72:Annalise Oatman: Healing the Witch Wound and Remembering the Sacred Body

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Cherie Lindberg

Hi, I'm Cherie and welcome to Elevated Life Academy, where we share real stories of healing, hope, and transformation. Tune in to hear how everyday people are rising above and lighting the way for others.

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Cherie Lindberg

Hello and welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg, and we have a wonderful guest Annalise with us this morning. And as you all know, we love to have conversations about life and healing and wherever it's going to take us for human potential and to help us elevate our life. So welcome and listen.

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Cherie Lindberg

Tell us a little bit about yourself, please.

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Annalise Oatman

Sure. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm going to try to say this in a way that's not confusing, but I really think of myself as a multidisciplinary artist and always have been. And I'm working on an album cover right now, and I'm starting to do some sonic creations with my husband, who's in a band and is a professional musician, and I've written books and published essays and poems, and and I'm also clinically trained as a trauma therapist and a psychedelic therapist.

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Annalise Oatman

And I work with clients one on one and in groups. And I also now creating kind of radical underground healing spaces that are not therapy but that are very therapeutic. It's called the underground temple. And so I'm doing a lot I'm very, very eclectic, very multidisciplinary. But I really think of it all as art. It's just different art forms that I'm proud to sing.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, I'm hearing you that you use that as a form of growth and for healing for everyone that you touch. Am I getting that correctly?

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm kind of. I'm an artist whose work heals people. I think of it that way.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, absolutely. Tell me more about this underground temple. That sounds very interesting to me. So what? Can you give us more information on that?

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Annalise Oatman

Well, I've been a part of different kind of mystical and somatic and very feminine communities for, for several years now. And a couple of my most notable mentors in that area have been Alexandra Rockso and Adriana Resilo. They're both amazing. If you haven't heard of them, you should look them up. I just I sense in the collective and in myself also this hunger for healing spaces that go beyond kind of the sterile sterility of the one on one clinical container and the one on one therapeutic situation can be a very beautiful, sacred place, don't get me wrong, but I think there are multidimensional, profound forms of healing that we remember as a species that

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Annalise Oatman

are in our DNA, that happen in community, that are very embodied, that are very expressive, and in these kind of radical underground healing spaces and communities that I've encountered, it feels like there's this collective remembering that's happening, and people's bodies know how to move. If there's an ecstatic dance or movement element, people start expressing, material starts moving through, and it's as though the entire group is kind of doing this together.

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Annalise Oatman

And it's really amazing to witness. And it feels ancient. So I want to gift that opportunity to people, and it's so fun to see what emerges in those spaces. You know, like I've had moments of people dancing and dancing for hours and then collapsing on the floor and someone you know is is crying in one corner and another person is singing on another corner of the floor.

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Annalise Oatman

It's like there's just this deep expression that's happening through the group, and this deep release of energy that I think we need collectively right now. Anyway, it's hard to talk about it concisely, but that's.

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Cherie Lindberg

No, I, I'm, I'm following you. I hope our listeners can too. I'm very interested in this too, because it sounds like what you're describing is like people surrendering to whatever's emerging and whatever feels like being expressed. And my question about that is, how do you help people get to that point of surrender where they can trust that intuition and they can let that come forward?

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Annalise Oatman

I think safety is the first really important piece. Figuring out a way to establish safety, establish that it's a safe place, and that you are a trustworthy facilitator who can hold sensitive material or vulnerable material with a lot of sensitivity. And in the spaces that I've been in, there's either some kind of embodied breathwork element or some kind of movement element.

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Annalise Oatman

In the Adrianna resilience spaces, for example, they would do body Temple dance. I've been trained by Adriana in Body Temple dance. So it's a specific type of dance. It's not ecstatic dance. It's a little bit different. But you could do ecstatic dance. You could do any form of erotic movement. I like to guide people in a very nonperformance, internally directed form of erotic movement.

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Annalise Oatman

And if you get people into that deeply embodied space beyond the rational thinking mind through any one of those practices, then the material is just there, you know? And if the space feels safe and intentional enough, it emerges. So I think that's the best way I can answer.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. What has been some of your feedback from some of the participants that, you know, get involved with this?

