Episode 63: What We Need to Know About Dads (Feature on Fathers Series No. 2)
/How was the episode last week? If you are a dad, did it resonate with you? If you are parenting with a dad, what takeaways did you get to apply into your relationship? Let me know! I would love to hear your comments. And for this week, we will be listening to the second installment of the Feature on Fathers Series. Dads, just like Moms, are human beings with fears and uncertainty in life.
I know, right? So shocking! 😂
In this episode, I want you to know that you do not have to live in fear. We are here to support you and guide you every step of the way. And so to help us understand what Dads undergo and the fears that bind them, I have invited a new friend and colleague to talk about parenting as a Dad. His name is Ryan Roy. He is an accountability coach, a husband, and a father of two boys, ages nine and three. He is committed to being a better father and helps parents take action in making the changes they want in their lives.
Here is a summary of what we talked about:
Overcoming parenting fear as a man
Co-parenting and identifying our roles as a dad
Different parenting styles
Dads’ inner wounds
Ryan is heavily involved with his community and has created The FBI Dads (Fathers Being Involved) Program. For fathers and those who identify as one who wants to be involved in this, visit his website www.fbidads.com and join his Facebook community, FBI Dads (Fathers Being Involved).
If you want to spend more time with your kids but you don't know how, get the "Dad's Daily 4". This is a free workbook for busy dads who have trouble finding extra time for their kiddos. DOWNLOAD IT HERE!
He is also on Instagram @fbidads and Twitter @FBI_Dads. So, go ahead and follow him!
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen in and we're gonna be talking with my new friend and colleague, Ryan Roy all about parenting as a dad. So Ryan is an accountability coach and he helps parents take action in making the changes that they want in their lives. So Ryan, I'm so glad to be talking with you, you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I'm very excited to be here today and hopefully share some nuggets with your audience and if one person walks away with a nugget and implements it, then this will have served its purpose. So a little bit about me, so a little bit about myself, I am a husband first, right? I'm a father of two amazing boys, both nine and three and they're my family is my world professionally. I have justified just do it coaching right? Where I help parents and people in general and taking action in their life. I think too many times people are sitting on the sidelines in their minds and I get them into movement so that they could achieve the things that they desire. And I am the author of the book, Be the dad, you wish you had and I run a dad's program called FBI Dad's which is Father's Being Involved.
Laura: Oh, I love it. And so we're in the space in the podcast where we are kind of focusing in on dad's and as we were talking before we started recording, you were talking a little bit about kind of how you got, started talking about parenting in your professional world and you said something that I just felt like we all could resonate with, that when you became a parent, you didn't really know a lot about parenting.
You also mentioned that you kind of just have been going with your gut and you've been reading and figuring things out. And I think a lot of the parents that I know that I work with, and mostly it's mom's, they come to me and if they're partnered with a man, they want to get their partner involved in learning about parenting, but their partner doesn't really want to, or it doesn't think that they need to or should have to because they want to be able to trust their gut, they wanted to feel authentic, they want to feel, to feel natural. So can you tell us a little bit about your journey of becoming a parent figuring out, like, oh, there's some things, I don't know, what do I do to go about learning those things so that I can parent in a way that feels authentic, but it's also right for me and my for my kids.
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give a little back story because my story is unique to me and I can only speak from my truth, but you know, I was abandoned by my own father at age five, so I had a huge fear in life of ever becoming a dad myself and made a conscious effort not to have children for a very long time because I didn't want to fail at that. I felt as though I didn't have a role model to look up to or even a bad role model, right? I didn't have anything, I was coming from this blank slate at a big fear of not necessarily being a bad dad because I'm a good person, right?
I figured I would be good at that, but I didn't know what it looked like to have a healthy adult relationship as my mom was divorced twice. Obviously, my father had left and my, I think my fear was even if I brought a child into the world, you know, could it grow up in a healthy relationship? Because I hadn't seen that. That was another fear of mine until I met my wife. And I'll tell a little story about that. Because when we were falling in love, she asked me a question, she says, how do you feel about children and like any smart man knowing that my biggest fear is to have children is, I asked her the question back and I said, well, how do you feel about having children? And her response was she was told by the doctors at one point that she had less than a 5% chance of ever conceiving and having children.
