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Shandeigh "Nikki" Berry, PhD, RN, CNE-Aydens Aunt
60 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we were fortunate to sit down with Nikki Berry, a former OR nurse turned nurse educator and researcher with a focus on the grief and trauma of perinatal loss.
The focus of her research came about as a result of her own tragic life experiences. Nikki’s niece, Ayden, was born with a life limiting condition-anencephaly. As she watched her family go through this loss and tried to offer assistance in developing a plan for the birth of Ayden, she realized the resources and research were severely lacking. She has turned her grief into purpose and has published many articles and formed a non profit to improve resources and conditions for loss families.
Nikki is the founder of a non profit called Project poppyseed. This came about as a result of her personal experiences plus her research work with families for her dissertation. While completing her research she met many families who experienced perinatal loss and was struck by the silence and loneliness families dealt with throughout their grief journey. One of the tenets of Project Poppyseed is breaking the silence surrounding perinatal loss. Another is to conduct research and provide tools for providers to utilize.
Nikki is a beam of light in the community and we are so thankful for the work she is doing. Nikki is someone who “gets it”. It was honestly hard to follow up with commentary because she summed things up so beautifully! Thank you Nikki, you are an amazing human!
The episode picture is a sweet view of Nikki holding baby Ayden after she was born, reading The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate The Wash, her favorite book, to her niece.
If you are looking for an organization to donate to in your baby's memory, please consider Project Poppyseed. You would be funding much needed research.
If you would like to be a participant or view current research please visit https://projectpoppyseed.org/
Thank you for listening!
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Nicole and I'm Desiree. We are both mothers who run a support group for perinatal loss. Through our group, we have met many wonderful families and have had the honor of hearing about and sometimes meeting their beautiful babies. We noticed that families feel relief when they can share openly and feel seen when they meet others who are telling similar stories. So we created this podcast as a space for families to share the stories of their babies.
00:00:24
Speaker
We want to honor and remember these children. We want to help you navigate your life after loss. And most importantly, we want each story to give you hope. So please join us as we share these stories of grief and love. Welcome to the Blindsided Podcast. Welcome to the Blindsided Podcast. We're your hosts, Nicole and Desiree.
Guest Introduction: Nikki Berry
00:00:44
Speaker
Hi, everyone.
00:00:47
Speaker
Today, we are here with Nikki Berry, PhD, a certified nurse educator from Washington state who focuses her research work on the topic of grief and trauma surrounding perinatal loss. When I was in nursing school 12 years ago, I could not find any articles on these topics, which is astounding as one in four families experience pregnancy loss in some form or another. To put some perspective on the statistic, one in eight women will experience breast cancer in their lifetime. Those numbers are astounding.
00:01:17
Speaker
While searching for articles recently, I luckily stumbled on Nikki's work. I was so impressed and happy to read these studies and to know that they exist. Finally, I thought someone is truly making an effort to understand the experience of perinatal loss and the blanket effect it has on a person's life. Nikki, along with colleagues, have published many articles.
Nikki's Personal Connection to Perinatal Loss
00:01:40
Speaker
Some titles include Caring for Families Who Have Previously Endured Multiple Perinatal Losses,
00:01:47
Speaker
a proposed framework for perinatal loss trauma-informed care, the trauma of perinatal loss, a scoping review, providing palliative care to neonates with anencephaly in the home setting, uncovering prolonged grief reactions subsequent to reproductive loss, the impact of anencephaly on parents, a mixed-method study, qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis of parents' experiences of perinatal loss,
00:02:17
Speaker
experiencing anencephaly, a parent's perspective, and the impact of communication surrounding intrauterine congenital anomaly diagnoses and integrative review. Most recently, she published an article on perinatal follow-up care recommendations.
Project PoppySeed and Advocacy
00:02:38
Speaker
Nikki, thank you for being here with us, and thank you for the effort you put into this work. Thank you for having me.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's so nice. I'm excited. Yes. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself on a personal level? Yeah, I am an assistant professor at St. Martin's University in Washington State. I teach in the nursing department. I've been a nurse for 10 years. The majority of my experience is with trauma, especially in my operating room. And
00:03:07
Speaker
It's weird talking about personal, but I enjoy hiking and rock climbing. Anything outdoors is amazing. Before we started, we were just talking about the weather today and she was, Nikki was just saying that she would have loved to be outdoors today because it's 50 degrees there. And I told her it was 75 here in New Jersey. So that's funny, but you're definitely an outdoor person. I'm very jealous of your weather. How did you go from a nurse in the operating room to your current research?
