Unlocking Voice, Autonomy & Future Planning for Non-Speaking Autistics with Lakshmi Rao Sankar

In this eye-opening episode, Valerie sits down with Lakshmi Rao Sankar — Executive Director and Co-Founder of Crimson Rise — to explore the transformative impact of communication access for non-speaking autistic individuals.

Lakshmi shares her personal journey as the mother of a non-speaking autistic son and discusses how the groundbreaking “motor sensory paradigm” is changing the way families, educators, and communities understand autism. Through the methodology known as Spelling to Communicate (S2C), many non-speaking autistics are now able to express their thoughts, emotions, intelligence, preferences, and dreams in ways that were previously underestimated or overlooked.

Together, Valerie and Lakshmi discuss:

• The difference between language comprehension and motor ability
• Why non-speaking does not mean non-understanding
• How communication access creates autonomy, agency, and self-determination
• The emotional impact of finally being heard
• The story and mission behind Crimson Rise
• How non-speaking autistic individuals are leading conversations about their own futures
• The importance of including individuals with disabilities in decisions about housing, supports, caregivers, and future planning
• The trauma many non-speakers experience from years of being misunderstood
• Why parents and caregivers must be led by the voices and preferences of their loved ones

Lakshmi also shares inspiring stories of young adults creating their own forever homes, building community, hosting social gatherings, and actively shaping the supports around them.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that every person deserves access to communication, belonging, dignity, and the opportunity to direct their own life.

Whether you are a parent, caregiver, educator, therapist, or advocate, this episode will challenge assumptions and expand your understanding of what is possible for non-speaking autistic individuals.

Key Takeaways

• Communication and speech are not the same thing
• Non-speaking autistic individuals often understand far more than they can physically express
• Access to communication can unlock identity, autonomy, and emotional healing
• Future planning must include the voice of the individual whenever possible
• True inclusion means moving beyond “care” into contribution, leadership, and self-determination

Final Thought

“Your child does not have to live in silence.” — Lakshmi Rao Sankar

Remember to Live with Intention and Embrace the Journey.

Connect with Lakshmi

https://www.crimsonrise.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ew2HZGIusA

Connect with Valerie

info@foreverhomeconsulting.ca

Music Acknowledgement: Audio Coffee - Denys Kyshchuk

Editor: Scott Arbeau

Link for book: The S.H.I.N.E. Principle: The special needs mom's path to strength, hope and happiness by Valerie Arbeau

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CW18ZXGX (Canada)

https://a.co/d/03hFdZI4 (United States)

Learn more about your host at:
https://coachingwithvalerieanne.com/

Transcript

 [01:00:23:05 - 01:00:58:08]

Valerie

 Hello and welcome everyone to today's episode. I have a special guest with me. I always have lovely special guests, but I have an even more special guest with me today. Lakshmi Rao Sankar is the executive director, co-founder of Crimson Rise, (we'll learn a little bit more about that in a few minutes), she's also a consulting partner at Team Core and is in the leadership cadre at IASK. Lakshmi has also served and continues on several boards.

 Lakshmi has two children, a dog and a spouse. Her oldest son was diagnosed with autism when he was 14 months old. And this began a journey of resilience and commitment to building a life for him that continues to this day. So I just want to welcome Lakshmi.

[01:01:15:17 - 01:01:24:24]

Lakshmi

 Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be part of this community and to have this conversation with you this morning.

[01:01:24:24 - 01:01:43:02]

Valerie

 Oh, so great that you're here. Thank you so much. All right. So I usually ask all of my guests what their connection is within the special needs community or the world of people with disabilities. So tell us a little about your journey.

[01:01:44:09 - 01:02:09:19]

Lakshmi

 My journey began even before I had my own son with special needs. I have a cousin who is now about 55 years old. And so I grew up with somebody with special needs. My aunt was a warrior and she did everything she could to get him access to education and live a fulfilled life.

And so when my son was diagnosed at the age of 14 months, I already had the lived experience of my aunt to look at and to sort of give me a path forward in my own journey. And I took a lot from the experience of being both a cousin and a niece or someone who had this experience. But of course, every parent's journey is different and unique. And being a parent to my son has been one of the most challenging, fulfilling, rewarding emotional experiences of my life.