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Annalise Oatman

Well, so far the group spaces that I've created have been ketamine focused, not focused, but they are technically ketamine assisted psychotherapy groups. And the underground temple spaces that I'm creating are brand new. So I haven't I haven't facilitated one yet. This is just at the very edge of what's emerging for me as a creator and as a healer.

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Annalise Oatman

But I have been facilitating ketamine assisted psychotherapy groups that contain an element of body, temple dance or erotic movement with a lot of safety. And I mean, I can answer your question in two parts, because part of the feedback that I receive from participants has to do with the ketamine or the ketamine therapy element itself, but I have heard from from clients and participants that being in a space where there's music, there's evocative music, there's movement, and everyone's doing this together, it feels more real somehow.

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Annalise Oatman

It feels like an invitation into the kind of healing and integration that they're craving that like, really gets to the gold. Sure. Faster than having a conversation and that an energy and a space is created that feels very different from traditional therapy. Absolutely.

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Cherie Lindberg

I mean, I'm I'm trained in brain spotting. And so we I mean, in just the research with trauma and trauma release and things in our central nervous system, all those imprints, I can only imagine it makes sense that it feels ancient, because that's what the indigenous folks used to do after battle, after something traumatic. They would dance, they would dance around the fast.

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Cherie Lindberg

So it makes a lot of sense to me what you're saying.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, absolutely. It's like dance music, visual art, performance art, these are art forms, even just kind of wild, ecstatic dance that's not choreographed and you're just moving. We as a species have always used these art forms to metabolize collective trauma and to make sense of what doesn't make sense, right? What's really hard to make sense of with the rational mind?

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Cherie Lindberg

Absolutely.

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Annalise Oatman

And there's a lot of that in the world.

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Cherie Lindberg

Well, right now especially, I mean, there's no language. And we know that the subcortical brain doesn't have language. Oh, as we as we move and express, things get released and there is no need for words. So I'm totally on board with what you're what you're saying. So tell me a little bit more about the project you and your husband are going to be doing here.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, well, my my husband is in a band called The Obsessed. It's a doom metal band. They travel the world bringing bringing doom. Well, I really think it's it's a way to help people metabolize doom.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah.

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Annalise Oatman

Like, exactly like what we're talking about. That's how I. I don't know if that's how he thinks of it, but that's how I think of it. So that's what he does. And he's also really into prog rock. So I have a mellotron and I just ordered a synthesizer, so I'm going to be playing Mellotron and synth in this prog rock band.

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Cherie Lindberg

That sounds very that sounds very interesting. I mean, sound, sound and vibration is another way to access all that.

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Annalise Oatman

Absolutely.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, yeah.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, I was just at a gong bath the other night, and I was.

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Cherie Lindberg

Oh, yeah.

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Annalise Oatman

Mase, it had been a long time since I'd done any kind of sound healing work, and I was like, okay, I have to humble myself before this art form that I admittedly don't know a lot about, but it is. Something's happening here. It reminded me of being in a psychedelic space, and I was coming up against internal edges during the the process, and almost like I was leaving my body at at.

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Cherie Lindberg

Some point. I mean.

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Annalise Oatman

It's really powerful when the dogs get really loud.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yes, I've, I've had a gone bath before and it does. It's surprising what can happen. But I mean, if you start to really look at the I love to bring in new experimental things that we're doing with the research. And there's an organization that's called gosh, let me see, Collective Healing Initiative, I think it's called Chi. And they're doing studies to show about monitoring, to show about vibration and music and dance and all these things that, you know, they're showing that we collectively would go into a bio field of energy.

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Cherie Lindberg

And this shifts like by doing this, it will shift and it can move things out of our central nervous system, which is exciting.

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Annalise Oatman

Yes, I love that bio field of energy. That kind of puts a word on something that I sometimes I feel that I have a hard time articulating.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah.

