Wakil (00:01)
Today we are really happy to be interviewing Deborah Grassman. The interview today just happens to be on Veterans Day. Although this won't be necessarily heard on that day, but we're really honored to be speaking to her because of all of her she's done with veterans. She is the author of three books, Peace at Last, The Hero Within, and Soul Injury, which is a new book.
And she's also a contributing author for four textbooks, has 25 published articles. And we have, there are documentary films and a Ted talk that feature her work, which we will link to in our podcast notes. None of these achievements have taught her as much as the 10,000 dying veterans she took care of as a VA hospice nurse practitioner for 30 years. “If anyone wants to learn how to achieve inner peace, ask a veteran who has successfully struggled to find it for the rest of their lives after they returned from war.”
Annalouiza (01:20)
The lessons she learned culminated into a concept known as soul injury, a wound that separates a person from their own sense of self. Deborah now provides presentations and workshops that can help anyone recover their loss of self-worth by healing the relationship that they have with themselves. There will be links to all of her work in our podcast notes. Welcome, Deborah. Thank you for being here.
Deborah Grassman (01:47)
Thank you.
Wakil (01:47)
Yeah, so good to have you.
Yeah, we usually begin our podcast just by asking people to tell us about the first time you became aware of death.
Deborah Grassman (02:01)
The first time I really experienced it was when I was about 25 years old. I was reading some philosophical book while I had two toddlers, my two toddlers at my feet, and there was this sentence that leapt off the page. And this is what the sentence was. You are as dead now as you are ever going to be.
Wow. I somehow, even at that young age, I just instantly understood the meaning and the intent of that sentence. And I experienced in kind of a profound way that I was more limited in this form than I will when I drop my body off, so to speak. So I immediately felt this kind of liberating shift and I, in an instant, my fear of aging even sort of disappeared. And the interesting thing was I didn't even know I feared it. I mean, I was only 25. You're never gonna die when you're 25, right?
Wakil (03:16)
Heh.
Yeah, right.
Deborah Grassman (03:30)
You're never gonna age when you're 25. So it was an unconscious fear evidently that evaporated in that moment. So that was kind of my first I'll say experience with dying. Little did I know how much dying would play in my professional life later on. I did go on about five years after that. So when I was about 30, I did become a nurse and shortly into my, went to work for the VA. And after just a couple of years ended up going into oncology nursing and that led to hospice nursing and became a nurse practitioner. So yes, over my 30 year career, I took care of more than 10,000 dying veterans. And what I would say is everything that I've learned that has truly mattered, I learned from the dying.
Wakil (04:22)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (04:23)
Perspectives shift dramatically as death approaches. You know, the day before you're given a terminal diagnosis, you pretty much take your life for granted. And the day after, and the day after, you wake up.
Wakil (04:34)
That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (04:54)
And the things you thought that were so important now seem insignificant and things that had been escaping your attention suddenly become front and center, thrust themselves forward to urgently complete.
So I was able to essentially bear witness to those 10,000 veterans. And one by one, they taught me about how to die healed. And of course, the gift that death is, is that you live healed. I always say, I worked in inpatient hospice unit
Wakil (05:08)
Hmm.
Deborah Grassman (05:20)
And I always said there was more living going on on that inpatient hospice unit than was going on in my own home or anybody else's for that matter. Because, you know, once you realize what's really important and once you figure out you're dropping off your body, you become real. I always say the unvarnished truth surfaces and people become real very fast. So that's been, you know, that's the gift that death is, is that it does wake us up.
Annalouiza (05:23)
Mm-hmm.
Wakil (05:40)
Right? Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (05:49)
It does bring us out of unconsciousness to consciousness. And that's the gift it has been for me as a practitioner, being able to be a part of people's lives at a very intimate time and a very important time in their lives so that they could have peace at the end of their life. They could allow pain and peace to sit side by side together.
Wakil (06:14)
Right. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much.
Annalouiza (06:16)
Mm-hmm.
So generally, the second question is how death has impacted your life story. And you just very beautifully segued right into that and have demonstrated that death has been the gift for you for quite a long time. And so what is it that you're currently involved in that you continue to do the work around death?
