THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 182

Ep. 182 FINAL

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome back to the Accrescent Podcast. I’m your host, Leigh Ann Lindsey. Today we have PJ Harlow on the show talking to us all about a holistic root cause approach to mold remediation. Mold is something that has been coming up so much lately. I feel like even in kind of pop culture on social media, there’s so so much I’m seeing going around with mold and actually when I did a poll a few weeks ago about guests and podcast topics that you guys were really interested in mold was a really really big one that came up multiple times And I think PJ Harlow is such a phenomenal guest to have on. PJ has certifications as a holistic health practitioner a certified CRC professional, she has a virtual consulting company where she helps her clients go beyond just treating mold with chemicals like bleach or covering it up with paints or fogs.

Her approach mirrors a root cause philosophy [00:01:00] that focuses primarily on the longterm goal of nurturing a balanced indoor microbiome that promotes longterm human immunity and overall wellbeing. She understands the intricacies, the responsibilities of all the roles within mold inspection, remediation, restoration, and she’s witnessed the limitations of current traditional methods, methods that commonly prioritize speed, appearance, short term fixes over precision, a consideration for mycotoxins, or the effects of contamination on occupants.

And she also was kind enough to give us a discount code for the ERMI test, plus an interpretation session with her. So that discount code is LEIGHANN. I’ll make sure it’s linked below as well, but L E I G H A N N will be that discount code on an ERMI test as well as an interpretation session with PJ. So with that, please enjoy this conversation with PJ Harlow.[00:02:00]

Well PJ, welcome to the Accrescent Podcast. Thank you so much for coming on today. Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m so excited. I’ve had, I want to say maybe two guests now on the show to talk about treating mold in the body, two different doctors looking at it from that approach, but your area of expertise on this topic of remediation, the home microbiome that I’m so excited to talk about, isn’t something that, you know, we’ve been blessed to have someone on.

So I’m really, really excited to get into this, but also that you bring this holistic approach to remediation that we’re going to get into so much more. Yeah, I’m really excited to talk about it too just because I feel like people are so confused, you know, and this is really um Where PJ Harlow Wellness really came from was, you know, I went through this myself and I experienced what so many other people are going through and it was just so overwhelming [00:03:00] and so, you know, I really felt like once you see something and you’re seeing all these kind of atrocities and things that People going through all this pain and, and all the loss that’s, that’s entails.

I was like, there needs to be a better way to do this, right? Where, where we’re not making our homes potentially worse. Yeah. And spending thousands of dollars. These are some of the. Stories I’ve heard from clients is how expensive it is. And then it doesn’t even really resolve the issue or not fully. And so I’m excited to dive into that.

I’m sure you’ve told your origin story so many times, but I would love, you know, whatever, whatever little tidbits of that you’d like to share though, just so the audience gets a sense of kind of where you’re coming from. And maybe even the lived experience that you’re coming from. Yeah. So, uh, in 2016, I.

Got really sick. And, uh, I was pretty healthy at the time, you know, like went to the gym five days a week. And, uh, all of a [00:04:00] sudden I just started getting pain in my hands and it started to move into my other joints. And I started to just, it seemed like every week that went by, I would have another symptom.

And at first I was like, Am I just getting old? Because I had just turned 40 and it was like really like 40 was like a really big thing for me and uh, so um, I I just first I kind of like shooed it off to This is something else right? You know, I’m not really sick because it was kind of coming and going and Fast forward a year later, 20 something doctors, every test you could imagine, nobody could figure it out, and I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and even some doctors insinuated that this was a mental health issue, that this was, you know, all in my mind, um, or, or, even [00:05:00] in so many words that I was just like some exaggerating woman, You know, we, we just all exaggerate about our symptoms and, you know, we don’t have enough on our plates with like kids and sports and, you know, working and dinner and, you know, cleaning, like we don’t have enough to do.

We, we want to make up stuff. Right. So, uh, so I Really, you know, not just experiencing having your body suddenly betray you, but also just feeling like your words have no meaning or no integrity behind them was just really a jolting experience for me. And, um, My kids started to get sick. My husband started to get sick.

Everybody’s symptoms were different. So it was really at first it was like, Whoa, what happened to our family? We were like the sick family all of a sudden. Um, but One day, thank [00:06:00] goodness, my husband had a bad day at work and he was like really, you know, the mold, little do we know, uh, was making him very moody and like he was just really snappy.

This wasn’t normally his personality. He was the more patient of both of us. And uh, The showerhead, we’re, I’m really short, he’s really tall, so we’re always back and forth with the showerhead, and he kind of palm fisted it, like, meh, and it broke, and when it did, all this water went into our wall, and the wall was our bathroom.

And our kitchen was on the other side, and all this water came splashing through the floor. And so we pulled back all of our appliances that were on the other side of this wall, and you could stick your finger through the drywall. Oh my gosh. And we knew That wasn’t from that little thing that just happened, though the water was only on for like a few seconds.

And that was the [00:07:00] very beginning. You could look behind kind of like the cabinets that we couldn’t, you know, once we pulled the stove out, you could look behind and it was all black. Oh my gosh. There was a hidden colony, there was a slow leak that was happening inside the wall every time you turned the shower on and with, you know, a family.

of two kids, two of us, um, we’re constantly using that one shower. And so, um, Underneath it was our crawl space where our HVAC was. And additionally, on top of all of that, it was, that was right under it. So it was leaking, it had leaked through the floor, through the subfloor. Into where our air conditioning unit was and also the dryer vent had disconnected so it wasn’t drying outside it was going down just shooting hot air into our crawl space.

So it was a total [00:08:00] combination for like the worst possible thing. So all this toxic, it was black mold. Stachybotrys was just pumping into our HVAC system and we didn’t see or smell anything. Like, we had no idea. Our house was clean, you know, and at first it’s like, how can this be happening to me? I’m a clean person.

Like I take care of my house. You know, there’s this insinuation that like, if you have mold, like you’re like lazy and you don’t maintain your home. And that’s not true at all. I’ve seen million dollar homes with mold, but, but that’s, that’s really was the beginning. And I went through, uh, a lot after that, just, our house was so bad, the, when, when we hired a very popular, uh, mold company to come in, um, there’s two things in the mold world.

