Is It Really Peace If It Costs You Yourself?

What if peace isn’t actually peace when it requires you to disappear?

In this episode, we explore a question that touches identity, boundaries, truth-telling, and healing:

Is it really peace if it costs you yourself?

Together we unpack:

• The difference between peacekeeping and true peace 
• How shrinking can look like harmony 
• Why systems and boundaries can create space for flourishing 
• How truth spoken wisely can build peace instead of destroy it 
• Why grace does not always require access 
• What healing can look like when old patterns begin to loosen 

We also explore the tension between forgiveness and proximity, discernment and love, and how some relationships may change form without love having failed.

If you’ve ever confused calm with peace…
 over-accommodated to keep connection…
 or struggled to tell where grace ends and self-erasure begins…

this episode is for you.

Continue the Journey

Pair this episode with:

➡ Episode 20: Why You Can’t Speak Up in the Moment (and How to Start Trusting Your Voice)
➡ Episode 21: You’re Not Responsible for How People Respond to You

Together they form a powerful arc around voice, response, and peace.

Explore more resources at Healer & Hope Giver website

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Dear friends, there's a question I've been carrying lately that has stayed with me longer than I expected. And honestly, it has been pressing on some places in me that I'm still learning how to name. It started as one of those thoughts that almost passes through quietly, but then it kept returning, almost asking not to be brushed aside too quickly. And the question is this what if some of what we have called peace wasn't actually peace in the first place? What if sometimes it was shrinking? I've been thinking about how easy it is to confuse those two things. Especially if you learned early that keeping things calm was one of the ways to stay emotionally safe. Because if you've spent much of your life reading a room, sensing tension before anyone names it, adjusting yourself so conflict doesn't escalate, that can start to feel like wisdom. It can feel loving and it can even feel mature. And sometimes it may be. But sometimes it may be something else entirely. Sometimes what looks like peace is really self-protection. And I think there's a difference between genuine peace and the kind of quiet that comes from making yourself smaller so nothing gets disturbed. I know that difference because I've lived in rooms where tension felt so thick you could almost feel it sitting in the air. Like if you opened your door in South Texas on a, you know, warm, muggy July morning and the air hits you in the face. You walk in, and before anyone has said a word, your body already knows that something is off. There's a sense that one wrong comment, one misplaced reaction, one question asked at the wrong time could set everything off. And in those spaces, staying quiet can feel like keeping the peace. But internally, nothing feels peaceful. Peace, real peace, feels light and it feels breathable. It doesn't feel like walking on eggshells while pretending everything is fine. And I think I've been realizing that some of what I once called peace cost me more than I understood at the time. Because shrinking often did keep things calm, but it also cost me honesty. It cost me opinions that I swallowed, sometimes opportunities that I never stepped into, sometimes even being fully myself without already editing for how it might land. And that's what brought me to the question that I can't seem to let go of. Is it really peace if it costs you yourself? Because if preserving calm always requires self-erasure, I'm not sure that's peace at all. I think that may just be survival wearing a very spiritual name. What brought this into focus for me recently was something that by itself probably shouldn't have felt nearly as revealing as it did. It was a project with the church, which sounds almost funny to say it out loud because if you looked at it from the outside, it really was just a conversation about branding and process and gathering input. Hardly the stuff you would expect to open up old emotional terrain. And yet somehow it did. I think maybe because the things that expose old patterns are often not the dramatic moments, they're the ordinary situations where you suddenly realize you're reacting to more than what is actually in front of you. And that's what was happening. There was a decision being made to widen the circle of input on a project. And I understand the heart behind it. In a small church, people want ownership, they want to feel included. I get that, and I value that deeply. But almost at the same moment that I agreed to it, there was another part of me quietly thinking, I don't know that this is going to go well. Not morally and not relationally, just practically. Because I know what happens when a room full of perspectives all need somehow to come to the same one visual expression, especially when you're the one holding the threads and trying to make all those perspectives live together in harmony. And maybe this is where some of the my ecosystem's wiring comes in. Because I don't just think in terms of ideas, I think in terms of what makes what it takes to execute those ideas. I'm not a big picture person, I'm the person that makes the big picture come into view and live, you know, the way that it's supposed to. So I think in timelines, dependencies, the invisible scaffolding that people don't always see. And I realize saying that out loud makes me sound almost overly serious about projects, but I don't think that that was it was really about the project itself. It was the point. It was about what started happening inside me as all of those opinions began coming in. And because something in me immediately shifted into that