Recovery Week Reflections

by on September 19, 2025

Dr. Dan Allender and Linda Royster, LCMHC—two of the leaders of our Recovery Week experiences—come together to reflect on the heart and history of this sacred work.

Dan shares about the origins of Recovery Week in 1988, a gathering that began with a bold hope: that healing is possible for those carrying the wounds of childhood sexual abuse. Linda offers her own story of first encountering The Wounded Heart and the ways it opened her to the possibility of transformation. 

Together, they invite us into a deeper understanding of what it means to hold both the personal and the collective—acknowledging that no one suffers in isolation, but always within systems and contexts that shape our stories. Linda speaks to the profound intersections of racial trauma and sexual abuse, and the complex layers of shame that can silence and fragment survivors. 

Recovery Weeks create a space to move toward those particularities of the harm you’ve experienced—where you may want to freeze, minimize, or look away—and to take the courageous step of naming what is true. The goal is not to erase or resolve shame, but to walk through it, opening the way for transformation.

This conversation is an honoring of the decades of work poured into Recovery Weeks, and a heartfelt invitation: to those who come, your presence is already a profound act of courage. Our hope is that you might encounter a deeper healing that makes way for new life.

This episode engages the topic of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.

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Episode Transcript:

Dan: Much of the work of the Allender Center has been built on based on sexual abuse and addressing those issues in the community of God, but inviting people to engage something of what their story holds with regard to sexual abuse. And certainly one of the most important weeks of my life, every year for the last 34 years has been doing a Recovery Week for men who have been abused and women who have been abused. And one of my deepest, sweetest allies doing this work has been Linda Royster. So Linda, welcome to talking about Recovery Week, sexual abuse, the intersection of racial harm, and the reality of what it’s like to engage the stories of those who bear so much heartbreaking shame. So welcome, Linda. To add, you are this Strategic Alliance Manager, which I never know what titles mean, but I love it. I think it’s a great title to basically say you have woven so many communities, you weave them into a relationship that allows for truth to invite each and every human heart to dignity, to honor, and ultimately to shalom. And you are a lead instructor in the Allender Center. So I’ll say again, so good to be with you.

Linda: Thank you. Thank you, Dan. It’s been a privilege to have been an ally in this work, and congratulations on 34 years of something that came out of your heart and your yes to working with people who’ve been victims of childhood trauma, victims of sexual abuse. So it’s been an honor to be on this journey and work with you.

Dan: Thank you. Again, there are so many stories. This work began in the December of 1988 because we had so many people who were engaging some of the material from The Wounded Heart asking where do we go to begin the process? Because my therapist doesn’t seem to have any knowledge or ability or desire to engage these categories, which up to that point was pretty much true of me, even though I had a Masters of Divinity master’s in counseling, PhD in Counseling Psychology, I didn’t literally have a single second on the topic of trauma or abuse, particularly with regard to sexual abuse. So I can say on so many levels that the cry and the honesty of men and women who simply wanted to engage what had no context to engage was what set a number of us over the edge to begin the process of creating this. My question to you is how did you get into this wild and truly wonderful work?

Linda: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate the question and I love to set the context by saying that I, many years ago was a participant in the Recovery Week experience, and I became a participant because I had come to a place in my own story where I felt like I was coming undone at the seams. So I had mentors at the time of whom James and Cynthia White walked closely with them since I’ve been 19 years old. So they were a critical part of my life, and they saw that I wasn’t well, that I was coming undone at the seams. And they referred me to a therapist. I began work with her and she gave me your book, The Wounded Heart, and was one of the most amazing and terrifying reads that I’d ever experienced. On the one hand, kind of foregoing sleep, couldn’t put the book down, but at the same time wanting to toss the book, which I know you’ve probably heard that phrase multiple times. And also thinking, who is this man? And how does he know something of the struggle or war that I’m now experiencing regarding my own stories and stories that I yet to name or tell or share? And so through the course of reading through the book and getting connected, finding out more about you, and at that time I think you were doing Wounded Heart conferences, so I wound up at a Wounded Heart conference in North Carolina. And that in some ways is kind of as they would say, the rest is history. But that opened up my experience of going to a Recovery Week, and that changed my life.

