Being around people that have the same experience. I don't think you should force. Anybody into that, but they need know that it's an option and they should be encouraged to do it. In terms of if somebody is in crisis, you know, that's I think that's still a big that's still a big question, even for for.

20:17 People who work in prevention and awareness. A person has to be willing to help themselves. It's it helps to. Have a good circle of of you know, a good strong circle of influence around you, people that are that love you, people that are willing to help you. But you also have to be willing to walk through that door. You can't force somebody to walk through a door if they are in crisis. There's you know, nine eight eight is the phone number that you can text or call if if you're worried about somebody and they're not making the phone call or they're not making. That text message.

20:57 I encourage any listener that knows somebody that is struggling to call that number and get information and get as much find all the tools that they have available to themselves in that community, in their community. When it comes to something that I learned about myself and that I've noticed, Oh, not only on the bike ride. I've kind of like I've come to this understanding about the importance of self awareness and awareness in the realm of mental health. Self awareness isn't encouraged in our society, for our citizens, it's not encouraged at all.

21:43 Imagine if there was a class. That we had when we started in kindergarten that was like every other class that just built on itself, but it was a class that helped you, teach you, that helped you learn yourself and also provided different tools of a stress reduction, whether it's through meditation, through breathing meditation, through thought meditation, through moving meditation, through art meditation, all the different forms. To me, I feel like it was the lack of self awareness that was the nail in the coffin for my brother. If you don't know who you are, you don't know what you want in this world.

22:27 If you don't know who you are, there's an entire world telling you, in demanding who you should be. Well, and you know, I think you've hit it on the head when you think about that. To be able to start at an early age and really help them to develop that self awareness, that self discovery, you know, trying to figure out and understanding potentially what their purpose is and so forth. That makes such a huge difference because if. That's not happening, then what happens, and I have some experience with this, is that they get to a point where that emotional is so tough on them that, as you know, they get to a point where they just don't know whether it's worth it. But then oftentimes they get put on medication because of that, and in some cases the result and the side effect of that medication is that they take their own life. And that has been shown now scientifically over another years and in fact a few number years ago that finally came out after you know, some people.

23:38 Have experienced that. So how do we how do we start as parents, how do we start as individuals to help our young people as well as ourselves and others to start really doing that self awareness, that self discovery and really get to the point where when issues come up they have the ability to handle that in a different way. The different self awareness is like a very vast because like one of the you know, I use it. My cultivation of self awareness has not only helped me to learn what I'm what I love in life and what I'm passionate about life and what i want to do with my life.

24:28 But it also helps. Me when I'm like, when I'm in the presence of somebody who's really difficult, my body will tell me before my mind, does, you know, when I'm working at the library and I just have this kind of like expectation that that's the job that I have, the day job, all this other stuff. The passion that I have, uh you know, in the in the rest of the world is that I do outside of work. But the library to me is I'm very passionate about as well, because it's the last place in our society that you can go to without the expectation of spending money, and we're a bridge for a lot of people that are in crisis. But when I'm at the library and I'm.

25:08 Work in the front desk and we get some interesting characters, you know, we get some like you wouldn't expect the level of difficulty that we get from somebody that isn't even in crisis. So you're kind of like have this expectation that, like, I'm going to deal with some with some troublesome individuals today, So you can know that going in. When you go to a service point. But for me, it's like, even though I have that expectation up in my head, it's not until my body starts to like give me these tells that, Okay, this person is actually on my nerves. It comes in like a tightness of the chest, the heart, palpitation, sweaty palms, my knee is bouncing. So it's just like, I feel like self awareness not only can help you with your purpose, but it helps you to understand your body and how you're responding.

26:03 To any any situation. Now that I got that out of way, how do we encourage that? That's a big That's an even bigger question because most people don't go on a journey of self awareness. Unless they've won, suffered a trauma on our. Grieving, or they need a Humanity's credit to get there to get their degree, and they wander into an Eastern philosophy class in college and their mind is blown. And the thing about self awareness, it's like any other skill. Some people are born with an innate, deep understanding of who they are, separate from every institution in their community that they've been influenced by, Just like some people are born and they can shoot a basketball really well.

26:59 But if you're one those individuals. That hasn't been born with that, you know, you can cultivate it, just like you can cultivate a jump shot if you if you don't have that innate talent. And I think it starts with just having like meditation practice, but. Also understanding what meditation is. It's not about cleaning the mind. It's about understanding the garbage that's in your head. It's about understanding and focusing on your body and where you hold tension. It's it's about understanding your body and and and that's to me was like one of the first things that I was taught was doing a breathing meditation while also starting at my toes and going all the way up to my head and then back down to my toe my.

