Steve Sewell on Grief, Chaplaincy, and Why Life Really Happens in the Transitions

Steven Sewell didn’t plan on becoming a chaplain in corporate America. He thought he’d spend his life as a pastor. But after almost 30 years in ministry, he discovered something: the break room at a car dealership needs the same thing as a Sunday morning congregation. Someone who will actually listen.  Steve and I talked about grief, starting over in your 50s, finding love again at 58, and why he stopped handing invoices to people in crisis.  This episode has me thinking about the three relationships Steve says everyone needs — especially when things fall apart. Listen for the full quote.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There are three really important relationships that everyone should have. The first one is a really good friend. They're not afraid to give you some feedback. The second one is someone who does their job but does it better. So this is a peer leader. And then the third one is a professional, someone like a counselor, someone like a good pastor, someone who really knows how to listen to someone and give guidance and make sure you have these three solid types of people in your life.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi everyone, and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. People really do find their calling. Steve Sewell found his in the break room. After nearly three decades as a youth pastor and senior pastor in California, Oregon, Nebraska, and Missouri, Steve discovered that his real gift wasn't behind the pulpit on Sunday mornings. It was showing up in the quiet corners of corporate America on a Tuesday afternoon, sitting with someone who had nowhere else to turn. For almost 20 years, he's worked as a marketplace chaplain, embedded in companies ranging from car dealerships to manufacturing floors to universities, offering something most workplaces don't know how to provide, a human presence. He's also survived cancer, rebuilt his life after divorce, moved back to California, and found love again in his 50s. His mission has always been the same. Come to the person right in front of you and help them learn how to smile again. Let's get started. So, Steven, I'm so happy to have you here on the podcast today. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation. And you know, we were just briefly talking. I said, I love everybody's stories. I I get inspired by people's stories. So we're gonna start with yours and we're gonna go back and tell us about, you know, where where did you grow up and what were you like as a kid and where'd you come from?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah, well, it's great to be here. Thank you. And you know, you think about your early starts, and uh, those are the like some of my favorite times as a as a person. It was when I was a child. I grew up in the in the northern Bay Area, in the San Jose area, went to school there. My mom and dad were divorced, and so that was troubling in 1974 for me, and uh trying to figure out where I belong and where I was going. And I was quote unquote ordered that I had to live with my mom until age 12. And so I did the the obedient thing like a like a seven or eight-year-old would do. And I I lived with my mom for a long time until I became 12. And then by the time I got to age 12, we were living in New Mexico, and so we had moved around quite a bit. My understanding about that now shapes who I am a little bit. But by the time age 12 came, I knew that making a shift to my dad's house was the best answer, but it was going to be a traumatic shift that was going to be a really hard thing for me to do just because I had only been with my mom. And my mom and I have this wonderful relationship. Even now, we have heart-to-heart conversations. That's what that's what she and I call them. And they're they're wonderful, but I know that I needed to move and so moved back to the Bay Area with my dad, went to junior high and high school and early college, and went to Southern California and met my my wife, and then we had kids and moved around until I'm back in Southern California now.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

When you went back to the Bay Area and now you're at middle school, those are can be tough years, high school. What was school like for you?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

I had a tremendous stuttering problem. I was stuttering like a madman. I I couldn't say anything without stuttering. I had a harder hearing, and it was discovered that at during that time I was also significantly behind with reading, with math. Any any kind of learning was very challenged for me, a big, big challenge. And even to this point now, where traditional schooling has always been very uh hard for me to process. I have always been better at certificates, shorts, stints, and learning. Kind of a a start, and six weeks later I get a certificate letter and then I do another one. And and so, but the traditional schooling has always been really hard for me. So we had to overcome that. And it took a while for the world to get used to that. And so I was in the stream of of learning how to go to school without the traditional model. I did finish high school and I did finish my bachelor degree, but it was one of the hardest things of my my adult life, you know, that I've ever had to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So when you went to college, what did you major in?

