Unmuted
Unmasking the stories of brilliant people.
Every episode, Unmuted’s Gary Robinson, invites an unsung hero to join him in sharing the experiences that have changed their life and the lives of others.
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Unmuted
My Journey From Dyslexia to Author - Frankie Larkin
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Undiagnosed dyslexia wrote off an early part of Frankie Larkin’s life. However, the lessons this taught him along the way are full of grace and emotional depth.
One such lesson being that emotion needs a target, which is explained beautifully in Frankie’s own words in the podcast.
In this live recorded episode at Frankie’s book launch he shares many of his musings and experiences, including those on depression and suicidal ideation so please listen with care.
Frankie Larkin left education without knowing how to read or write, and it wasn't until his thirties that he began to learn. Thirty years later, I had the honour of hosting the launch of his first book, Who Am I? Why Did It Take So Long to Find Me? at the beautiful Cumbernauld Old Parish Church.
But this isn't really a story about reading. It's a story about the people who show up.
The grandad who never said much, but he knew what Frankie loved.
The school janitor who took a humiliated boy out of the classroom and taught him to read the flames in the boiler room.
Alcoholic Uncle Frankie, who sat with a young dad who couldn't read his letters and worked through every single one.
Frankie calls these the qualities of grace: tenderness, attunement, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness.
Whether you work in care, lead a team, or are simply carrying something you suspect was never yours to begin with, this one will stay with you.
Music: 'Spirit of Fire' - fiftysounds.com
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Hello, I'm Gary Robinson with a very special episode of Unmuted. Frankie Larkin grew up not knowing he was dyslexic, and at school he was labelled stupid and simply pushed aside. Frankie left school without knowing how to read or indeed write, and it wasn't until his 30s that he began to really learn. Frankie Larkin recently published his first book, Who Am I? Why Did It Take So Long to Find Me? And I was honoured to host the launch at the stunningly beautiful Cumbernault Old Parish Church in the West of Scotland recently. Now, before you hear Frankie in conversation, this is for everyone, but especially, and this is in Frankie's words, just taken from his book, um, if you've ever felt behind and qualified or like your voice didn't matter, please know this. You're not alone. And it's never too late to find you. Um hopefully can you hear us at the back? Yep, okay, we don't need a mic. Okay, that's fine. Congratulations, thank you. Absolutely superb. As you can see and feel that there's a lot of love.
SPEAKER_00I didn't turn around when I was sitting, but maybe it's a bit more awkward for me.
SPEAKER_02Awkward at all, it's people who've obviously uh helped you on your journey. Yeah. People who think an awful lot about you. The book's fantastic. I've got to be honest. When I when I had it, when I when it arrived, and thank you for the inscription in it, by the way, it meant an awful lot. I my first reaction without opening the uh the pages was oh, this is going to be very religious. That's that was my immediate thought. It's not. Um, and uh I can just echo the uh the comments of of the others that have gone before. It's really easy to read, it's wonderful to read. Um, it's quite lyrical, actually. And um it made me think about my own youth uh and my childhood. We'll talk about that in a sec. Um, how are you feeling now you're here 30 years on? The story 30 years in the making.
SPEAKER_00Um well, I think some of the comments bring it bring it home, Gary. Um I think um I think I can't remember who I was talking to today. And no, it was a video that I got from a friend down south, and I've known her for about five years. I mean she sent the video uh I found it very emotional because she started off, so she obviously picked things up from me as as um as a friend, and yeah, I I probably feel um a whole mixture of different emotions pride, gratitude, obviously, gratitude. Um and probably my greatest is probably going to be hope and belief that it's never too late for for anyone, no matter what age or what the circumstances are.
SPEAKER_02And were were those the main factors that that really compelled you to write the book?
