What if learning to die well could actually teach us to live better? That’s the big question we’re diving into today with JoAnne Chitwood, a seasoned hospice nurse with nearly 40 years of experience. Joanne’s seen it all—extraordinary courage, profound grace, and heartbreaking goodbyes—so she’s got some serious wisdom to share on how we can navigate the end of life with compassion and dignity. We chat about her new book, "Please Help Me Die Well," which offers powerful insights and seven promises to help caregivers and families support their loved ones through this sacred journey. If you’ve ever wondered how to have those tough conversations about death or how to approach life with a little more urgency and heart, you’re in for a treat. Grab your favorite drink, kick back, and let’s get into it! Imagine diving deep into the concept that learning how to die well can actually teach us how to live our lives to the fullest. That's the kind of thought-provoking journey we embark on in this episode, where we chat with Joanne Chitwood, a seasoned hospice nurse who brings almost 40 years of experience to the table. She’s seen it all—extraordinary courage, heart-wrenching goodbyes, and those miraculous moments of clarity that come in life’s final days. JoAnne’s insights are not just about the end of life; they’re about redefining our approach to living. You’ll hear her share her personal experiences, including the profound lessons she learned from her patients, and how those moments have shaped her understanding of life, love, and loss. Through her new book, *Please Help Me Die Well*, she offers a roadmap for caregivers and families, emphasizing the vital importance of open conversations about death. It’s a gentle nudge for all of us to live better lives by facing our mortality head-on—because let’s face it, we’re all going to be on one side of that coin eventually. So why not make the most of the time we have?

Takeaways:

• Learning to die well can teach us the art of living better and more fully.
• Our most vulnerable moments often hold the deepest lessons about life, love, and connection.
• JoAnne Chitwood's decades of hospice nursing reveal extraordinary courage and the importance of compassionate care.
• Conversations about death should be open and honest to relieve fear and foster connection.
• Many people regret not prioritizing relationships and experiences before it's too late, emphasizing the importance of seizing the moment.
• Building a supportive community can profoundly change the way we cope with grief and loss, as demonstrated in Joanne's experiences.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.joannechitwood.com

What if learning to die well could actually teach us to live better? What if some of life's deepest lessons were found not in our memories of success, but in our most vulnerable moments?

Our guest today has spent nearly four decades walking alongside people of one of most life's most sacred journeys. She's witnessed extraordinary courage, profound grace, heartbreaking goodbyes, and remarkable stories of hope.

Joanne Chitwood is a registered nurse, author, speaker, and retreat leader, and trauma Counselor.

With almost 40 years of hospice nursing experience, she has helped thousands of healthcare workers, patients, and families navigate the end of life challenges with strength, confidence, and compassion.

Her new book, please Help Me Die well, offers powerful insights into caring for those in their final days and helping people appreciate approach death with greater peace and dignity. Joanne, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Reverend Haney. I'm really happy to be here with you.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We. We all go through this at some point in time.

And I just was on Facebook with a friend of mine whose mother suddenly passed away and she's dealing with some grief, and so I. We're always gonna. We're always gonna be on one side of this coin or the other. So it's an important conversation to have.

Yes. And I just was on the other side of that coin. My mother passed two weeks ago today, so. And I was there with her.

That's always good. I'm so glad you could be there with her. And. And we're gonna dig into that as well. But thank you for. For taking the time to.

To share what you've learned on your journey with this. Yeah. I want to ask you my favorite question to kind of get us warmed up. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Oh, the best piece I've ever received. Go travel now. I. One of my hospice patients told me that probably 20 years ago, maybe longer, maybe it was 30 years ago.

And he just grabbed me and said, I waited until I retired to travel. Don't do what I did. You need to travel now. And I took him seriously. I had been putting it off and thinking, well, someday.

And I just started taking whatever. If a low price ticket came through to go to Milan, Italy. I grabbed my daughter, got the tickets, and we went. Even if it was just for a few days.

We went horseback riding in the base in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Unguided horseback ride, 125km around. We just. I went to Alaska and worked there for three years.

I just, I. I traveled every chance I got, and it was really, really good advice.

Yeah, that is good advice because I've heard people say, yeah, when I retire, I'm going to do this. And then they pass away or get sick and can't travel and. And all those things on their bucket list never actually happen.

