Wanting to Communicate with Aron Nels Steinke

Aron Nels Steinke, cartoonist of Speechless (Graphix) and the Mr. Wolf’s Class series (Graphix), joins Matthew to talk about verbal expression, anxiety, and wanting to communicate

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About the book: Speechless by Aron Nels Steinke. Published by Graphix.

From Eisner Award-winning author Aron Nels Steinke comes a heartfelt and funny middle-grade graphic novel about friendship, anxiety, and expressing yourself.

Middle school was supposed to be a fresh start for Mira, who struggles to speak in class even though she can speak at home without a problem. Her former best friend, Chloe, has become her worst enemy, and Mira's only solace is making videos for her secret stop-motion animation channel. But when Chloe's mom has to travel for a family emergency, Mira is horrified to learn that her family has volunteered to let Chloe stay with them. When it feels like everything is going wrong, will Mira ever find her voice?

More:

Visit Aron Nels Steinke online at www.mrwolfsclass.com.

Learn more about Boyds Mills and their upcoming programs by visiting www.boydsmills.org. 

Transcript:

NOTE: Transcript created by Descript. I've attempted to clean up any typos, grammatical errors, and formatting errors where possible.

Matthew: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Children’s Book Podcast, where we celebrate the stories that help kids navigate who they are, how they feel, and how they find their voices. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Boyds Mills, positively impacting kids by amplifying the voices of storytellers who inspire children to become their best selves.

I’m your host, Matthew Winner—teacher, librarian, writer, and a fan of kids.

Before we dive in, a quick reminder: listeners on Apple Podcasts can enjoy ad-free listening and early access to episodes by subscribing to TCBP +Plus for just $0.99 a month. Just tap the banner in the app to learn more.

Today, I’m excited to welcome Aron Nels Steinke, Eisner Award–winning cartoonist, author, and illustrator, to the podcast to talk about his latest middle-grade graphic novel, Speechless (Graphix).

Speechless is a heartfelt, funny, and deeply empathetic story about middle school, anxiety, and what it means to express yourself in a world that doesn’t always make that easy. Mira can speak freely at home—but at school, her voice disappears. As friendships shift, old wounds resurface, and her former best friend Chloe suddenly moves into her house, Mira retreats into the one place where she feels fully herself: her secret stop-motion animation channel.

With warmth, humor, and incredible emotional insight, Aron captures the complicated inner lives of kids who are often misunderstood—those who feel deeply, create quietly, and struggle to be heard. Speechless explores friendship, anxiety, and creativity, reminding readers that finding your voice doesn’t always look the same for everyone.

I’m so looking forward to this conversation about graphic storytelling, middle-grade emotions, and making space for all the ways kids communicate.

Please welcome Aron Nels Steinke to the Children’s Book Podcast.

Aron: Hi so I'm Aaron Steinke. My pronouns are he, him. I am the author and cartoonist of the book Speechless and the Mr. Wolf's class graphic novel series for kids. 

Matthew: I'm glad you're here, man. I it's rarely does it happen. That's. Somebody reaches out to me over social media and I'm like, oh my God, this person's in my inbox.

And we read them in my library. That happened with you? I it, there's a couple people that can catch me off guard. I don't know if I adequately communicated to you [00:03:00] prior to recording that. You very much caught me off guard by popping into my inbox. What a joy to talk to you. 

Aron: Oh, thank you, Matthew.

I was feeling nervous reaching out to you because I don't know what the protocols are. I know you're busy, and I think I even read too late that you're, you had, filled up your guest list for the show, and so I was like, oh, whoops. I hope I don't offend you or come on too strong.

But yeah, no I'm a big fan of the show and I would excited to be here and chatting with you. 

Matthew: It's a hard line to walk, isn't it, that we have to. As authors, we have to promote what we're doing. That's important. But also people have a certain amount of bandwidth and some people like to receive emails or don't or whatever it's hard, I'm sure I don't make it any easier by saying, no, really, my guest list is booked.

My dance card is full. I say yes to too many things and it's a problem, but also there are just a couple names that can pop up where it's I am really busy, but also. I couldn't imagine showing up after this winter break that, or recording over and telling [00:04:00] my students, I had a chance to talk to Erin.

They would've been like and what? Why didn't you I had mentioned to you off recording or I had mentioned to you on social media, what a very big fan of Mr. Wolf's class I am and our students are. I'm sure you hear that a lot. So it was quite exciting to get to read Speechless. Thank you for sharing it with me, Erin.