[01:02:54:13 - 01:02:59:09]

Lakshmi

 Also parent to a neurotypical young woman. And she also is equally filled our lives with joy and laughter. But there's something very unique to the experience of being a parent with a special needs person.

And I know that your audience understands this well, that it shows you and it gives you a capacity to love like you have never loved before. And that experience is one of love.

[01:03:27:23 - 01:03:39:18]

Valerie

 Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing. And yes, our audience can definitely relate to what you're saying. And it is one of the most fulfilling, yet challenging emotionally, physically, whichever way you can imagine being a parent. Being a parent period is a challenging, fulfilling, rewarding occupation, if we want to call it that. But then as you say, adding the dimension of special needs, disability, whatever form that may look like, certainly does throw a huge curve ball into the whole mix. But I love that you mentioned the love piece because yeah, I've never experienced love like this. So I'm just… songs going through my head. I'm one of those kind of people. I say something, it's like, oh, it triggers a song.

[01:04:21:18 - 01:04:24:01]

Lakshmi

 It's like so visceral. Yet all of us brings you to the edge of a spiritual experience. And I think that is because this is about very deep love.

[01:04:36:10 - 01:04:37:20]

Valerie

 Yes. Thank you for sharing that. I mentioned Crimson Rise, so we're going to be talking a little bit about that.

When you speak, you have often spoken about this new motor sensory paradigm that reframes how we understand non-speaking autistics.

From your perspective, how does this paradigm shift impact the way families should think about long-term planning when we're looking at our children and what their future can look like?

[01:05:06:12 - 01:06:18:24]

Lakshmi

 That's such a great question. Thank you for asking that. This paradigm shift of looking at non-speaking autistic people as people who have sensory motor differences, with cognitive differences, is really profound. And we're just at the frontiers of having discovered, identified, and found a methodology by which non-speaking people like my son have access to communication. And the premise of this is so simple, yet it continues to confound people. So in very simple terms, if you are sitting across me at a table, and you're just listening to what I'm saying, and you're not communicating back at me, and you're sort of… imagine yourself frozen, unable to nod or sort of indicate that you're following along with me, my words are still sort of landing through the auditory nerve into the cognitive area that is linked to language.

[01:06:20:07 - 01:07:27:05]

Lakshmi

 And the area where we comprehend and understand words is different from the area where we use words to communicate. So the language part of the brain is different from the motor part of the brain. Right. You look at communication, we all either use our oral motor articulators to produce sound. And so that's a physical motor capability, or we text, or we use sign language, or we write, or we, you know, use our bodies to communicate non-verbally. And we have discovered that because we have conflated language with speech, we've misunderstood our non-speaking people because they lack the motor capacity to produce the motor capacity to use sign language successfully or X system successfully. And because they lack this motor sensory capability, we assumed that they were not understanding or comprehending anything that's going on.

[01:07:28:12 - 01:07:36:05]

Lakshmi

 So it's analogous to non-speaking autistic people are more like people with Parkinson's or ALS. So those people are fully intact cognitively, but they struggle to use their motor systems to communicate to move their bodies around successfully.

And because we've de-linked speech and language, and we are using motor systems to get people to communicate, we have broken through the silence and people like my son are now able to communicate all the rich ideas and thoughts he's always had. And we've understood that he's had that.

[01:08:12:19 - 01:08:46:01]

Valerie

 Love it. Love it. I'm just loving what you're saying because my oldest daughter has cerebral palsy, uses a communication device. And so we've always known that she was smart. And we've learned from when she was a very young age that she was actually understanding what we were saying, but it was just that she was almost locked in her mind because she couldn't express what was going on. So what I'm hearing you saying is that you just unlocked the ability for your son to be able to express what's going on.

[01:08:46:01 - 01:09:00:11]

Lakshmi

 Through a method called Spelling to Communicate. And it's a rigorous clinically based method that helps an individual progress from spelling words to complete thoughts and ideas and emotions. And they have a rich communication life through this motor coaching that we provide.

[01:09:10:22 - 01:10:03:08]

Valerie

 Wow. Love it. Love it. My daughter started to spell herself using her communication device. So her communication device has, (it's kind of like a tablet) has pages and then these little symbols. And so she goes row by row and then she goes cell by cell. So some of these cells will have phrases on them or just a word. And then she'll have to put things together to make a sentence. But I just love the fact that she is now actually using the spelling page and actually spelling things out. And it's just incredible like how accurate she is with her spelling. And again, you just assume that they don't know anything and that they're not learning because they can’t express and it's just such a disservice to these people. Right.