Well, technically, there’s water restoration and then there’s mold remediation. Okay. There’s actually two manuals for both of them [00:09:00] and two certifications through the IICRC. You can be a water restoration tech or a mold remediator. If you go onto a job and there’s water that needs to be dried, the idea is you’re supposed to dry it ASAP, but if mold has already formed, you kind of hand it over to mold remediators.

All right. Thank you. Well, these people didn’t do that. And even though there was visible mold, they put these giant dehumidifiers right next to where that colony was and just dried it out so all of those spores and particulates went airborne and it suddenly made us, like all of our symptoms, a hundred times worse.

Oh, wow. Like, you’d walk in the door and you would feel your lungs burning. Like we were, it felt like you drank lava, like it was within minutes, like you could taste it. My son’s nose bleed would start like immediately walking in the door. I even [00:10:00] have, um, a book bag of his the day that he came home from school that day, it was like rainy and his book bag got wet.

So I took all his stuff out and just, just, you know, a regular, like LL Bean book bag, right? And I, I put it on the dryer just to like let it dry and, and put all of his books away. The next day it was covered in mold. Oh my gosh. That, I have pictures of it. It’s crazy. Like, you know, normally mold doesn’t, you know, it usually takes about 48 hours, but that just tells you like how severe.

The fungal ecology was in the air and, and we, it was so bad. We ended up having to exit and, uh, you know, my story gets much, much longer, but I don’t want to focus too much on that. The, the, the short story is that whole experience, you know, getting sick. Not being treated right by [00:11:00] doctors not being treated right by professionals, you know, they made our situation worse They made us sicker and this happens a lot That was really kind of like I I can’t just like sit here.

I have to this is this is I have to do something about this and that’s why I, that’s why we do what we do now. That’s really how it started. Oh my gosh. I am so sorry. It sounds though, I mean that was 2016 and your family has since recovered and is doing well. Yes. I’m so glad. Yeah, man. That’s brutal. I had, I’ll, I’ll share really quickly.

There was, I found out the office I had been in for three years. Had mold and it was something similar where it just, I’d get in the office and my skin would start burning. Mm. And my eyes would start burning and I had a headache for months on end. And mold had just never, never even occurred to me. Mm-hmm

That this could be something. And I don’t even know really how it got on my radar other than [00:12:00] maybe like a. Practitioner friend of mine mentioning something kind of in passing that then sent me on this whole journey. So I’m still, I’m like barely a year out of that space, not even a year out of that space and still doing some recovery with it.

But it sent me on a little bit of a deeper dive with this, but to your point, like we said, kind of, I think before jumping on, I’ve had some guests on some doctors on to talk about how to support the body in recovering from mold, but supporting the home in recovering from mold. Even the little tidbits I’ve heard about it, to me, it just sounds so overwhelming.

And I think what makes it extra tricky, and maybe you can speak to this too, is I would imagine that oftentimes by the time people find it, it’s because they already are so sick. Yeah. Which I think only lends itself to the fear mongering and the urgency of, well, I just got to find someone to do something.

Yes. And then that maybe leads us to taking a bunch, bunch of action that ends up [00:13:00] being counterproductive or making things worse. So you’re going to talk to us a little bit about kind of conventional approaches to remediation versus holistic approaches and really how those differ. And to be honest, I don’t know much about either, so you might have to guide us through this.

Sure. I think one of the key things that I want to, I want to say first that is really important that you brought up that is a great point is that By the time these things are happening and by the time you’re digging into like mold. You’re scared, you know, because it seems really scary and especially when you first start learning about mold and contamination And it’s this thing that’s like invisible and we can’t see it and there’s so much ambiguity because it’s invisible Right.

I think that works against us in some ways too because oftentimes we see that partners who may think more practically are like What are you talking about? I don’t see anything. There’s nothing [00:14:00] here, right? Like, but then other times I think that women are a little bit more intuitive, um, and, and kind of more in tune a little bit with their bodies and even the kids sometimes.

Not saying husbands aren’t ever, but, um, but you mentioned the fear mongering, you know. We have been kind of conditioned to think of bacteria and mold as bad things, right? And, and instead of understanding that they are a part of nature, you know, there’s that fear there. And there’s so much of this industry.

that is directly marketed to your fear. And so, you know, you also talked about rushing and hurrying. And that is one of the very first things that we work with, with our clients is saying, slow down. Okay. There are times. Where, yes, urgency is required. If your toilet just fell through [00:15:00] your ceiling, that requires some urgency, uh, right?

We need to take care of that. But if you find mold in your bathroom, it just didn’t get there overnight, right? If it’s in your ceiling and like if you’re finding mold in some room or something, it took a while to get there. And even being affected with your health, it takes a while for this to happen. My symptoms didn’t happen overnight.

They happened over a year period and certainly they increased to the degree where I became bedridden and this is often where what I see in my clients to some people are hypersensitive. That’s a little bit different, right? But, um, most of the time it’s exposure over long periods of time, so it’s really about kind of.

grounding yourself and figuring out, like, who do I need to work with first? And that’s [00:16:00] really where we come in. We kind of help people so you’re not hurrying up and rushing to hire a remediator before you’ve even had an assessment, right? And I don’t blame people because nobody knows. You’re not taught any of this stuff.

You’re like, Oh yeah, I’m just supposed to get a remediator and they come fix it, right? But, really, you need to very first out, start out, and have someone on your team. Because, as much as I love DIY, I mean, hey, I’m in the health industry and You know, I’m all about doing as, researching and doing as much as you can for your family.

But this is a particular project that you really don’t want to try and wing it, right? There’s just too many ways that things could go wrong. So you really need a guide. Um, you know, and, and this is what a [00:17:00] consultant does. Someone who is not your remediator and is not your inspector. They don’t have the time or the capacity to be helping you make decisions.

And two, they’re financially vested in your, your decisions. So they really can’t be completely objective, right? So then you’d get an inspection. Where we, we actually will give you a referral for a class three or higher inspector. That’s one of the things that we guarantee with anybody in the United States.

If you work with us, we get you on board stabilized and we provide you with it and an inspector. They’ll come assess the situation and write a work scope. Then we were we go into remediation if that’s what you want to do. Some people decide. Hey, I don’t want to remediate I’m I’m don’t want to invest anymore.

This is too much I’d rather just sell it and get something [00:18:00] else That’s an option that some many people do because remediation is a lot. I can’t say that You know, no matter who you work with It’s never going to be a happy experience, right? Like, you know, it’s going to cost money and there is stress, but it doesn’t have to be traumatic.