Aron: Yeah. Thank you for reading it. I, it's a newer book. Mr. Wolf's class has been around for a little while and I feel like it's it, it took a little, it was a slow build, but most kids seem to know of it, at least if they haven't read it, which is really exciting. But coming up with a one-off book that's something completely different was a little both exciting and a little risky because stepping outta my comfort zone of the, the characters in the world, I've created that, I know we'll land well with kids and so yeah it's exciting to be able to talk about my new book. 

Matthew: Before we get into talking about that new book too much I'm glad that we got [00:05:00] to talk about being teachers before recording. And it strikes me that that as a teacher, we know how to show up and be present.

If we're doing it well, we know how to show up and be really present with our students. I'm gonna ask you, Erin as present as you are with me right now. To answer, what is giving you hope today? 

Aron: I, oh I love this question and it it stumped me at first, but then I remembered, every morning is a chance for something new and I always look forward to the mornings and I'm a morning person.

I didn't always used to be, but just getting up in the morning. Taking a shower. Making coffee. Making breakfast greeting my family like, I don't know. It's just, it's something that always keeps me optimistic and positive. I know there's, there's so much going on that is awful. And there's also really great things happening all the time that we're not highlighting.

'cause there's so many, the bad things take the weight. But even. With [00:06:00] bad news or, the progression of things going in a direction. I'm not, I'm actually quite, frightened of it it's, I don't, every day I feel very positive. If I were teaching, I don't know how I would be teaching right now.

'cause, as a teacher you feel every emotion is even more highlighted. And more but then you're also just in the classroom. Like I used to be a teacher. And I remember just being able to almost tune out a lot of the world because I was just focused on, the problems of the classroom and the little highlights and the successes of the classroom.

So that's I guess if you have something to work on and something to focus on it's a good thing. And putting away my phone, putting away the distractions is also maybe a good new Year's resolution for me to. To maybe stay more present in the moment and in my own world. 

Matthew: Yeah, I'm with you on that one.

That the staff lounge can be a dangerous place. 'cause we all do just wanna talk and [00:07:00] process not dangerous because of the good people I work with, but dangerous because there's just a lot going on and we don't often talk about it in front of children. But it is pretty great to get to talk about big feelings and big emotions and the.

The broad strokes that connect us all and to know we are actually literally physically here with one another. That feels pretty good. Often making things with one another that feels pretty good. Yeah, that's a good thing. Glad that you're able to. To find that as well in your home. And also thinking back to the time in the classroom I wanna bring us to talking about Speechless.

But I realize that there's, I'm sure still some people still discovering this book, some readers of all ages. Would you mind sharing a brief book, talk of Speechless? 

Aron: Yeah. So Speechless is a middle grade graphic novel about a sixth grade girl named Mira. And one of the main reasons it's called Speechless is because she has [00:08:00] a she has difficulty verbally expressing herself when she's not comfortable in school.

The school setting is the main area where it's really challenging for her to talk. In fact, she's never spoken in school. Now, that's not the main defining thing about her, right? She has she's a whole person besides that but she does talk at home just fine. She discovers throughout the course of the book that she has she, she gets labeled with having selective mutism or situational mutism, where it's an anxiety, mostly anxiety I guess I should say most often.

It's attributed to anxiety disorder. And it makes it so she freezes up in those anxious situations and she doesn't talk. But she's a stop motion animator. When she goes home, she gets to make stop motion films, and that's what she loves to do. It's about her and her ex best friend Chloe, who we start the book.

And we find out there's this other girl in her life named Chloe, who used to be her best friend, [00:09:00] and we we discover what the rift was about and why they stopped being friends. But really Mira has to take it head on because her mom is really good friends with Chloe's mom and to help the family out, they take Chloe into their house.

Chloe has to live with Mira. So these. Two characters who have a lot of history and issues have to end up living together. And it's about Mira making new friends and just, for cheesy as it sounds it's about her finding her voice and many ways and taking small steps to overcome her challenges.

Getting help and finding her own confidence in the things that she's, she is good at and the things that she enjoys.[00:10:00] 

Matthew: Aaron, it's a lovely book. I like the way you write kids. I like the way you've rounded out Mira's world. I would love to know more about your inspiration for creating this kid and this kid's situation. 