[01:10:03:08 - 01:10:11:01]

Lakshmi

 So I often use the example of Stephen Hawkins, right? He's this brilliant young scholar, a wonderful scientist who was struck down by ALS when he was in his twenties. But then he ended up in a place where he's on a wheelchair. He didn't have control over his facial muscles, right? He would have his mouth open and his eyes were not focused, could barely move his hands. But because people knew that he was bright, they were able to accept and give him communication access.

[01:10:40:11 - 01:11:37:15]

Lakshmi

 Our children are like that, right? They're locked in. If you encounter a Stephen Hawkins in a group home, you would not ascribe intelligence to him because of the way his body presents itself. But it's because they didn't get this sensory motor locking in at the age of 20 like he did, but that's been since birth. And so they've never had an opportunity to demonstrate their skills. Right. So, you know, I just wanted to show you, we start with very basic motor and we coach the body so that the eye can track and the finger can locate the letter that they need. And so we start with very broad stencils and we gradually move up to 26 letters. Right.

[01:11:38:18 - 01:12:35:22]

Lakshmi

 And that's 26 letters on one page. We train the eye to reach the letter that they want. Right. And we're not over teaching words. So we're not teaching words, we're just sort of teaching it within the context of a lesson. Say it could be the moon landing and we ask them, so what was the name of the craft that took the astronauts to the moon? And then we say, go, go, go, get the A, find the P, look, look, find the O. And so they're spelling Apollo and they're spelling the names of the astronauts and they're gradually learning how to reach for the letter they need. So eventually they're able to simply find within the 26 letters, the combination of letters to put together to express their thoughts. And 26 letters means infinite possibilities. There is such a richness to the communication because we are a letter-based system.

[01:12:37:19 - 01:12:54:03]

Valerie

 Wow. So we're really talking about access to voice and agency and choice, right, when we're giving them this board. So for those that are listening on the podcast here, as opposed to watching on YouTube,

Lakshmi just showed us a stencil with the letters stencilled out on this board. And she said she started off with larger letters and then got down to smaller letters so that all the letters were on the same page and then helping the speller to access the letters so that they could spell the words. Love it.

[01:13:17:01 - 01:13:33:21]

Lakshmi

 And then they move on depending on their motor capability to a keyboard or to an iPad. But once they have access to 26 letters and are able to select the letters they need in the sequence that they need, they're good to go.

[01:13:34:22 - 01:13:35:11]

Valerie

 Yes, yes!

[01:13:35:11 - 01:13:44:11]

Lakshmi

 I love what you said about having a voice leads to autonomy. And I want to say that getting a voice is only the first step, right, because our children live in a world that has been built by neurotypical people.

[01:13:58:20 - 01:13:59:13]

Valerie

 Yes.

[01:13:59:13 - 01:14:16:14]

Lakshmi

 Very often the struggle to find autonomy, make choices and build a life that they are truly in charge of is very difficult. And so that really, that is where the story of Crimson Rise is embedded. Four young men, my son included, gain access to communication, had a voice, spelled powerfully.

And so their audience of their family and friends and teachers were blown away by it. But organizations were still created in the older paradigms that didn't sort of include the voice of non-speaking people. And so that's when they came to their allies and said, we really want to build an organization that is centered around what we want to do with our lives so that we build our own future together with our allies. And that is the story of the co-founding of Crimson Rise. It's all around gaining a voice and moving towards autonomy.

[01:15:07:01 - 01:15:13:10]

Valerie

 Yes, yes. And so can you tell us how the word Crimson Rise came about?

[01:15:14:20 - 01:15:22:23]

Lakshmi

 Oh, I love this story. So when we were a group of parents, practitioners, and these four young men, and as we went through the discovery process of what we wanted to build together, we had a very clear mandate from these young men. They said, you know, we're tired of being marginalized, we're tired of being shut out. So we want to build a premier, excellent organization that stands for who we are and what we're capable of. So we started looking at that age, they were sort of just college age, college bound. And so we looked at Ivy League schools and how they came up with their names and what their missions were and what they stood for as we were crafting our own mission and our own identity. And they discovered that Harvard's newsletter is called Crimson.