So, yeah, and that's what happened to this man. So he was determined to spread the word, do not do what I did,.

And do not wait. Right?

Yeah.

So, Joanne, many Christians view their work as a vocation, a calling which God serves, helping them serve others. Looking back, how did you recognize your hospice care work as. As a calling?

Oh, from the very beginning, I. I became a hospice nurse because a hospice volunteer. And this was back even before the Medicare hospice benefit. This was back in the. I'm a dinosaur.

But there was a hospice volunteer in the early days of hospice who. I was working in a nursing home and taking care of his mom. And he said to me one day, he said, joanne, you are hospice nurse.

And I said, what is hospice? And he gave me a brochure, and I studied into it, and I thought, you know, this combines everything that is important to me.

This gives me the chance to really minister to my patients, not just race up and down halls giving medications. So it fit my worldview, it fit my personality, it fit my dreams about what I could do to make a difference.

And so it was very definitely a spiritual decision.

I'm curious, Joanne, we all have some specialized things that we take that help us do our work better. What was some classes or workshops that you took that you found particularly helpful for the unique work that you do?

I have taken lots of them. I've actually taught more than I've taken. But I did read. I've read Elizabeth Kubler Ross's book, book on Dying. Well, on Dying, on death and Dying.

I think that's another. And there are several. Really back in those days, there were several really prominent speakers, and I would go to events and.

And then I. I got my chpn, my. Oh, what are those initials stand for now? But it's the. It's the certification for a hospice nurse.

And I learned a lot from that, but mostly I learned from a seasoned hospice nurse. When I took my first hospice job, I went in to apply and they said, oh, we don't have any home health jobs. We do have a hospice job.

And I said, oh, good, because I'm a hospice nurse. And she said, oh, really?

I said, yes, I know nothing about it, but I'm a hospice nurse because someone told me I was and that she was an LPN who was the most wonderful woman I think I've ever met. And she took me under her wing and she taught me not just the.

The physical things, not just what to look for physically, but how to connect with people's hearts. And I believe that is the most important part of hospice work, because people need.

They need to relieve the fear with knowing what's going to happen, but they also need somebody that sees them and hears them and values them and honors them. And that doesn't always happen in the medical community, I'm sorry to say. It does at times, but a lot of times they.

People get really caught up in the factual stuff, and people need their heart seen. And that's been what I've focused on my entire career.

You know, it's interesting you talked about that, because in our culture, people really avoid talking about death altogether.

Yes.

In so many circles, people try to do everything possible to pretend death doesn't happen. And there are a lot of misunderstandings around death and prevent people really preparing for life's end. Well, how do you help people prepare to die?

Well, since that's. I think I see your book talks about that. How do you help people prepare to face life's end?

Well, well, that. I call that denial of death kind of magical thinking. People think if they don't think about it, it's not going to happen.

And that's a carryover from childhood, and it's just absolutely not true.

I encourage my families to speak openly and to face everything head on and not in a collision course kind of way, but in a really open way, to open their hearts up and, and really be willing to look at everything that's happening and, and have the. The difficult conversations instead of denying. I had a patient once, that.

One of my favorite stories is about a. I went to do an admission on a hospice patient. So they had asked for hospice, the kids had asked for hospice for their mother.

And so I go to the house, I go in, I knock on the door, this woman brings me in, and everybody's huddled around the table just kind of furtively. And she brings me over there and they say, we know that you're putting her on hospice, but there's. We have a request.

Please don't tell her she's dying. She's not going to be able to handle it. We know she's not going to be able to handle it.

And I listened and I said, okay, okay, I'm going to go talk to her now.

And I, you know, and so I went down hall, knocked on the door, and this Little voice had come in, and I. I came in and she motioned to me, you know, close the door, and she come over here. So I go over to the bed and lean down, and she whispers to me, I know I'm dying, but please don't tell my children.

They're not going to be able to handle it. And it just. It was so indicative of that. We're not going to talk about this because this is too hard.

And people are really afraid that if they do talk about it, it's going to make something happen faster. That's part of that magical thinking, too. It doesn't. It doesn't. When someone's dying, they know it. They know it deep in their heart.

And when people refuse to talk about what's really happening, the elephant in the room. And it brings up more fear and anxiety than if we just talked about it.