So internally Laura I think I did a fist bump, a backflip because I'm falling in love with this woman and she will never have the ability in my mind at the time to have me face my greatest fear. So not very long from there, I asked her to marry me, well, on our wedding night, you know, we had the same discussion, well, what are we gonna do about this kid thing? And I said, listen, let's just have fun, let's enjoy each other in my mind. There's a 0% chance, even though there was a 5% chance.
Well, six weeks later we were pregnant. Yeah, and at that point, I realized, wow, about to face my greatest fear, but I'm doing with the person that I know is going to be an amazing mother. It's a partner I chose and although I was scared, I was excited, but I recognize that my book title is I needed to be the dad I wished I had. I couldn't define it and say I'm not going to be like my father because he was absent. I define it as I'm going to be fully present. So I did it with a lot of intentionality because of my hurt and pain from childhood, of not having that dad.
Laura: Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that story with us and I think it's at some level we all can resonate with that, that there are things that we experienced growing up that we want to protect our kids from. And then oftentimes we kind of just know what we don't want to do, right? And we don't know, Okay, so what does the opposite of that actually look like? Because we've never experienced it.
And I think this is one of the things that can be so hard is because humans like the familiar, they like what's comfortable and when we start doing something different, like parenting differently than how we were parented ourselves, it can feel awkward, it can feel uncomfortable. And we misread that sometimes to say that that's not natural for us. You know, it's not authentic for us, but really what I think, and I don't know if you feel the same, but really that just means that we're learning something new, we're stretching were growing and growing can be quite uncomfortable sometimes. Do you agree?
Ryan: Absolutely. And I think men in general, you know, society has told us as men that it's a mom's role to parent, right? It's our job to provide. So I think we automatically go to default mode because your audience is predominantly women. I'm just going to give you an insight into the mind of a man what a man finds out. He's about to become a father for the first time. First of all, we don't know the sex, right? We just know that you're pregnant.
So the first thing, what do you think a man pictures and you may know this, but a man pictures throwing a ball with his five-year-old son, Right? That's his first vision. Like, oh my gosh, I'm going to play in the back or if you know, he's an engineer, maybe he's building something. But whatever his passion is, it's I'm doing that with my son at five years old. We don't picture an infant, it doesn't become real for us.
So when we think of a baby, we're not thinking about, oh, I get to cuddle with it and look into its eyes and nurture it. Like maybe a mom may think of these things, we automatically are going to that five-year-old. So when this child comes into the world, we don't know what to do for the first five years because we haven't envisioned it.
Laura: And I think oftentimes, you know, the generation of parents that we are in, are some of the first to be so active to have such a shared, mutual role in raising very young children. Most of us did not grow up in homes where we saw men doing a lot of the caretaking of young kids. And so I do think that there's a little piece of like, there's growing pains in this as because you don't you only know what, you know, and most of us learn through modeling and if we didn't see it, then we don't know how to do it.
And if we didn't see it, we don't know that that's really an expectation of us. And so there's part of this, it has to be a conversation between the two people who are having the child of what is our involvement, what is our role, What are what, how can we mutually define what we're going to be doing and co-create a sense of who's responsible for what and what roles are we going to be taking on?
Ryan: I think so, and I think for me anyway, and I can only speak to myself because the audience probably say, well where I find one like him because I've heard that another podcast and I'm like, listen, there has to be an internal desire to want to be better. But then there has to be guidance and acceptance that as men, this is an uncomfortable territory. I think you know, to change a diaper sounds like a very simple thing. But to a man, one of my best friends refuses to change diapers no matter what I tell him how important it is to bond with the child and show unconditional love, right? It's one of the chapters in my book that has just changed diapers Dads, why?