00:03:38
Speaker
Great question because the two are very unrelated.
Trauma-Informed Care and Emotional Support
00:03:43
Speaker
In January of 2016, my sister found out that her first pregnancy was complicated with anencephaly. And that's a diagnosis that explains the brain hasn't formed fully in utero.
00:03:59
Speaker
And at that time, I was working in the operating room and my sister and her husband decided they wanted to carry their daughter to term and they wanted to donate her organs. So they asked me to be her resource with my background and experience. And I thought, no problem. I can carry out your wishes. I can make sure that you have what you need. And as time went on, she learned at that 20 week ultrasound appointment about this diagnosis. As time went on, I ran into one roadblock after another.
00:04:29
Speaker
I couldn't find anyone who was able to accept my niece's organs. There were policies and procedures in place that prevented this. And I wasn't able to carry out her wishes. And I was starting to get very concerned. It wasn't until my sister was in active labor that I got a phone call saying that a university in Texas would accept my niece's body for whole body research.
00:04:57
Speaker
And so it was comforting to our family and my sister and her husband that they were able to find some sort of meaning out of this experience. But it really showed me how alone parents are and how few resources there are. And I thought to myself, if I
00:05:15
Speaker
a nurse with a master's degree at the time working in the operating room. I'd been in multiple organ procurements. If I couldn't navigate the system, how on earth is the average individual going to be able to traverse the healthcare system? So when I went on to get my PhD, I decided that I really, something I was very passionate about because of this personal experience was helping families who are experiencing a loss like this.
00:05:41
Speaker
I wanted to dedicate my career in research and learning how the healthcare system can improve, specifically supporting parents emotionally.
Societal Silence and Prolonged Grief
00:05:51
Speaker
That's awesome. What year was that that your sister lost her daughter? It was January 2016. Did she have any children before that or does she have any children now? That was her first pregnancy. Okay. They have since been able to adopt an adorable little boy. Aww. Yeah.
00:06:10
Speaker
That's awesome. Can you tell us about Project Poppy Seed and how it got started? Absolutely. Project Poppy Seed really came about because of the parents I interviewed in my dissertation work. As I was getting my PhD and doing that research, I was very humbled and moved by the parents in my study, by their strength, by their love, by everything.
00:06:36
Speaker
that I was hearing from them. And something else that really stuck out to me is, again, how alone parents are but also how silent their loss is.
00:06:46
Speaker
perinatal loss isn't something that people talk about. They don't want to talk about it. They want to avoid it. And so those who experience this type of loss are so alone. Society doesn't know how to support them because we're not talking about what can we do.
Role of Healthcare Providers
00:07:03
Speaker
And so Project Papacy came about. It's a nonprofit organization and I wanted to start breaking that silence
00:07:09
Speaker
around perinatal loss. So it really works to advocate for parents to raise awareness of the prevalence of perinatal loss as well as the emotional impact. And then there is also research and education available for healthcare professionals. Most of the resources are on the website, but there's a lot of resources for families who are experiencing grief, trying to help them learn how to cope and heal.
00:07:36
Speaker
I did get a chance to look at it and I thought it was awesome. You have really good links to wonderful organizations and then your resources and just the things that you say are really helpful. Thank you for doing that. What year did you create that? I believe that was 2021. Okay. Have you been since able to connect families with other families through people reaching out to you?
00:08:01
Speaker
I don't really do that with Project PoppySeed. It's more just resources that they're available with themselves.
Toolkit for Follow-Up Care
00:08:07
Speaker
Okay, cool. So in your article, a proposed framework for perinatal loss trauma-informed care, it says that up to 60% of parents continue to experience symptoms of trauma for up to five years.