[01:16:10:13 - 01:16:31:03]

Lakshmi

 And so they chose that name because they felt it stands for being premier and sort of the color carries a standout element to it. And they liked that. And then they wanted to use the word rise because they know that they are rising as spellers. And so they chose the name Crimson Rise.

And then when we translated that to our visual identity, our logo, if you look at it, it looks like a rising sun or a flower, but the rays are disjointed. So

there's gaps between them and some are higher, some are lower. And they said that they like that particular rendering of our logo the best because it represents that rising is not linear. You just get up and keep walking and rising. When you're neurodivergent, you rise a little bit, you fall back two steps and then you stay there and then you are resilient and you get yourself up and you rise again. And that is their experience and they wanted it reflected in their logo.

[01:17:19:01 - 01:18:27:16]

Valerie

 Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I just love how that story has come together for those young men and that they've been able to make a difference and being able to share their experience so that it can be a benefit for others. And I also love the fact that they are autonomous. They're in a position to make decisions. They can share their preferences. They can consent to what it is that they want. And I love the fact that as young men… and so in my role as facilitating forever homes and helping parents sort of realize a dream and make it happen. And I've often mentioned to parents, we need to make sure that we're including our young ones, our ones with a disability in the decision making. And so I love what you're doing with Crimson Rise, what the young men are doing with Crimson Rise because it's giving validation to yes, we do have a voice, but it's also empowering people to utilize their voice so that they can make changes, that they can make choices for their future, that they can decide, yeah, I want to live with you guys. No, I don't want to live with you guys.

[01:18:29:24 - 01:18:36:13]

Lakshmi

 Absolutely. So they continue to have agency.

They weigh in on our long-term strategy, any decision we make on either building a partnership with another organization or a project with somebody, they get to meet them and then decide whether this is a good fit for what they have in mind for Crimson Rise. Hiring new stuff always goes through them.

And then sometimes I don't know, this doesn't make sense for what we would like to see in this organization.

[01:19:10:06 - 01:19:18:08]

Valerie

 Wow. Wow. I just love the fact that these young men are changing their world, but they're also changing the world for other people.

So as you had mentioned to me before we met, you've mentioned that non-speaking autistics are increasingly leading, creating and influencing the world in a powerful way. And I just see that this is what your young men in Crimson Rise are doing. So how does recognizing this reality change the narrative around care versus contribution? So just taking it from the Crimson Rise perspective and just putting it into sort of care home environment, that kind of thing. So how does this reality change the narrative around care versus contribution when families are planning the future for their child?

[01:20:02:24 - 01:20:07:22]

Lakshmi

 So we do have an actual experience where two of our young spellers, by the way now we have young men and women. So from these four founders we have many leaders and many voices added to Crimson Rise, which was the goal. Yes.

Two of these young men are now living in a group home. Well, I don't know that group home is the right word, they call it their home. Yes. So they have been very much front and center of how that home was put together and planned and staffed. We were able to sit with them and ask them if they were even ready to move out of their parental homes. We were able to work with them and identify what their fears were, what they were anxious about and what they were looking forward to.

[01:21:04:00 - 01:21:26:12]

Lakshmi

 And as parents, I always thought that my son would view this with a lot of trepidation and anxiety and fear. And I was so happy to find that he was joyful about it. He said, I want to be in a place of my own. I want to have my own life that I get to build myself.

And that was a big relief for me. And his friend who also lives with him had similar views and they have weighed in on everything that they do, how the transition was executed, how we sort of started them off doing just a couple of hours in the new space and then built to one night overnight and then built it to a place where they're now spending five nights a week in their forever home.

And they have been wonderful about the experience because they've invited their friends over and had parties over there. They've celebrated Thanksgiving together and want to have regular Friday night socials with their friends. And one of these young men, Christopher, who is such a loving soul, went out of his way to create these opportunities because he said, I want my friends to know that living on your own without your parents is not something to be afraid of. It's something that you can enjoy and look forward to and see yourself in that space.

So that has been an experience for us.

[01:22:48:10 - 01:22:49:07]

Valerie

 Amazing.