familiar over-functioning mode where I start trying to hold everybody's input faithfully, trying not to dismiss anyone's perspective, and somehow trying to make all of it fit together. And if I'm honest, there was probably a part of me that felt responsible to do that, which is ridiculous, really. But in people pleasing, it often is ridiculous. You take on assignments that no one actually handed you, and you feel pressure to carry them well. I remember at one point thinking this is becoming exactly what I thought it was going to become. And instead of that prompting me to say, maybe we need to narrow this, I just kept absorbing it, which is such an old pattern for me. And honestly, that was the thing that interested me later. Not that the project got stressful. Projects often do get stressful. That happens. It was how quickly I defaulted into accommodation over clarification. That got my attention because what I wish I had simply said from the beginning was let's keep the decision making with a smaller group. That wasn't meant to be combative and it wasn't controlling. It was just clarity. And somehow clarity can still feel risky when part of you has learned that boundaries create fallout, even when they don't. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I got a migraine, which I mean, of course I did. I almost have to laugh because of how absurdly on brand it is for me. Is it even me if it doesn't end in a migraine? But there was something revealing in that too, because my body was saying what I wasn't saying yet. This is too much. I've noticed that in my life before. Sometimes my body knows before I consciously admit it that I'm overloaded. It shows up physically before I give it language. That cold rush of blood when somebody says something that perk, you know, perks your adrenaline, a tightness in your chest, that strange feeling where your mind has already left the room, but your body's still sitting there carrying the stress response. And I remember Rachel sensing some of that before I had really named it. And she texted me this one sentence and comment, and it was that it wasn't supposed to be stressful. And it almost startled me because she was saying out loud what I was trying to quietly manage internally. And I think that was the moment that something in me clicked. Because I began seeing how often what I call keeping the peace can look a lot like absorbing unnecessary tension so other people don't have to feel it. And that may be cooperation sometimes. But sometimes that's shrinking, and those are not the same thing. I think part of why the church project touched something deeper in me is because overaccommodating did not begin in adulthood. It certainly didn't begin in ministry. It reaches much further back than that. And honestly, when I start tracing it back, I don't first think about conflict in some big dramatic sense. I think about being a teenager trying very hard to be understood and failing. Not because I didn't have thoughts, and not because I didn't care enough to try, but because often it felt like no matter how carefully I tried to explain where I was coming from, something about it was still land wrong. I still remember sitting down and trying to write things out because speaking in the moment felt too hard. My mind has never sparred well in real time when emotions are running high. Even then I knew that. I knew that by about eight years old. Writing felt safer because I could slow down, soften things, and choose words carefully, and to try to make sure that nothing sounded combative. And I think part of me believed that I could just say it carefully enough, maybe it would be heard. But what sh that shaped in me was realizing that often it wasn't. And that was the painful part. Not disagreement, not even conflict, the feeling that my perspective was somehow unacceptable. And if you experience enough of that, especially when you're young, it does something below the surface. Because after a while you stop thinking, maybe this conversation went poorly, and you start wondering whether expressing yourself at all is what causes things to go poorly. And that's a very different belief. I don't think I understood that at the time, at how much I began adapting around that. I just was. You learn to read people, you learn to let go sometimes, you learn how to keep a thought to yourself before it can become a car a problem. And after enough years, that doesn't even feel like shrinking anymore. It just feels like who you are, which is why I said in an earlier adaptation, it can start looking like personality. Because I think some of what I once thought was simply being easygoing may have also been old survival wearing a softer language. And it showed up in friendships, too. I was thinking about this because my 30th high school reunion happened recently, and it struck me how much those friendships once once felt like everything. At that age, belonging feels enormous, fragile even. Like losing it would mean losing a part of yourself. And I remember that fear. I remember feeling how much those relationships mattered to me and how much I feared losing them. Even leaving for college and wondering how you rebuild belonging somewhere entirely new was a huge stressor in my life. And it sounds almost tender looking back at it now because what once felt like the center of the universe now feels so far away. But what surprised me recently was realizing some of those old measuring sticks can still whisper loudly. Because when the reunion invitation first came, I declined it instinctively. And if I'm honest, part of what sat underneath that was an old thought that I recognized immediately, this subtle sense that I hadn't been successful enough in the 30 years since high school that I was able to show up there again. That somehow I didn't measure up to the people that I graduated with. And even saying