And so I went back out, you know, to the kids, and I said, let me tell you what she just told me. And they laughed, and they said, okay, all right, let's talk about this all together. And they. They came around. They. They did really well. They.

I think I really believe that end of life, these last weeks and months, days and hours are really sacred time. It's like this. I don't know how to describe this. This portal opens and. And it's really. Everything's open spiritually.

If you think about the way it is when a baby's born, they. Everybody is excited, everybody's open. Everybody's just emotionally and spiritually wide open to welcome that new life into the family. And.

And that same spiritual openness is there at the end of life. I've seen it over and over and over. I've seen healing happen.

If people will be willing to be present and face the fear and let go of the magical thinking and just be there. And I actually. I wondered when I. My sister called me and said, you know, I live in Oregon, so. And she was in Nashville.

And my sister said, she's really, really gone down this last couple days. You need to come now. And it was just miraculous how all the doors just opened for me to go.

I got a ticket the very next morning for less than my original ticket. I was able to find caregivers for my dogs. All. All. Everything that I needed to do happened. So I knew God was leading in this.

And I got there, and she knew me. She responded to my name, she talked to me.

And that next day, this was on a Monday that I traveled the next day, Tuesday, I spent all day with her in the room. She'd sleep and wake up and I'd say, I'm here, I'm over here if you need anything.

And, and then I called, I contacted her grandchildren and some of them are my, my kids and grandkids. They're her grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren.

And they one by one called her and she wasn't able to talk by then, by Tuesday afternoon. And she just. When she heard their voices, her whole face changed. Her face lit up. She got this beautiful color in her face. Her eyes opened wide.

At one point, my son was teasing her about bending her spoons that he did when he was little. And she, she smiled because that was their like little joke. And the healing that happened for me was profound that night. It was.

I had set my alarm for 4am that was when my shift was going to start take, take over for my sister. But at 2:30, something just woke me wide up. I was just wide awake. And I got up and I went straight to her room.

And I could tell by her breathing she was almost gone. And I, I said, I'm here. And she acknowledged that, you know, she was aware enough she couldn't talk. I went and got my sister.

She was on one side, I was on the other side. And we were with her right until she breathed her last breath. And I feel like that was a gift straight from God that he woke me up. If I. It was 3 o'.

Clock. If I had waited till my alarm went off, she would have died alone because my sister had gone to bed to get a little bit of rest.

So, wow.

It was to see how it was to see how God opened up for me to go. He nudged me to contact the kids and have them be part of it. He nudged me awake so I would be there holding her hand when she died.

It was, I mean, the presence of God was palpable. And I thought, okay, I've been teaching this, I've been sharing this.

And now I know absolutely that it's true because I've experienced it myself personally.

As a pastor who've done a lot of funerals. It does change you when it becomes personal.

And I get that because when my mom passed away, the way I preached at funerals was completely different than before. Even though I had lost other families. It was just different when, when she was gone.

I'm curious now that your mother has passed away, how has that impacted even how you deal with other patients differently now than before your mom passed away?

It's still pretty raw. So probably the difference is even more connected in if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Even more. It's like there's. I'm a writer too, so. And I've written like fiction books also.

And they say unless you go to the place where you're writing, that you're writing about and spend time there, your writing will stay 6 inches off the ground. It won't make contact. And I would say that going through that with her brought me down to make really solid contact with the ground. That is grief.

Yeah, it is different. I'm curious, you think about your 40 year career of doing this.

Was there a patient or an experience that really early on, maybe in your career totally changed your understanding of life, death and faith?

Oh my goodness, yes, there was. When I, I went up to Alaska for three years and was a supervisor of a hospice up there in the Mat Su Valley.

It was a fabulous experience, just amazing. I got chased by a moose. I drove on an ice road in the winter to get to a patient's house. It was just Alaska's breathtaking.

And there was this visit that I made to a native family. It was. The young man was in his 40s and he was dying of lung cancer. And so he, he had gotten quite a bit worse and I was going to, to check on him.

And so I walked up to the house, I drove out there. I walked up to the house and I could hear singing when I. Even when I was out in the driveway, I could hear singing.

And I knocked on the door and I had to knock pretty loud for them to hear me. And this person came to the door. This, this older native man came to the door and welcomed me in. He brought me in and there was a.