Aron: Yeah. I had finished the fifth Mr. Wolf class book. It was called Snow Day. And after that I, I was like, I really wanna make a book that's not with animal characters, with, I wanna make real humans and how do I do that?

And so I was thinking about stories to [00:11:00] tell, and I had worked with a student who was a fifth grader who he wasn't in my classroom, but he was in my, my teaching colleagues classroom. Because I was a fifth grade teacher too, and we shared students sometimes we would have them come over and he did.

Yeah. I found out he didn't talk at all in school. And he did speak at home. It, he, I didn't get to know him too well, but he was the inspiration at the beginning. And I'm hesitant to like, go in deeper about that. 'cause I really didn't take his story. But what he his. His not speaking in school made me think and I did some research and then I discovered the term selective mutism.

And I know there's a lot of reasons why, people might, be mute in different situations or people who are nonverbal and there's people who are nonverbal at the time for other reasons. But this definition of someone who's elective mu selectively mute or situationally mute, which I like better because it's.

It's really the situation. It's an [00:12:00] anxiety heightened situation for Mira where she doesn't speak. It's not like she's selective and she's not choosing to not talk. She just can't, she freezes up, right? So our amygdala and our brain, or our lizard brain tells us, if something's if we're perceiving a threat, we either fight or flight or in some situations we freeze and.

When I learned about this condition, I was like, oh, like I identified 100% and I. Maybe I'm just being one of those people who's oh yeah, I'm, I have that, but, and I don't actually I don't know. I've never been diagnosed, but I had a really hard time speaking myself when I was a kid.

I still have challenges. I have a lot of social anxiety. If there's a party, if it's unstructured. It drives me nuts because, I don't know, like just navigating, social social expectations and like the nuances of that is really challenging. Selective mutism. There's, obviously there's overlap sometimes with other [00:13:00] things like, autism spectrum disorder. There's there's a lot of things going into factor. So I'm not like the expert. I just know that there are kids who have these feelings and they have these challenges and I was one of those kids and I wanted to speak desperately. I really wanted to be able to communicate better than I could, and I didn't want to freeze up.

This is my story. So when we're trying to tell stories, especially in this day and age, we're trying to find what's authentic to us and are we the right voice to tell this story? And so I felt okay, I feel safe in like knowing that this is my story, even if it's heightened because she really doesn't talk at all.

And I spoke in school, but it was there were many moments where I couldn't talk, but it wasn't the same, it wasn't a hundred percent of the time in school. And then I actually, I started thinking about other students I'd had and I was like, oh yeah, there was that one kid.

Whenever I tried to talk to him about something, he would freeze up. I thought at the time he was being defiant. Like he really, 'cause he talked to his [00:14:00] friends just fine. But then when I came in, it was like a wall had been put up. And so we as teachers, sometimes we don't really see what's going on. And at the time I thought, okay, this kid.

He really doesn't like me. What am I doing that make and he doesn't want to talk to me, but I think maybe he was really anxious. Here I am this big adult and I have this authority and I could be scary, especially for this kid who was at the time, a second grader and he was tran moving from one school to the other in the middle of the school year.

And so it really got me to think about how, oh, this is really an unseen, it's an invisible disability that, people aren't really aware of. And so I was okay, I have to tell this story because it's something that people need to know about and don't know about, especially educators.

But it's also a great opportunity for, students to see themselves in this character, even if they're not like Mira. As [00:15:00] far as like the speaking thing, we all. Have anxiety at some point. I even had a student read my book and they said, oh my gosh, I I had I identify with Mira so much she's just like me except for I can't stop talking.

And I thought that was hilarious because 

Matthew: That's beautiful. 

Aron: Yeah. This kid identified who, was having a sim, a sit, a different situation. It was around expressing yourself and so it was relatable. Anyway now I'm talking too much 

Matthew: feel. No. I, you make me I can't help as I'm sitting, listening to you picturing my students, it was only just a couple days ago that we had our final days before winter break, and so as you.

Bringing up these different ideas. It is evoking a lot of images of my students. Perhaps other teachers listening or other parents listening are also picturing their kids of the ones that can't stop talking. And I have a couple that can't stop talking and feel, I think, really [00:16:00] embarrassed or out of like they're unable to control it.

And so the redirection it makes. Reflective on how I redirect them, because I don't want them to feel that I'm mad at them. I want them to feel like, I can tell this is really hard for you to stop. It's also interrupting us. But I also can feel that it's hard. Similarly, I have students that I don't know how they are in their classroom, but I know that for the past three years that I've been at this school, they've been pretty quiet with me.