that out loud sounds revealing now. Because successful by whose standards? That old script sure knows when to show up and how to show up. But then later, some friends that I've stayed in touch with were talking about an after party, and I ended up seeing some photos from the reunion. And what struck me has almost made me laugh because I hardly recognize anyone in the photos. People who once seemed larger than life in the social hierarchy of my younger world, I barely recognize their faces. That irony is not lost on me. What once felt so defining had become almost unfamiliar, and yet seeing those pictures still stirred those old measuring thoughts. That fascinated me. Because how can people I barely even recognize still have symbolic power in an old inner script? And it made me realize how deeply some beliefs about worth can lodge themselves in. Because I found myself asking, at what point did money or visibility or worldly success become the litmus test for whether a life has mattered? Who handed us that scorecard? Because if I step back from that lie for even a moment, I can see how false it is, how silly it is. I've been married for almost 25 years. We've raised two 16-year-old sons. I have deep relationships rooted in love, not in performance. My faith has held through things that once could have undone me. And I'm building something through this podcast and this healing work that I believe is helping people or has the potential to help people. So why would that not count? Who decided that doesn't count? And in that moment, it struck me because it showed me how old belonging wounds can still wear surprisingly modern clothes. Sometimes they show up in shrinking, sometimes in conflict avoidance, and sometimes in quietly assuming that your life has to look impressive by someone else's standards before it's worthy of being seen. And maybe healing means challenging those measures too. Maybe belonging has never supposed was never supposed to be earned through achievement at all. Maybe it was always meant to be received. But the beliefs formed there, those can linger much longer. Like the quiet belief that taking up too much space might cost connection, or that questioning someone else's perception could trigger a fallout, or that peace may depend on keeping some parts of yourselves tucked away. I don't know what I would have said that I would have said any of that out loud then, but I think that I lived it as though it were true. And maybe that is why this line has stayed with me so much. Shrinking kept the peace, but it also cost me being my true self, because I can feel how true that's been. And also how much healing may be learning, how much healing may be learning that once one what once helped you survive may not be what helps you live fully now. One of the things I've been realizing through all of this is how often I've equated peace with the absence of friction. Not because I consciously chose to define it that way, but because somewhere along the way that became what peace felt like. If no one was upset, things must be okay. If nothing was exploding, then everything must be peaceful. And I understand why I learned that way. Because if you spend enough time in environments where tension can turn quickly, calm starts to feel like safety. But the older I get, the less convinced I am that calm and peace are the same thing. I can look back now at situations I once would have called peaceful and realize that I may have what I may have meant was that I was keeping things from becoming disruptive. Those are not identical. Some of those spaces may have looked calm on the outside, but internally I was carrying a tremendous amount, monitoring reactions, adjusting myself, absorbing stress before it spilled onto anyone else. And I don't know that that is that it is honest to anymore call that peace. It may have been quiet and it may have been controlled, but peaceful is too generous a word. And that's been a strange realization because I think for a long time I assumed peace meant everybody was staying comfortable. That if tension stayed beneath the surface, then something good must be happening. But increasingly I'm seeing how often what looked like peace may actually have been one person carrying the discomfort internally so everyone else could remain comfort comfortable externally. And I know something about doing that. I've done it well for 47 years. Sometimes quite well. What has helped me to rethink some of this, strangely enough, has been something as practical as systems. And that may sound unrelated, but it doesn't feel unrelated to me. I've spent enough years helping ideas become executable to know healthy structure is rarely about control. It's usually about creating conditions where things can flourish. Good systems create room to breathe. They reduce unnecessary urgency, they keep everything from becoming reactive, and because my own nervous system reacts so strongly to chaos, I think I've become unusually aware that structure can actually be a form of peacekeeping in the healthiest sense. Somewhere it it recently occurred to me that boundaries may work often in the same way. That was a new thought for me, because I used to hear boundary language and almost think that it was distance and exclusion and hard limes meant to keep people out. But more and more I find myself seeing boundaries as a kind of relational structure, clarity that protects what allow protects that that allows love to function well. And that feels much softer and honestly wiser. I think what that what was part I think that was part of what was stirring underneath the church project, though. I didn't have language for it at the time. What I was reaching for wasn't control. It was it wasn't getting my own way, it was enough shared structure that creativity and planning could both thrive without constantly pushing each other into emergency