Because you're going to connect to that child and that child knows there's unconditional love because if at three years old, maybe the kids still in diapers and dad's never changed a diaper, he knows that there is conditional or she knows that there's conditional love because dad will do a lot of things for me. It won't comfort me when I'm soiled. What kind of message does that send to our children? Right, Dad has a role of mom has a role. And I think in today's day and age, especially with women coming into the workplace at the levels that you are, Why can't dad step into the parenting role and why can't we just co-create this habitat for these children to feel unconditionally loved by both parents?
Laura: I so agree. And I mean, I think that these are really important conversations to have two between parents as you're becoming parents, you know, an ongoing And you touched on something that I want to circle back to because a few people in my community asked about this about you said it's a kind of a sensitive thing that it can be kind of uncomfortable to not know what to do.
And I think that that discomfort can make people defensive at times. And so a few people in my community were wanting to know a little bit about differences in parenting style or differences in approaches and how to talk about that with their partner in a way that doesn't get the hackles up, doesn't get defensiveness coming in. And do you have any insight on that and why we might get defensive when we are trying to discuss the difference in parenting?
Ryan: So I think what you do for a living and what I do for a living allows us to ask a lot of questions, right? Because then we get the information out of people and I think in a traditional relationship people don't necessarily have those skills, so they tend to tell each other what to do or you should be doing this. Well no, you should be doing this, that's your job and I do this. And I'm just going to come from the male perspective, “Well I provide. Can't you just change the diapers and clean the house? I mean really guys” No, you know, but that's real for him because he's scared about, you know, not changing it right?
And being criticized for not being able to change a diaper in 15 seconds, right? Because he's never done it and he never wanted to do it. And then it's from a man's perspective and I'll just speak to my own household, right? She has a certain way of doing things and when I do things oftentimes it's not up to speed. So do you think from her perspective, so does that give me a strong desire to want to do it again? You know, encourage ladies out there, encourage your husband, your spouses, your partners when they are partaking because it's very uncomfortable instead of critiquing, we're giving constructive feedback, you know, when your kids, So this is me coaching, I told you, I always give an example, going back to the kids, right?
So when your kid is picking up a crayon for the very first time and you know, Laura will see it, I'm holding it with a fist, right? And this is how they hold it, I believe that. And then they start writing on a piece of paper, hopefully, right, we instruct them as to where we want them to do it, not on the walls or anything and they're and they're doing something and they're just making scribbles, I don't know about you, but in my house I'm like, “Oh my goodness, Jaden, that's amazing. What is that?” It's just scribbles. We, as men, are very sensitive, we have egos, and the person who could crust those egos the most ladies is you because we're most vulnerable with you.
So if we do a diaper change a diaper or we do the dishes and there's a speck left on it. Just ignore the spec and say, hey honey, thank you so much for helping out in the kitchen. It really meant a lot while I was taking in bathing the child and then he's gonna go, wow, I got kudos for that were just like dogs. Right? You put us on the head a little bit, were real simple beings. I know you think were the complex beings, real simple beings. Just pet us a little bit and stroke us a little bit and guess what? He may just do the dishes again. But if he gets a critique or criticism isn't like why did I do it anyway? It wasn't appreciated.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, I think we all operate better in a context where we are unconditionally accepted when we are appreciated, when were affirmed, when we have affection and admiration coming at us. For sure. Yes. And I mean, so you're, you're touching on something in the academic world. It's called maternal gatekeeping. And it's the absolutely something that we do. I mean we do it and we there's so much research on that trait that moms have.
And in doing so we limit the people around us and we limit ourselves. We box ourselves in. And I think we come at it from a place of, you know, it's easier to just do it myself if I want it done right, I have to do it myself. And these are all stories that we tell ourselves. So I really like helping parents break down like, okay, so what story my telling myself right now? What am I making it? mean? What am I making it mean that when he washes the dishes, that there's still food left on it? What am I making that mean? About about me, about our relationship, about his commitment to his care for our family, and is that true? Isn't actually true? And what else could be true? What other things are also true?