But also I don't want them to feel like I don't see them. Or that I don't value them or that I don't want them to be a part of this community. They certainly are a part of. And so as I was reading Speechless, I kept feeling that whenever we got to school, whenever I got to see Mira at home and making these wonderful animations and having [00:17:00] a whole name for your production, that nobody.

Knew you but hearing them talk about you in a positive way at school as you're putting up flyers for your latest videos. There were just moments that were really great and loving and made Mira's presence and her voice known throughout the school, whether or not they were, and again, it caused me to reflect a lot on.

The way that all of my students have a voice in my library, if not in the school in different ways. It might not be audibly, but it could certainly be in other ways. Yeah, so 

Aron: that was great. Yeah, I was thinking about that too, about how, like the, there's so many personalities and children who are in our classrooms.

They're the ones who are really great at volunteering and sharing, and they're really great at help helping drive to this drive to the [00:18:00] discussion and help move the class forward. But there's so many kids who don't get to really share who they are in the course of the day, and I was thinking about when I was a kid and I loved to draw, but we never had an opportunity to draw, like when I was in elementary school, zero opportunities at all.

And so no one really knew that I liked to draw. I wasn't an, I didn't, never had an opportunity to express that. So who are the kids who really loved to go swimming, or they were horseback riding, or they're, they have some hidden talent or. Thing they're passionate about, but they don't get an opportunity to share that side of themselves in the classroom.

And just how it would be great if everyone could really get to see that side of people. And so Mira she's a stop motion animator. I gave her this opportunity to have like a kind of like a YouTube channel? 

Matthew: Yeah. 

Aron: As much as I don't know if I would really want my kid to have a YouTube channel like that at the time that's maybe visible to other people.

I do have her like navigate it with her dad [00:19:00] and and there, there is a whole thing about there, I think there's a big negative side of like looking for likes and things like that. But she does have that opportunity to at least. Have this part of her discovered by people. So people do know about it, but it just didn't connect and it's her.

Matthew: I think it's complicated. My daughter has had a YouTube channel for a little while. She's currently in fifth grade, but we also had some really strict guidelines on. Not including information on the video itself or in the description of the video or the account that identifies you, guidelines like that.

I love for you to make, she makes puppets and makes fairy videos and really wonderful ways that she's making things and then expressing it's beautiful. But, walking that line of I, I want you to be able to share this. It's terrific, but also I need to [00:20:00] protect you from things that you don't know are out there.

Or maybe you know, because the other adults in your life, myself included, have talked to you or warned you about them. But like any kid, I can draw back to when I was a kid going, yeah, my parents are trying to protect me, but they don't know how safe I am. I'm totally fine. The world's got nothing.

It's fine. I'll be fine. So I think about that. I also think about, I have a son. He's older than she is. He's in high school, but he similarly is at a place just this past year of making a business for himself through taking sports, photography Oh, amazing. A space that wouldn't have existed for me when I was a child.

Yet I'm able to similarly help him navigate. I think I bring that up because this world you've built for Mira, you're not just modeling how Mira's parents are helping her to navigate that world and her teachers are helping her to navigate that world. [00:21:00] But I know you know this, Aaron, but you're also modeling for all of your readers, no matter what age we are.

But this is one way to, to navigate this as well. I would love to ask you, I realize a more complex question than I originally wrote in our interview questions. And I'm gonna warn ahead of time that I'm, it's still part of what I'm processing, so I don't know if I'm gonna quite word it the right way, but I wanna ask it this way, Erin.

I've been around a lot of other writers. I go to SCBW, S-E-B-W-I events and I have been to the Highlights Foundation and to other writing retreat centers. And this is a really great thing, but I notice that those of us coming from the classroom, in some cases have a leg up on those that don't, because.

When we're thinking about what the classroom looks like and how it operates, I know that it's a shorthand. I know what that looks like. I might have the o the opposite of a colleague. I've sometimes received information from critique groups or feedback from [00:22:00] critique groups where they're like, that's not really how the classroom is.

And I'm like yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. Yeah. I promise it is. And that's okay. It's funny, but. I also know that's not something I can turn off when I'm writing the way that I think about kids that way, or how I look at kids that show up in the library. I wonder how your classroom experience, I know it might've been some time ago, but how that classroom experience continues to influence the stories you tell and really the worlds you build.