[01:22:50:17 - 01:22:52:18]

Lakshmi

 You express fears about, you know, they do require support, right? And they do require people who take on those roles of support staff. So they have criteria, they sit in to decide whether those people should be hired or not. And they have some long-term worries about how long somebody will stay with them and the whole learning curve that people experience when they shift the people who are going to be with them in care roles.

But it feels wonderful to be able to have these conversations rather than carry these fears without having an opportunity to be in conversation with them and have them be part of the solution.

[01:23:42:06 - 01:23:43:01]

Valerie

 Oh, how empowering. And just, yeah, I just love how you've been able to weave them into it and integrate them into being front and foremost, spearheading their future. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I'm just thinking about them being concerned about who is caring for them. So our daughter, our oldest lives in one of our homes, and that's her forever home. And the reason is because it's wheelchair accessible. So it just made sense for her to stay there and for my husband and I and our youngest child to move. And so I have to say that I don't know that we have really talked to her much about who the caregivers are. And I think partly because we actually have an agency that provides the caregivers. And so they are the ones that do the hiring and the firing and the training and all whatever else needs to be done. So I don't know that I've actually ever thought about how my daughter feels about who is caring for her. We were fortunate in that four of the staff that we had trained that had worked for us and our family, actually went to the agency and were hired by the agency. So for Melody-Anne, that's my daughter's name, there was a continuity of care for her in the fact that some people knew her well, they understood her, her idiosyncrasies, and just how she operates. And so I think that just made that transition for her a little bit smoother. But you've got me thinking, and we have seen some change, not a huge amount of turnover, but there has been some turnover. But the next turnover that we have, which we weren't anticipating, is one of the young ladies has just moved out. So they have been together almost eight years. And it was interesting, I learned that Melody-Anne had been a little upset for about a month before this young lady left. Her parents have started a forever home for her. And so we're very excited for them. But yeah, it just kind of warmed my heart that my daughter actually had that feeling of I'm going to miss my housemate.

[01:26:10:03 - 01:26:24:10]

Lakshmi

 So the home that my son and Christopher are part of is a self-direction home. So there is the capacity then for families to kind of hire their own staffing.

I think we're one of the first homes in the area that we live. There are I think two or three, maybe more in the state. And we certainly learned from other people. I also want to say that changes in caregivers has been part of the lived experience, you know, they've had that since early intervention. Having that. That's true. It's just part of how they've grown up.

Valerie

That's a great point. Yeah.

How does Crimson Rise support identity, community and self-determination? And why are these elements just as critical as housing or supports when we're envisioning our child's forever home?

[01:27:34:01 - 01:27:55:17]

Lakshmi

 So when our spellers begin to express themselves, right? And we're at a point in the communication where we've gone up the communication capability where we're building capacity, we're asking questions like, if you were going to go on a mission, which planet or which area of space would you like to go to? Right? These are more application analytical questions, discovering questions. But then the question can flip into if NASA were to hire you in as part of the space program, why would they hire you? Right? Then you begin to tap into them examining and identifying ways in which they can, their identity can be used by NASA. Or we might ask them if NASA was to put together a team that is neurodiverse, how would they balance out that team? What would the roles be? Right? So in those ways, we foster identity and self-expression. We also have a big component of disability studies within our curriculum. And so we look at disability history. We also look at marginalized people and their history. Our scholars here at Crimson Rise just did a project with the New York Public Library. And it was called the Billion Oyster Project.

[01:29:23:03 - 01:29:39:01]

Lakshmi

 And because we’re located here on Staten Island, oyster farmers were traditionally marginalized black oyster farmers. And the Raritan Bay was an area that was over harvested. Chemicals were dumped into that area. And so it's no longer an oyster rich environment. So there's an environmental angle of reseeding that area and an exploration of the history of oyster farming. And it's so curious as we went through the curriculum that we co created with the NYPL. They talked about how they saw themselves as oysters, right? They see themselves as the secret hidden pearl locked in silence with an oyster undiscovered.

And then they also identify with black marginalized farmers as people who are experiencing marginalization by structures that don't empower them, that don't recognize their agency and autonomy and have shut them out of education systems and opportunities within what their capabilities are. So we have ways in which we kind of enable that conversation with them. And we also did a book with them called The Mole People. And The Mole People is a lovely book. It's about all these homeless people who lived in unused subway tunnels. And as they read the book, we would read it and then there would be sort of conversations around the book.