So, yes, there's still specks of food on the dishes after he washed them. And he also was rushing to get the dishes washed, that he could be present for bedtime. And, you know, he was on a work call while he was washing the dishes to, you know, like, there's always alternative ways, alternative stories, alternative narratives with these things, you know, an opening. We don't know. We also don't know what's true. So, I think you're saying before that we often go to our partners with you don't do it this way and kind of accusations.
But we also go to them telling them what they think and what they feel. You must not care about our family. We go there with kind of ideas already firmly planted in our minds rather than coming from this softened curious place. And this is not, I don't think either of us are saying like that we can just excuse kind of, you know, not being done well in the home, you know, but always, always coming from a place of support, encouragement. We're on the same team. We're always working together here. You know what I mean? There's always room for improvement. But when we want to get improvement, we have to come from a place that's curious.
Ryan: I'm from a place of love. Yeah. You know, you were saying I always say my coaching, there's no right or wrong, right? There is no right or wrong. I think they're just is and if we could accept it for what it hasn't come from a place of love and understanding. If we ask questions, hey, you just said curiosity. “Hey, you know, I was curious. She did the dishes and I just wanted to make you aware they weren't quite done the right way. You must have been in a rush because I know you read to make it last night” and I heard her laughing up there with you and that was amazing. And it's just bringing an awareness like, “Hey, just take a little bit more effort” but acknowledge everything behind it that happened.
Laura: Yes. And assuming the best of them, right? And yeah, I mean, and even just shifting from curiosity. So if we're noticing, you know that they're struggling with something with parenting. For example, when we got a three-year-old who's having lots of meltdowns, right, we notice that they're struggling to stay calm during those meltdowns. We can come to them in a quiet time outside at that moment and be like this kid's having a lot of meltdowns, I'm struggling to stay calm. What about you? We can come from a place of like who I see this struggle, I'm experiencing it too. We are turning into each other, we are on the same team, let's figure out what we need to do as a parenting team to stay calm during these meltdowns because three is intense, you know, you've got a three-year-old at home
Ryan: And he is, you know, three going on 30 he runs the house and honestly my nine-year-old, his first child wants acceptance from his parents, very good in school, you know, listens to everything. He's like this model kid in so many ways and then we have the terror right behind him and we love him right to death. But he is a complete opposite of his brother in so many ways and I think we took for granted some of the blessings we had the first go around and this one just presents different and new challenges
Laura: And new balance, like new benefits to write new opportunities to grow and learn and build new skills. I always think that those challenging kids are here to wake us up and help us figure out, Okay, so there's a new trigger now, I need to work on that one. Okay, thank you child for showing me where I have a feeling to do
Ryan: Right and it’s awareness around that for self-right for my wife and I like, okay, like we knew he was going to be different, we didn't know it was gonna be this different, but he is absolutely different. And I call him challenges because I like to face challenges, right? Some people would call problems, but I like to face this challenge and learn how to adapt to this new child. I was telling somebody one day I go, you know, I could do remember, I showed a picture of my nine-year-old when he was about four.
Somebody said, show me a picture of your son. And I was flipping through my phone and the first one I came across, he was making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and he had a butter knife in his hand and this moms listen to what I'm about to say, don't be critical of other parents. Oh, really? Good parenting. Is that a knife I see in his hand? And my immediate response was like, yes. She goes, why would you give a four-year-old a knife? I said, because I trust him.
And I said, would you not give you a four-year-old butter knife? And she says, oh, no, not mine. And I said, okay, she knows her child. I would not give my 3 and a half-year-old, soon to be four year old a knife. Because at this point, that's not something I trust him with, right? Just because of who he is. And we have to adapt our parenting styles to our children, right? It's not one size fits all their different people they are.
Laura: And bringing it back to this, your book, be the dad you wish you had. I think that this is something that I hear a lot too. But in flipping through, I think that what you're really saying is you know what you're saying right now is that we have to yes, we've got to figure out how we would have liked to have been parented, but we also have to figure out how this particular child in front of us needs to be parented. And I think that that's the same for our partners too, so we're giving you know, kind of standard across the board information, but we're all individuals and your individual partner likely has different thoughts, different feelings, and that like that.