Are you still. Transporting yourself back to the classroom, do you still think of individual kids? Do you start of still think of, like the way a classroom ecosystem works? How is that, how has that influenced or continue to influence the way you make things? 

Aron: Yes. I think it, it becomes more challenging the further I am away from teaching.

Okay. So while I was doing Mr. Wolf's class, I was teaching full-time and I was a [00:23:00] full-time elementary school teacher for about, I think 10 years. And I was a preschool teacher for one year and yeah, just, I had the kids' voices in my head the whole time. And so some students became some of the characters in Mr.

Wolf's class, were like amalgams of characters of real people. After time, they became their own people. Sure. But having those voices in my head were really important. I don't think I could have done that book series without having been a teacher. There's no way. I had to have had that experience.

And if you're writing for children and you don't work with children, I think it's really, you gotta find kids. You gotta find a way to be with kids because you're not gonna know what you're doing. You might get lucky. You're writing for yourself probably, or think about.

Okay with Speechless. I was thinking about my son and myself because I wasn't teaching while I was working on the book. I was thinking about, I wanted to make a book for him. So he's 13 now, but he was maybe, [00:24:00] oh gosh, nine when I started writing. 

Matthew: Whoa. Yep. Okay. Yeah. 

Aron: And I wanted to make a book that would be really exciting for him because he was really into making his own films and animation.

And so I wanted to share about this character who had that. And I was also tapping into my own childhood. I was thinking about, friends that I've lost in my life and and what would be, how could I put a po positive spin on that? If I could reconcile with that person, what would it be like?

Now that I'm thinking of new books, like I just finished Mr. Wolf's class six. It's called the new student. And I've got all these characters already dialed in, so it wasn't that hard to go back into that world. 

Matthew: Yeah. 

Aron: Yeah. I think as I get further away from teaching, I'll probably be asking friends if I can just stop in their classroom every once in a while.

Just 'cause you gotta be around kids. It's a whole energy. It's, it just [00:25:00] affects the work so much. You gotta worry about, you gotta watch out for the little things that are so exciting. The Mr. Wolf's class started out as a comic strip. I don't know if it was like I did 200 and something comic strips.

It was just, I did not know that, 

Matthew: Erin. Wow. 

Aron: It was the day in the life of the teacher, it was just based on my life as a teacher. This is before the book series. And so I had done all this pre-work and I was just doing it for fun, but, every day there's something that lends itself to a comic strip for sure.

You can think about that small little moment that happened. Do those small moments though, make it into a narrative like a big book? Not necessarily. So how do you find a way of like writing a more plot driven narrative or character driven narrative? You have to, you can't always have those great little.

Zingers. The little one, the little things that happen every day. They don't always make it into the main narrative. But you get a good feel for what the classroom is like if you're just volunteer, find someone to volunteer with. I don't know if you're making books [00:26:00] for kids, there's like a, in my area there's a program called smart. It's called Start Making a Reader today, and they're always looking for volunteers to help, read to kids who need extra help in the classroom. Find a way to volunteer and work with kids. That's just as simple as it is I don't think you can make books for kids without.

Having a relationship with a kid. 

Matthew: I think when you mentioned about the little things that went into this comic strip, the little I can imagine the little events that are happening. But I also think it's the knowledge of those little events that helps round out characters and make spaces feel more known when you're telling stories.

So I like that it's the signs on the wall. It's the yeah. Clips the kids say it's all of that. It's great. I wanna ask you before we go about why comics, I think people are drawn to tell to writing in different mediums and formats for different reasons, but you really seem to have a home in comics, maybe just from drawing from a young age.

But tell me more about [00:27:00] comics and their importance to you, Aaron. 

Aron: Oh, this is a, I could go on for a long time, but I'll try to keep it succinct. I started, I didn't really start drawing comics until I was in my twenties. But I'd always drawn and I liked comics but the models of com of cartooning that I had growing up were like superhero comics.

And comic strips. So I really liked, peanuts and Garfield. I didn't read Calvin and Hobbes 'cause we just didn't have it in my newspaper. I would've absolutely loved it and I would've, it would've been a big influence if I had read it. But, so I spent a lot of my early childhood, just like trying to draw like pinup characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man, like I like those superhero characters, but I didn't really know how to draw.

A narrative story with sequential images because those comics, I don't know, like people love them. Great. For me it wasn't a great tool. But we have kids reading Dave Pelkey books now and they all [00:28:00] know how to draw comics because they've just, from osmosis, they've read so many graphic novels and comics that like make it accessible.

