I’m on my way to Bozeman this morning. Below, I’m linking the ppts to my talk, as well as a one-page handout/summary.
Have a great Monday!
Ten Things Everyone Should Know about Mental Health, Suicide, and Happiness
Tag Archives: mental health
Thoughts on Ethnic Matching From Clinical Interviewing (7th edition)
Every chapter in Clinical Interviewing has several pop-out boxes titled, “Practice and Reflection.” In this–the latest–edition, we added many that include the practice and perspective of diverse counselors and psychotherapists. Here’s an example from Chapter One.
PRACTICE AND REFLECTION 1.3: AM I A GOOD FIT? NAVIGATING ETHNIC MATCHING IN PRIVATE PRACTICE
The effects of ethnic matching on counseling outcomes is mixed. In some cases and settings, and with some individuals, ethnic matching improves treatment frequency, duration, and outcomes; in other cases and settings, ethnic matching appears to have no effects in either direction (Olaniyan et al., 2022; Stice et al., 2021). Overall, counseling with someone who is an ethnic/cultural match is meaningful for some clients, while other clients obtain equal meaning and positive outcomes working with culturally different therapists.
For clients who want to work with therapists who have similar backgrounds and experiences, the availability of ethnically-diverse therapists is required. In the essay below, Galana Chookolingo, Ph.D., HSP-P, a licensed psychologist, writes of personal and professional experiences as a South Asian person in independent practice.
On a personal note, being from a South Asian background in private practice has placed me in a position to connect with other Asians/South Asians in need of culturally-competent counseling. In my two years in solo private practice, I have had many individuals reach out to me specifically because of my ethnicity and/or the fact that I am also an immigrant to the U.S. (which I openly share on my website). These individuals hold an assumption that I would be able to relate to a more collectivistic worldview. Because I offer free consultations prior to meeting with clients for an intake, I have had several clients ask directly about my ability to understand certain family dynamics inherent to Asian cultures. I have responded openly to these questions, sharing the similarities and differences I am aware of, as well as my limitations, since I moved to the U.S. before age 10. For the most part, I have been able to connect with many clients of Asian backgrounds; this tends to be the majority of my caseload at any given time.
As you enter into the multicultural domain of counseling and psychotherapy, reflect on your ethnic, cultural, gender, sexual, religious, and ability identities. As a client, would you prefer working with someone with a background or identity similar to yours? What might be the benefits? Alternatively, as a client, might there be situations when you would prefer working with someone who has a background/identity different than yours? If so, why and why not?
Reflecting on Dr. Chookolingo’s success in attracting and working with other Asian/South Asian people . . . what specific actions did she take to build her caseload? How did she achieve her success?
[End of Practice and Reflection 1.3]
For more info on ethnic matching, see these articles:
Olaniyan, F., & Hayes, G. (2022). Just ethnic matching? Racial and ethnic minority students and culturally appropriate mental health provision at British universities. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 17(1), 16. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2022.2117444
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482631.2022.2117444
Stice, E., Onipede, Z. A., Shaw, H., Rohde, P., & Gau, J. M. (2021). Effectiveness of the body project eating disorder prevention program for different racial and ethnic groups and an evaluation of the potential benefits of ethnic matching. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 89(12), 1007-1019. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000697
To Hospitalize or Not to Hospitalize? A Suicide Assessment Conundrum
Yesterday I had a chance to do a 3-hour online workshop with a very cool group of about 22 smart, skilled, and dedicated professionals. They engaged with the content and consequently, we had some great discussions. One of the discussions has kept percolating for me today. The topic: How do we handle situations where clients are clearly suicidal, but are reluctant or unwilling to develop and agree to a collaborative safety plan.
We talked about how, often, the knee-jerk impulse is to pursue hospitalization. While that’s a viable and reasonable option, the problem is that hospitalization and discharge is a notable risk factor for death by suicide. The other problem is that it’s pretty much impossible for us to know if the client’s resistance to a safety plan indicates increased risk, or just resistance to what s/he/they view as a coercive mandate.
There’s no perfect clinician response to this dilemma. Hospitalization helps some clients, and causes demoralization and regression in others. Not hospitalizing can feel too risky for practitioners.