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Annalise Oatman

That it feels like I mean, in psychedelic spaces sometimes if I think of it as it's almost like a field of love being created that's shared that everyone feels in the group.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. So is that your primary work you're doing the assisted therapy right now. Is that your primary work? And you're doing it more in groups?

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Annalise Oatman

It's not what I do most of the time with clients. It is something that I love doing. And it's become absolutely a really central thing in my heart in terms of my work. Not every client is doing that with me. Okay. I would say that the the foundation of my work is the body and working with somatic. And I'm training in somatic experiencing right now.

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Annalise Oatman

I'm in the second year of the three year, but it's a very immersive experience modality, as I'm sure you're aware. So I already use it moment by moment with all of my clients. My clients are all aware that ketamine assisted therapy is available in my practice, but not all of them avail of it. And that's okay. You know, like I think the best thing is that there at least this is this is how my practice is comprised currently.

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Annalise Oatman

I like for people to be aware of what's on the menu.

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Cherie Lindberg

And that can have choice and they.

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Annalise Oatman

Can have choice, which is so important. And you know, if they feel called to it. And I think it's a very personal choice, we can talk about it and we can prepare them for it. And I've definitely had some clients who don't want to go there. And that's okay. So I don't have a practice that's 100% ketamine therapy focused.

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Annalise Oatman

And that's just kind of the way that it is right now. It's not it's not necessarily by design. It just is like, these are the folks who've come to me for whatever reason. Maybe at some point in the future it will be all ketamine. But I think just by virtue of the way I work. I'm very multi trained and integrated.

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Annalise Oatman

People come to me for different reasons, and I'm always going to start with where they're at in terms of what feels like.

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Cherie Lindberg

Absolutely. So would you say you're primarily trauma trained and you're doing trauma work? Is that primarily what you're doing with all your folks that you work with?

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, yeah, I mean, the the modalities that I'm trained in, that kind of form. The bread and butter of my practice, eMDR and Somatic Experiencing, those are trauma modalities, as I know, you know. And I really think of what just about anyone is coming to therapy with as having some kind of trauma underpinning, even if it's just regular old developmental trauma.

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Annalise Oatman

And I like to work with that and kind of get to the roots and shift it at the root. So I yeah, I definitely take a trauma approach to everyone I work with, whether or not they necessarily identify as a trauma survivor or have a specific incident, adult trauma, they can point to a lot of people do, but some don't really.

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Annalise Oatman

But I, I think of it as trauma work really with everyone.

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Cherie Lindberg

Sure, sure. And where are you located? In lease.

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Annalise Oatman

I'm in Woodstock, New York.

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Cherie Lindberg

Okay, okay. Just want to make sure our listeners know where you're at.

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Annalise Oatman

And it's all.

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Cherie Lindberg

Online though.

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Annalise Oatman

And I'm licensed in California and New York.

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Cherie Lindberg

Gotcha. That's important for folks to know. And so you do all telehealth. Do you have groups that you offer?

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Annalise Oatman

Typically I, I'm typically recruiting for ketamine assisted therapy groups. But right now I'm really kind of pivoting my focus towards these creative group offerings that are sort of outside of the therapy world, much more in the wild, freewheeling world of just creative offerings. And again, I mean, you're speaking to me very much at the edge of this pivot.

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Cherie Lindberg

You're transitioning. It sounds like.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, I am. And those groups are going to be very much informed by the ketamine groups that I've designed and facilitated the past, and that I have loved facilitating. And so, yeah, look out for those. Those are going to be kind of at home ritual retreats and in-person ritual retreat.

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Cherie Lindberg

That's what I was just going to ask. If you're doing it in person or online.

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Annalise Oatman

Both. I have a kind of, I guess you could call it a pilot at home ritual retreat that I just launched on teachable. So that's first, first temple offering is there.

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Cherie Lindberg

Wonderful. So, folks, if if this speaks to your heart, make sure that you look that up. We'll make sure we have all of your socials and so that they can reach you and connect with you. I think that this is the wave of the future, that ketamine assisted therapy and expressive arts in one form or another. We're starting to realize how much you know, talk is helpful.