mode. And I once once I saw that, I felt it felt bigger than this project issue. It felt relational because maybe peace in relationships is not pretending our differences don't matter. Maybe peace sometimes looks like honoring them. Maybe it sounds like saying kindly and clearly, I need more lead time than that. Or maybe fewer voices in this decision, or simply, this is what allows me to carry this well. And that doesn't strike me as selfish, it feels honest. I think for a long time I imagined truth and peace living in tension with each other, almost as if speaking honestly endangered peace. And I'm beginning to suspect a wise truth may actually be one of the ways that peace is built, honoring the differences in people and allowing them to thrive in the way that is best for them. And that feels like it's something newer that I'm learning. Still tender, still forming, but very real. And maybe that's part of healing too. Not abandoning what once helped you to survive, but letting your understanding deepen so that peace becomes something fuller than the absence of conflict, something sturdier than merely calm, and something that does not require your disappearance in order to exist. Because maybe that was never peace at all. Maybe that was survival. And those are not the same thing. One of the things I've been realizing as I've sat with all of this is that grace and access are not really a conversation about cutting people out as much as they are a conversation about what patterns continue to live inside. And that feels different because if I frame it around people alone, it can start to sound like blame, and that's never what I want. I'm much more interested in what certain systems taught me and what healing has required me to unlearn. And honestly, when I look back, part of what made some of the family dynamics so complicated was not one event or one hurt, but an entire emotional structure I had learned to function inside of. A kind of system where peace often meant compliance, where questioning authority could feel like disruption, and where criticism was sometimes handed to you dressed up as love. And I can say that now with tenderness and honesty. Both. Because I do not think that people often I do think that people often do the best that they can with what they know. And I also think that what people know can still wound them. Both can be true. I've joked before that I often felt like a square peg in a round family structure, but there's a lot of truth in that image. I was always living in the tension between two very different relational worlds, the chaotic, emotionally charged side that I grew up in, and the calmer, steadier side that I discovered more fully as I got older. And moving between those worlds taught me things I didn't realize I was learning. One of them was how easily keeping the peace can sometimes mean keeping a system unchallenged. And that's different than peace. That's maintenance. And I think some part of me has always sensed that because I was never wired especially well for. Pretending what was true wasn't true. Even when I was shrinking in other ways, something in me has always learned leaned toward honesty. Honesty, truly, helps you not have to remember the stories that have been told. I've often joked that I would rather tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, so I don't have to remember the story that someone was told. There's probably more theology in that than a joke. And maybe that is why some of what I'm learning now feels less like becoming someone new and more like reclaiming something older in me, something truer. Because I think healing has involved realizing that I do not have to keep living inside patterns simply because they wants to find the air I breathed. And that's been free. But also sad at times because there is a grief in realizing some forms of closeness only worked when you stayed small enough to absorb and not disturb the arrangement. That's painful to admit, but it's honest. And honesty has become increasingly important to me. Not brutal honesty and not weaponized honestry honesty, just truthful living. And I think that is part of where that line comes from in therapy that has stayed with me. I can choose where my emotional energy lives. That sentence has layers because it really isn't about avoidance, it's about stewardship, about recognizing that peace is not always found and re-entering every old emotional terrain simply because it's familiar. Sometimes peace is choosing not to keep living inside old dynamics. Sometimes peace is refusing to inherit patterns you don't want repeated. Sometimes peace looks like breaking generational habits by living differently than what formed inside you. And that feels holy to me, especially as a parent, especially as someone who wants the generation behind me to inherit something healthier. And maybe that is why grace does not require access feels less harsh to me than it once might have. Because I hear it now not as rejection, but as discernment. I can love people, I can forgive people, and I can hold no bitterness towards them, and I can still recognize certain patterns no longer serve the peace. And that feels nuanced but deeply true, because forgiveness may soften the heart without requiring a return to every old pattern. Love can remain while distance remains too. And both can be part of grace. I believe that more now than I once did, and maybe that's part of what healing looks like too. It's not muddy water in a video that has instantly turned clear, but slowly over time, enough clean water has poured in that what's once felt normal no longer defines the whole cup. And in some ways you can see the clearing, and in some ways you see the old sediment stir stir again, but healing is still happening quietly, persistently, even then. One of the things that's helped me to believe some of this more