Deborah Grassman (06:43)
Well, as I said, everything that people who've been dying have taught me about how to become more conscious, how to become more real, so to speak.
We ended up after I retired and left the VA after 30 years, started a not for profit, a 501C3 called Opus Peace. And the mission of Opus Peace is to help people heal the relationship that they have with themselves. See, that's the paradoxical lesson from these veterans who paradoxically have been trained for war and came back.
Wakil (07:24)
All right.
Deborah Grassman (07:33)
And those who are able to successfully, they come back seeking peace. They become seekers of peace and many successfully find it within themselves. And those are the ones that I would truly pay close attention to and listen avidly to. yeah, so we started this nonprofit.
We have identified this term that we call soul injury. And so we define soul injury as a wound that separates you from your real self. And there are three causes. What we've learned is there are basically three causes of soul injury. First is unmourned loss and hurt. Unforgiven. Guilt and shame. And fear of helplessness and loss of control.
So if you peel back the layers of people who have become separated from themselves. One or all three of those causes are generally the culprit that are causing that. So that's the work that we do through workshops, presentations, and what have you, is help give people an experience of themselves. Not just conceptually, not even just with their connecting with their the integrity of their feelings and their emotional self, but actually give them an experience of their self.
So most people have experienced a soul injury of some sort, of some kind. You know, that's the healing process. So at any rate, it's a very straightforward. The tools that we use are very straightforward. As I said, they really had to be because we were using them with people as they were dying.
Annalouiza (09:05)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (09:27)
So they had to be, you know, it couldn't be a lot of complex cycle babble type of stuff. It had to be hands-on in body, very simple things to help people heal. However, I will tell you that people at end of their life are fertile ground for healing.
Annalouiza (09:38)
Yeah.
Wakil (09:42)
Sure.
Deborah Grassman (09:51)
They're very motivated to heal. know, they're gonna, you know, I would, the question I would always ask all patients, I would often see patients, early on, I would be the one going around the rest of the hospital, the ICUs and what have you, and the doctor would say, hospice, send the hospice consult. I would be the one that answered. And, you know, sometimes people were, you know, I mean, I could see very quickly, they did not have very long to live. So your your work becomes very urgent to try to complete very quickly. But there's always one question that I always ask that that helped to let those issues surface and I would just say pretend like you died today. What would be left unsaid or undone?
Wakil (10:28)
Mm.
Annalouiza (10:30)
Mm-hmm.
Wakil (10:31)
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Deborah Grassman (10:32)
And that's really what we would then focus on to bring more peace.
Wakil (10:40)
Yeah, beautiful.
Annalouiza (10:41)
Yeah, that's really interesting. And before we jumped onto this call, I was mentioning to Deborah that this is a very Aztec, you know, old mechica practice. And we have that lineage of knowing how to do this. And I will say for us, there's 13 ways that you can have a soul loss and, and it, it actually even can start with children, right? So you've, I have actually witnessed it happening, but the really wonderful thing since I've raised my children, knowing this, they know when that happens too and come and ask me for help. So they're like, I just had a susto, can you help me? So that is really great that, you know, at the end of life, you can have those tools, but I hope more people know you can start it from the very beginning. Like it's there.
Wakil (11:26)
You don't have to wait.
Deborah Grassman (11:27)
Well, yeah, the, you know, when you talk about soul injury, the example I often give is I have a story that when I was five years old, I was watching TV, I was watching Lassie and I was sure that, you know, Lassie is a dog and she's trying, she's in some real dangerous situation and I'm sure she's going to die. And I start crying. And right then my dad walked through the room. He sees my tears. He starts laughing. And so I made a five-year-old decision that day to never cry again.
And I didn't for 30 years. I became ashamed of my tears. But when I was 35 and I was dealing with something painful, it suddenly occurred to me, what if your fear of pain is worse than if you just let yourself feel it? And that's when I let myself feel it for the first time. That's when the tears came for the first time. And that's when my unfreezing began.
Wakil (12:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Annalouiza (13:05)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (13:05)
That’s the day it started becoming real.