So I want to make that clarification. Now, traditional remediation practices is very much similar to how we have. Allopathic medicine and kind of like functional medicine, holistic medicine. Um, they’re totally conceptually different. Traditional remediation can very much be focused on aesthetics and, um, you know, how can we make this appear.

Like it’s better, right? And, and I don’t even want to, I want to clarify too, because [00:19:00] even in the traditional side, there are companies that still don’t do things correctly. So, um, there’s more like the medicalized. Holistic health focused approach. There’s the traditional and then there’s just people who are just plain Nefarious and just they’re ignorant painting over everything.

Yeah, and you know, just not even Having any type of experience at all for any of you who follow me on Instagram You’ll probably have seen that a few weeks ago. I did my first prolon fast mimicking program and I was I was so blown away with how, how easy it was, how accessible it was, the unbelievable results that I experienced that I had to share it here on the podcast.

For those who aren’t aware, Prolon is a five day fast mimicking program. What blew me away was The impact because [00:20:00] the magic of prolon is that even though you’re eating, it has been scientifically developed to put your body into a fasting state. And when we’re in a fasting state, that is where so much magic happens.

In the cells, we start purging dead cells that autophagy happens. There’s so much cleanup that happens when we’re in a fasting state. And the only other way to get into the state is to do a five day water fast, which is. Super inaccessible and hard. That’s not something that I don’t think I would even ever do But I also did the in body scan at ascent adaptation before doing the diet and after doing the diet because I really wanted to measure Results and I was blown away.

I lost six pounds Just in that week, I lost 2 percent body fat, but the other markers that I was really excited to track were my inflammation went down significantly, my phase angle went up significantly, which I’m gonna talk about a lot more because I decided I’m gonna record a [00:21:00] short solo episode going super super in depth into the Prolon fast mimicking program and more in depth into my results and what some of these measurements mean.

But if anyone is interested and wants to learn more, click the link in the show notes below and that link will also give you 15 percent off your order. Once you click it you’ll scroll down and you’ll see a little button that says get 15 percent off. Their website is packed with so many research articles and studies and information for anyone who wants to learn more.

So, The philosophy around holistic remediation in our practice is this. It’s more about the outcome of what do you want your project to look like at the, at the end of this project, because everybody is unique and everybody is different. Some people are, um, just experiencing symptoms and may have a diagnosis of mold [00:22:00] illness.

Some people are more sensitive. Even some people are hypersensitive. And some people may not even be sick at all. Maybe they are just really want a healthy home or maybe they’re thinking of conceiving in the next few years and they just want to, you know, ensure that they’re confident about their home’s health.

So how we would remediate for someone who’s very hypersensitive would not necessarily need to be the same way we would for someone who’s not sick at all. Now, theoretically, somebody could come back and argue, well, we should remediate. At the same level at the same level for everybody, but that’s just not realistic, especially when it comes to the actual labor involved with some of the cleaning and decontamination.

It’s it’s can be much more of, um. Uh, a larger, uh, laborious process for people who are on the more sensitive scale. [00:23:00] So we really look at that and really want to assess your individual health and your individual risk profile. And then we really work to understand. What’s happening in your home, right? And how severe are the issues?

What’s your budget? And try to work all these things strategically in addition to the fact that at the end of the day, a lot of, uh, traditional remediation companies. much abuse, in my opinion, a lot of antimicrobials, you know, and disinfectants. And in our kind of philosophy, we kind of look at this like we’re trying to salvage what’s left of the microbiome, right?

Because there can be effects from just Putting antimicrobials on every surface and fogging all of these [00:24:00] disinfectants. What does that do to your? Ecology in your home like every home has an ecology just like your gut does right? You’ve got good bacteria and bad bacteria and We’re supposed to that’s actually natural So, you know, when we go blasting all of that, the same thing that happens when you take antibiotics, right?

It can start creating an environment where sure, maybe you just killed all the little guys and the medium guys and the purple guys, but the ones that really survive are going to be those stealth like organisms. And so you’re almost regenerating. with an imbalance, right? You’re starting from the negative.

Do you, do you see what I mean? Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. It’s like you take those antibiotics and maybe those bacteria are killed or killed off for a bit, but you didn’t replenish the good stuff that will ensure that that environment is not [00:25:00] hospitable to that pathogen. Exactly. And so we’re more about being very strategic.

Sometimes you need to use antimicrobials in remediation. You know, there’s a difference between, and let me clarify, physical mold removal. Like if you’ve got a situation where you’ve got a bunch of moldy drywall, obviously, we need to remove all that. And if there’s, you know, some type of sill plate or something that’s more permanent, that needs to be cleaned.

Obviously, sometimes we need to use some. You know, there’s a layered approach to that again It’s really using detergents and things and wire brushes and physical cleaning and then you would come in Maybe there’s still some stains there or something. You could use a hydrogen peroxide product for that But the cleaning part the decontamination part, you know Oftentimes a lot of remediation companies are just coming in and using a [00:26:00] bunch of killers, you know It doesn’t matter Oftentimes I get so many questions from people, but PJ, what about this product?

Oh, PJ, well, what about this product? What about ozone? What about chlorine dioxide? What about, you know, ammonia? What about bleach? What about, you know, even hydrogen peroxide? All, it doesn’t matter. Insert product here. If it’s a disinfectant, right, it’s the same premise, right? It’s the same idea. And, you know, we’re trying to, at the end, it’s almost kind of like rewilding to some degree.

We’re trying to, you know, get back to that level where. We want to bring that toxic load down, but we want to try to salvage the biome. And some people would say, you know, I’ve had people say, well, we can just use a bunch of antimicrobials and then we can come back in and use probiotics, right? Um, cause they, they do have some probiotic sprays, but [00:27:00] at one point in my career, I thought that was brilliant.

But the more I researched and the more I studied, I found that, well, that’s not really the same thing because most of those products are, you know, maybe one species, maybe two. And so it’s not really replenishing diversity, right? Sure. You may be inoculating with a couple species, but that’s not, that’s not the same thing, you know, As, as whatever that, that biome was that took, You know, years to develop in, in some ways, even the good biome, right?