Dan: I hope for the listeners, there is something where you go, how did that happen? Because even though I was part of it, there is still a mystery and the abiding sense of both wonder had such, I mean just deep, deep gratitude on my part that you had the courage to step in. And I’m sure without question, the idea that I would be leading Recovery Weeks not just with me, but that you would create a Wounded Heart Recovery Week for people of color. It’s been one of our dreams for…

Linda: Many, many years.

Dan: Way too long. But that’s where I want to intersect between this. So take me, we’re going to just go back and forth on this. How did you get not just into a Recovery Week, but why and how did you begin to imagine a Recovery Week for women of color?

Linda: Yeah, yeah. I remember the experiences of being at a Recovery Week, Recovery Week as a participant, and it was amazing and life-changing. And my heart longed for faces that looked like mine. I was the only woman, black woman in that experience. And I knew that I was being transformed, that I was being freed from a lot of things that I was being seen and seen well in some areas, but there were some areas that were missed. And I left that weekend feeling like, man, this was good. But there was a whole swath of my life or story that really didn’t get engaged. And I longed for that for myself, and I longed for it for other women, particularly other people, including men, and not just black people, but I longed for it, especially for women of color. And so after a long story that has so many twists and turns, I wound up as a student at the Seattle School, which was called Mars Hill at the time. And upon graduation, that first year of graduation, I was invited to co-lead or to be one of the facilitators at a Recovery Week. And again, it was an experience of a phenomenal healing and breakthroughs and being able to journey with people from places of darkness and shame into more freedom and light, but still realizing that I was often the only black woman there. Or if there happened to be women of color, it might be one or two. And I knew that this was something special. This was something special and necessary and I do believe sent from God. It felt heavenly in that sense, absolutely sent from God. And that began, or at least it continued, the desire to have a Recovery Week designed by and for women of color. And so for years, we prayed, thought about it, talked about it until one day we just decided, we decided that we were going to test this out and see. And so we are in our second year just completed our second year of the Racial Trauma and Healing Recovery Week where we make space for up to 10 women of color to on site and to enter into stories of trauma that intersects not only the stories of trauma and particularly sexual abuse, but more than anything we bring into the center, the trauma and the impact of racism, the racialized trauma that’s often layered. And I have a particular theory and approach to thinking about racial trauma and sexual abuse. And so we step into those waters and it is beautiful and fraught with danger all at the same time.

Dan: Oh, and glory, if you will. The danger is that when you address the issues of shame, which is endemic, absolutely ubiquitous with regard to the effects of sexual abuse, one of the things that we address and all work with regard to abuse is that evil’s intent is to always bind desire and the experience of your body being touched, even though it was in the context of a violent, violent, even if it’s not physically violent, a violent degrading of your integrity. And at that, there is such a sense of heartache and horror. But when the body’s touched, yes, there’s betrayal, yes, there’s powerlessness, but there’s a sense of my body felt even if it’s 0.01%, some degree of arousal, something that felt alive. And when that conjunction of feeling something in my body, but bound to something so degrading, there is such a deep, deep bondage of shame. And therefore we always link that to a level of contempt of violence, orientation of judgment against ourselves sent against others. So I’ll just add this. So when we’re dealing with people of color who have often grown up in a world in which there have been judgements, accusations, contempt from the majority culture, then we’ve got layer upon layer upon layer, almost into fatigable, drawn together in a way that it’s very, very hard to separate. And that’s why I’m so proud of you. I’m so thrilled that we… you…

Linda: Your presence is very much felt at these particular RTH Recovery Weeks because we’re, I say we, my colleagues and I are very much aware that we are in that space because of the work that you did and the framework that you’ve set, and that the work that you’ve pioneered, really, that has allowed us to come to a place where we get to use something of the frame that you’ve established as part of the work that we enter into.

Dan: Thank you. And I do say we, but I also need to say you. So though it may not, shall we say by pronoun disruption, you have really taken this and so proud of the labor you and your team have invited. But in both worlds, the Recovery Week general, the Recovery Week for people of color, we’re addressing shame and we’re addressing contempt. So I would love to hear from you how, what’s the process of addressing this war that’s inevitable with regard to abuse?