We talked about a few guidelines in dealing with this conundrum. They include: (a) consulting with colleagues, (b) reflecting on the client’s engagement in other aspects of treatment (increased engagement in treatment is a protective factor), (c) evaluating client intent and client impulsivity, and (d) documenting your decision-making process (including citations indicating that psychiatric hospitalization may not be the best alternative). But again, there’s no perfect guideline.
Below is an excerpt from a CEU course I wrote about a year ago. For the whole CEU (actually there are two different CE courses), you can check out this link: https://www.continuingedcourses.net/active/courses/course114.php
Similar content is also in our brand new Clinical Interviewing textbook: https://www.wiley.com/en-cn/Clinical+Interviewing%2C+7th+Edition-p-9781119981992
Here’s the CEU excerpt:
Decision-Making Dilemmas
When discussing Kate’s situation and other scenarios that involve outpatient work with highly suicidal clients, the following question usually comes up, “What if your judgment is wrong and she either makes a suicide attempt, or she kills herself before your next session?” This is a great question and gets to the core of practitioner anxiety.
The answer is that, yes, she could kill herself, and if she does, I’ll feel terrible about my clinical judgment. Also, I might get sued. And, if I’m inclined toward suicidal thoughts myself, Kate killing herself might precipitate a suicidal crisis in me. Sometimes suicide tragedies happen, and sometimes we will feel like the tragedy was our fault and that we should have or could have prevented it. That said, most suicides are more or less unpredictable. Even if you think you’re correct in categorizing someone as high or low risk, chances are you’ll be wrong; many high-risk clients don’t die by suicide and some low-risk clients do (see Sommers-Flanagan, 2021, for a personal essay on coping with the death of a client to suicide; https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/2565/the-myth-of-infallibility).
More depressing is the reality that hospitalization – the main therapeutic option we turn to when clients are highly suicidal – isn’t very effective at treating suicidality and preventing suicide (Large & Kapur, 2018). Hospitalization sometimes causes clients to regress and destabilize, and suicide risk is often higher after hospitalization (Kessler et al., 2020). Because hospitalization isn’t a good fit for many clients who are suicidal and because we can’t predict suicide very well anyway, some cutting edge suicide researchers recommend intensive safety planning as a viable (and often preferred) alternative to hospitalization. In the case of Kate, as long as she’s willing to collaborate, and I’m able to contact her husband, and we can construct a plan that provides safety, then I’m on solid professional ground (or at least as solid as professional ground gets when working with highly suicidal clients).
Kessler, R. C., Bossarte, R. M., Luedtke, A., Zaslavsky, A. M., & Zubizarreta, J. R. (2020). Suicide prediction models: A critical review of recent research with recommendations for the way forward. Molecular Psychiatry, 25(1), 168-179. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41380-019-0531-0
Large, M. M., & Kapur, N. (2018). Psychiatric hospitalisation and the risk of suicide. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 212(5), 269-273.
Sommers-Flanagan, J. (2021, July/August). The myth of infallibility: A therapist comes to terms with a client suicide. Psychotherapy Networker. https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/article/2565/the-myth-of-infallibility
And here’s an excerpt from Clinical Interviewing.
Collaborate with Clients Who Are Suicidal
The idea that healthcare professionals must take an authoritarian role when evaluating and treating suicidal clients has proven problematic (Konrad & Jobes, 2011). Authoritarian clinicians can activate oppositional or resistant behaviors (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). If you try arguing clients out of suicidal thoughts and impulses, they may shut down and become less open.
For decades, no-suicide contracts were a standard practice for suicide prevention and intervention (Drye et al., 1973). These contracts consisted of signed statements such as: “I promise not to commit suicide between my medical appointments.” In a fascinating turn of events, during the 1990s, no-suicide contracts came under fire as (a) coercive and (b) as focusing more on practitioner liability than client well-being (Edwards & Sachmann, 2010; Rudd et al., 2006). Suicide experts no longer advocate using no-suicide contracts.