00:08:18
Speaker
Adverse health outcomes include cardiovascular, endocrine, sleep, and eating disorders, and a host of psychosocial orders, including depression, anxiety, substance misuse, and suicide. To mitigate the adverse symptoms of emotional trauma, it is necessary to approach care through a trauma-informed lens. So we wanted to ask, why is trauma-informed care important for providers to factor in when caring for patients who have experienced perinatal loss? I'm even going to go a little bit further back to answer this question.
00:08:48
Speaker
As I was doing my research and as I was reading other articles from researchers who look into perinatal loss, the word trauma kept coming up. And I thought to myself, you know, these parents are saying I was traumatized. It was traumatic.
00:09:02
Speaker
I had PTSD and the healthcare system doesn't recognize perinatal loss as, I mean, it barely recognizes it as an emotional experience, but definitely not an emotionally traumatic experience. And so if we can't recognize the impact of this experience, we really can't step in to support these parents.
00:09:24
Speaker
And that's what got me started on this idea of emotional trauma. And so I did the initial scoping review and found that, oh my gosh, 60% of parents who have a
Supporting Families Through Loss
00:09:35
Speaker
history of perinatal loss are having symptoms of PTSD. And that's just astounding. And so this framework, it really provides a guideline for healthcare professionals, one, to
00:09:49
Speaker
let them know that this is an emotionally traumatic experience. If we don't know that there's emotional trauma, we can't respond to it. We can't provide those resources that families need. We're not going to be able to meet the needs of the parents. So the first thing is really that awareness. Another thing is restoring that sense of control. Because when someone experiences a loss, whether it's miscarriage or stillbirth or even early neonatal death,
00:10:17
Speaker
that sense of control is not there. The entire world is ripped out from underneath you. And so with this framework, it helps health care professionals recognize what parents are going through and then how to respond to their unique emotional needs. So it really, it kind of provides a guide map and it gives just really simple things that people can do. For example,
00:10:43
Speaker
allowing additional time when talking to families. We know from neuroscience that trauma is going to impact an individual's ability to retain information. So because we know that, let's slow down. Let's repeat things. Let's allow additional time for these care interactions.
00:11:02
Speaker
so that we can really help people understand what it is they're going through, because their experience is, it's, well, like your podcast says, it blindsides them, and they just don't know how to understand what's happening. How would a care provider access this framework that you wrote? It is published and available online, so they can go through any type of database and find it, medical database, and then with the publisher as well.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:11:32
Speaker
Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think that's so important to what you were saying about the time. Because even when I worked in the area, some providers would be like, Oh, I have to get consent. I have to get consent. After telling them, you know, your baby doesn't have a heartbeat. I'm like, the consent can wait a few minutes. We, we got to take a few minutes, but it was just always that rush, rush, rush, like, and it's just the way of the hospital. I feel like I try to get their consent and they have to check off all these boxes. But in situations like this, we can take time.
00:12:01
Speaker
we can let things sink in as long as no one's at risk of being hurt or, you know, God forbid something bad happening. We can take the time, you know? Absolutely. And like you said, if they're not at risk, it's not a heart attack. It's not a stroke or not pushed for time like that. It's a different type of emergency. It's an emotional emergency. Yes. It requires that slowing down. Yes. It's so true.
00:12:28
Speaker
According to your article, the trauma of perinatal loss, a scoping review, 60% of parents experienced PTSD following perinatal loss. The trauma of perinatal loss was found to impact parents for up to 12 years following the loss experience. At one year post-loss, the diagnosis of PTSD was two times higher than a diagnosis of depression or anxiety.
00:12:51
Speaker
Symptoms of trauma remain clinically significant up to seven years following a loss experience. And 4% of participants develop chronic PTSD. What factors do you believe contribute to the prolonged grief of 12 plus years? The silence that surrounds perinatal loss, I think, is the primary contributing factor. Because we know that individuals who experience trauma have better outcomes if they have social support.
00:13:21
Speaker
But if this is a silent loss, they don't have social support, whether it is professional or their family or their social circle. In addition to not having that social support, there's no permission to grieve and people can't talk about what they're going through. A lot of this comes from society's fear
00:13:42
Speaker
not only of death, but of perinatal death. We don't want to accept the idea that a baby can die. That's a horrible world to live in. So if we ignore it and we pretend it doesn't happen, then we can keep living in our own little utopia where medicine can save babies. But what that tells the parents is that we are not going to acknowledge that this happened. We're not going to let you grieve. We're not going to talk about it.