deeply is realizing that not every hard truth ends in rupture. That may sound obvious to some people, but it has not been obvious to me in my life. Because when you've lived long enough expecting honesty to lead to fallout, it takes more than ideas to loosen that belief. It takes different experiences, takes counter stories, and I've had some. One that comes to mind is something that I've referenced before in this podcast, but it belongs here as well because it taught me something I'm still drawing from. There was this point where I knew I needed to step back from part I would part of what I was carrying at church. It was I was in overload. I knew it, my body knew it, my mind knew it. Everybody probably knew it before I admitted it. And I remember standing in my kitchen trying to write that text, nervous, overthinking every word, asking Rachel to help me soften it because of course I did, trying to paraphrase it in a way that I could not possibly be misread. Which, if you've ever written a text six times before sending it, you know exactly the kind of emotional labor that is. You're trying to manage the outcome. And after I sent it, I turned my phone off, which still makes me laugh a little. Because what was I expecting? Nuclear fallout? Honestly. I expected some version of being told I was wrong to need what I needed, and that asking for help meant that I somehow had failed, that naming a limit would become a problem. And none of that happened. In fact, Kevin's response was almost wounded in a different way. He said something to the effect of, but I've never done that to you. And he was right. He hadn't. That expectation had belonged to an older pattern, not that relationship. And I remember realizing how powerful that was in the moment. Because sometimes healing is not learning a new truth in theory. Sometimes it's having a moment where an old script doesn't play right. And sitting there realizing, oh, it didn't explode. The relationship didn't fracture, truth did not destroy peace, and that did something in me because it made room for another possibility. Maybe honesty does not always create rupture. Maybe sometimes it creates understanding. Maybe sometimes it builds peace. And that mattered, and it still matters. Because I think that part of this or part of what I'm learning to trust now is that speaking truth lovingly is not the same thing as creating conflict. Sometimes it prevents the conflict. Sometimes it deepens the relationship and the understanding. Sometimes it allows people to love you more honestly because you finally gave them something true to respond to. And that feels so different from the peacekeeping that I learned when I was young. That feels like peace with substance, peace with roots that can grow. And maybe that's why I keep coming back to the difference between peace that depends on shrinking and peace that can hold truth. Only one of those can really sustain a soul. And maybe that is where all of this comes together for me. The systems, the boundaries, the family patterns, the over-accommodating, the migraines, the nervous system reaction, the learning to speak. All of it. Maybe healing has been less about becoming someone radically different than learning just to trust a truer version of what has been inside me all along. That honesty and grace are not enemies. That discernment is not unloving. That peace is not maintained by disappearing. And that may sound simple, but for some of us, that is decades of relearning. And I think that's where that image I've seen so often in videos, the muddy water being slowly filled with clean water, keeps coming back to me because it feels so much like healing. You watch someone pour clean water into a glass full of murky, gross, muddy water, and at first it almost feels like nothing is changing. The water's still cloudy, and the sediment still swirls, and it can feel as though the old stuff is still winning. But the pouring keeps happening slowly, persistently, and over time something changes. The water begins to clear, not all at once, but gradually. And I think healing is often like that. There are days you feel so much clearer than you once were, and then there are days where the old sediment gets stirred and you think, have I learned anything at all? Have I healed even a little bit? But the clean water has still been pouring, and that matters. And maybe peace works like that too. Not something that you achieve all at once, but something cultivated, something clarified, something that gets cleaner over time. And maybe part of maturity is realizing that you don't have to return to every muddy place because it once felt like home. You can choose clearer water, you can choose healthier patterns, you can choose peace that does not cost you yourself. And maybe that's the whole question that we've been circling. Is it really peace if it costs you yourself? I don't think so. I think peace, real peace, leaves room for truth, for boundaries, for grace, for love, and for you. And maybe healing is learning that all of those can live together. And before we go today, I want to stay here for a minute because I know conversations like this can stir things up. Sometimes an episode isn't doesn't just feel thoughtful, it feels exposing. It touches places that you've spent a long time managing quietly. And if some of this has brought something up in you, old grief, old tension, places where you recognize how much peace has cost you, I want to say this gently. Don't rush past that. Sit with it, be curious about it. Sometimes awareness itself is the beginning of healing. Sometimes simply noticing what you thought was peace may have actually been self-protection. It may have been you making yourself smaller. And there's already a sacred shift happening there because once something is seen, it's harder to unknow. And maybe that's where some of this work begins. Not