Instead, collaborative approaches to working with suicidal clients are strongly recommended. One such approach is the collaborative assessment and management of suicide (CAMS; Jobes, 2016). CAMS emphasizes suicide assessment and intervention as a humane encounter honoring clients as experts regarding their suicidal thoughts, feelings, and situation. Jobes and colleagues (2007) wrote:
CAMS emphasizes an intentional move away from the directive “counselor as expert” approach that can lead to adversarial power struggles about hospitalization and the routine and unfortunate use of coercive “safety contracts.” (p. 285)
One Word to Describe Two Days at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) Home Office
Shortly after Beth Brown, Managing Director of Mental Health and Well Being at The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (https://blankfoundation.org/) called the meeting to order, she asked us to introduce ourselves and share one word to represent how we were feeling in that moment.
Having taught my fair share of group counseling and psychotherapy courses at the University of Montana, I immediately recognized Ms. Brown’s icebreaking trickery. The trickery is, while ostensibly asking about the emotional tone of participants, the “one word” question simultaneously evaluates participants’ ability and willingness to comply with group leader requests.
It was a raucous group. People immediately began bending, breaking, and straying from Ms. Brown’s one-word rule. Some participants took 30 words to introduce themselves; others took 50 words to frame the rationale for their one-word choice. One participant (who spoke second, and may or may not have been me), immediately displayed annoying attention-seeking behavior by interjecting an anecdote about the worst icebreaker activity ever in the history of time.
Had Sigmund Freud been a Mental Health and Wellness grantee (and therefore invited to the two-day event), he might have used the word delighted. Not only was the one-word activity intrinsically projective, Freud also once famously quipped,
Words were originally magic, and . . . retain much magical power, even today. With words people can make others blessed, or drive them to despair; by words the teacher transfers . . . knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps away the audience and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth affects and are the universal means of influencing human beings [n.b., this is not a perfect quote because I engaged in minor editing to make Freud more quippy and less sexist].
I have some magic words to describe the participants. They were smart, fun, funny, dedicated, committed, clever, brilliant, generous, compassionate, empathic, connected, passionate, and cool. During Lyft rides, some of them even engaged with each other as if they were live podcasters. My particular program officer is so kind and generous that I now just think of her as Saint Natalie.
Words were the theme and the tool. On the afternoon of Day One Michael Susong, PR Lead at Intrepid, taught us how to use asset-based, instead of deficit-based words on our websites. His presentation was complemented by a gallery-walk through an adjacent room where life-sized word cloud posters of the words in our websites were set up and numbered; we perused the clouds, absorbing the language and seeking to discern which cloud belonged to which organization. I, of course, quickly found the Montana Happiness Project (MHP) word cloud, primarily because the biggest word was SUICIDE, which may or may not have implied that we (the MHP) have a bit of work to do on using more asset-based language on our website. I also felt jealousy because other organizations had way cooler words, like “Nintendo” and “LBGTQ+” and “Youth of color” and “Belonging.”
At the close of Day 1, the prevailing descriptive words were “Tired” and “Exhausted” not principally, but partly because this was a group of people who had likely added this retreat into their already too busy lives and consequently were emailing and doing business-related calls during breaks and lunch and on the airplane the day before and possibly into the night.
Looking back at the previous paragraph, I notice I used the word “business” which connotes a particular entrepreneurial feel, which requires a particular explanation. All of the organizations and people in attendance had a shared passion for the business of helping others achieve greater well-being, mental health, and happiness. IMHO, that’s good business. . . which leads me to sharing a few words about the man behind the curtain.
We all convened at the Arthur M. Blank Foundation headquarters for two days because of one man’s business. That man is Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta United professional soccer club, and PGA Superstores. But along with his businesses, Arthur Blank has expanded his service mentality into the business of philanthropy. On the evening of the first day, Arthur Blank joined us as we listened to renowned Harvard researcher Robert Waldinger talk about the world’s longest study of Happiness [n.b., in his usual buoyantly optimistic style, Freud once noted that a main goal of psychotherapy is to move patients from neurotic misery, to common unhappiness].
Although I didn’t get a chance to meet Mr. Blank and impress him with my witty repartee, knowledge of icebreakers, or arcane Freudian quotes (I wish I could have told him, “Where id was, there shall ego be!), I did hear him speak. In one long, hyphenated word, I’d describe his message as gracious-supportive-humble-encouraging-empowering. Had Freud been there, he might have just said, “Arthur Blank’s words were magic.”