00:14:09
Speaker
And it also pressures parents to return to normal. So if they're pressured to return to normal, people want life to be as it always has. They say, oh, just get pregnant again. Have another baby. We don't have to worry about it. But all of that does is potentiate that trauma. And that next pregnancy, if it does come, isn't going to fix the grief and the pain the parents are going to feel. It's honestly, a lot of times it's even more traumatic.
00:14:38
Speaker
the parents because they're just terrified that something's gonna go wrong in this pregnancy as well because they do live in a world where babies can die. And so not having that social support and not having that permission to grieve really causes the grief to become embodied into the individual and they just it's in their in their souls and their muscles in their cells because they can't express it and heal from it.
00:15:08
Speaker
It's so true. It's true.
00:15:11
Speaker
It's heartbreaking. It is so heartbreaking. And you only came to realize this when you started doing your research because before this, you know, I had zero experience with perinatal loss before my niece, which was another reason it was so impactful to me is because I learned how emotional it was not only for her and her husband, but for me and my family. I mean, I had never held this little girl, but at that 20 week ultrasound appointment, I was devastated.
00:15:40
Speaker
for them and for the niece I wasn't going to have in the future that wasn't going to be there. And that was very profound to me, recognizing how emotionally impactful it is. She's so empathetic, very empathetic. What have you found with your participants that's really helped them to alleviate the symptoms of PTSD or to cope? One of the things
00:16:07
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of different things that research recommends as far as coping and healing. There is grief is really work. And there's a theory of grief work. Dr. Warden talks about how you have to work through accepting the loss and feeling the loss before you can really heal from the loss.
00:16:29
Speaker
Therapy has been very helpful for a lot of families, but honestly the most profound thing that I have noticed is simply listening to people talk. In one of my studies, in my dissertation study, I was interviewing a dad whose daughter had anencephaly and it had been 12 years since his daughter had died and as I was listening to his story he kept seeing these things like
00:16:56
Speaker
that made me hear the guilt and he was blaming himself. And so after the interview, I asked him, who do you have to talk to? Because you're carrying so much guilt with your experience. And he said to me, you're the first person that's ever asked me about my daughter. Oh my gosh. And it just crushed me to hear that. It was so heartbreaking.
00:17:22
Speaker
But the thing that makes it stand out, it was a couple years later, it was probably three years later, I had the opportunity to talk to his wife. And she said to me, I don't know what you said during that interview, but he has been a different man. And so he just, yeah, just listening to his story. And I only spoke with him once. And all I did was listen. And it made that profound impact on his life.
00:17:52
Speaker
So being allowed to talk about what the experience is about their child is such a healing process.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's a beautiful story. It's true. Yeah, support groups, support groups and therapy. We're lucky we do have quite a few dads who do attend our support group. I think once they say oh, there's another dad there that they come in there. Honestly, some of them more sometimes are the more vocal ones. Yeah, my longest interviews with men, honestly.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, they grieve too. And they, sadly, they can easily be pushed aside because perinatal loss is thought to be a female experience. She carried the baby, but they grieve very deeply.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yes. So when you're interviewing participants for your studies, have you noticed the ones that are doing well versus the ones that are not doing as well after their loss, a major difference in what they are or are not doing? Absolutely. Social support is one of the things that really stands out to that. So are they allowed to talk about their experience? Is there anyone that is grieving with them?
00:19:05
Speaker
Those who do have a strong social support do much better. It's not to say that it's not a lot of work and pain for them in their healing journey, but they have that support in place. I interviewed a single mom and she didn't have any, but she had a living son, but she didn't have family around her. She didn't have a partner.
00:19:26
Speaker
And she went through her entire loss experience by herself. And it was six years later that I was talking with her and she said, I haven't even had time to grieve yet. And she was, you know, carrying so much anger at her experience because it was a really devastating experience. And so not having that social support, she hasn't been able to even begin grieving. And if you can't begin grieving, you can't begin healing.