I always just come back to curiosity. I think if we can just get to a place of like what is it that even just the thought of the story you were telling about? The very first thing you think about when you find out you're going to be a parent and how often times the dads you work with, they got about 4, 5 or six when they're older. I feel really curious about if that's true for my husband, I'm going to ask him that tonight. These are things that are ongoing conversations that we can have with our partners to get to know them better. You know, what did they think parenting was going to be like?
Ryan: So and I think for men, like if you were to ask a man, what is your biggest fear around parenting? His fears are going to be more around. I'm not able to provide for my family. Am I going to be enough for this child? Right? There's this big, huge hole of like is this child going to know that I love them, right? There's going to be this emptiness, but why? Because so many men, maybe their father didn't provide for them in a way that he desired to. Maybe dad never said I love you. I can't tell you how many men I talked to. And I said that your father ever say I love you. And they'll say he told me once and they'll tell you the exact time how old they were, where they were, what they were wearing. Because it only happened once in their entire life. Right?
So a man coming into this and I am I enough. Well, maybe because he didn't feel his father was enough, right? These are the fears that men have that so many women may not understand because we're not allowed to be vulnerable enough because we're supposed to be the strong breadwinner for the home, that we're not allowed to say these things.
So as your listeners are listening, I guarantee you one of those three challenges are the challenges that your husband or all three or partner face is I'm not enough and I see you. You know, Laura's over here tearing up because this is true. And if you don't understand that, you're like, well, why don't you just hold the child? Well, nobody ever held me. I didn't feel like I don't know how to give love because I never give I don't know how to say I love you without choking up in my own throat because I never heard it from my own father. And I don't know if that's the right thing or the wrong thing to do. I'm just going back to your word modeling what happened to me.
We need to make a conscious effort as men to say. That's malarkey. That's B. S. That's garbage. Because I wanted to know I was loved by my father. So I must tell my child I love them. I must tell them I believe in them. I must tell them I trust them. I must tell them I'm proud of them because I wanted to hear all those things myself.
Laura: Yeah. So you totally just made me start crying. It wasn't intentional. No, I'm a tearful person and I, I felt really connected to very deep pain that all of us feel at times. Am I lovable? Am I enough?
Ryan: And the answer is yes. Every single one of you out there. The answer is yes. Because you have a clean slate with these amazing children and you can start today, no matter how old they are, you can start today.
Laura: Yes. 100%. And I think you really hit on something that's so, so important for all of us to know about men and boys in the way that they are raised in the society. They are not taught, it's okay to feel anything other than anger or to show emotions in any way other than aggression. And they are in a touch deficit from the time. Therefore, boys get touched less by their parents and caregivers, they don't know.
And for if dads are listening to this, it makes sense that you don't know how to support your kid through their big feelings when you yourself have never been held and supported through yours and you've never, all you've ever learned is to stuff it down. I feel, I don't know, so much deep pain for men.
Ryan: Well, and I'll just share two perspectives from you as a man, Right? So my son, my nine-year-old, still holds my hand when we go places, right. And when he was five and we first went into school, I'm like, he's a big boy. Should he be holding my hand? But he wanted to hold my hand and I've done enough research and enough reading to let him hold my hand right? But even though I've done a ton of research and reading my brain saying, should I be holding his hand? Well, forget my brain. You know, he needs to hold my hand because that's what brings him comfort in this big bad school or walking through this mall or walking down the street. So if that's what he needs, I'm there to meet his needs and let him know that he is loved and that's how he receives love. Now he's nine years old, right?
And I'll tell you kind of our morning routine is I go into my son's room when he's got to get up at 6: 30 I stroke his hair this morning right? Sometimes back sometimes, but right. And I get into bed with him and I say good morning, how was your day? Did you sleep well? Are we going to have a fantastic day today? And I even question I did this just this morning And I think to myself, he's nine, he's almost 10. How long do I do this? I don't care how long I do this, I do this until he says, dad, get out of my bed, I'm 16 because I wanted to know that he is loved.