The Arthur Blank Foundation has given well over $500 million to philanthropic causes. None of this is required. Arthur Blank could take his money and keep it to himself and his family. Instead, he has embraced philanthropy. Arthur Blank also has a book titled “Good Company.” In a word (or maybe 20 words), if I were offering a New York Times Book Review (which will never happen because the NYT always rejects my editorial pieces, and yes, I’m clearly hanging on too tightly to my resentment toward the NYT), I’d describe his book as: A rather surprising treatise on companies doing values-based good work in the world as a part of a larger philosophy/vision of service-oriented capitalism paradoxically infused with egalitarianism in the workplace. In other (or additional) words, I enjoyed, appreciated, and valued the book and its philosophy WAY more than I expected. Now I want to become as wealthy as Arthur Blank so I can join him in contributing to the culture and welfare of places like West Atlanta, South Chicago, North Philly, Livingston Montana, and East Missoula.
In the end, Beth Brown asked us for a final, departing single word. I cleverly used my hyphenated last name as an excuse to say “overwhelmed-hopeful” but I might have just as easily used “connected-inspired” or “challenged-to-do-more-good” or “I’m-on-a-rocket-ship-headed-to-a-city-called-mental-health-and-wellbeing” or, given the fire of inspiration lit under my feet, I could have decided to demonstrate the worst icebreaker of all time, and just spell out my name and feelings with my hip movements.
Thank you, Arthur Blank, thank you to the AMBFF team, and thank you to the grantees. I am humbled by your generosity and vision of greater mental health and wellbeing for all.
Advanced Mental Health for the Jackson Construction Group
Three years ago (2019) I had the honor and privilege to be the first outside person to speak at a Jackson Construction retreat. The topic was suicide prevention. During our time at the Jackson retreat at Big Sky, Rita and I were touched by the kindness, authenticity, and engagement of the Jackson community.
On this rather frigid Montana day, I’m back with 130 Jackson employees at Fairmont Hot Springs. Once again, I’m honored and humbled to have the chance to speak. Knowing how hard it is to gain and maintain positive mental health, I deeply appreciate the chance to speak, and I hope the words and experiences I share are of use to the Jackson community.
Here is a one-page summary handout:
Here are the ppts:
Advocating for Children’s Mental Health
Hi All,
This letter is primarily directed to Montana residents, although concerned out-of-state individuals may also participate or use this information to advocate for children’s mental health in your state or province.
As many of you may know, Montana State Superintendent of Schools Elsie Arntzen has recommended the elimination of the state requirement that Montana Public Schools have a required minimum number of 1 school counselor for every 400 students. Obviously, this number is already too high; the national recommendation is for 1 school counselor for every 250 students. During this time of urgent student mental health needs, we need more school counselors, not fewer.
I just wrote and sent my letter to the Montana Board of Public Education in support of retaining the school counselor to student ratio in Montana Public Schools. Please join me. Email your letter to support retaining (or increasing) the current school counselor to student ratio to: bpe@mt.gov.
The public comment period ends on November 4th, so please launch your emails soon!
If you’re not sure what to write, but you believe school counselors are important for supporting student mental health, then just write something simple like, “Please support Montana students and their mental health by retaining or increasing the current school counselor to student ratio in Montana Schools.”
If you want to write something longer, the Montana School Counselor Association has provided the following bullet points to guide public comment.
- Keep your talking points clear and concise. Make sure to state that you are in support of keeping the school counselor to student ratio
- It’s ok to provide a few talking points, less may be more. If you’re not sure what to write, you could simply send a statement asking them to retain the School Counselor to Student ratio
- Professional and polite messages are received better
- Provide examples as to why the ratio is important. Share your experiences within your school (maintain confidentiality), about your program, the multiple hats that you wear, any changes you have experienced over recent years, data that supports increased student needs, etc
- We acknowledge that there is a shortage of school counselors in Montana. Eliminating the ratio will not solve the shortage of school counselors, but could exacerbate the shortage, especially when tough budget decisions need to be made
- Students could miss out on the proactive and responsive services our communities have come to expect from us including A) attendance and graduation rates, B) school climate and bullying prevention, C) social and emotional learning, and D) students having a professionally trained safe person to talk with
Thanks for considering this and for doing all you can to support children’s mental health and well-being.