Linda: Yeah, yeah. Part of what you’ve named a bit ago, arousal that’s connected to shame, that’s been connected to contempt. And some of what we don’t often talk about regarding racism or the impact of racialized trauma is that it’s often connected to arousal. And what I mean by that is when you’re cultivated in an environment where the lesson every day is proximity to whiteness, proximity to a kind of audiology that will allow you to climb the ladder, that will allow you to have access and to certain worlds that will allow you to have access to resources. And there’s something about living in the reality of the gaze of whiteness, right? Whether it’s literal or metaphorical, living in the gaze of whiteness sometimes creates a kind of desire or that kind of arousal that says, oh, I want that little bit of relief that comes with proximity to whiteness. And so connected to that, there can be a level of shame as a person of color to begin to acknowledge, oh, I actually do want some of the goodness of what I perceive of being connected or privileged by whiteness. So that is one level of shame that we’re having to address. And in a weekend like that, in addition to the shame of being abused and taking on the blame of having been abused, that why were you this precocious little girl? Or why did you wear that thing? Or why didn’t you tell? Or all the why’s that question that the questions that come up, that challenge, and that also open up space for contempt that we would hold for ourselves because we didn’t do something to stop it. And sometimes when we did tell we weren’t believed. And so we’re having to expose. So one level of shame is, oh, I’m having to deal with my internalized racism. The other level of shame is having to deal with, oh, my word I told and no one believed me, or even deeper. And sometimes a place of most pain is I was abused and my body was aroused. That there are parts of me that, and I say this word like I hold it loosely when I say it, enjoy it. Or in some ways, your body receive pleasure from the abuse that was happening. If we can remember to integrate the collective with a personal, if we can begin to remember to integrate the micro with the macro that some of those same dynamics not only played out personally, but they play out in the collective as a person of color and a predominantly white society/culture, sometimes those are those processes that begin to play out where we play into the whatever role we have to play into in order to gain a bit of advantage. And that doesn’t come without contempt.

Dan: Oh, good Lord. Yes. And another word for that is grooming. Grooming can be done by a youth pastor working to solicit connection, sense of care and protection, and utilizing that framework of their own spiritual power to create a connection that they use two to eight months later to begin the process of a kind of touch that may not be directly called sexual abuse. What would be a way of bonding the body in a way in which when a line is crossed, a profound impropriety, a violation of dignity, that indeed abuse itself, almost always, we know 93% of abuse is perpetrated by someone whom the victim knew beforehand. So if we change that from the youth pastor to cultural grooming, that if you want to make advances in the context of this corporate world, your nappy hair needs to look more presentable, enjoyable for a white person and therefore not offensive. And now what we’re beginning to say is, look for those individuals, be it white or a person of color, you’ve got to deal with the reality that there was more happening than just the event, tragic, of your abuse. And that’s one of the reasons why people are very surprised. Maybe they are, and maybe only just slightly, that we’re beginning to ask them about their family of origin. And again, I do not want anyone to hear that the child you loved was abused because of your failure as a parent. Nevertheless, many, many times a child is selected by an abuser because they have a very strong sense, you’ll not be believed and you’ll not be protected. So when that’s the case, we’ve got family of origin as a system, not just individuals, but a way of being in the world. Then we’ve got neighborhoods, and then we’ve got churches. And then what we’ve got is a larger theological framework that says, even if there’s been harm, you just need to forgive. And if you’ll just forgive the things that you’re having to address will be resolved. You don’t need to do this kind of internal work. And I’m personally seeing vastly more over the last five years, maybe even more like the last two or three years, this turn against history. We have too much information about slavery in the Smithsonian. We need to reinvigorate those confederate generals who we took down the statues of, well, they’re just part of history. There’s no meaning with regard to the effect of their presence today. So all I’m saying is we have a natural, strong, personal and collective commitment to not want to face the past and want to erase it, change it, forgive it, disengage. And one of the things that we do in a Recovery Week is to honor the heartache by stepping into the particularity of your past, including the role that you played, not only in your family of origin, but the role you played in some sense in the larger culture. Thoughts?

Linda: Absolutely. It’s the integration and that fluid connection between the personal and the collective that’s playing out all the time. The individual but also it’s the sense that you’re not a siloed being, that you exist in a context. And that context exists within multiple contexts, and they’re all converging and interacting all the time. So to address the personal or the person is also to, in some degree, addressing the collective and to address the collective, to some degree, it’s highlighting and getting at something of the personal. So we can’t really honestly do one without the other because it’s so intricately woven together. It feels inextricable as we think about. Can we tease it out? Not really. Not really.