SPEAKER_01 4:50

What did you know? I I had a traumatic, well, I say traumatic, I probably should say something different because it was it was traumatic, but it was a a breakthrough for me. I encountered my faith. And so I began to really work through how to see myself differently. But I went to college at the Biola University here in Southern California in La Marata and had a wonderful experience. They didn't know what to do with me quite yet because of my learning disability, but they discovered that if they just take it slow and let's team have a few chances, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So high schools, you know, middle school, high school, all very difficult. So it's kind of surprising you even went to college.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Back in the 80s, I graduated high school in '86. I don't think anybody was not going to college. It just felt like that was the path that you took. It was the rite of passage. You graduate high school, you go on an all-night party, you take a summer off, and then you go off to college. That's what everybody was doing. So I took two years at a junior college because I knew that my dad didn't have the kind of money to send me to college. I knew it was going to take me a lot longer too, because of the course load, because of what I was up against. I was very anxious about it. And so I took a couple classes while I was working to see how that was going to do it. And I really enjoyed working at my church and I enjoyed the classes, but I I really enjoyed college as a social excitement. I told my dad the same thing that my middle son told me once. He says, Dad, school gets in the way of my social life, man.

unknown 6:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And so that was just kind of the the way, the way that it went. Math and sciences were the especially hard, but reading in general was just really tough. I had a really hard time retaining what I was learning. So I knew that it was going to take a while. So I took two years at a junior college and then I went to Biola as a second semester sophomore and then graduated in 91.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

What did you major in?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I majored in Christian education with a minor in in Bible theology and then also a lot of emphasis and family and individual development.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Well, you had already been involved in a church. And so, I mean, did you even know that was a major? That was an option.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

No, I didn't. I, you know, when I was a junior high kid, I thought, well, you know, I kind of like the idea of being a teacher because I've had some really good teachers in my life. And one in one teacher in particular, Mr. Craig, was an amazing science teacher. He would let me make his coffee with a Bunsen burner, which I thought was kind of cool. He would smoke his cigarettes in the back and we'd hang out. And he just had time for me. He made room for me. I helped him clean up after the day. And he was just this old guy that allowed me to hang around. I hung out with the janitor. I would go and help out the janitor after school just because I didn't know any better. And it didn't include sitting down and reading a book. I watched MTV with bowls of cereal all of my life, you know. So that was just like the thing that I did. But once I realized the path that I could go on, boy, it was like life-giving. It was life-giving. When I was in high school, my senior year, Mr. Paulson, our school counselor, came to me and he pulled me out of class, which I was super excited about. And he's like, hey, eat some of my Cheez-Its with me while we talk a little bit about a program that I want to start. And I was like, okay, I'll do anything, you know, to get out of class and do anything to, you know, hang out. And he started introducing me to counseling. And I had no idea that I could possibly be a counselor. I think mostly because of all my problems, of all the anxiety I had with schooling and all the running around. I go from one place to another and trying to figure out all these things. And Mr. O'Palsen and I and a group of other students in my senior year started a program that's still going on at Monta Vista High School called Peer Counseling. And it takes seniors and juniors and connects them with freshmen who probably just need a little bit of extra love and care. That's what we said. But what we realized was these kids that we used to call them latchkey kids. We used to call them kids that didn't have too much to go home to. And so we were kind of merged together, kind of brought in together for this wonderful relationship of some people that I actually still connect with today. My high school 40 or 41 years ago, I graduated. So that's how old I am.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

That's incredible. That that program's still still there.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. And that took me to doing youth ministry, youth group type stuff. And that which is what led me to choose my major at Biola. I knew that if I chose something fun, I could get through it. But if it was just going to be a counseling class for four years, that was going to be really hard. I was going to have to learn statistics. I was going to have to learn the way the chemistry works within our body, that was going to be tough. So I was just trying to figure out the the easiest way that I could get through school, get a piece of paper that said I graduated and hang my little diploma on my wall. But it was going to be life-giving as well. So that was that was the way I chose it. And I believe that's been the best ever since.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