SPEAKER_00Yes, but I didn't know that at the time. Um, and I think Suzanne would probably agree with me when I handed her almost 150,000 words to um sift through, um cry over, fight over. Um and I remember one day she said to me, Who's the book about? And I said, Um, well, I think it's about me. And she said, Well, why are you talking about John of the Cross and why are you talking about Jesus? And why are you talking about and I said, But they're instrumental, but yeah, but it's not their journey. And I thought, that's quite an eye-opener because I could throw Jesus to the side, because it's all about me. Um so from that point of view, then I had to revisit the message or go deeper in myself to say that okay, what am I trying to say? And I think it's the message that I want to get across is that we all have an inner child that wants out to play, and to allow that child out to play, it's like any mother or parent who's looking after a child. We have to nourish with tenderness, attunement, compassion, acceptance, all the qualities that I talk about. And the people who who help me along that journey are people who who um expressed those those qualities of grace. They're not the only qualities of grace, they're the seven that touch my heart or my soul. There's plenty of other qualities of grace that other people could talk about and discuss, but for me, they were the ones that actually took me from one place to the next in safety.
SPEAKER_02Uh and it was a lovely cue, actually, because you've got your friends here. Yes, uh, as we can see, uh Frank Lake, the author. Yeah, uh, he's clinical theologian. Clinical theologian. Yeah. Uh Jesus is in the house.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he is.
SPEAKER_02Um we've here. Um, of course, John of the Cross. Yeah. And then and then we have here Dudie Ching, yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Who's um I think 3,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_02He's wearing well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02He's wearing well.
SPEAKER_00So there's a story around all of these as well. Yeah. We might we might get to, we might not get to.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, I mean, I I loved it. I mean, I've got a little bit of a mind map here. Um, and you know, when um Suzanne was talking, there are some examples on page 81, 88, and 90 of trauma that that you talked about. Um, but there's also a really interesting part around rupture and repair, and that was with your daughter Sammy, yeah, who's with us. You know, you've not read the book yet, have you? She's not reached that chapter yet. Uh you've not reached that chapter yet, but there's a lovely piece in it. Yeah. Can you remember it? Yeah, yeah, very well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You wanted to just share it? Yeah. Well, it was um it was during a period where I was deeply depressed, chronic chronic depression, and I had Sammy four days a week. I would go and pick her up, and I would pick her up off the night shift, which I was exhausted, and my nerves were shattered this day, and I happened to raise my voice too harshly, and I saw her face just drop her shoulders. Um, it was just like it was a collapse, but we talk about collapse now, and I looked at her face and I thought, oh my god, what have I done? Now I wasn't I didn't know understand psychology or any um science around emotions, but I knew um instinctively that I had done something that upset her. So I got down my knees and I gave her a cuddle and I said, I'm really, really sorry. This is not on you, this is me, this is my fault. And less than a second, her words were it's okay, Daddy. And she her spirits lifted again and she carried on playing. So the rupture and repair, it was seconds, so for that rupture to be repaired. So that that stayed with me a long time, but also on the back of that, there's another lesson, and I think I mentioned it in the book, is that I remember being triggered on another level when that happened, and it was because I thought to myself, in those days I would curse. I said, Where the F did that come from? To myself, and I said, even the words weren't mine and the tone wasn't mine, but I remember it thinking, like, okay, where have I heard that? And I think it came from like my dad, had quite a um stern um uh personality or demeanour, and I thought, oh my god, I've I've picked a trait up that doesn't belong to me. I never gave it a thought after that because I was in my twenties then, so I just I just took it for granted that I thought, like, okay, then I started to think well, how would I have felt if um someone was there to say sorry to me at that time or for them to understand that I was hurt? So that kind of uh obviously stayed with me because I I felt I had to write it in the book.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting because you you make on a few occasions the point that we grew up in in a different time uh and in different communities where we didn't wear our hearts on our sleeves. Yeah, absolutely, and uh and maybe we were looking for something else that that our parents couldn't provide.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I think I talk about that in I think it might be joy, chapter in joy of creativity, when I talk about the emotional language wasn't available in those days. So the the book it was never about blame or pointing the finger, and I state that at the very beginning, and I had to be frank about that. It's about how do we re-educate ourselves to break the links and the patterns of the past because they're not ours. A lot of the stuff that we carry doesn't belong to us, it's unresolved issues from ancestors before. So when I came to the awareness of that, I thought, okay, how do I break these patterns? And it was my willingness to even contemplate that that's when Grace entered.
SPEAKER_02You you weave um examples from the Bible into your examples, and that works really well. Yeah, I've got to say it's not it's not heavy, yeah, and it's very understandable for the non-theologians in us, really. And I want to go back to the the five-year-old you, and you paint a wonderful picture of taking a trek of I don't know, half a mile or something to to see grandad Frankie when you were five, and that Anderson shelter that had so much magic for you. Can you describe talk talk to us a little bit about it?