The room was full of people. This young man, if you can picture it, the young man was in a hospital bed on the far side of the, of the living room.

The living room was full of chairs. There were probably 30 or more people in that living room.

And they were all singing, they were singing hymns and they, they invited, you know, they just pulled me in, you know, and shepherded me over to the bedside of this young man. And I, I did my assessment and I worked with him and he was, he was really close to the end, but he was able to respond. And I just.

The thing that struck me was how peaceful he was. He just seemed like he was just being cradled in this music in the presence of these people.

And I came back, I started to walk back out, and a couple of the elders, you know, the elderly native man men grabbed my hands and they pulled me into the middle of the circle and they just made a circle with me in it. And they put their. They all put their hands on me and they prayed a native blessing on me.

And then another elderly woman grabbed my hand and pulled me over to an empty chair and asked me to sit with them. And so I sat there and sang all those old hymns. And it's just tears running down my face. It was so poignant.

And then, you know, after a while, I had to go, so I excused myself. And as I was walking out, the, the man who, who walked me to the door, I said, wow.

I said, you guys are an amazing family to, to stay this close to this guy. He said, oh, no, we're not his family. We are his community. We don't let anyone in our community die alone. We're here day and night.

Several of us, obviously, a lot of us are here day and night until he dies. So he is not alone. And I was floored by that. To see that level of community and communication and love and surrounding.

You know, I could see why he had that peace because he wasn't alone.

A lot of times when somebody start, you know, gets the terminal diagnosis and it's really clear that they're going, People start talking around them or about them, in front of them. It's like it's something in human nature that if, if we know somebody's going, we kind of get a jump on it by not really talking to them.

I've seen it time and again, and it's very, very, very lonely for the person that it happens to. And that did not happen to this young man. He had the support.

And I realized I needed to work on building my own support system, that I wanted to be that support. And I've done that every chance I've gotten. And others can do it.

You don't have to be a hospice nurse to be supportive to the people in your community that are facing this. But I needed to have a community around me that could give me that support when I needed it.

So this is something to start working on way ahead of time, making sure that, that I'm not isolating away, you know, staying too busy, working. Even though my work is incredibly meaningful, I need to make sure that I'm building a community that can support me.

So it was a powerful picture.

It was absolutely life changing for me.

Wow. Imagine if the church does that. That would be just an amazing picture. I love that. Thank you for sharing that.

Yes.

So let's talk about your book, Please Help Me Die. Well, the title itself is powerful and I think really emotionally moving.

What unmet needs among patients, families, and caregivers were you trying to connect with in his book?

Well, I go through seven promises that you need to make to a dying loved one. And these are the seven things that are really, really important.

And I think that anyone who is going to go through that with a dying person needs to know how to do those seven things, because they'll be. We don't want to have regrets afterwards. I mean, guilt is part of the grief process, and you're going to feel guilty about something.

I mean, it's just. That's the way our minds work. But we can reduce that by. By knowing that we did everything we could to help them feel safe and to.

And loved and help their transition. So the. The seven things. I'll see if I can remember them off the top of my head.

The first one is understanding the journey, understanding about hospice, understanding what's going to happen, all of those things. The second one is, what can I do practically? What can I do that will help on a practical basis?

If you're not a nurse, if you're not a professional caregiver. A lot of times people have said to me, I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do. I need to know what to do. Just to feel like they have the agency.

They're faced with this huge responsibility. What can they do to practically for the person? The third promise is listening. How can I really listen with my whole heart and soul to this person?

And what are the things that get in the way? It's all about communication. And communication in. Specifically about dealing with death. And you know, what.

What the fears are that you're going to be hearing and what you're listening for. The fourth promise is I will help you stay comfortable. I will help your symptoms.

And that is all about pain management, symptom management, explained in a way that. That anyone could understand it. I tried to take any professional jargon, any medical jargon out. I left a little bit, but when I did, I put.

Put afterwards. That's what this means. So people deal with. They're gonna deal with bowel issues. They're gonna deal with pain issues.

They're gonna deal with nausea, vomiting, depending on what their diagnosis is. These things happen. Hospice is really, really, really good at relieving symptoms and paying attention to what's going on.

So this helps the family members know what to look for and help them with those symptoms so they don't have to be afraid. I had one lady that we couldn't get her to have a good night's sleep no matter what we did.