So when you graduated, then what? What did you do?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

So I graduated in 91. We got married right after that. And we stayed here in Southern California for a little bit. I was doing camps, I was speaking at camps and retreats. I was kind of a roadie for a couple of big wig speakers in the youth ministry circle. And so I did a lot of did a lot of things like that. I was a youth pastor. And so I hung out with junior high and high school kids all the time. And we, I, it was to me the best of the world. I was smiling a lot. I was newly married. We were excited. We had our dog. We had two cars, which was amazing at the time. And then two and a half years, three years later, we moved to Oregon. And we were youth pastors in a small to medium-sized church in Oregon. We did that for seven years. Lots of great things happening there. We had a new pastor come in and they said, hey, we want to bring in a new youth pastor. It's going to be my son. So you got to go. And I figured, well, okay, I had a nice run with this. Let's see what's happening next. But I felt in my soul that there was something special happening. And I wanted to try doing youth ministry still, but I wanted to be a pastor. I wanted to see if I had it. I had what it takes to be a pastor. I like standing in front of people. I love speaking. And my stuttering had gotten tremendously better. So I knew that there were some good things happening there, lots of great ways that my faith was showing up in my life. And it just really resonated with me that maybe I could help people in their life. And by being a pastor, I knew I would help people when I was a youth pastor. So maybe I could take those skills and have fun in church. Maybe we won't be able to play musical chairs, but maybe we could play different games as a pastor. And so I had a great time being a pastor in Oregon. In excuse me, so when we left Oregon, we went sight unseen to Nebraska. I didn't even know where Nebraska was. I had to look at the map again. And so we went sight unseen. That was that was what you did back then. If a pastor wanted to make a change and we wanted to do something really drastic, so my the director of pastors at the time, Larry, is a great guy, still a wonderful friend to me. He says, Hey Steve, I want you to, I want you to pray about something. And so we're like, okay. And we prayed and we took the church. That's the language we call it. We took the church and we moved from Oregon to Nebraska. And we were there eight years, had a wonderful time. The church was a kind of a restart. It had really had significant loss. And the Larry told me, he says, Hey, Steve, just love this congregation. Just go and love them. Just go and serve them, preach good sermons, have good programs, enjoy yourselves. By this time, we had two kids. We had two more when we were there. We had a miscarriage, but it was just amazing. We we just had a wonderful time. And then after that time was over, we thought, well, let's start something new. So we planted a church in Kansas City area. So we drove another 10 and a half hours to the Midwest more and kind of did the reverse Oregon Trail from California to the Midwest and had a wonderful time in the Kansas City area with their 20 years being a pastor of a brand new church as well as a chaplain. And the chaplaincy really surprised me of how I could be a good chaplain and probably a better chaplain than a pastor.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Can you explain chaplain versus pastor?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, so chaplaincy is all about the person that you're in front of. That's your congregation, if you will. A chaplain will become the presence of God to an individual in a traumatic situation or in a in a transition or a change of some kind. Most people, when they think about chaplains, they think about military chaplains right there in the field, kind of like pastors to the men and women that are in the service. A lot of times people think about chaplains and hospitals. So chaplains going to the hospital room and praying and offering care and support and listening and doing those kinds of things. So I've done the hospital, but what I found myself thriving in was two areas: hospice at the end of life and in the marketplace in corporate America, where chaplains are welcome to come in and provide emotional and spiritual support to the employees and their family. So those two areas became this huge opening for me. And that's when I started realizing life really happens in transitions. Life really happens when there's a pivot. Life really happens during those times.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Okay. So just going back a little bit, and these are non-denominational Christian churches. Were you tied to a certain denomination?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Yeah, I had my license as a pastor within the Four Square Church. Okay. And that was a really wonderful experience. I've been in that denomination now for 28 years, 29 years. But being a chaplain is a wonderful experience because it doesn't have a tie with a particular denomination or affiliation. So I found myself listening and caring for Catholics. I had many opportunities to listen to Muslim and Jewish and atheist or non-affiliated. And it was beautiful. I found myself being lit up. I love people in my church when I was pastoring, and I still go to church now, so I still love all those things and people, but life was really lighting up for me when I was listening and being available and having these amazing interactions and encounters with people of all walks of life, experiencing the same thing that everybody experiences changes, setbacks, heartbreaks, discouragement.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Okay, so the hospice part I understand, right? That makes sense that you would be there and needed there, but corporate America?