SPEAKER_00Those were the days where children were free enough to walk a half a mile or walk that distance. And my grandda was, I mean, I only knew him two years and then he passed away. But the he was a very tall man, white-haired, and he had a shelter at the back where he would keep all his tools and bits and pieces. And I wouldn't be able to tell you how many times I actually visited the shed, but I always liked to hammer my hands, and he would give me nails from the shed, and I would just watch him as he he didn't talk, he didn't say too much. He was a very quiet man, and he would gather the nails up and wrap them up in little bits of brown paper and give them to me. So without any words, he was attuned to what I liked and what I needed, even though I none of us knew the language of attunement in those in those days.
SPEAKER_02You you write in this um Under the Shed and the Nails, you write in many ways, Jesus reminded me of my grandfather. That's a powerful line.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah. To me it's obvious because if you if you look at the Gospels um and reflect upon Jesus' humanity, um irradiated all those qualities without even speaking. So her body language and her the energy that flows from is is important before words. So attunement is like uh an invisible language that says you're okay, you're safe. And our nervous systems, because I talk about the nervous system because we now have the science behind that, the nerve my nervous system was very regulated. I can say regulated now, but then it wasn't. I just felt loved, and I just felt I had joy because I was in a place where the world didn't exist.
SPEAKER_02By the way, you can see my book here has been well thumbed, and I hope you don't mind my scrolling all over it. Scrolled with love, I have to say, because I was like, I like that, I like that line. I'm gonna have that one. I thought it was really good. Um, it goes on. Um, your time at school, and I've got to say, you write in very forgiving terms about a teacher who you know who had impact on you. Um, and I think sharp, impatient, and derogatory uh are the words used, but you almost see life from her side saying, Well, maybe she was overwhelmed, maybe she was under pressure, maybe she didn't know how to work with you. I mean that that those are those are very forgiving words you use. Um and uh when did you come to come to that realization?
SPEAKER_00Um probably um well I had an experience, a spiritual experience, that um touched me in a way that it allowed me to see beyond the pain of others. And when the pain that we carry is not I mean the pain that we carry has to find a target. If if we're not consciously aware of that part of us, then it finds a target because it has to vent it, it can't it can't hold that level of emotional pain. And when I had the the the experience of the overwhelming love, um I'll call it, then I saw everything in a new light because after that experience nothing in the world could hurt me because I knew it wasn't intentional. I knew people were carrying baggage, I knew people were carrying their own pain. So, like this guy here, John of the Cross, when he was being persecuted for nine months by his own friars, he never once criticized, he looked beyond the pain and so looked beyond the insults or the abuse, and looked at their own pain. And that's what drives people, is their emotions inside of them. They can't hold that for a great length of time unless they've got a safe place to do that. Um, hence we see that in daily life throughout life, and the scripture um the quotes that I I mention are um great examples of how Jesus dealt with um people being abused, and in the opposite way around the abusers were actually forgiven, but they weren't they weren't condemned because he knew there was a story behind that that pain.
SPEAKER_02Um Suzanne talked and gave the example of the biscuits, yeah. Um which I can only imagine was terrible for you having to go through that. But you found solace in the in the boiler room with the janitor, the caretaker. Yeah, and that's the bit a little bit like Trisha spoke about the soup, and I love the soup, by the way. Soup did it for me as well. But I was I was sat on a train reading your book, and I went, Oh my goodness, because I remembered all of a sudden, after 40 years, this is what your book did, a head teacher of mine called Mr. Williams, who recognised something in me because I didn't I didn't have a the great childhood either, um, what in terms of having a particularly happy family? And he he rescued me in the way that your janitor rescued you by doing those small tasks, giving you cloths, giving you tasks to do. Um, how did how did that come about? Do you think the caretaker, the janitor, saw something vulnerable in you and decided to help, or did you reach out to him?