That diversity that develops over time from all, all the different things we’re putting in it. Absolutely. To just think that we can just like immediately replace that after we’ve decimated it, I think is the, the human egocentricity. Exactly. And I think that, you know, just even spiritually my relationship with like, Mother Earth, [00:28:00] you know, I think that sometimes, I don’t know, I always get cautious when we think we’re smarter than nature, you know, and to some degree, it’s, it’s, that’s kind of where our philosophy comes from.

We’re trying to, like, respect the Way mother nature is and also, you know Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest worldwide problems that nobody really talks about in this industry And so we try to really take all these things sure that might not matter to the average Person who’s in the middle of a mold crisis who cares about antimicrobial resistance.

Yeah I’m in the middle of a crisis, right but collectively We all do need to worry about this because I worry about my children’s future, and that’s really where this comes from as a mother, as someone who looks at our home’s health currently, I’m looking [00:29:00] further ahead. It can’t just be about what’s happening to us now in the present.

Mm hmm, completely. I want to take a sec to kind of reflect back some of what I’m hearing already this far. So it sounds like in kind of. Misteps people might take unknowingly or conventional versus holistic. One is either skipping assessment or maybe the not, not the right kind of assessment. And I do want to ask a follow up question on that, um, skipping assessment entirely, just going straight to remediation.

But then what I heard in that is conventional remediation. Sometimes it’s just visibly removing the mold that we can see, and they’re not looking at the bigger microbiome, or if they are, they’re just decimating it entirely. Yeah, a lot of times, um, you know, even the removal part gets missed sometimes and it’s just chemical treatments, you know, when you hear language.

When I hear the word treatment, that’s almost a red [00:30:00] flag for me when I’m seeing a company use that kind of terminology. Mold should always be removed. But yes, pretty much, I would say a large majority of remediation companies are just using antimicrobials because it’s fast, right? To do layers is laborious.

It requires, it makes it more expensive for your client. It makes it more time consuming. Um, and I mean, I hate to say this, but it does. Also give them the option to kind of take a lazy approach, right? Um, and even you, the use of what’s called encapsulants, which are, um, it’s, it’s kind of like a, a fancy way of saying paint.

And a lot of companies also encapsulate right over top of areas that were moldy because this encapsulate this, [00:31:00] this type of paint has a preventative, um, in it, like some type of chemical, whether it’s, uh, you know, a pH, um, like chemical that will lower the pH of the surface. Um, or it has antimicrobials built in and this is one of those products that sells to your fear, right?

This is again, what I was talking about earlier, after going through this remediation, most people are terrified and don’t want this to happen again. So here. By this, this, you know, we’ll encapsulate everything and the mold won’t come back. Right. That’s how they present it. But realistically, a lot of those encapsulates won’t allow surfaces to dry if they do get wet again.

And then again, do we think we’re smarter than nature? Like you can never eliminate the possibility of mold to grow. I often think [00:32:00] that one of the, the larger golden rules. That it just kind of gets lost in translation, right? Because we’re so ingrained with, with this fear of microbes that it kind of just, we relapse into these old thinking patterns.

Even if we’re taught everything that we just talked about, it’s so easy to go back into, I, well, I don’t want mold to grow. Um, yeah, put it on there. Right. But, but they’re not really told that, you know, what again. What are we doing to our home’s internal microbiome? And additionally, you know, water is the root cause, not mold.

Mold is a byproduct of moisture. It’s a symptom. So, you know if we’re constantly focusing on the symptom, you know We’re not even focusing on the actual root cause problem Which is moisture if you mitigate moisture, you won’t [00:33:00] have a mold problem And you’re also not going to have any of these other kind of side effects I guess you could call them or even Potential problems, you know, yeah, a thousand percent.

I do want to ask quickly about assessment because I think this is also something even in my own experience that I found very confusing. So the, the office I was in, I, I finally spoke up to the landlord. I was like, look, I’m really not feeling well. I think we need to check who knows who they had come in.

They said they had someone come in who said, you know, no, actually the, the quality of the air inside. You know, what compared to outside air, the humidity is not more than the outside air. So there’s no issues here and we didn’t find any mold and, and that was kind of it. And they were like, bud, we can move you to a different space, this or that.

And that’s really where it stopped and ended. And I just was like, that just [00:34:00] doesn’t seem right to me. But what is your two cents on maybe even kind of conventional testing versus, I don’t know if we call it holistic, but just a more, um, accurate. Way of sure, sure. So every type of test that we have available, there’s pros and cons to it.

In the traditional sector, air testing is the like numero uno, right? That is what they base everything off of. And unfortunately, Oftentimes, they’re very wrong. Air testing, it’s strong point is not to, they have like a little tripod and for anybody listening, it’s like a little tripod and it has like a little cassette on it and a pump attached to it and the inspector will kind of turn it on for, you know, five minutes and they’ll collect the Ambient air in your room.

That’s called an ambient air sample. And [00:35:00] the thing is though. Air samples are only looking at spores primarily. If you were to pretend mold is a tree for a second, there’s more to a tree. That would be like, do you have trees in your house? We’re only going to look for acorns though. You know, we’re not going to look for bark or branches or trunk or roots.

We’re just gonna look at acorns, right? And so it also has to be acorns that or spores that are actually in the air at the time of the test. If everybody, you know, you think about it, when these guys come in to do testing, Usually, it’s during the day, kids are at school, you’re at work, maybe you came home to meet them or something, or maybe you stayed home.

It’s not actually a representation of what your living room looks like at, you know, six o’clock p. m. when the kids are running around and the dogs barking and everybody’s, you know, doing all kinds [00:36:00] of stuff. So, um, oftentimes. You know, it’s not a real representation of the activity that’s happening. It’s usually very still.

So that is something that often. Is not really talked about. This is why aggravated air samples can sometimes show a little bit more of what’s actually happening in a home. So air testing. I like air testing. For like cavity samples, or if you know that mold is particularly if you’re thinking it could be an area and you’re kind of using a little bit more strategically, but oftentimes just smack in an air sample in the middle of the room.

It usually doesn’t say much unless the mold is like, really, really bad. And you’re very, very close to it. There’s been tons of studies. Um, one of my mentors has been a part of a lot of peer review [00:37:00] studies, and he’s just shared with me, you know, over the years that they’re just not accurate. Like in order to really do accurate air samples, you would have to continually do samples, like every hour over the hour for like 24 hours.