27:42 Toes and recognizing where I'm holding tension. And the more and where you do that, you start to you you don't even have to be in a meditative space state to recognize tension. It could be a situation, you know, like. Oh, like I I'm nervous or I'm upset, and it's because of what's happening, And it couldn't It may not even be a situation that like is blatantly stressful, but your body is going to let you know how you're responding to it. I think literature is another good place to start. Like everybody's gonna find their their literary teachers.

28:22 My big one. I'm a big Alan Watts fan, even though I do realize he's a bit of a of a drunk and and maybe a hash head. But the stuff, you know, it's it's it's the lesson. It's the lessons, not the teacher, or it's it's the message, not the deliverer, not the message, not the messenger. Sorry, Alan Watts was was big for me. I really enjoyed Tick, not Han and some of the stuff that that. He writes about. But the biggest thing for me, and this might be surprising to some people, and it's it's it shows up in my book. I am a big nurse and I am a passionate, passionate fan of story and storytelling. So before I go on, another author which I came to before the bike ride, that I find as a teacher is Joseph Campbell, the Mythologist and so.

29:20 Those literary techno Han, Alan. Watson, Joseph Campbell probably the biggest ones, but outside of them, I love storytelling. You're not going to it does not even matter how commercial a story may be, whether it's a book, it's music, or a movie. You cannot not tell the human story, the human condition in any type of story. How is that possible? Because all stories are written from humans, from human experience. So every you know, so, like, what forms of storytelling are you consuming? And what why?

30:01 Or do you watch this television show? Why do you watch. This movie series? Like what is it about? Why do you listen to this music? If you're just into it because you like the sound of the music, that's one thing, But there's still a story being told in the sound outside. Of the lyrics. Why do you like this music? Is because of the lyrics? What is a story being told? Why does that resonate with you? Is it resonating with you because you have a lived experience or it's something that you aspire to live up to in an archetypical sense, or is it just something like everybody else is listening to it. And that's why I'm doing it, and I'm going along. With the crowd so I can have something to talk about, you know, in the office water cooler conversation.

30:47 Well, and you talk I know on your website you talk about and this is one thing that just hit me real fast when I looked at it. Mental health equals mindfulness begins with mindfulness. Yeah, and that's what you're really talking about, is that we have to be so mindful aware of what's going on subconsciously and what's around us, that we recognize how that can or cannot affect our emotional help. And I know you talk about the four seas that you I assume have developed. Can you share with the audience what those four seas are? It's been a lot of times since I've talked about that, so you know, community, was it?

31:28 Community, collaboration, creativity, and compassion. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you. I've been on such a different I've been on the awareness thing. I think the four season is just it's it's it's a no brainer art in creativity. A society that is thriving is one that supports the arts. One of my favorite quotes comes from Terrence M. Mccannaugh where he says that, oh, oh now I just left me. It's like so much information in my head. Sometimes I just have to calm down and breathe arts. Task is to save the soul of mankind, and anything less is a dithering while wrong burns. It is the artists who are self selected to journey into the other.

32:14 So if the artist cannot find the way, then the way it cannot be found. It takes a creative mind to solve complex problems, all right. So that's like the four c is, that's. One of the biggest ones is that we need to we need to be able to think differently about about issues that we're dealing with. Community. You shouldn't be the only person that's doing it by yourself. You need to have people around you. And a part of community is to be able to collaborate. In collaboration, you also have to realize that that you have to sacrifice. Sometimes there's a. Give and take in working with a community.

32:56 I think a strong community is one that's filled with individuals that understand who they are. And what they want in this world. Compassion, doesn't it? Yeah? And compassion and with compassion that kind of goes to I have three And this is why like I kind of like stalled on the four seas because I've really been talking about with. Special with my book The awareness, and I don't really just talk about it in the book as much. It's kind of like an echo in the background. But I booke and and I'm sure anybody can break this down into different ways that they want, but I break down awareness into three forms. You have self awareness, spatial awareness, and social awareness. And social awareness is what cultivates compassion and empathy, which is important if we're going to work together in a community to solve problems. And the idea of social awareness is understanding what paradigm other people live in.

34:04 My view of reality. Is followed through the filter of a white heterosexual male. That's how my reality is filtered through me. If I want to learn about even just a white female, I need you know, my compassion and my empathy is only going to take me so far, but I need to be willing to go as far as I can and push that limit. I can't know their experience because I am not of that ilk. I'm not going to know what it's like to be a person of color or a person of different sexual orientation because I don't live in that meat sack of reality and I don't have that filter. But if I want to grow as an individual, if I want to expand my compactis then I need to be have that awareness to understand that I don't know that person's lived experience. But in order to be a better, you know, a healthier person, not only for myself, but for my circle of influence, for the community that I'm within, I need to at least take the steps to understand and learn this other individual's experience and existence in this world.