SPEAKER_00No, no, I remember the day it happened, it was the day of the biscuits. Um, and I would squash the biscuits up and I would fill my mouth with water also at the same time and hold it. Now, for a child looking back, I mean I just wanted to swallow the biscuits because they were good. I mean, you'd it's like putting a uh a Malteser in your mouth and saying, Don't don't chew it, I just let it no, it's it's impossible. But the pain that I was carrying was greater than that, so I had I had to do that, and then I would vomit that out to pretend it was sick, and then I remember that that I call it the walk of shame from the desk to the door with my head down, searching for the handle because the rest of the class were um making all rude suggestions, and you know, this person's just vomited all over the desk. And when I got out, she would she shouted, just go and help the janitor. So I had to go and find the Janny. But it was interesting because there was no conversation between myself and the janitor. It was like my granddad. So he was he was grandad too, if you like, because um he didn't talk, and I ended up just following him around, and he gave me some milk in his uh the big cartons of milk, and then he would take me around on the rounds into the boiler room, and then he taught me how to look at the flames inside the the front two furnaces to see how they're burning the oxygen and the uh the the fuel, and then I would um do a bit of sweeping up and a bit of and then I would do the the pick-up papers from the the yard. And for a person who hated school, I spent six weeks in the school during the summer holidays washing floors and windows with the Janny. Yeah, that was bizarre. But it it kept me out of the classroom.
SPEAKER_02So granddad was Frankie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You had an uncle Frankie, yes, who who was as impactful and and really um taught you practical skills, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Frankie was a man who carried his own his own pain, and I talk about him as a good Samaritan. So and I talk about um compassion uh in the sense that this was a practical compassion because I see compass I see all the gifts, they're not they're not they don't just stay in one level. To me, they're different depths of attunement and compassion forgiveness. So Frankie represented a compassion that was very practical because I was bringing Sammy up at the time and I had very little money, and then I was made redundant. So trying to get to make ends meet was quite difficult, and then I was getting hounded by the government to to prove that I needed the money, etc. And I couldn't read the letters that were coming in, so obviously I was really panicked. So Frankie came on the scene, and Frankie was an alcoholic, and he didn't have any troubles to seek, he had plenty, but he had a rare gift of not even talking about that or mentioning it, and just stepped right into my life and stayed with me for I I don't know, months and months to take me through all the letters, and then he took me on a to help me get a course to become self-employed, taught me electrics, plaster, hence, I do all that, I can do all that work now.
SPEAKER_02Um, so yeah, and I've seen the house and it's beautiful. Yeah, I love it. Um Frankie's resolute belief bridged the space between who I was and who I was becoming. He wasn't trying to play the hero, he wasn't trying to save me, he just showed up uh bringing a persistent willingness to sit in my mess instead of stepping around it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I've doubled underlined that. Yeah, that's massively powerful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's it's it's very rare. I mean, we we talk about compassion, and I don't believe that compassion is something that we have, uh it's it's who we are, you know, at our core, I think every single human being has these gifts. But I think the struggle most of us have is expressing those gifts towards ourselves to be compassionate, and I think when you embrace pain in a way that um I've tried to do and I still continue to do, then what I found is is that the compassion that comes up or attunement, it's actually overflow. I don't generate it, I don't create it. It comes as an overflow from me feeling safe within myself.
SPEAKER_02You know, when we when we uh watch the news, read the news, consume social media depending on on what platform you're looking at. Um certainly from my point of view, I look at I look at some social media and I just think you know, we're going you know where in a hand cart. Yeah. And I don't always think that that's the truth. Yeah, but when you were writing the part about the Good Samaritan, were you thinking about what what the world needs now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very much. So um what yeah, we we do walk around a lot of um situations, um, and I talk about I think acceptance I found was the most difficult um chapter. Um not to write, it was the most difficult chart uh quality to embrace because tenderness and attunement comes from other people towards me, but acceptance came from me. I had to accept what was happening in my life, so that was more difficult, and I think um when you begin to accept what you're experiencing and it begins to make sense, then I think we can have more compassion for the world.