And who’s really got time to do that? Yeah. It’s just a snapshot in time. Mm-hmm . Now. What we usually use, and again, I want to clarify to everybody out there, nothing replaces a boots on the ground inspection by somebody who really knows what they’re, they’re talking about. Now, you mentioned having somebody to come in and do air sampling that will would be what I would consider like a, um, a level 1 or class 1 mold tester.

For teaching purposes, I use kind of a classification system for mold, you know, inspectors, remediators, even HVAC technicians, [00:38:00] even doctors. There’s kind of a classification. Some doctors are very low level, don’t have a lot of different experience, where you could have some that, you know, are really specialized in certain fields and have, you know, a lot of experience in a lot of different facets where, um, in the mold industry, you know, level one would just be somebody who’s going to.

Know how to use an air pump, right? And know how to maybe they got trained in house, but they don’t have a lot of education in microbiology and building science. This is the science of of of how your home and physics and chemistry work together and really understanding insulation and air flow and dew point and humidity and all of those things.

And this is what a lot of the inspectors that. We work with, they understand those things. So it’s really getting a [00:39:00] thorough assessment because oftentimes to be very honest, it’s not always right in front of you. Mold is often hidden and just an air sample alone. It’s not enough. And comparing it to the outside, I mean, sure, it’s great to know what kind of climate you’re in, but it’s just not going to give you the answers you’re looking for if you’re trying to figure out could there potentially be a problem.

With my home and it, and it very often falls short for people who are symptomatic. It did for me, they told me my house was normal, believe it or not. And, um, you know, they said nothing was wrong with, with my house, which was unbelievable with the amount of mold that they found. Afterwards, like, I mean, that house almost killed me and so, you know, I think that there’s usually what we usually a [00:40:00] lot of time what we do is we’ll do what’s called an army dust test, which is really DNA.

Um, and you can start with this or you can start with just going into an, an inspection, but many people like to have that kind of starter evidence. Maybe someone’s not really on the same page, you know, oftentimes again, spouses may not agree and, um, you know, they might think, oh, there’s nothing here. My house is fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it’s usually a nice piece of data that we can start with. It’s not going to give us everything, but it can kind of give us some crucial points to let us know what is, what is the biome acting like, you know, what is happening with the indoor common indoor molds or how are they behaving?

Where should we maybe look? Right? Um, because there’s some molds that only grow in certain areas. So [00:41:00] that’s a place that we usually like to start. My relationship with coffee has changed so much over the years. I went from waking up first thing in the morning, drinking multiple cups of coffee on an empty stomach to now approaching intentionality, especially when I started realizing just how much it was affecting my nervous system, which is why I’m so so careful and intentional about when, how, and what kind of coffee I consume.

Lately I’ve been getting back into having a morning coffee, but after I first have my warm lemon tea Usually i’ll even wait until after i’ve had breakfast to then have that first cup of coffee And i’ve been loving putting raw honey raw butter And half and half in it. I know it sounds so decadent and it is absolutely amazing And something I look forward to every morning recently, but when i’m drinking coffee, I want to make sure that first of [00:42:00] all It’s free of molds because there was a study done that 90 percent of coffee has mold and mycotoxins.

And this is why I love Four Sigmatic so much because they’re third party tested for molds, mycotoxins, bacteria, heavy metals. What I also love though is they have a number of different coffees available that are either ground or whole bean. I’m a bit of a snob so I love to buy the whole bean coffees.

But it’s so neat because they have Their Focus coffee blend that has extra adaptogens to help support brain health. They have their Gut Health coffee blend that I’m really excited to start using because it has probiotics, prebiotics, turkey tail, and chaga mushrooms that have been added to it. They have their Calm Decaf coffee blend that has really calming adaptogens like reishi and chaga and a number of other different blends.

that can really support you in the best way [00:43:00] possible. But these coffees are so intentionally created to provide clean, sustained energy without any crashes, without giving you the jitters, which is something I really started experiencing maybe a year or so ago. And which is why I’ve become so, so intentional about the kind of coffee I drink.

And when I drink it, if you click the link in the show notes, you will automatically receive 20 percent off your first order. I remember I did, I’m completely forgetting the name of the company now, but I ordered some swab tests and some, and then like a plate test. And I swabbed a bunch of places. And, and then I actually did consult with a mold consultant, uh, before I had found you who helped me interpret it.

Cause I was like, okay, I see this results. I have no idea what it means. And he, it was so helpful because he was able to go, look, there’s some molds in here that are just normal. There’s always going to be some level of mold. This is life. To your point, we live in mother nature. These I wouldn’t be concerned about, but he’s like, there’s a [00:44:00] couple really toxic molds here that can only be present if there is severe water damage.

So that’s what you need. Cause I was really trying to understand, like, is this something that I can just mitigate while I’m here? Or do I really need to leave this space? Cause the landlords had made it clear. They’re not going to do anything about it. And it wasn’t worth the fight. You know, if I wanted to legally for something, it wasn’t going to be worth that.

And so that really helped me go, oh, okay, so there’s mold here that isn’t just latent from something, whatever, whatever, like this is active. It can only be here because there’s water damage somewhere in this building, even if it’s not in my exact unit. And I made that decision that, okay, for me, it’s time to leave.

Yeah. You mentioned one really important factor, you know, a lot of these tests you can buy online on your own. And I’ve seen many people do this and please, to anyone out there, please do [00:45:00] not try to read these tests yourself. Please do not put them on Facebook and think that people are going to be able to read them.

Because there’s a reason why they’re on Facebook and not doing this for a living. And this is no offense, I think that people are just trying to help, um, but they’re not professionals. Especially if you’re using ERME dust testing, DNA. This is a very complex test that we’re using off label. You cannot use the scoring system on there.

Um, we’re not using it like the EPA originally did back in 2006 and 2007. So That the ERMI technically is an index and it gives a score. You cannot use that score. You have to have somebody be able to look at all the 36 molds and be able to really understand those patterns, but also apply context.

Context goes [00:46:00] into the interpretation, your symptoms, you know, how the home is maintained, all those things go into, to understanding those results. So that’s a really important factor. I want to clarify. That’s exactly what I found with this consultant was he was able to go, tell me, tell me what your concerns are.

And of course he didn’t make a recommendation. You know, he was very like, I can’t tell you to leave or stay. You need to make that decision on your own, which I think is appropriate. But based on what you’re saying and the symptoms you’re experiencing and what I’m seeing in this report, here’s what I can tell you about what’s going on.