by fixing anything overnight, and not by suddenly becoming a person that holds every boundary perfectly or speaks every hard truth effortlessly, but maybe by asking some smaller questions. Where have I confused calmness with peace? Where have I mistaken erase self-erasure for harmony? Where might honesty actually deepen the peace rather than threaten it? Sit with those, journal them, pray through them, talk them through with someone safe. Don't force the answers, let them breathe. Because healing usually grows slower than breakthrough culture wants us to believe. It often grows quietly, almost imperceptibly, like that clean water continuing to pour. And if this episode surface grief for you, grief over relationships, patterns, younger versions of you who learn to survive while becoming small, I hope you hold that grief tenderly and lovingly. Not as evidence that something is broken, but maybe as evidence that something living is waking up again. And that matters. If you're in a season where you are trying to learn the difference between peacekeeping and peace, between grace and over access, between truth and fear, friend, you are not behind. You may be doing deeply holy work, slow work, but holy work. And I think God does a lot in the slow work. If this conversation opened up something that you want to keep exploring, there are a couple episodes I'd point you toward next. If today resonated around trusting your voice and or recognizing where you might have learned to shrink, go back and listen to episode 20, why you can't speak up in the moment. That episode really sits with where some of those patterns begin. And if what I if what stayed with you today was the question of truth, boundaries, and other people's responses, I'd pair you with the episode 21, how you're not responsible for how people respond to you. Because those three conversations really do form kind of an arc together. Episode 20 asks, can I trust my voice? Episode 21 asks, can I release responsibility for how it lands? And I think today's episode asks, can I learn peace that doesn't require me to disappear? And those three belong together. If you need a next step, that may be a beautiful place to keep learning. And before we go, I want to say something to anyone who's still feeling tender or stirred up right now. You have permission to move slowly with this. You have permission to do this in small bits. You can come back and listen again. You can do whatever it is that you need to do for yourself. You do not have to leave an episode like this, suddenly knowing exactly where every boundary belongs, or have language for every pattern that you're trying to understand. Sometimes healing simply begins by noticing. Sometimes growth begins by naming something honestly for the first time. And that's not small work. And if some part of you recognized yourself in this conversation, recognize places where peace sometimes meant shrinking or where truth has felt costly, you have permission to hold that realization gently instead of turning it into another place to perform. You do not have to weaponize awareness against yourself. You do not have to rush into fixing. You can sit with what surfaced. You can pray about it, journal it, bring it to therapy, talk it through with someone safe, let it unfold. You have permission to learn peace differently than you learn survival. You have permission to believe discernment is not cruelty. You have permission to tell the truth kindly, and you have permission to let some relationships change form without deciding that love has failed. And maybe for some of you, you have permission to stop calling something peace when your soul has known for a long time that it felt like fear. And that may be a big per permission. Take it slowly, and if old sediment has been stirred in this conversation, let that be part of the work too. Sometimes what raises is not a setback. Sometimes it is what healing is asking to be tended, and there's no shame in tending it slowly. If this conversation resonated, I'd love to invite you not to let it end here. I've built the Healer and Hope Giver website, www.healerhopegiver.com. It's all one word together, Healer Hopegiver, to be a guided pathway into this whole ecosystem. Almost like choosing your own journey, a place for wherever you need to go right now. If today's episode touched something deeper and you want to go somewhere next, you can begin there. There's a Start Here Path, the podcast library, devotionals, companion resources, all flowing out of this episode. And also flowing out of this episode is a deeper workbook called Peace That Does Not Doesn't Require Disappearance. Because there are some conversations that you don't just listen to, you sit with them, you pray through them, you work through them slowly. If this episode stirred something tender in you, I hope that that becomes a meaningful place to land. And if this episode met you where you are, would you do me a favor and share it with someone who may need it too? Those shares matter more than you know. And if you haven't already, I'd love for you to follow the podcast wherever you listen. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or over on YouTube where episodes the episodes live as well. Subscribing, leaving a review, liking, or even commenting, all of that helps these conversations reach people who may be looking for exactly this kind of space. And as always, if something in this stirred a thought, a question, or a place you'd like me to revisit in a future episode, you can reach out through the website or message me on social media. I really do read every one of those. Sometimes, what you send helps me to know what needs more discovery. And until next time, keep practicing peace that makes room for truth. Grace does not require self erasure, and hope that keeps making room for healing. I'll meet you here next time.