I'm not the norm. I get that, but I would love for it in the next 10, 15, 20 years for this to be a norm. Oh my God, there's nothing wrong with it. And there's everything right with him knowing that he's starting his day. Being told by his father that he loves him, encouraging him about his day and saying now get out of bed, go to the bathroom and get dressed because we got to get down for breakfast because that's kind of how it goes, right? He gets like five minutes of just waking up. I know I don't use an alarm clock. I don't like to be abruptly woken up, I ease out of my day and into my day. So I do the same thing for my kids and then when he goes down, I go into the other one's room. Yeah. Good morning.
Laura: That connection to like when kids are connected to their parents, they are more cooperative. They start their day, they feel good, they feel centered, they feel grounded and I so agree if we can have this generation of parents who are parenting right now if we compare our kids with love and acceptance and them knowing that's what they deserve. Like that's the treatment that they deserve, How to do it, How to manage their emotions in a way that is responsible but also accepting. I mean, oh gosh, can you imagine what this generation of kids is going to do, how they're going to be as parents? I just, it's going to be amazing. I'm so excited to watch it.
Ryan: And there's a flip side to all this. So I mentioned all these nurturing things that I do as a dad because I believe, but I will tell you the boys respond to me when I lay down the law to its there is this balance right. I want to give them all of those things, but it's also, hey, I need you to pick that up now. And what did I just say? And I always ask my kids, how many times do I have to say something once you and then they go do it right.
But they're getting all of their needs met. They need that structure of dad knowing that he's going to put his foot down. But I also love them. You know, there's this big, huge evolution to being apparent and there's encouragement out there ladies because I knew absolutely nothing. But it all starts with some very simple, simple things and
I would love to share with your audience a free download of what I called it that daily for. It takes four minutes a day. So get this. So dad's one of the biggest objections. Every mom is going to relate to this at some level. I'm busy, I’m working, I don't have time. Have you ever heard that? Yeah, so four minutes a day max and the dad's Daily Four is simple and as a doctor, Laura can sit there and say yes, these are proven strategies.
But even in the dad daily for which you could get at FBI dads dot com for slash laura. And in that way, you know, you could go and get that free download. So this is what the dad's daily for is I want dads to tell their kids and I mentioned it earlier. Tell your kids you love them every single day through your words and your actions. Tell your kids that you trust them. I told you earlier, I trusted my son with that knife. Sometimes he says, hey, I want to do this and I have to teeter on my head and I'm like, you know what? I think I can trust you with that. I think go ahead, go do it.
And I use the words I trust you because if I tell him I trust him, he starts trusting himself right? Similar to trust as I believe in you. Yeah, I believe you can do that. And then the last thing and I love doing this because I do it with my both of my boys every single night. But I'm just asking your husbands to think about doing it when you're in conversation with the kids throughout the day. I want dads to finish this sentence and moms, you can do all these things too. But you probably do it a lot more naturally than dads finish this sentence. I am proud of you because personally, it's in my night routine with my kids.
I tell them five things every day that I'm proud of them for. And then I asked him a follow-up question of is there anything that I didn't mention that I would be proud of you, that I may not know about that you did today and so many times like why did this Right? He's all excited. They're all excited, wow! Dad's proud of me of all this. Well, you know, I did this too and I did this, and if dads can just sit there somehow fit that into the repertoire, at least the, I love you, I am proud of you and I trust you and I believe in you will come because there's more interaction. I think kids are growing up with confidence knowing that dad loves them and believes in them, that every boy and girl needs at a cellular level.
Laura: Yeah, we all need those four things. We all need them. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I really, really appreciate it, brian that you came on and you shared so openly and so candidly about this. It was really helpful. So listeners go download your daily for and not just families with dad's on them too. So no matter your family structure, that daily four sounds like a great place to start. Thank you.
Ryan: Thank you.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um, and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family, and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.