Wakil (13:14)
Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (13:35)
Now, I’m often kind of embarrassed to even tell that story. When you, because it feels so trivial when you compare it to the stories I’ve heard on the death beds of these war weary veterans.
But you can become separated from yourself. You can become invested in facades and think that that's the real you, you know, in a lot of different ways. You still become dead inside, you know.
So, yeah, so most people, we have found most people absolutely have that. I think the other approach that we use, you know, by learning how to mourn your losses, learning how to forgive, you know, what you've done or not done, learning how to let go, release those fears of loss of control, fear of helplessness, those types of things. That's very different than a lot of the current philosophies of, just need to be more resilient. You need to just put more in there. You just need to be stronger, those kinds of things. And that often causes, that can even cause a soul injury, because I've had a lot of people say,
Wakil (14:03)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (14:04)
Why can everybody else seem to be so resilient? They can do it, but I can't. What's wrong with me? Why am I not enough?
Wakil (14:13)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (14:29)
With soul injury a lot of times you peel back the beliefs, it’s the belief, I am not enough you know, I’m not strong enough, I’m not good enough, smart enough. You know, whatever it might be. There’s just not enough. Yes, and there’s shame that surrounds that.
So a lot of the work that we do is more about just releasing the barriers and letting who you are be. Letting be.
Wakil (14:36)
Hmm. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (14:41)
And that letting it be is your soulfulness that connecting and letting your ego choose to align with your being.
Wakil (14:50)
Yeah, yeah, beautiful. So what would you say have been your biggest challenges in that work over the time?
Deborah Grassman (14:57)
You know, I think people are busy and distracted and they use, all of us use different numbing agents to comfort ourselves. So part of it is just, teaching people the value of grieving, the value of forgiving, the value of of releasing fears rather than numbing those things out. So that's where it starts. I mean, that's just the very initial thing. The other thing is really helping all of us connect.
We do actually every February 2nd, we do what's called National Anchor Your Heart Day, which we have. Just a very simple, much like how you started earlier of just breathing deeply, connecting with whatever is real within your heart at that moment, bringing it presence and allowing yourself to connect with scattered pieces of self.
So I think part of the challenge is, you know, in our society, we really attached to our ego, which is one part of self and it's extremely important part of self. It's a hard part of self because it's got to kind of navigate and you know the inside and the outside world, you know both. That's not an easy thing to do. But to really help people identify scattered pieces of self and that all those pieces of self matter, not just your ego matters.
Wakil (16:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (16:53)
All those pieces, that little part of self that's ashamed of her tears, she matters. She's real, so get to know her. So we have a lot of very simple tools that just allow you to open up to all the pieces. That facade that you're hiding behind, that facade is real. I mean, it exists, it's there. You're using it, it matters. Get to know it. But that facade is not you. But welcome it, open up to it, and get real with it.
So it's not about growing into this one idealized perfect person. You know, like sometimes we're led to believe that that's the goal. It's no, all of these pieces matter. They are all real. Get to know them and bring consciousness to them so they're no longer unconsciously sabotaging your life.
Wakil (17:41)
Yeah, yeah, so good. So real. Thank you.
Annalouiza (17:44)
Yeah.
So what do you do to feel supported in your work?
Deborah Grassman (17:51)
We, You know, just the feedback that we get because our tools are simple. And when you see someone really discover this scattered piece of self that's been unconscious and they don't need to be afraid of it anymore, but they can welcome it back home. They can reown it. They can re home it and be revitalized by it. yeah, that that's, that's the best. I mean, that's fulfillment. You know, that is fulfillment. That is energizing. So that's, that's the support. Yeah, that's the support that I get. It's the results.
Wakil (18:32)
Great, thank you. Is there anything that frightens you about the end of life after all this work?
Deborah Grassman (18:41)
You know, I think the only thing that frightens me is, I don't know that it frightens me, but it bothers me is, you know, I know my death will impact people that I love.