SPEAKER_02Interesting again, and there's only a few more questions, but I'm loving this conversation. Um here you're talking about um John of the Cross. Um uh this is you talking, uh writing about this. I was deeply struck when I first learned that John held no resentment towards his captors. Uh, it wasn't just that he forgave them, but how he forgave. He saw beyond their actions into their humanity. They were not monsters, they were wounded men acting from blindness, fear, and pain. Is that is that an element of what's happening in today's world, do you think?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, undoubtedly. Yeah, that's what was happening in my world. So a couple of minutes ago I said we we all need a target, our emotions. Need to find somewhere to land. If they don't, then they just become like a physical illness and and so much more. So people vent, you know, if they're angry, then they need to get rid of that anger. And some people will go inwards and be angry at themselves and end up in depression. Other people will vent it towards other human beings. And it's not that they want to do it, it's that they can't hold it. So I understand that. So if I get up in the morning and go to the shops and someone's not nice to me, it's not personal. They don't say Frankie's in it, we're going to get him, we're going to give him a doing the day. To me, it doesn't work that way. It's something they can't hold. So I can forgive that quite easily because I was that person giving that out at one point. So it I'm not being a hero. I just recognise that that's the way I behaved. I would be angry at someone, I could lash out, or go the opposite way and become depressed. So I know that that's not the way I wanted to be.
SPEAKER_02What can we do to make people realise that? That you know they're not maybe they're not acting in maybe hate or rage, or but they're maybe it's fear and the trauma that they're carrying within their bodies. How can we make people continue to realise that? Is it through grassroots movements like you know the ACES movement that's leading the way really in the UK here in Scotland?
SPEAKER_00Um I don't have I don't have an answer to it. I can only talk from what helps me and what I believe. I remember having a chat with Brett driving up to Dundee just a couple of weeks ago, and you were talking about your thoughts can wander or whatever, we can have crazy thoughts and they're they're all over the place. And I and I remember those thoughts only too well, where it would lead me. Um and it's quite easy to get led down a road of being judgmental or having a narrative in your mind, they shouldn't have done this, and but and then you're often one, you're down a rabbit hole. So I think um if people can look at their own lives and ask themselves the question, okay, I feel angry at that person saying that. So why do I feel it so intensely? You know, I I always give an example when I'm talking to people. I say, okay, you if you're a driver and you might get this, you drive down the motorway, someone comes off that joined that wants to join from the slip road, they just barge out, they don't indicate, they don't do nothing, and then what does that do to you? And most people I talk to shout and ball and scream, and they're quite willing to give that information out. And I said, But why would you but why would it be so intense? And they said, Well, I said, but you don't know you may have a sick wife in the back or a wounded animal, so they might be rushing to the hospital, someone's dying. I said, So we're too quick to judge. I said, and I I was I did that all the time. You know, why are they doing this? Why are they doing that? But when I started looking at my own my own actions, I thought, no, this this doesn't sit right because I'm doing just what I'm accusing someone else of doing.
SPEAKER_02Um did I read it right that when you had the I don't want to give too much away, you've got to take the book, right? But when you had the the rescuing hug from the stranger, yeah, the did the depression leave you at that point? Did I read that right? Did I pick that up?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was I was suicidal, I was on the edge of suicide, and my aunt was nibbling at me for months to go to a prayer meeting, and I kept saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll go, but I never went. And then this night it was uh it was a last ditch, if you like. I said, I'll go then. And I went and I walked into the the hall, and there was a woman standing, they called them greeters, and she gave me a hug and um and said, Welcome, find yourself a seat. That was it. So there was no who you what you up to, or no judging, it was just it was just so simple, so basic a hug. And I sat down, but something shifted that night, and I couldn't put it into words, but I do want to tell a wee story about the rescue and hug because that's not my phrase. I adopted that, I've stolen it. Um, and this is a true story of a set of twins that were born in America. Now, I'd probably hazard, I guess, and say it was about 28 years ago now. I think it was Bruce Lipton. Um he he wasn't involved initially when they were born, but he did when they were 17. And what happened was the two twins, the twins were born, and as you know, they get separated into incubators. So this one here was thriving, and this one was failing. This week her always dying, her nervous system was beginning to shut down, couldn't get temperature. So this nurse actually, going against all protocol, lifted the infant and put it back in beside her sister. And right away the healthy sister put her arm over her and she survived. So that's where I get the rescue and hug from because that woman saved my life. I don't know the woman, even to this day, I don't know who she was. We don't need to know. Someone just does something, we don't need an audience to be healed, we don't need an audience to know that we're um what we're broken. It's just it's it's to me, it's just grace, it's how grace operates.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_00And sorry, Bruce Lipton did interview them when they were 17, so and they're very, very healthy girls.