Sincerely,
John Sommers-Flanagan
Spanking and Mental Health
Several years ago, doc students in our Counseling and Supervision program started teasing me for being preoccupied with corporal punishment in general and spanking in particular. Somehow they found my concerns about adverse mental health outcomes linked to spanking as entertaining. They were very funny about it, and so although I was somewhat puzzled, mostly I was entertained by their response, and so it was, as they say . . . all good.
Despite their occasional heckling about spanking and despite my BIG concerns about the adverse outcomes of corporal punishment, I haven’t really done any direct research on the effects of spanking. Maybe one reason I haven’t done any spanking research is because Elizabeth Gershoff of UT-Austin has already done so much amazing work. In an effort to help make her work more mainstream, today I published an article with the Good Men Project titled, “How to Discipline Children Better Without Spanking.” The article begins . . .
“As children across the country headed back to school, some students in Missouri returned to find corporal punishment, with parental approval, reinstated in their district. They joined students in 19 other states where corporal punishment is still legal in schools. At home, most American parents—an estimated 52%—agree or strongly agree that “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking” Parents hold this opinion despite overwhelming scientific evidence that spanking is linked to mental, emotional, and behavioral problems. In a well-known and highly regarded study of over 1,000 twins, Elizabeth Gershoff of the University of Texas at Austin found that spanking was linked to lying, stealing, fighting, vandalism, and other delinquent behaviors. Gershoff’s findings are not new.”
You can check out the full article here: https://goodmenproject.com/families/how-to-discipline-children-better-without-spanking-kpkn/
Also, a big thanks to Kristine Maloney of TVP Communications for her edits and for helping get this piece published.
Happy Tuesday!
John SF
Evidence-Based Happiness for Belgrade Schools: Advice is Cheap, but Knowledge is Power
Tomorrow I’ll be in Belgrade, Montana.
Back in May I received an email from a Belgrade High School AP Biology teacher asking if I could present to Belgrade teachers on mental health. The details have worked out. I’m super-excited to do this for several reasons:
- I’m very passionate about supporting teacher mental health and well-being. For as long as I can remember (but especially during these past three years), teachers have been over-stressed, over-worked, under-paid, and under-appreciated. I even happen to have a grant proposal submitted that would give teachers access to very low-cost graduate credit on an Evidence-Based Happiness course. Happiness knowledge and mental health support for teachers is essential.
- Education is the central “plank” on my personal political platform. IMHO, to quote myself, “The road to economic vitality, the road to environmental sustainability, the road to excellence in health care and social programs, and the road to good government always has and always will run through education.” We need excellent teachers and we need excellent public education. We need it now more than ever.
- Belgrade is conveniently located just off I-90, a freeway that I regularly drive on my way from Missoula to Absarokee and back again.
- And best of all, I’ll get to see the famous Nick Jones. Nick is a cool Aussie transplant, a former Carroll College basketball player, and a graduate of our M.A. program at the University of Montana. He also happens to be a school counselor at Belgrade High School.
The ppts for tomorrow’s presentation are here:
And here’s a one-page handout/summary:
My big theme will be that although advice is cheap, knowledge is power. We all benefit from knowing more about mental health and happiness. One of my main topics will involve information on understanding sleep. . . because we all have better mental health when we sleep well.
See you in Belgrade tomorrow!
Happiness Homework: Week One – University of Montana
In the friendly confines of a psychological laboratory, happiness is created rather easily. In the real world, happiness is more elusive.
Whether researchers have college students hold pens with their teeth or write down three good things or express gratitude, mood is boosted. In the real world, sometimes you have to force yourself to smile, and even still, you may not experience happiness.
You might wonder, do the small behaviors that improve mood in the lab result in sustained positive moods into the future? Martin Seligman, the contemporary psychologist most closely linked to the positive psychology movement (and author of Authentic Happiness and Flourishing) says yes. Although I’m less sure about this than Dr. Seligman, I am sure that many small behaviors over time—the sorts of behaviors that become positive habits (or positive routines)—can, for many, result in improved moods sustained over time.