Dan: Well, let’s just be blunt. I for many years attempted to address the personal without addressing the collective. Because as a white man, my collective, the water that I swim in I didn’t address because at least at certain levels, I was not open to the experience of black men and black women and other people of color as to the intersection of shame upon shame upon shame, but shame from very different, shall we say, currents in the same river. So talk a little bit about how we engage shame.

Linda: Part of the way that we step into shame is sometimes we end up heightening a sense of shame by inviting people to name and naming more with particularity. And so it’s one thing to name, as you would often say, at 30,000 feet. And if that’s the best, that’s available and accessible at the moment, wonderful. But we always encourage people to go a little bit further. I’ve heard you say so many times that if you open the door, you’re kind of going to put your foot in the door and then you’re not going to force your way in. But if people open a door, then you certainly will utilize that opportunity to invite them to a little more. And by that we mean not only a cognitive engagement, but paying attention to what’s happening in your body. As you think about or even lean into telling your story, what is it that you say and what is it that you don’t say? And so in some ways, we’re really wanting to heighten the sense of shame by inviting people to name with more particularity and paying attention to the places that people want to freeze or people want to run away or people want to minimize. We want to, and it sounds cruel to want to desire that, but if we heighten the shame in some ways, we can begin to get closer to a process of healing that’s really going to end up being transformative or transformational. Because if we don’t get close to naming what is true, we keep people locked in a cycle, and I think we end up keeping people in a fragmented place.

Dan: Yeah, so brilliant. Do you know where I learned about putting your foot?

Linda: No.

Dan: Well, just quickly aside, at age 16, I got arrested for a number of things, had to go before the court, and instead of being sent to juvie in this case, I was told that I had to get a job and I sold fuller brush. And one of the first techniques when you knock on a door to offer your free product to put your one in the door, yes. And they literally said, don’t push too far, don’t be too obvious, but if you can just get your toe so that it’s harder to slam. And they literally made me buy a pair of boots that had steel toes because you are going to get people slamming the door. So there is that sense of, look, we’re not going to intrude. We will never break and enter into your life, but because you have had the courage and honor to make the choice to come to a Recovery Week, we will honor your desire even when you’re terrified to just keep it a little harder to avoid. So on one side, I think there are too many people who try to help people, especially with regard to abuse, resolve shame. So they do wonderful but not effective things like we all have felt this in the effort to universalize shame, there is a degree to which it’s a palliative that lessens a little bit for a moment some of the effect of shame, but it never deals with the core issue of the story and the arousal. So opening the door to naming part of the harm of our family of origin, something of how we were set up and groomed, gets us closer to being able to name where your body not only felt betrayed and enraged, powerless, and where you shut down so much of the desire of your heart, but where there is this bondage of desire and shame where there is degradation. And that’s one of the things that is such a heartbreaking reality for people of color, somewhat universally. It’s their very face, their very being has been spoken to directly and indirectly with such degradation.

Linda: That’s part of what can feel like an added cruelty of inviting people, particularly people of color. Not that it’s not true for all humanity, but especially so for people of color to invite folks to come back to their bodies can feel particularly cruel because the way of survival has been to dissociate, to disconnect so that you can survive the day so that you can survive the micro and the macroaggressions. But to carve out a time where we are intentional about inviting people to say, yeah, we know you can think your way through it, but we also want you to bring your body into this space is both risky, it’s terrifying, can feel cruel, but immensely rewarding if you can stick with the process and pay attention to a good, good body that’s been cursed by multiple systems.

Dan: Important word cursing, because now we’re not just talking about my judgment of myself, that somehow what was wrong with me, that in those first encounters, and I’m speaking personally and those first encounters with sexual harm, part of my body was aroused. And that what is wrong with you? How could you have not just allowed it, but even more pointedly, how could your body have felt intrigue or arousal? And in that, all I can tell you is I think a lot of my addictions, a lot of my drug use was an effort to quell to submit something of the erratic, crazy, mad arousal in a way in which I could then tolerate being who I am. But when you add that, even though I found many people mocking my face, mocking my nose, mocking the nature of my non-blonde hair, there’s still something different about being a person of color, having attributes of your body assaulted and degraded in a way in which you got to look like me. So again, what I want to be able to underscore is dealing with shame is really the key of what we believe we offer. But in doing so, it’s a huge cost, not only for you, the participant, but for all of us because we can’t help you address your shame unless we step into our own. And it’s not something that once you resolve, I’m good, I’m done, I’m free. So how have you in this long, difficult but beautiful process, how have you changed?