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yeah, that surprised me too. Because that was what I said almost in the same way, Monica. That that's like it was like, really? That's a thing? Yeah. You know, walking around the halls of corporate America or being in the settings that I've been in with agriculture, with manufacturing, with leadership, top-level experiences, as well as foreman, supervisors, managers, everything from a call center to a major metal forming organization, all different kinds. It surprised me to realize that all these guys and gals and these companies and these organizations, they need listening and care and support just like everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

But how did you get in that?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Like I had a friend of mine, Steve, who worked with an organization called Marketplace Chaplains. And basically they're a clearinghouse for people, companies that call them and say, hey, we want a a spiritual person coming in and helping to build resilience and come back and support to our to our to our employees in their companies. And so they would pretty much like match me with these companies. And so I put them off for a while. I Steve kept trying to call me, call me, and I'm like, I'm too busy, I don't have time for this. That's not a real thing, you know. And I started listening and I started realizing the kinds of places that I could support and listen in and encourage. That was my only thing. I wanted to help people. My mission in life was has always been to come to the person that's in front of my nose and support them and listen and encourage. And so I found myself in this space and it was amazing. I spent almost 20 years as a chaplain to a car dealership. And people go, car dealers? I'm like, yeah, they need they need support too. I spent time in in the back rooms of universities, back rooms of hotel and management companies, financial folks in the medical world, all these places. I was sitting in the in the break room and walking the halls of these places, just saying hello, checking in, having these amazing conversations that I would have never had if I have didn't step into their arena.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

So you talked about what happens during a pivot. You talked about, you know, the life really happens that during that transition, during that pivot. What did you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I always say that when a person smiles, genuinely smiles, it's usually because they're doing something that is life-giving or they are a part of something that is life-giving. And I wrote one of my books I wrote is called Finding Hope. And it's a children's book about a little girl who loses her smile when a grandma dies. But in the foreword of the book, I talk about how child psychologists have always said that when a child smiles in class and it's a genuine smile, you know that home is safe. You know that there's some safety in their life. And life-giving purpose for me is when I feel safe and when I help people feel safe, when I help them feel seen, when I help them feel listened to and cared for and resourced. And when I see them smile over a period of time, I know that I'm doing my my job. I'm doing my my work, or as my mom says, my good work.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