Wakil (18:55)
Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (19:08)
And I know that there are some of them that will struggle with it. you know, as Ana Luisa and I were talking before we started, you know, I do live in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Wakil (19:11)
Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (19:34)
And we were just hit by two hurricanes that were devastating, absolutely devastating. So, yeah, I have my two children and three grandchildren, they all evacuated. My husband would not evacuate. And so I had to really...You know, my son had already gotten a hotel over in Orlando, Mom, you you come, my husband said, you go ahead and go. I had to really think about that. But if I went and something happened to him, could I live with myself after that?
Wakil (19:48)
Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (20:01)
So I decided I could not so that I would stay behind. So if you can imagine, you know, the hurricane hit here at dark, we had no electricity, all the streetlights out and everything. We actually were in a small bedroom and slept with a mattress over us. So you can imagine the sound, you can't see anything in the dark. So I honestly, I knew we were doing everything we could to preserve our life, obviously, but I do have a lot of big oak trees around my house that could easily come down.
So I mean, there is that threat of death that I could at least think of. as I said, preparing, do I go ahead and evacuate? Do I leave him behind when he refuses to go? And I honestly was at peace with everything. Somebody said to me later, weren't you terrified hearing all that and you're sleeping under a mattress waiting for the roof to fall in?
Wakil (20:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (20:59)
I said, well, I figured the statistics were kind of low that I would actually die. But I have to say I was
laying there thinking, know, if I go, I'm okay laying my life down. really am. I don't really have anything unfinished. And, I've lived my life and I've lived a good life. I so yeah, that was just a couple of weeks ago of just, you know, of it being kind of forced in your face.
Wakil (21:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (21:26)
You know, the mayor of Tampa was on the news, you know, going, if you all don't, if you don't evacuate, you are going to die. That's what she was saying. That was when it was a category five. If it was a category five, I don't know what we would have done.
Annalouiza (21:26)
Hmm.
Wakil (21:26)
Yeah, yeah.
Deborah Grassman (21:32)
But at any rate, so yeah, lot of destruction. My son's still completely without a home. We have a beach house completely gone. So we've got two out the six houses in our family completely gone.
Wakil (21:36)
Wow, yeah, devastating. And also, like you said, a good opportunity to practice that work, right? To think about really, this, I ready? Am I done? Have I done what I need to do?
Annalouiza (21:58)
Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (21:58)
That question every night, you I always ask my patients, pretend like you died today, what would be left unsaid or undone? It's the same question I ask myself every night. You know, it's a good way to go to bed.
Wakil (22:12)
Yeah.
Annalouiza (22:14)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (22:15)
That Pretend like I died today, what would be left unsaid or undone? And, you know, there's your marching orders for living a full life the next day then when you get up.
Wakil (22:15)
Yeah. Exactly, Yeah, that's right. That's a good way to wake up.
Annalouiza (22:29)
That's right. So how do you keep yourself resourced doing this work?
Deborah Grassman (22:38)
Well, I think always having a purpose, you know, meditation. Until the hurricane, I did a lot of gardening. Those days, you know, I lost all my gardens. So I don't know, you know, that that will continue to, you know, resource me.
But I'm sure I will find a other ways, whatever my soul is going to be revealed. know, after, you know, a catastrophe like this, it's really about kind of sorting through what do I try to restore and go back to the way it used to be, what needs to be modified, and what do I need to let go of?
Wakil (23:27)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (23:35)
You know, so that's, that's really the opportunity. I've had a lot of people say to me things like,
you can just replant your garden. you can just go get new. I haven't had a lot of different fence things and what have you. And I'm 72 years old. can't do, I've been through hurricanes before. I've lived here 55 years. I've been through hurricanes before.
Wakil (23:50)
Mm.
Yeah
Deborah Grassman (24:03)
Never as devastating as this, number one. Number two, I was younger even 10 years ago. Yeah, so just because... everybody always wants you back to the way you used to be. And there is kind of this yearning inside yourself, myself, know, trying to get things back to the old normal. But things will never be the same. And, you know, it is an opportunity to let go.
Wakil (24:18)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Deborah Grassman (24:33)
And obviously the more you can let go of that is that is preparing for death. You know, that is preparing for death is just letting go little by little.