Linda: That’s such a beautiful and scary question all at the same time because I recognize I’m still in process but I have changed in significant ways from going from being terrified of letting anyone know that I had stories of trauma to telling my story rather publicly and rather frequently without turning against myself or holding contempt for myself. One of the most significant changes has been to coming, it’s been coming to love the younger part of myself that was so dazzling and lovely and invited and just simply got a lot of attention rather than cursing that part of myself that I brought it on myself because I was just so precocious as a little girl, it’s my fault. But getting to bless like, oh, that’s the way I was created, and it’s honorable and good and lovely. So there has been an ever shifting or an ever turn toward that younger part of myself rather than wanting to put her in a corner and blame her for all the things that happen so I can begin to turn with kindness toward myself, and it’s an ever turning. And to say that it’s not a hundred percent complete, I am still in process. But I want to go back to something you said a little bit earlier about how you learn, how you learned the idea of putting your toe in the door. I just think about how you’ve been able to translate that to the work that we do and therapy and the work that we do in story work, is that that same, you’ve used something from your story and now you’re using it on behalf of other people to create goodness in the sense of inviting people into their story. You don’t want to get your toe crushed, but if there is an invitation, you’re going to take them up on the invitation. And I’ve seen you do that so brilliantly in the work that you do of you don’t skirt away. If there is an opening, you tend to lean in, not aggressively or violently, but you do tend to lean in. And I bring that up just to have us think about, that’s what we do in Recovery Week, is that we invite people to think about their story and the particularity, but also with the knowledge that you can use, you can utilize as a guide, the things that have been brought to light in your story, the things that have been true about your story. Those are often the things that the spirit of the living God wants to do and utilize when you lean into engaging other people in this story, whether you do that professionally or in your friendship circles, that nothing of our life or story is wasted. And so that we get to bring in all those. And so something that seemingly is as simple as the idea of putting your toe in the door oh my word, how that’s been such a model for how we lean into story work.

Dan: Well, thank you. The fact is, I don’t think I’ve ever, not because I’m ashamed, I just haven’t even thought about it, ever put words to the fact that I sold Fuller Brush and frankly, quite successfully for the six months that I was under probation the day I could stop selling Fuller Brush, I tragically went back to selling other products that made a whole lot more money than combs and shampoo. But there was something about that experience of people want to talk. I think I learned that people, if you just pay truly, somewhat sincere attention to their life, and oftentimes hair products, soap, it is the issue of literally making something dirty, clean, making something you perceive to be less attractive, more attractive, became a conversation into people’s lives. So honestly, until you mentioned the word toe, I haven’t thought about that for kind of like 50 years. Is that right? Almost 60 years. Oh, 60 years. I think that the theme of what we’re underscoring is what we think to be tragic is heartbreaking. Yet there’s always this turn that what you would perceive to be cursable, God intends to open the door for you to bless, and this is the playground of Jesus, the playground of when we engage, we don’t bring Jesus in a what in literature is called a Deus Absconditus. Like here’s the problem. Now Jesus is the hook that will take you out of the problem, but Jesus is in every detail of you coming to name your past. And in that bringing honor, kindness, sweetness. But as we begin to deal with the rage, our murder, and not only murder toward others, but more our murder toward ourselves and something of the consumption of lust as we deal with our own brokenness, it’s the playground of God to create the kind of beauty where the past begins to be used for glory. I love that there are no realms that Jesus cannot redeem, but not just redeem, use for his glory. And I think we’re both surprised by still.