So I have a kind of a hey, this is a dumb question. How do you get paid? Like if you're a chaplain and you're a good question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Like so, and I think I don't think it's a dumb question at all. I think it's probably a question I probably should have asked a lot earlier in my in my career. So back it up all the way back to my early years of being a youth pastor. I was part of a church and they paid me a salary. I remember getting$100 a week and I was so excited. 1991.$100 a week. I was getting four. If it if it was, if there was five weeks in that month, you know, oh man, I was living large and have no idea what it meant to pay bills like that, you know, because I was still under the umbrella of my dad and, you know, going to college, being raised, and things like that. When I got married, my work became more valuable, my time became more valuable. So I would be doing work as a youth pastor, so I'd be getting a little bit of money that way. And then I would also speak at camps and I would speak at at retreats and I would go to a conference and I would do a workshop and I would speak at those workshops. I would hang out with kids and somebody would throw me a bone, you know, of, you know, hey, here's$20. Go get yourself some in and out, you know. And I was just like, yeah, this is great. I'm really feeling loved. The older I get, the more I realize, oh, this is not sustainable. So I have to, I have to make myself more of a wage. I have to start acting my my wage, you know. And so the churches that I was part of, they were paying me. And then when I became a uh chaplain, most of the chaplain work that I've done, not all, but most of it, have been a paid effort. So when I was doing hospital chaplaincy, I would, I would be paid for that. When I was doing hospice, hospice actually paid me the most I'd ever made because it was funded by the state or funded by a med. Medicare or you know, they had regulations. And so that was a wonderful experience. And I actually had the opportunity to be part of the policy making for Missouri for some wage increases for hospice workers, which was very exciting. And so now, as I look back the last 10 years, I've done everything from having five W-2s just to make it work. In April of last year, I went full funded model, which means that I'm kind of like a missionary raising money to do what I do. So it's it's my goal, my hope that as I do counseling now, grief and loss counseling, I would never have to give an invoice to a hurting family ever again. And it would be my choice to be able to go to any conference or any church or any company or anybody that needed some support. It would be my goal that I would never have to be paid by that person again. Because usually when I'm going in to help something or help someone, it's at their crossroads. And nobody knows what crossroads look like. So giving an invoice is like, hey, you got 30 days, but I'd really like this to be paid in 10 because I gotta turn my lights on, you know. And so it's just a different, it's just a different life. But it's been one that's been really, really neat.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

All right. So you were in the Midwest doing this. How did you make your way back to SoCal?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, that was a that's a story too. My wife and I were married 29 years, so that's forecasting there, for foreshadowing the story there. We ended up having a divorce, and uh, it was very unfortunate. Nobody wanted it, but it was what was happening. And I knew that I was gonna have a new start. I talked about new starts all the time with others. I had already gone through some cancer and I had gone through now my divorce. So I was like, well, what am I gonna do? And I started dreaming, I started thinking about going back to California, and all of my kids were like, Dad, you should totally go back. You love California, you love in and out, you love being on the beach, you walk like a Californian. I'm like, what is a California walk like? I don't know, but I just loved it. And I came back to California at least once a year to speak or to train or to do counseling, and so it was just that was a natural thing that happened. And so my oldest son Mike flew out. We packed up our my apartment and my towed my car, and we took a taco trail from Missouri all the way to California. We stopped every week we had tacos at least once a day, and we found the best tacos all along the way. It was amazing, it was amazing. That's a that's a podcast just in itself, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

That is awesome. So, how long have you been back in California?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Been back since 2021, and I was in Oceanside for six months, moved to Brea, and when I got to Brea, I really felt like a new start was gonna happen. Something new was going to go on, and it meant being connected with someone. I didn't like being alone. I did not enjoy being solo, being single. So I put myself out there with some dating sites, and I got connected in with this site called Hinge, which I used to call cringe, because you just never know what you're gonna get. And I had changed my parameters a little bit, my geography, so that it would reflect 25 miles in in a circle of Southern California. I lived in Brea at the time, and lo behold, and someone in Laverne was doing the same thing and writing the same types of things that I was writing. The algorithms connected. And as soon as I logged on, I saw her profile. As soon as she logged on, she saw my profile. And thankfully, she said, Okay, well, let's see. He doesn't look so bad. And I said, Man, she's really cute, you know. And so we met for coffee and she smelled amazing, she looked amazing when she walked. It was like slow motion in her the wind was blowing her hair back, it was just perfect. And we it was just this amazing thing that we met in Diamond Bar, and next thing you know, we're we're connecting over a couple of dates, and then we talk some more, and we know where it's going. Oh when you're when you're old, you don't have to waste time of trying to figure out is this gonna work. We talked to my kids, we talked to her kids, we introduced each other to the important people in our lives. And 2023, we got married, and we've been married almost three years.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Thank you. It's been wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