And I found that incredibly helpful. And, you know, I think you need those different team members. My doctor was doing all the deep. In depth blood work and testing and bioenergetic testing. She was the one who referred me to do this test, but then I went on my own and found this mold consultant to give me some extra insight.

And I think just having that, that nuance of the team is important. It is, it is oftentimes too, I [00:47:00] think that, um, one of the things you mentioned, you’re getting that information from your doctor and you’re getting the other. Kind of environmental information from a consultant. I think that part is really important.

The more we’re moving into the future, I think when this first started, um, and, and we were really just getting our eyes open to the mold industry. I think that oftentimes, sometimes, you know, Doctors would have to be providing people with information about their environment because there was nobody else right and vice versa.

Oftentimes you might even have somebody who’s an environmental consultant and they would have to be teaching, you know, people about their health. But I think we’re at the point now where there’s enough people in each kind of category that, um, You know, this is why, I mean, I started out as a holistic health consultant and [00:48:00] practitioner, and I found that I couldn’t serve the people best by trying to do both because we’re evolving so quickly in each of the kind of roles that I couldn’t keep up, right?

The science that has, you know, from, Where we were, um, when we first kind of opened up into the world of mold with, you know, Dr. Shoemaker’s work, and now we fast forward in Dr. Neil Nathan, Jill Krista, you know, all of these really great pioneers in the industry have really pushed this forward. You know, I know so many other doctors as well that are doing.

amazing, amazing work. Um, and even in the environmental side of things, you’ve got people who are really advancing the science in this, in this space. So, you know, oftentimes I think it’s best to kind of get your information from the people who are specializing in their, in the [00:49:00] industries and, and just be careful sometimes cause things can cross a little bit.

Um, and that can make it. More overwhelming when you’re taking environmental advice from your doctor or, you know, health advice from your environmental, uh, you know, consultant. Yeah, take it. And they might have some insight over the many, many years of working with people. But I think to that point, it is important to have the specialists on each end of that, that can then, you know, bring it all together.

And it’s, it sounds like what you do. So how, where you become so helpful for your clients is you’re kind of like that team lead that point person of give me, let me get the bird’s eye view of everything. Okay. So here’s what we need to look at here. Here’s where we need to look at there. Here’s a couple of companies that we might want to bring in for this.

Here’s a couple other options. Um, I’m almost thinking like a, um, a home designer who’s able to just bring all the pieces together and bring that to their client and the client can [00:50:00] go, I like this. I don’t like that. Let’s bring this in. That works for me. I don’t like this. You give them that. Yes, exactly.

And you know, we don’t make decisions for you, right? Just kind of how you were talking about, like, I’m not here to get on the phone with your remediation company and said, no, do this, do this, do this. That’s not my job, right? That’s your IEP’s job, your inspector’s job, is to write the work scope. But we do, in a way, Teach or empower people to manage their projects, right?

It’s your home, right? And you’re Unfortunately, nobody else can manage that project for you And you know you are gonna have to be involved to some degree, but we’re here to make sure And, and it’s actually a pretty beautiful transformation to see people that maybe would never ever kind of go toe to toe with a contractor, but at the end they’re like, this is what [00:51:00] I would like.

And this is, and they, and they’re all communicating in a way where, you know, At the end of the day, the expectations, you have to be able to define them to whoever you’re working with in order for the team to execute it. You can’t just say, make my home healthy. Right. That, that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

You have to be able to articulate. What exactly that means. And we’re here to help you speak their language. We’re also here to help you understand what, what are your goals and what does that, what does healthy mean to you? Does it mean sterility? Does it mean you want a healthy home microbiome? What types of products do you want to use?

Here’s the risks and pros and cons of each of them. You know, what are. Some of the things that we really need in a remediation company too. Oftentimes I find people are looking for that perfect company and, you know, remediation is [00:52:00] a, a project that, uh, it must be done localized traveling remediation companies don’t often work.

Really well, because it’s not a one and done. It’s not like they do the job. They leave. They never come back Very oftentimes they’re coming back to get equipment or maybe they have to do something over or you know There’s still parts to that. So, you know Finding a perfect company in every small town. It just isn’t realistic at this point where we are, um, especially since this more medicalized holistic type of remediation is very new, but we can teach you if, you know.

Remediation, the core of remediation, a lot of those core methods that are used, they’re not rocket science. It’s just about finding a team that is open to working [00:53:00] with the team. And maybe doing things a little bit differently, a little bit more meticulously, a little bit more carefully. Um, and there are, and this is how we’ve been very successful guiding people through this process.

I mean, at this point, you know, we’ve taken thousands of people through remediation and we’re also looking out for your finances too. On average, we save our clients about 12, 000. Um, in, in things that are unnecessary that are again, you know, feeding into that fear. We’re not here to like, let that happen.

If something’s really worth it and really healthy, we’ll explain that to you and let you decide. But if it’s just, you know, feeding into that fear mongering, I don’t, I’m not really a big proponent of that, but again, it’s not my decision. Some people may decide to do those things. But at least they know, right?

At least they’re not like going back and saying, [00:54:00] man, I wish I would have known that I would have not done that. You know, had I known this and that’s not, we want you to feel confident. And that’s how our clients feel at the end of the day. They feel confident that I made the most informed decisions that I could possibly make.

And at the end of the day, you know. Again, I can’t promise there won’t be any stress, right? Or that, um, you know, it won’t cost any money and that there’s some trick somewhere that you can make this, you know, snap your fingers and it’d be all over, but at the end of the day, I feel like There’s a reason why some of us go through this and I try to look at like try to find the the light in that of like, what am I learning from this?

You know, what is this? Why are we going through this now? And how can I try to like, take the lessons from this? You might not know it while you’re in it. Oftentimes it’s afterwards, but it usually does happen. Yeah. Oh, I love that. There’s a [00:55:00] couple of things I want to point out and what you just said, because there were so many great tidbits.

One is the word project. And I think that’s important for people to hear is it is, it’s a project which insinuates on ongoing in the sense that it’s rarely, I think, going to be just a pop in for a day visit done. And so if you’re seeing that, that’s probably a red flag to look out for. And if you want it done in a way that I think is going to be sustainable, We do need to think of it as this project, but I also love that you’re pointing out the empowerment because to your point, if you’re just swooping in telling them what to do, maybe in the moment that feels really good, but then when they have to sit down with that contractor or that inspector or whoever, there’s still so much fear that rises up.