SPEAKER_02I just want to touch on mum and dad. Uh, because again, you know, you you talk about your mum and dad in very honest terms. Uh, your mum was obviously a non-judgmental person and just got on and she was very pragmatic and got on with life. Um, dad was a fantastic dancer, yeah.
SPEAKER_00He was, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And there was a really it struck me that um I think there was a point where you'd I think you asked dad, or dad said he was going to teach you to dance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there was more to it. My dad liked a can of beer, and he was a very quiet man, and we had a wee can of beer, he would loosen up a wee bit, and he would say to me, he was a beautiful waltzer, right? So ballroom dancing, yeah, absolutely superb. And he said one night, Do you know if you teach me disco dancing, I'll teach you how to ballroom dance. So the two of us got a few cans of beer, and so I showed him how to disco dance.
SPEAKER_01Do you want to do you want to show us now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it's it's a wee bit a wee bit like this and that. So he would just stand like that, he shoulder. Uh but I remember him, I said, Okay, it's my turn, you need to teach me how to walk. And he said, Go and get the brush. So I brought the brush into the room and he said, right, okay. I said, but I put my arms out too, thinking he was going to put his so no no no no, he said no, yeah, he's that down again. He said, No, no, you need to dance with the brush. He says, 'Cause I I'm a leader, I don't follow. He says, so you need to learn how to lead. So I had to dance with the brush. No, hold your hand up a bit, hold it there, and then start. He showed me the steps. And um to this day, well, yeah, to this day I still enjoy dancing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you you you danced with with mom up until the time she almost passed. Well, no, before she passed.
SPEAKER_00Three days before she passed. Yeah, my my routine getting into the care home would be because my mum and I danced even after my dad died, yeah. And I tried to take his steps because she was a beautiful dancer, but she learned my dad's steps, and my dad had tricky steps. So he had we we separate special steps that she followed, she could follow, but I couldn't yet master. Um, but when into the care home um when she could no longer talk or her mind wasn't her own, um, her body knew how to dance. I would dance and she would curry in, and we would um it would be you and my sunshine, and we'd just dance and walk through in the bedroom or out in the corridor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, attunement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And a somatic memory in her muscles as well. She remembered that, albeit her brain wasn't working that well, but her body was still remembering how to dance. And I think that I think that's important for people who work with dementia like yourself, um, is another language, dance is another music's another language.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Can you cut a rug? How's your waltzing skills? For cutting a rug? Waltzing skills. Good waltzing skills? Yeah, okay. Um is there another book in you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I have to say I do have to say that the um well the the the quick answer is yes. There's another two, and I think it's important. Um this book is it's been the hardest, but it's not been the hardest because of the um because I couldn't do it, I didn't know structure or anything like that. Um the reason that is the hardest is because that was a book that was never meant to be written. The book that I had in my mind was going to be what does it feel like inside to experience grace at work. That tells me I was touched by grace, and it tells me what I got better at doing, being compassionate and forgiving. But what actually happened in that journey is not in the book, because that's taken 30 years from 33 up until tonight. Um, so to produce that when it was never on the agenda to produce a book like that. It was when Suzanne came on the scene, we had to start somewhere, and then all of a sudden that came about, and I didn't even know it was going to happen. The other two books that I've hopefully will see the light of day is the next one will be formation, how that grace, how does it form in the inner journey when no one sees it outwardly, and then the final one will be integration. How do we integrate that with the nervous system because that's where our pain lies? So it's it's going to be a very embodied book, the third one, because it's about how love changes our biology. So if you like to think the theology of love meets the biology of love, and the tourum can embrace to allow love into the places, those dark places that none of us like to talk about or don't even want to open the door to, because we all have them, and I continue to have them, and I never take it for granted that I've reached any. I don't think I'm in agreement with John of the Cross there's no such thing as a goal on our journey. I believe being on the journey is a goal. So if I can if I can be here tonight and accomplish that and I die tomorrow, then my my goals ended, if you like. But the goal is like every day. Well, for me it is the journey is never ending. There's no goalposts or no finishing line. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02It does make sense. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.