Yeah. So that's kind of the opportunity. So one of the things I've done in the last couple of weeks is not try to be too quick to get things back to the way they used to be,
Wakil (24:33)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Annalouiza (24:43)
Hmm.
Wakil (24:43)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (25:00)
But to really take time to abide with all of it because there's wonderful things that are happening with all of this upset and uproar. And there's awful things. There's both. So it's being able to embrace both ends of that spectrum and let myself just stay open to the grace of the movement within my being to tell me, and you know, that our soul kind of whispers to us, you know, it's not that chatter of the world and all the blah, blah, blah. So I've just had to kind of be, I think, more quiet and allow things trust. I have to trust grace that my life is going to change and my life will never be the same after what has happened in the last couple of weeks. And, you know, being able to be at peace with that and open to that. Not try to make it go back to the way it used to be. So, letting go.
Wakil (25:34)
Mm-hmm.
Annalouiza (25:35)
Mm-hmm.
Wakil (25:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well. Yeah, acceptance. I love that. That's something we're all trying to learn, right? We actually have a little more time left. I wonder if you have any stories, anything particularly profound that you remember from those times with the 10,000 veterans. Maybe you could tell us a story from that and then we can finish up with a couple more things. But I thought since we have some time, just ask that question to see if there's anything that rises up as you kind of think back.
Deborah Grassman (26:16)
Yeah, my books are filled with their stories because they are profound. I'd have to think as far as one particular story goes. But yeah, nothing's coming to mind at the moment.
Wakil (26:35)
OK, no worries. If something comes, we can always edit it in. So just let me know. Yeah, so we always like to give you an opportunity at the end to just let us know if there's anything you wish we had asked you, anything else you'd like to talk to us about.
Deborah Grassman (26:41)
Yeah, no, I'm good.
Wakil (27:04)
Okay, yeah.
Annalouiza (27:05)
Beautiful.
Wakil (27:09)
Yeah, well we really appreciate the work and that Angie contacted us and let us know about your work and that you're willing to come spend this time with us. Really appreciate you.
Annalouiza (27:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (27:21)
I was going to say, I have a new book coming out. It's called Soul Injury, Healing the Relationship You Have with Yourself. And in chapter one, I try to give the reader kind of a glimpse of what my everyday world was like as a hospice nurse practitioner. So I tell this story 10 stories of patients one day, as I was writing the book, we had 10 patients on the unit. I just told each of their stories in just little glimpses. I could read that to you, but it would take probably five minutes to read if you want me.
Annalouiza (28:06)
Well, but we are going to share the opus piece that you sent us. And I think that's a really beautiful kind of framework for the work that you do too. So I have that in front of me. We could read it together or we could read it.
Wakil (28:16)
A vision statement, yeah.
Yeah. The other thing is that if you'd like, if you have maybe a summary of what, I love the idea of what's a day in a life kind of thing. That would be a really good brief, five minutes might be too much for them, but if you wanted to just give us a brief kind of like, what does a day in the life look like when you're doing that work?
Deborah Grassman (28:46)
One of the things I was going to say is, as I think about that, your audience might appreciate is one of the things that happened to Opus Peace is through the hurricane is that all of our books got flooded.
Wakil (29:07)
Whoa.
Annalouiza (29:07)
Mm.
Deborah Grassman (29:14)
Yeah. Yeah. So I have, so we've tried to dry them out as much as possible. So, any rate, are giving them away or selling some weren't damaged very much. So we're selling those at half price and we have others that are damaged but are quite readable.
Wakil (29:29)
Okay.
nice.
Deborah Grassman (29:44)
You only have to pay the postage for us to ship them to you or your organization. And we simply want to extract a commitment that you won't just give them out to anybody but that you really will give them, for example, The first book is about veterans that you actually will find, you know, a veteran that will read it. The hero within is more about healing the relationship you have with yourself. It's more about personal growth and development. So it's for anybody.
But if anybody's interested, we are getting those books out. yeah, we love to get them out to people that will really read them. The other thing I would say is, you know, February 2nd,
Wakil (29:58)
Mm-hmm.
perfect.