Whereas when you’re. You’re teaching them the questions they don’t know they need to ask, that leaves them so much more empowered to be able to continue on and you know, you’re not this crutch, you’re this [00:56:00] team member, and I think there’s a huge, huge, huge difference in that. And then the last thing I wanted to point out is, I love what you’re saying, you know, about saving money on the one hand, that’s nice.

Like we’re saving money, but really what I hear beneath that is it’s about this bioindividual approach in holistic medicine. This is a lot of how we look at it, where the idea of just blanket protocols, although we see that sometimes in holistic medicine too, but blanket protocols. Are never going to be a perfect fit because no no one person is the same just like no one home is the same And so having someone though like you who can has a broader perspective and more information and insight you can go.

Hey That’s their blanket protocol Let’s work together to pick and choose what actually fits for your home. Exactly. Exactly. You nailed it on that whole thing Because believe it or not You know, I find that I’m really big on vocabulary and terms [00:57:00] and words and language, and I find, especially in, in this sector of the community, there’s a lot of verbiage that gets thrown around, like sensitive and hypersensitive and oftentimes.

I don’t even think people really know what those mean and I don’t say that to shame anybody I didn’t know what they meant at first, you know at when I first got sick with mold I heard people saying hypersensitive and then I started picking that up and I was like, oh i’m hypersensitive too, right? And then when I really worked to Break down those definitions.

I even reached out to certain, you know, members of certain communities to help really, you know, really look at what that actually means. And oftentimes, I think that sometimes when you’re going through this experience, I know I can speak for myself. I [00:58:00] was so, I was so much looking for validation that I think that I was finding that validity in those terms, right?

And you get so caught up in these diagnoses and kind of defining yourself by like, I have mold illness, right? Because you know, if I really dig underneath that, it’s because I felt like. I didn’t have any integrity as I spoke of earlier and I felt like people didn’t believe me And you know, I wanted to be believed so much that I I was clinging to You know this terminology and I think when we really break that down oftentimes a lot of the people that we work with who Have filled out our paperwork at first, they checked off that they were hypersensitive, but we, I actually made like a little kind of questionnaire and it kind of spits out, you know, some, some information of like how [00:59:00] severe things are and oftentimes people are not actually hypersensitive, they may be sensitive, but not hypersensitive.

And that’s a big difference there. Yeah. We would remediate. Okay. Or if we’d, we’d, we’d even remediate at all for somebody who’s hypersensitive. It’s very different for somebody lower on the scale of sensitivity. Even when you say the word sensitive, there’s a spectrum to that. Right. You know, and, and I think that oftentimes we don’t think of that when you’re, when you’re learning about risk.

It’s often very black and white at the beginning, good and bad, you know, awful or great. And it’s hard to really see that there is, you know, a lot of metrics in between that. And the further you kind of grow, I mean, this is what. I actually, uh, I created a guide, um, you know, for my clients, [01:00:00] uh, I had to go backwards first for all of our clients that we work one on one with our members.

We have a virtual library. And a lot of members were coming to me and saying, PJ, can you make us like a checklist of like, what to look for in a healthy home? So I was like, okay, cool. I made a checklist. And then everybody was coming back and saying, okay, the checklist is cool, but it’s not enough. Like we’re still confused about like certain things and we don’t understand, you know?

Um, so I was like, okay, so I made a blueprint to it. And then People were still coming back and saying, I’m still confused because I don’t understand how this applies to me, right? And I always use this one example because it’s a very easy example. Like, I could say chimneys are risky, right? Why are they risky?

Oftentimes, they’re not flashed correctly. [01:01:00] Flashing is like an underlay that goes under the brick and it, whenever you have any type of penetration in your roof, whether it’s a chimney or a ventilation, uh, you know, pipe or something, there needs to be flashing around it. Like you think that’s like a hole in your roof and there needs to be something that protects where that circle part is or water is going to seep in there.

And over time, a lot of times it can be a construction defect. It can be not the flashing might not be sticking there properly, or somebody might have missed a spot or over time it starts to, you know, um, uh, just erode. Yeah. Um, but it’s a common problem that we see with Fireplaces is that they leak a lot.

Any penetration in your roof can potentially leak. Skylights leak too. We can use that as an example. So oftentimes when I teach people that, they’ll say, okay, great, check, no [01:02:00] skylights then. And it’s like, that’s the black and white, right? It’s not necessarily because then you could look through the whole checklist and you’re not going to end up with a house at all.

If that’s the case, you know, there’s no like perfect recipe. Sleep in a, sleep in a grassy yard. Yeah, yeah, but that’s what I mean. It’s more about, um, and this is where I really thought about it. I was like, okay. How do I teach people how to assess risk with context and their own context, right? And so I created a whole guide, um, called risk profiling and home health intelligence.

And it’s about learning how to understand your own symptoms. Your own susceptibility, your own sensitivity, and then taking that and then applying it into your home search and understanding, like, to your [01:03:00] climate as well. Like, in Austin, Texas, you may not need a chimney or a fireplace. So if you’re hypersensitive.

You might not want a fireplace because you’re just more sensitive at this point in your life. But if you’re not sensitive at all, then hey, maybe that could work for you. In Michigan, you know you’re going to need that fireplace probably because you might lose power. 10 times during the winter storms. So that must be an absolute for you.

So, you know, it’s, it’s learning how to work through all of these things individually, because as you said before, every home is different. There’s not one perfect recipe for a perfect, healthy home. It’s about understanding. How to go in, know what areas are risky, and how to really identify severity as well.

You need to be able to triage that. Yeah, [01:04:00] I love the nuance. In my work with clients, and I’m in the, you know, emotional, subconscious realm of things, it’s nuance, nuance, nuance. nuance. And I just find myself so drawn to practitioners in all the fields that can bring in nuance. Because again, even in the holistic field, I’ll sometimes see practitioners who are working in the rule of opposites.

I call it where it’s like, we’re here. Okay, great. We’re just going to go to the opposite. I see this a ton in the therapy world where it’s like, Oh, you’re, you’re dependent. We need to take you all the way to total independence or. You know, you have depression. We need to take you all the way into this joyful spectrum.

And I rarely see that really getting to the root of it. And it’s not. It’s not creating a someone who can think critically and attune to themself. And I think that is something that is missed across all the fields is really, you know, it’s so funny. I’m in this PhD program for depth psychology, and I’m reading this book [01:05:00] called care of the soul.