I mean, we put her on medications, we did everything that we could possibly think of to do, and she couldn't sleep at night. And finally I sat down beside her and I said, you know, what is it? What is it? Is there something you're afraid of?

And she started crying, and she said, you know, I'm not afraid to die. I know where I'm going. I have no fear about that. She said, I'm afraid of the process. I'm afraid it's going to hurt.

I'm afraid there's going to be things that happen to me that are really scary. And I just gently asked her, do you want me to explain to you with your diagnosis what will probably happen? She said, yes, I want every detail.

So I did. I told her, you know, about the three different phases that there'd be the decline stage that she was in right then.

Then she'd go into a transition stage, and here are the things that happened during that stage. Then she'd go into an active stage, which just only lasts a little while. And here's what would happen then. And when I got all done, she just.

Thank you. And she slept like a baby that night. And the rest of the time, it was the fear that was keeping her awake.

So someone understanding the physical part is a very important part of diminishing the fear I have.

I explain things all the time to my families and my patients, and they say, oh, wow, that helps so much just to know, you know, what's going to happen. So that's. The fourth promise, is that I will facilitate making sure you understand what's going on physically. The fifth one is spiritually.

I'll support you spiritually.

And so that whole promise goes into what spirituality really is and how to support somebody spiritually if they don't have the same belief system as you do. How to, you know, what. What is actually happening, you know, what causes spiritual pain and suffering and.

And how to support someone through that spiritually. And then the sixth promise is I will support you in your grief. And a person who's dying has a lot of grief. You know, they're.

When the family's talking about the fourth of July picnic next year, and they know they're not going to be there next year, and they're the family is going to go on without them, their spouse is going to go on without them. There, there is a lot of grief. There's grief in the family members beforehand, we call it anticipatory grief. And there's grief afterwards.

And they, the two are quite similar, but you know, there are some differences. But understanding the grief process really helps people know that they're not crazy, that this is part of it and how to deal with that.

And the seventh promise is I will take care of me so I can take care of you.

So it's all about self care, all about, you know, how can you do the things you need to do for yourself so you don't burn out, so you don't close, you know, shut down because you're overwhelmed and overstimulated and overworked. You know, how do you get the help you need? How do you, what do you do if your brain is overwrought, how can you offset that?

You know, they, if you're, if you're thinking about a lot of facts, it's good to go into your right brain and go sit by a waterfall and hug a tree. Or if you're emotionally overwrought, you can do some left brain things to help bring yourself out of that and help create some balance.

So those are the seven promises. And then after that I say it's the, what happens after and it's the thing about the funeral and everything like that. So, so.

Oh, that's very good. Oh, those are really great points and I love how you laid those out.

You mentioned the family's first, I mean, the patient's perspective at the end of life. How do you help families approach the conversation about dying? You just mentioned funeral planning, end of life wishes.

That brings peace to them rather than fear.

I encourage them to do that as soon as they can. It really helps to have that conversation with your loved one because then you know that what you're doing is what they want.

And contrary to having it make somebody give up hope, it doesn't do that. You know, what I've seen time and time again is the person wants to talk about it.

It's like, here's what would really what means a lot to me if you would do this, if you would have this song, if you would have this person speak, if you would plant me under a tree, you know, or I want a full funeral and burial, you know, for the person to be able to say what they want.

And it sounds like it would be a scary conversation, but it's really not a lot of times the conversations that we think are too hard to have are really not.

Once you take a deep breath and launch into it, of course, gently and, and with, you know, reading the room and you know, if the person, if your loved one says, I don't want to talk about that, you don't push it, you know, you, you just wait and bring it around another time. But it's, it's really important to have those deeper conversations and you'll be really glad later that you did.

It makes sense. You know, as Christians, we always talk about finishing well and dying well, but you spent a lot of time with people in their final days.

What are some of the things people seem to regret most as they approach the end of life?

I would say that the biggest regrets are relational. If they have estrangement with a loved one and they couldn't seem to figure out a way to get over that, that, that's the biggest one.

Regrets about what they didn't say. Regrets about not letting a child know how much you love them. Relational. And then the other one is quality of life.

You know, the travel thing that, that they waited till retirement to do the things that meant a lot. And those are, I've noticed that those are always relational too.