[01:31:12:06 - 01:31:39:06]

Lakshmi

 One of our fellows talked about how much they identified as a homeless person because they said people shy away from us. They don't come near us. They don't want to look at us. They don't know how to engage with us. They're a little fearful around us. So we have so many ways in which we are able to have these conversations. And interestingly, it's always led by them. And we go through these through them.

And they talk about the trauma of being silent. Some of them have asked for and requested time with counselling and therapy to help them cope with some of the trauma that they experienced as people who were not recognized for who they are in their early lives. So it's a whole gamut. And we pay close attention to this part of it because they're emerging as people who are empowered. And we want to be able to work through all these experiences with them. And we lead it to an intersectional sort of lens that helps us look at identity and expression of yourself under these circumstances.

[01:32:34:07 - 01:32:34:12]

Valerie

 Wow. Just hitting an emotional chord. I don't know that it ever really occurred to me about an autistic, recognizing that they've been traumatized and then having the voice to be able to say and asking for help. Like I wonder how many don't have that opportunity to ask for help. And I guess for me, it's just increasing my awareness now of how we work with our autistics for sure. Wow. Thank you so much for opening that up for us. 

Lakshmi

You're welcome.

[01:33:12:07 - 01:33:24:04]

Valerie

 All right. So tell me, what lessons from Crimson Rise should parents and caregivers be paying attention to now so that they don't unintentionally build a future that limits their child's voice?

[01:33:25:22 - 01:33:29:15]

Lakshmi

 So I guess our one single guideline would be to be led by spellers and to be led by spellers voices of what they want, right? So many times when parents discover cognitive capability and understanding within their children, and if they're still relatively young, parents then begin to look at neurotypical ways to the future, right? So they're looking, "Oh, my child must start on high school or middle school or college, and I now need to divert this and open those doors." And for sure, many of our spellers are college-bound and want that for themselves, but not every one of them does. And college life and high school brings its own demands, and many of them have motor sensory differences, regulation, ways that are not met in these settings. And so it's a big challenge to be placed in that track, even as they are cognitive and fully capable of a very rich academic life. So we kind of talk to parents about, "Is that something that they really want?" Sometimes parents are very active as advocates, and they want to change the world, and they want their child to be sort of in the public eye, in social media, self-expressing their own story. And sometimes the speller is not necessarily ready for that or feels pressure. So we always try and question and ask the parents saying, "Is this what your speller really wants? Is this what your speller really is ready for?" And to examine where those desires are coming from. So that's my main sort of giveaway to any parent or speller starting on this journey. You get what your body feels in situations and how ready you are to take apart in any situation before you jump into it. You know you must do this now that you have a voice. You have a voice so you can explore and discover, find, create your own spaces and your own future.

[01:36:06:08 - 01:36:12:20]

Valerie

 Yes, love it. So where can our audience go to find out a little bit more about you and learn more about Crimson Rise?

[01:36:14:20 - 01:36:30:09]

Lakshmi

 Join us on our website www.crimsonrise.org. We are on Facebook as Crimson Rise. We're on Instagram as Crimson Rise underscore S2C.

And you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Crimson Rise on LinkedIn as well.

[01:36:40:15 - 01:36:46:12]

Valerie

 Thank you so much. And what does S2C stand for?

[01:36:46:12 - 01:36:51:02]

Lakshmi

 It stands for Spelling to Communicate.

[01:36:51:02 - 01:36:59:20]

Valerie

 Thank you. All right. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. Do you have any pearls of wisdom or any advice for any of our audience before we close today?

[01:37:01:02 - 01:37:20:15]

Lakshmi

 If you are a non-speaker or you have a child who's non-speaking, I urge you to explore spelling to communicate as a communication access methodology. Your child does not have to live in silence. They have the capacity to communicate and it's possible for them to do this.

[01:37:22:06 - 01:37:30:03]

Valerie

 Okay. Thank you so much for being with us Lakshmi. I've really appreciated what you shared with our audience today.

Lakshmi

Thank you for having me. 

Valerie

You're so very welcome. So audience, I want you to remember to Live with Intention and Embrace the Journey.