And it’s about like, What is my soul needing? What is my soul communicating? The psyche, the soul is always trying to be known. How can I tune in and hear it better so that I can make decisions that are really aligned for me. And that’s even what I’m hearing you’re doing in your own way is I want to help you.

No, you so that when you go out into the world and are assessing all these things, you know, what’s important to you, because what might be important factors to someone else is completely different. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. You just broke that down beautifully because even, you know, I, I tried to even teach this.

It’s sometimes very hard on like Instagram to try to teach a very concept topic. In a 60 second reel. Yes, exactly. And often times, you know, people for the past few years, they’ve consistently come to me, PJ, what is your favorite air [01:06:00] purifier? And I’m like, for a while I was trying to like. Okay, I wouldn’t share what my favorite purifier was.

I was just like testing different things out of like, how can I do this? And for a while I wouldn’t share because it was, I was like, you don’t need to know what my favorite one is. It’s about what’s good for you. Right. But we live in the world of, Influencers, right? We live in that that world where everybody wants to know what you’re using and they want to use what you use.

So I kind of was like, okay, fine. But it’s still that kind of premise, though, where, you know, it really should be about, though, what works for you, because there’s different types of purifiers for different purposes. Right. Reasons, and they’re not all the same, right? And I use specific ones for my home, my, the size of my home and my personal issues.

Um, but yes, that’s exactly, you, you pretty much nailed it. [01:07:00] That’s, that’s exactly, I’m very much into like, there’s so much of this that is nuanced, you know, and especially with homes. Not everybody is working in the same budget, especially, so, you know, sure, we’d all love to have the million dollar homes, but even then, I don’t want to just say that, like, expensive homes don’t have problems, because we have clients that have, you know, the most beautiful homes, but they’re hugely, hugely, you know, water damage, humidity issues, under negative pressure, all kinds of problems.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, I can already tell we’re going to need a part two, maybe even a part three, um, because it’s so fun to just sink so deeply into one of these facets. So I do want to ask really quickly, and then I’ll make sure everything is linked below. Where can people find with you? What’s the process of working with you or getting more information again?

I’ll make sure the website, your socials are linked [01:08:00] below too, but just so they can hear it here as well. Yeah. So the, we try to make it really simple. When working one on one with us, um, we don’t like things to be complicated and we’ve modeled our, our consulting firm very similar to like a gym. You can either drop in and, you know, for a 30 minute session and there’s no commitment.

You know, on the same as RN2, we’re not going to be digging deep into your paperwork. We’ll read it all in live time. Um, if you want to do an ERME interpretation, if you already have one, you can just drop in. Um, on the other side of things, if You’re curious and you’re just starting out. We also do have like our flagship product, which is an Ermi plus interpretation.

I’ll send you a discount code so you can give that to people as well. Um, and then we have our membership. Which is most people will move into our membership after [01:09:00] an army interpretation if they need an inspector and they’re ready to kind of go through the process of like, I need an inspector. Help me through remediation.

And then once you’re a member, you get. Discounted access to like our a la carte sessions, um, but that membership package is kind of like a little on boarding type of package. And it comes with a few sessions, just really enough to get you stabilized, get, get, get an inspector out. You know, it doesn’t include the inspection, you know, we’re not, we don’t have any financial relationship with any of the inspectors that we refer.

We’re really big on no conflict of interest. And in fact, Some inspectors don’t like us because of that because, because you know, we, we won’t be number one on your list. Yeah, we won’t join the mafia. So, but uh, but yeah, that’s pretty much how to work with us. And then we also have our guides which are kind of like a new [01:10:00] thing, the thing that I was talking about earlier.

That’s encompassed in a guide called Home Check. It’s a series of Seven different guides that are really built for, um, people buying homes, but it’s also kind of like homeownership one on one it’s got a lot of valuable info in it. And then we have another guide that is one of my favorites. It’s also a lot, a big favorite.

It’s called the pretty little guide to HVAC. And it’s an HVAC guide designed for women. Um, and it’s written for women. So it’s not like. Totally boring. Like who wants to talk about ventilation? Like that’s really exciting dinner conversation. Um, but it teaches you everything you need to know, you know, should you get the UV, should you really get your ducks cleaned, how to get.

You know, what to say during when you’re calling up an HVAC guy, so you don’t sound or don’t feel dumb, you know, so you’re not intimidated. Um, [01:11:00] it’s, it’s everything that I wish I had, uh, and, and so that’s what I’ve been working on lately is really trying to give people, um. The tools so they can prevent these things from happening.

We’re such a, a reactive species that we wait till, you know, the, the, the S hits the fan. Um, and we don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do that. Like you, you have to learn how to maintain your home because it requires maintaining and. I didn’t even know where my HVAC was when I, you know, first started in this and that’s a, a big shame on me because I worked on the insurance industry.

I thought it was like the condenser outside, um, but there’s a lot of parts to your house that you may not know about. And so this is a very important one that often gets very moldy. So, um, Yeah. And those guides are also a la carte. People can just purchase those. Oh yeah. You can have them [01:12:00] forever. Yep.

They’re in my link in my bio on my Instagram. So you can find them really easy. Or if you go on my page, you know, you can, there’s, you can comment one, two, three on any of my, uh, any of my posts or any of my stories, and we’ll send it to you. Amazing. Oh, that’s so wonderful. And I’ll make sure as much of that as I can is linked in the show notes too, just to make it really easy.

But I always think it’s nice to hear, hear from the guest explaining in more in depth. Okay. And here’s what we do. Here’s how you can reach out. So I love that. I’m so, so grateful to have met you. I just love, again, the nuance, but also how comprehensive it is and how accessible you’ve made all these different things.

So I’m super, super excited and grateful. Thank you so much for allowing me to have the platform to just talk to your audience. I think this is such an important topic, especially, you know, because our homes are just, we’re not taught how to care for [01:13:00] our homes. It’s, it’s, you know, you kind of like become a homeowner and it’s like, cool, here’s the keys, you know?

And you’re like, Oh, all right. Like, I don’t know. I don’t know half the parts. What’s a sump pump? Like, you know, so I get it. Yeah, and just making it accessible, digestible, all those things, and, and not from a shame based way of like, yeah, duh, no one taught us this. Yeah. And also it is our responsibility to take ownership over gaining that education that we might need.

Exactly.