The art style is. Imitable the art styles and the superhero comics were very hard to imitate. And they weren't based on what I call like it wasn't based on timing like a good graphic novel has a good timing and pacing to it. A lot of those superhero comics that I was reading felt very much.

Just a display of flashy characters and not really about reading from beat to beat. Of course you can argue against me. That's just my opinion, my personal taste. So once I started reading graphic novels I think the first, my, my uncle got me my aunt and uncle bought me a Linda Berry collection called the 100 Demons, or I think that's what it was. But back in like 2001, I was an animation student in [00:29:00] 2002, whenever that came out. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is. This is like a way to tell stories with pictures. Like I don't have to be an animator 'cause that's what I was training to be. It was like a Disney animator.

I can, I could just use paper and draw comics. And then it took me another several years before I started drawing my own comics. There were a lot of great cartoonists who were making indie stuff at the time, like Chester Brown's indie comics. Like I never loved you and unlikely. Craig Thompson's blankets and then I saw Mar trois Persepolis with a really like graphic kind of simple art style.

And so I used a lot of these influences and I started drawing my own comics about my own life. So through. My artistic pursuits, I became a storyteller because I like to draw pictures and tell stories with pictures. I didn't think I would be a writer. I never considered myself a writer. It wasn't until I really started drawing my own comics about my own life that I was like, oh, okay.

I [00:30:00] can tell my own story. I can try to make this work. And I even tried doing picture books before I did comics and I, and they never got published. Oh, 

Matthew: Jose I remember the zoo box. That's my first introduction to you. 

Aron: Oh man. So 2005, I had a friend and I who she would write the words and I did the pictures.

Matthew: Yeah. 

Aron: And then at some point I was just like, and she's a really talented author. She ended up like getting nominated for the National Book Award, things like that. But at the time I was like. I am so driven. I just wanna work and work and make something. And I don't wanna rely on anyone else's timeline.

Like I, it didn't feel like I could. I'm a I'm not a team player. It sounds bad. I love being on a team. I do work well with certain people, but I just, I don't wanna wait. And so I was like, I'm gonna write my own stuff. Maybe I'll be a writer. Yeah. And 

Matthew: that's 

when 

Aron: I started trying to write my own stuff.

And 

Matthew: I'm glad I went that direction. Erin. Sorry. [00:31:00] No, I, taking 

Aron: time to tell the story, 

Matthew: I it's terrific and I'm glad. That it led you to where you are. And I'm glad that it led us to this moment today. 'cause I'm glad I got to talk to you. I'm glad that these books exist. I'm glad you're catching me in my library career at this exact time and that you're writing for the exact kids that I'm teaching.

It's really terrific. I've watched our time go by so fast, but I don't wanna say goodbye without asking you that. Aaron, I'll see a library full of children tomorrow morning. Is there a message I can bring to them from you? 

Aron: Yes I thought about this. I think doing something every day that is kind is my message.

Try to do one thing every day that you normally wouldn't have done that would be considered like a good thing, like a kind thing. It could be like, so in my world like my son and I were just like, I'm like sick of seeing like trash on the sidewalk. And I was like no one's gonna pick it up if I don't.

And so we just started we got grabbers and we got a bucket and we got a [00:32:00] bag and we just, if we're bored, we just go out and pick up trash. So I would consider that like a, an act of kindness. But it could be, saying hi to someone who you've never said hi to before saying their name.

That's really nice. I don't know, I think about this a lot and how I can be like, I can do something outta my comfort. To do something that's good. That's not like for me, it's all, ultimately it's for me because it makes me feel better, but it's the thing where like we can affect change.

In ways that we don't acknowledge. It's like I'm such an a, I'm such Afra afraid person. Like I've lived my whole life. I'm an anxious person. Like obviously I wrote a book about it. The main character is a lot like me because I have so much fear of doing things wrong or. But if you go outta your way into your discomfort, like once every day, just do something a [00:33:00] little bit that makes you a little bit uncomfortable.

Maybe it's, like I said, like an act of kindness or even just something that you're just pushing yourself into doing something a little bit uncomfortable. That. That, would be good for you? Probably. Or as simple as trying a different food or yeah, talking to someone you've never spoken to before, making that effort.

It might feel weird, it might not pay off, it might not be like a good fit, but you've tried it and you know better.