It's like the man said, you know, I kept telling my wife we would do these things once I retired. You know, she wanted to go then and I said, oh, let's go when we retired. And then as soon as they retired, he got sick.

I mean, like within two weeks of retirement. And he couldn't go and so he couldn't keep that promise to her.

So a lot of times the, the wanting to travel and have experiences are in the context of having those experiences with a loved one and not taking that away from them.

Wow. So now we're going to lighten up a little bit. Lightning Round questions.

Kind of a fun way to kind of bring this very serious conversation, but a good conversation to an end. Coffee or tea?

Tea, definitely. I'm allergic to coffee. Yeah, I don't know why, but I am.

One word that describes a life well lived.

Connection.

A book everyone should read before. Yours.

Safe to Love Again by Gary Salier. Dr. Gary Salier. He it's about attachment issues and it's life changing.

What's something people would be surprised to learn about you?

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I turned 70.

Wow.

I, I once I took the test and looked back. I've had it my entire life, but I didn't know. Made a lot of Things. It explained a lot, I bet.

Yeah. Favorite place to find peace and reflection?

Oh, definitely. By the ocean, on the beach.

A daily habit. You never skip.

Drinking water. Lots of water.

One thing you wish every family knew about the end of life care,.

How to connect with each other. Well,.

If you could share one message with every healthcare worker listening today, what would it be?

Oh, so learn to really listen with your heart. Don't let the tasks take over.

Begin, end, and in the middle, with connection and really seeing the person not just as a patient, but as a human being.

Yeah, nurses are really good at that, I've noticed. Typically.

Yeah.

What's currently bringing you joy?

I have a little. Oh, lots of things. Whoa. I have a little Yorkshire Terry terrier puppy and she will not let me ignore her.

She wants me to play with her a lot and just watching her little antics. And then she'll come and just snuggle right up to my neck and. And put her head and just lay there completely still. And it just.

It brings me a lot of joy.

That's so cool. So fill in a blank for me. Courage is blank.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

I love it. So here we go. As you reflect on your own life and impact you've made, what do you want your legacy to be?

I feel like my spiritual gift is as an enzyme, instigating in a good way people to grow and learn and heal. And that's what I want it to be. I want. I want to be. I want to be an enzyme.

That's really neat. So for listeners who want to learn more about your work, Joanne, and pick up your book, Please Help me die well. Where can people find you?

And we're going to find a book.

Okay. My website is www.joannechitwood.com. My email address is joannoannshitwood.com and the book is on my website, the one for caregivers.

I'm just finishing up and I have it on my website. It says coming soon, and so keep an eye on that. I'm. I'm right now printing it to be coming out in time for hospice month in November.

And what's the title for that one again?

They're both, please. The first one is for professionals. Please help me die well, helping your patient. Seven promises to make to your patient.

The second one is please help me die well. Seven promises to make your loved one to your loved one to help them finish. Well, they have different covers.

And then the next one that I'm going to do after this is going to be Please help me die. Well, facing your own death for people that have a terminal illness and want to know how to face that with grace and courage.

Wow. That's so important.

Yeah.

So we have one more thing on the show that's a surprise question. Joanne, pick a number between 1 and 10 for your surprise question.

7.

Oh, here we go. This is so telling. I'm so important for you. Your work. Which band or artist, dead or alive, would you want to play at your funeral?

I did not pick that out, so that was just kind of.

Bonnie Rate.

Oh, okay. No. Who died? No, no, somebody else who passed away.

I hope it wasn't body rate. I didn't hear that.

Somebody else. I just saw the past. Okay.

I'll have to check the news and make sure she didn't, because I want her to play at my funeral, dead or alive.

So.

Yeah.

Well, Joanne, thank you for joining us today for spending your life helping people navigate one of the most difficult, yet sacred journeys we all face. Friends, if today's conversation encouraged you, challenged you, or.

Or helped you to think differently about life, loss, caregiving, and compassion, please take a moment to subscribe Rate, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Remember, building bridges aren't about people who avoid difficult conversations.

They're about willing to step into them with courage, grace, and with love. Until next time, keep building bridges of transformation in lives. I'm Reverend Dr. Keith Haney. This is becoming bridge builders.

And thank you, Joanne, for being an amazing guest on the podcast.

Thank you, Reverend Haney. It's been a delight.