Linda: Incredibly, because it feels so counter-cultural, so radically different. The awful things that happen to us, we don’t want to look at it. We want to tuck it away and forget about it. But Jesus is inviting us to say, look and look more closely. Look, not that I wanted those horrible things to happen to you, but oh, how I can utilize those things for your own good and glory, but also for other people that it doesn’t have to be only a story of tragedy, but it can also be a story of hope and goodness that touches our own lives, but also concentric circles or like a wave that flows to other lives that we get to, among all people, I think that we get to look at our stories with tenderness and kindness, but have hope among all people that leads, causes me to think of the gospel. The gospel is a story of many things, but it is no less a story of trauma. And we are told to look at that story. And remember, we’re told to share the gospel, to share the good news. A story of trauma can be good news. How is that? I think that’s one of the most radically transformative realities when I look at my story and the stories of the people that we’ve worked with, is that those stories of trauma, somehow Jesus transforms them into good news, not only for us, but for other people. And that means that good news is deliverance is healing. It’s a form of resurrection.

Dan: Well, my dear friend, you often speak about it with another word,

Linda: Shalom.

Dan: Say more.

Linda: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Shalom. That reality that we have an ongoing, that we’re meant for this ongoing or perpetual experience of goodness, we’re meant for wholeness. We’re meant to have a soundness of being at our core. We’re meant to live with provision, and we’re meant to live well with the collective that happens to have personal benefit.

Dan: Just happens…

Linda: Just happens to have personal benefit.

Dan: I don’t know how that happens, but somehow, again, the idea of mutuality, this is what evil wanted for the abuser to be able to create an intersection of a body, of touch, where you felt bound in their pleasure and in that bound to shame. So if we can say evil’s intent, and I’ve had people describe to me the experience of being abused where their abuser said literally words like this, you will never forget me. Whenever your body feels alive, I will always be with you. Can you not hear not just how hideous and Satanic, but also how intentionally attempting to take away what Jesus says, lo behold, I am with you and will be with you to the end of the age. So that clarity of at a personal level and at a collective level, we’re addressing an unseen realm that has intention to create something that is the absolute adverse of what you’ve defined as Shalom. And in that it’s so crucial that we have the ability to move narratively between what is seen, what is unseen and unseen literally with the work of the spirit of God unseen as well with the work of Satan and its attempt to capture, control and consume the soul in a darkness that only is bound to shame and contempt.

Linda: Yeah, the words that come to mind as you talk about that dark binding is ownership. It’s ownership. The abuser and certainly evil seeks to create a kind of ownership over you, over your body, over your experience of pleasure in erasing any sense of freedom. That’s part of the kingdom of God, any kind of liberty that’s meant to be part of the kingdom of God in the world of Shalom, it’s ownership and isolation to keep you from community. We were not made to live in isolation. We were made for community and abusers. The system of abuse, the evil one seeks to silo and isolate everyone and lock people into a sense of hopelessness, or at least the sense that it’s just going to be this same old, same old every day with no opportunity for growth or flourishing or change. This is just what it is. But that is so antithetical to the kingdom of God and what we’ve been made for this. And I think that even that idea that we were made for goodness, we were made for Shalom, for a community that’s both mutual and reciprocal and creates space for flourishing, we were made for that. We were not made for fragmentation, we’re not made for isolation or to have someone else own us, enslave us. We were not made for that. So that premise alone is so radical for some of us to think, oh my word. We were made to live with that kind of goodness.

Dan: Amen. We’ve covered a lot, but let me just be very, I don’t often get blamed for being practical, but get a book Wounded Heart, Healing the Wounded Heart. It’s a great beginning. If you want to go a little further, we’ve got at the Allender Center, an online course taking you through the lives of remarkable men and women and good teaching to invite you to the material recovery. But if you want to go further, yeah, our Recovery Week for men, for women, you’re a person of color, indeed, the work that Linda and her team is doing. But I’m also going to suggest another thing. Look, every time I listen to you, Linda, my heart is both moved, captured, encouraged, and you are a phenomenal person and presence. And you know what? If you’ve got any capacity to invite this woman into your church, into your world, into a home group, she’ll do the work of getting on a plane and traveling for the right amount of money. Nonetheless, what we’re saying is if this material stirs something in you, then don’t let it sit. It’s maybe the spirit inviting you to that percolation of there’s more. There’s more. And it’s good. Slavery. Hell, no. Freedom. Heaven, yes. Contempt, shame. Hell, no. Delight and honor. Heaven, yes. And we want to be those, and we are those, who are part of putting our foot on the neck of evil, but also inviting you to the playground of redemption that really is ahead for you. So Linda, thank you. Thank you. At so many levels. Thank you.

Linda: Thank you. It’s an absolute honor and privilege. Thank you.