So you have had this life that started as a struggle and traumatic, as you said, and then ended up in an adult life dedicated to just wanting to help other people. And you're you know, not a lot of monetary reward, but you are you're happy.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah. I, you know, it's funny. My friends say, Steve, when you die, are you gonna have anything? You know, and I'd laugh and I I tell my kids all the time, I said, Well, but don't spend your$25 that you're gonna get in from inheritance, you know, all in one place. I I I laugh. I'm I'm grateful for the monetary things that I have. And that's never been something that I've really wanted. I I never wanted to pursue money. I have always wanted to pursue people. I and it's it sounds so corny, I guess, you know. And living in California, oh gosh, that's that's hard. That's hard sometimes. But there's been times where my where I've had a more of a champagne type taste and my budget is cheap beer. But in general, I have always been taken care of. I've I've always had my faith has sustained me, and I believe that, you know, God has been there for me and all of my endeavors. And I don't know too many people who do what I do without, you know, the invoices and the high fees. You know, I'm I speak and I train all over the country. I'm starting to be a little more global now, and I do my work and I have a very reasonable and a very nominal medium-level pay scale, if you will, and I have a great time. I come home exhausted from the conferences I speak at because I've given my all and I have a day of rest and I get back on it.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

So what's what's in the future for you?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, I think I want to do this until I can't anymore. I'm 58 and I feel probably I'm at my best that I've ever been physically, emotionally. I'm probably at much better of a place that I've ever been. I'm very grounded. I feel ready for the next season. And and you can call it the fourth quarter or the second half of the fourth quarter, or maybe, you know, some of my friends who are older than me, they call it the fifth quarter, you know, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not that old yet. But I've got two grandchildren that I just adore, and we have a wonderful time with our children. So I'm gonna keep doing this as much as I can. And when I start realizing that, you know, I'm not able to listen as well or my mind is not working as much, then I'll go work at Costco, I guess, you know. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Looking back, what would you tell your 20-year-old self, knowing what you know now?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

That's such a great question. I think I would say that having people speak into your life. And I tell these college students, high school students all the time, that there are three really important relationships that everyone should have, especially when they're starting out or in the middle of their I don't know what's gonna happen time. Three most important relationships. The first one is a really good friend, someone who just knows you better than you. They can call you on your BS, they know what you're gonna say, they finish your sentences, they know what you like to eat and drink, and they will bring you surprises, but they're not afraid to give you some feedback. And feedback is a breakfast of champions for people that are in the middle of, I don't know, the hardest part of their life. They need feedback. They don't need decisions made, they just need some affirmations, they need some somebody to call them on what they're doing and and how they're doing it. So that's the first one. They're really, really good personal friend. The second one is is someone who does their job but does it better. So this is a peer leader, someone who's maybe just a little bit older, but can help them get more established by helping them take better steps, helping them see themselves, what helping them realize that they're not as cute and smart and and good at everything that they touch. These people are usually ones that can help them take better steps, make better decisions. And then the third one is a professional, someone like a counselor, someone like a good pastor, someone like a good life direction person or a coach, someone who really knows how to listen to someone and help give guidance, not make those decisions. I don't make anybody, I don't fix anybody. I just draw things out of people and I listen and I ask questions and I ask better questions. And sometimes you have to say, so is this what you really want to do? And sometimes nobody asks those questions because they're afraid or or whatever. So, so I I think I would I think I would answer the question, what would I say to a 20, 21-year-old, Steve? Make sure you have these three solid types of people in your life and you'll do much better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Well, thank you. You've had an incredible life and uh thank you for being such a great human. I mean, really, you've I'm sure you've changed the lives of hundreds of people and got them through really tough times. And that's that's important. That's a gift. We need more people like that. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

You're welcome. You're welcome. It's a humbling experience, and I don't take it lightly when I hear people's stories. I am humbled and I'm set back and I'm amazed at the opportunity that I have to step into their story with them and to listen and to care and to help them learn how to smile again.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Yeah, I wish you all the best.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribe, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. At Keystone Network, we're helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Minor at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.