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Cherie Lindberg

Telling your story is helpful, and there is so much that's stored in the body that I think what we're learning with all these central nervous system imprints is that movement and art and sound gets deeper and gets more access to those things.

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Annalise Oatman

Yes. And those those kind of charged ceremonial atmosphere, kind of community or group offerings. You can't do that with ChatGPT, right?

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Cherie Lindberg

Or one on one or or one on one, you know, one on one connection. Analyst. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you would want our listeners to know?

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Annalise Oatman

Oh, gosh. I mean, there's always there are always so many things we could talk about. There are so many places we could go. I'm always, always kind of mining the vast world of literature that's out there in the in the young and depth psychology, tradition.

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Cherie Lindberg

Archetypes and things like that.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah, I'm almost finished reading trauma and the Soul by Donald Shed. It's this huge home about a depth psychology approach to trauma. And it's it's just it's been a beautiful, really enriching read. I've been trying to figure out for a long time. Am I called to do a traditional union analysis training, which would involve two years of my own psychoanalysis, before I can even apply to train at the Institute?

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Annalise Oatman

That's in the time, I think that's how most training institutes work for becoming a union analyst. Or am I meant to do more rogue training where I just pick out the most essential reads and kind of do these, I don't know, underground young salon type of workshops and reading groups of some kind. I haven't figured that out yet, but I'm I'm also at the edge of a union journey of some kind.

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Annalise Oatman

And Jung has always been kind of whispering to me in the background, that.

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Cherie Lindberg

Really sounds like you're evolving as a practitioner, and you're trying to listen to those internal whispers and your intuition.

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Annalise Oatman

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it's I feel so lucky that I'm, I get to do this work where I get to be listening to those internal whispers of intuition about how to keep refining and honing this very dharmic work that we get to do that's, you know, so that it is coming from the center of my soul. Yes.

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Cherie Lindberg

I hear that, I hear that. Well, I just want to thank you for coming and being on the podcast and sharing what it's like to be in a transition and not really having the answers of where you're going, but but having flavors. I always think that that's wonderful. And we can role model that to folks. Like we're not always going to have the answer, but we're trying to listen to our inner intuition.

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Cherie Lindberg

And you're right, at the peak of that is what I'm hearing.

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Annalise Oatman

Yeah. And I mean, I think that's what it is to be human, you know.

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Cherie Lindberg

To be alive.

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Annalise Oatman

We're all kind of in a conversation with the unknown moving forward all the time towards, we know, not really where we are all in that situation together as humans. So I love that we talked about that because it feels more authentic to me to talk about. This is the very alive edge that I'm at instead of calcifying myself into or like, this is who I am, and this is how I practice.

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Annalise Oatman

Because if you talk to me, I don't know, three months ago I might have said, yep, ketamine groups. That's it. That defines me. But it's part of in this moment. It's part of an ecosystem of offerings that are all kind of informing each other and evolving together. And that's the truest response I can give.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, and I appreciate that very much. So thank you so much. We'll make sure that everybody can reach you and find out more. And I'm just going to invite our, our listeners, if you if this spoke to your heart like please pass it on. As you know, we're trying to reach as many healers as we can out there so that we can hear all the different ways and all the different paths so that we can all live an elevated life.

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Cherie Lindberg

So thank you so much and least for being with us today.

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Annalise Oatman

Thank you. Such a pleasure.

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Cherie Lindberg

And we wish you well.

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Annalise Oatman

Thank you.

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Cherie Lindberg

Thank you for joining us today on Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. As you move back into your world, I invite you to take a breath and hold on to whatever stirred something in you from our podcast today. Healing isn't always loud, but it is always sacred. Whether today's story Open Your Heart, gave you a new perspective, or just reminded you that you are not alone, it matters.

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Cherie Lindberg

And so do you. Keep choosing alignment. Keep trusting your becoming. And remember the elevated life isn't perfect its present. If this episode resonated. Share it with someone who needs a little more light. And if you're ready to go deeper in your own journey, you know where to find me. Until next time, stay ready, stay rising and stay you.