Deborah Grassman (30:14)
Join us in our worldwide Anchor Your Heart Day. It's just three minutes. We will do a one-hour webinar, but we will actually do three minutes of anchoring our heart, becoming settled within ourself, getting real within ourself, and creating that sense of stillness as a community. So that's February 2nd. And so I would encourage everybody to join us for that.
Annalouiza (30:17)
That would be really lovely.
Wakil (30:40)
I'm just looking at what we've got scheduled and if we kept it to the schedule, it wouldn't be till after that. But I think maybe what I'll do is move it, swap it up for something more toward the end of January so that people can hear that and can join you. Thanks for letting us know about that. Yeah. And I was thinking it's like a fire sale, but water instead, right? Water sale. man.
Annalouiza (30:48)
We'll swap it.
Okay.
Deborah Grassman (30:57)
Right? Yeah.
Annalouiza (31:01)
The water sale.
Deborah Grassman (31:04)
I gotta tell you, it was a lot of work to try to dry out 3,000 books, I can tell you. That was exhausting. I did that between hurricanes. It happened the first hurricane. was drying out books. That next week when I here came another hurricane. was like, my God, it's exhausting.
Wakil (31:10)
my, boy.
my, well, an opportunity for acceptance, right? That's the way life runs for us,
Deborah Grassman (31:25)
Well, there's been a lot of it. Sometimes I feel like I've met my quota though, Waukele.
Wakil (31:35)
We can all wish that, Right, exactly.
Annalouiza (31:40)
Yeah.
Shall we read the vision for the opus piece?
Wakil (31:44)
Yeah, I think that would be a good way to end. usually do a poem or some kind of quote. Yeah.
Deborah Grassman (31:47)
It's a great summary for the work that we do at Opus Peace.
Wakil (31:53)
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I think reading it twice is a good idea because people can really take it in. So go ahead.
Annalouiza (32:04)
Opus Peace has a vision of a world where people know how to personally apply these three statements. Number one, cultivate in me the willingness to reown, rehome, and revitalize scattered pieces of myself so wholeness can be restored. Number two, grow in me the honesty, courage, and humility to release my fear of who I am and who I am not. And number three, fuel me with your grace.
Wakil (32:41)
Yeah.
All right. Opus Peace has a vision of a world where people know how to personally apply these three statements. Cultivate in me the willingness to reown, rehome, and revitalize the scattered pieces of myself so wholeness can be restored. Grow in me the honesty, courage, and humility to release my fear of who I am and who I am not. And finally, fuel me with your grace.
And I'd actually like to ask to tell me a little bit more about that last fuel me with your grace. Can you tell us a little more about you and what is it? I mean, grace, thank God we have grace. Grace is given to us. Yeah.
Annalouiza (33:33)
Who's the you? Who's your grace?
Deborah Grassman (33:42)
Yeah, I mean, it's the grace of your being that sources your being that was before you came to this earth and will be with you after you leave this earth, which is why you don't need to fear death.
Wakil (33:50)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah my...
Annalouiza (33:59)
Mm-hmm.
Deborah Grassman (34:01)
that infinite spark.
Wakil (34:04)
Yes, beautiful. Yeah, I had a teacher say something like, grace is that love and spark that is given to us whether we deserve it or not. There's no question of whether you deserve it. It's just there. It's grace that's given to us. Yeah, OK, beautiful. Thank you. I just love that statement. I'm glad you could tell us a little more about it. Well, thank you so much, Deborah. It's been a pleasure.
Annalouiza (34:20)
Hmm.
Deborah Grassman (34:30)
Hmm.
Wakil (34:34)
And we will look forward to it and hearing more about your new book and hopefully no more hurricanes. No more floods.
Annalouiza (34:37)
Hahaha.
Deborah Grassman (34:39)
The season's over in two more weeks, so we should be okay until next June.
Wakil (34:46)
OK. Blessings. All right. Well, thanks again. Have a good afternoon. Take care. Bye.
Deborah Grassman (34:49)
Thank you. All right. Thank you. Bye bye.
Annalouiza (34:52)
Thank you.
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