35:25 And you know what, that in my mind, that is so important, and I've had that experience. It's been interesting as I've interviewed different people from different cultures, were different ethnic groups. It's amazing as we talk, and sometimes we do this after we've videotaped everything, but it's interesting to realize that, you know, here we sit in our own lives, as you say, we have our own perception, our own experience, and we don't understand what's going on there. And oftentimes the lack of understanding causes us to quite frankly, be a little bit prejudiced towards something, or angry towards something, or unforgiving or whatever that happens to be. But at least in my experience, the minute you do exactly what you're talking about and you reach out and you seek to understand, and it's not that you have to agree, but to seek to understand what they're going through and potentially the emotions and all these things they're going through all of a sudden is like, holy cow, I had no idea, And you're right. What that brings about is a sense of compassion.

36:34 For others that oftentimes we don't have. When I was shooting the documentary about the group of Christians, there was this bishop that walked with us on the tail end of a tropical storm as. We were walking into Washington, DC. And I remember having my camera, like I duct taped a garbage bag around the lens so that the camera was in a plastic case, and I was just holding the camera and I was having a conversation with this bishop and I was just you know, I hit record and he he just shared with me. He's like, you know, I had to change my theology of the civil rights movement and meeting people that were a part of that helped me.

37:23 Cured me of my racism. Raising daughters cured me of my sexism, and working with people of different sexual orientation cured me of my bigotry of the LGBT community, and I. Think that that's just important. We're going to get along. It's easy to just. Not like something because it's different. It's so easy. It's so easy. I mean, my first my first reaction, I mean, I think of myself as a horrible person. My first reaction when I need anybody is like, who's this a whole? Like that's easily my first reaction. It's just it's just like this weird defense mechanism within me.

38:03 And I understand that, like, you know, on a on an animalistic level, the human animal looks at every situation and says, can I eat it? Can I have sex with it? Or is it a threat to me? And I need to run away? And like that's like the like outside of like learning language, our base impulsives hasn't really changed much in our evolutionary spectrum. So I I just like understand it, like that's me just being a jerk, and it's not. And I always say I have that first reaction, but I tell myself, Okay, that's just your alarm system. That's that's that's your overly sensitive alarm system.

38:46 This you know you you like this, this guy has a better beard than you, and you're just being a jerk. And that's that's where your mindfulness comes in, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, and go ahead. It's just it's just something that like h it would never hurt us to pay a little bit more attention to our thoughts and understand why we have those thoughts. Like any you know, who am I outside of what. Society tells me I should be is probably and I can't you know, I say it in my in my book, like the fact that that we don't have uh that that are our educational institutions don't teach self awareness to to us as a society is either it's it's only there's only two.

39:39 Reasons why it could be. It's either negligence or it's nefarious. There's no there's no other reason why they wouldn't be teaching that either either they the. People who who who. You know, write the policies just aren't thinking of it, which I think it's probably more inclined that it's just negligence or those like a sinister you know, it's easier to manipulate people when they don't have a. Sense of self or they just do not get it. And that's why I hay negligence. They just don't like they just don't get it well. And you know, as we as we come to the end of the conversation, what would be the message.

40:21 That you really would like to share with the audience. Your one true. Job on this planet is to understand who you are and what you're about and why you do the things and believe the things that you believe. Because there's only it doesn't matter how much you alienate yourself from the rest of the world, you are going to be stuck with one person from cradle. To grave, and that's you. So you better get comfortable and learn everything you can about. Yeah, I love it.

41:02 I love it, Thomas. This has been interesting, and you know, I really appreciate the fact that you've been so transparent because obviously suicide is such a difficult thing to deal with, and society has kind of been real nervous about and trying to create words that are not going to be offensive. But the reality is, and as we talk about compassion to be able to understand what's going on, to be able to in some way work towards that prevention, and then what you've experienced, and I think part of what your book is all about is to be able to help those people who have experienced that trauma in their life to be able to ultimately work through it to the point where it's not affecting in them negatively anymore in their lives. So as you say, they can move on, they can find their own self there in her purpose and really move forward without not letting it totally affect them.

41:57 Memory's never going to be gone, never going to be gone, but to be able to get to the point where you look at it and go, all right, I'm going to do something about it for the future generations. And I think you hit on the good point is all we can do with these experiences is what can we do to help prevent this any further in our generations? And I think that becomes the keyse So thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate you, Doug Well, and I really appreciate what you're willing to share with us and folks. I hope this has made a difference for you. And again it's nine eight eight right that people should yeah yeah is an issue you can call text yeah, please be aware and let's see if we can't help our society and our culture to be able to literally help start preventing this horrific situation that goes on so those doctor dogs saying have a wonderful week and now mistay there are two times to return to Cot and turned year