Instead of assuming that everything Martin Seligman or other researchers say is true, in our University of Montana happiness class (COUN 195: The Art and Science of Happiness) we’re all about directly testing evidence-based happiness strategies. Part of the reason we’re testing these strategies is because we’re replicating nomothetic scientific findings in idiographic contexts. The true originator of positive psychology, Alfred Adler, would be happy about this. That’s because Adler believed we can never know if group scientific findings generalize to individuals, until we try them out with individuals.
In the spirit of positive psychology, and in an effort to develop and maintain healthy habits in college students, I’m giving small weekly homework assignments in the UM happiness class. Sometimes these assignments are verbatim (or nearly so) from published scientific research. Other times they’re assignments that Dan Salois (my TA) and I have created just for the class. This week’s assignments are home cooking.
I’m including these assignments on my blog so you can follow along with the class and experience different approaches to creating positive moods and psychological wellness. These assignments aren’t stand-alone miracles; they’re brief and simple behaviors purposely designed to elicit positive emotions and prompt you (and the happiness students) to reflect on the nature of positive emotions and wellness-oriented behaviors. They might work as intended, or they might not. I hope they work.
You have two assignments for this week.
Active Learning Assignment 1 – Happy Songs in Your Life
Music in general, and songs in particular, can trigger happiness, sadness, other emotions, and life memories. Sometimes our emotional responses to music are all about the music. Other times, our emotional responses are about the personal links, associations, or memories that songs trigger. For example, when I listen to “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night, I’m transported back to positive memories I had playing 9th grade basketball. The song, “Put the Lime in the Coconut” will forever take me back to a car accident that happened with my sister in 1973. It’s not unusual for us to turn to music to help regulate our emotions or to heighten particular feelings.
For this assignment, do the following:
- Select a song that has triggers positive emotions for you.
- Listen to the song twice in a row and just let the song do its work. You can do this with a friend or by yourself. Don’t WATCH the song. If it’s a music video, shut your eyes and listen.
- After you’ve listened twice and let the positive feelings come, respond to the following prompts, and then upload your responses to Moodle.
- Write the name of the song and the musical artist (so we know the song).
- What emotion does the song bring up?
- What’s your best guess (hypothesis) for why the song brings up those particular emotions? (Share the lyrics or the links to life events that make the song emotionally important to you).
- Do you usually listen to that song to intentionally create a particular emotional state, or do you wait for the song to randomly pop into your life?
- Optional: share the song with someone and tell that person why the song triggers positive emotions for you.
Active Learning Assignment 2 – Witness Something Inspiring
Inspiring things are constantly happening in the world.
Martin Luther King Day is coming. Martin Luther King was a source of great inspiration for many. Over this coming long weekend you could watch a video recording of King’s “I have a dream” speech and feel inspired. You could also go on the internet and find something inspiring on social medial. But instead, just for fun (and for this assignment), we want you to watch for and observe something inspiring that’s happening in the real world.
The inspiring event that you notice may be small or it may be big. The key part of this assignment is that it involves intentionally watching for that which will inspire. Keep all your sensory modalities open for inspiration. Then, write Dan a short note (about 200 to 300 words) describing what you experienced. Your note should include:
- What it was like to intentionally pay attention to things that might inspire you.
- A description of what you observed.
- Reactions you had to the inspirational event.
- Anything else you want to add.
*******************************
Try these assignments for yourself (or not). If it strikes your fancy, you can post your reactions on this blog (or not).
I hope the remainder of your Martin Luther King weekend is fantastic.
Two Announcements: A New Article on EBRFs and a New Milestone
Two things.
First, Kim Parrow, a doctoral student at the University of Montana emailed me a copy of our hot new journal article. The article explores evidence-based relationship factors as an exciting focus of research, practice, and training in Counselor Education. The article is published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling. Here’s a link so you can read the article, if you like: EBRFs in JMHC 2019
Second, today when I logged into my WordPress blog, something seemed different. As it turns out, my official number of followers had turned from 999 to 1,000. I’m not sure what that means, other than a woman named Shaina from Thrive has won a special prize. Maybe I’ll see you on Thursday evening Shaina.
I hope you’ve all had a great day, especially all the veterans out there, who IMHO deserve deep appreciation for their service.
John Sommers-Flanagan 