00:19:55
Speaker
There are, volunteering is something else that a lot of people who are doing well have been able to do, whether it's volunteering for awareness marches or donations, but just having some sort of memorialization or continuation of their baby's memory is healing and it's really powerful, honestly.
00:20:22
Speaker
And you brought that up, and we brought that up last night at support group, that I think the same thing. I think when you get involved and you are doing something that's making an impact for other families, it could even be something like volunteering in an animal shelter. Just giving back and giving your energy to something else positive to help someone else really brings a lot of feelings. It does. Yeah, it really does. Why do you believe the research has been lacking in the grief and trauma of perinatal loss?
00:20:54
Speaker
I think there are two reasons it's been lacking. One, there's not a lot of money in it. And it's hard for researchers to do studies if they're not funded. And so there's really, sadly, not a lot of funding in this area. The other thing is that perinatal grief has only recently been recognized. I mean, 1970 was the first publication.
00:21:19
Speaker
Oh my goodness, I think that this might be an emotional experience for people who experience perinatal loss. And that was not that long ago. And it is, and it really, it kind of contributes to our society and just the way it runs and the majority historically doctors are men and they tend to be more detached historically with their professional practices. So it's a newly evolving field of research in general.
00:21:49
Speaker
And the other thing is I think that because it's so new, all these ideas, they haven't had time to be explored yet. Well, like Nicole said in the beginning, the statistic of one in four families will experience pregnancy loss versus, you know, one in eight women will experience breast cancer. That's crazy that the funding is not there to just investigate this more and help. I know we were talking about last night, again, bringing up last night's support group.
00:22:19
Speaker
therapy and how Nicole said, you know, she saw a meme where it said, if I won the lottery, you know, you would see a lot of changes. And one thing was like someone going to therapy. And it's so true. Like, there's so there needs to be more money and more research into this. It's more than a best thing in this. Yeah. And I think another thing is because the loss is so silent, people in general don't know how prevalent it is.
00:22:47
Speaker
And they don't know how impactful it is. In the US, we already spend over $300 billion a year for treating depression and almost that much for anxiety. And for PTSD, it's an average of $18,000 a person in the financial costs of treating or supporting PTSD. So if we look at it in a very detached way,
00:23:13
Speaker
looking just at the dollar signs, it's incredibly impactful and it is an economic burden, not to mention the personal and familial and community burden of the grief that goes on with the loss.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it just further isolates the person because then they're looked at like they're crazy because they're not moving on or moving past this because there's no research into it and people really don't know unless they've gone through it because there's not enough education. It's true. It's so true. And if we think about someone losing a spouse, that's something that we can understand. So we know more how to respond to it, whereas someone loses
00:23:55
Speaker
pregnancy or a baby, that's not something that if you don't have that connection to it, you just truly cannot understand what you're experiencing. How can caregivers in the hospital help their patients through the trauma of perinatal loss and what should be avoided?
00:24:13
Speaker
the words that people use are incredibly powerful. So focusing on terminology and just that conversation is really important. Avoiding anything that starts with at least. At least you're young, at least it was an early loss, at least you didn't get pregnant again.
00:24:35
Speaker
That is not helpful. It may be well-meaning, but it's not helpful. So just recognizing that little things like that have a lasting impact on families. Again, providing more time for interactions, that slowing down, allowing people to process, offering people choices. Even if it's a small choice, they have this sense of powerlessness because their world just fell apart.
00:25:02
Speaker
Do you want somebody at this appointment with you? Do you want additional people? Do you want to go out the back door so you don't have to walk through the waiting room? Little tiny things like this can make a huge, huge difference. And then another area that's really, I think, lacking is follow-up care.
00:25:22
Speaker
Because unfortunately, if there's not a neonate, then those follow-up appointments, they really fall through the cracks. And so then parents and families, they're grieving alone and they don't have that support. Another point I want to make, one of the things that can be harmful is just avoiding the topic at all. Especially if someone has already experienced a loss,
00:25:48
Speaker
noticing that they do have a history of loss and worrying about, again, this comes from ignorance, worrying that bringing it up is going to make it worse. They avoid talking about it, which again, potentiates that experience. Or even if it's an active loss or the loss just occurred and they just saying, I'm so sorry that you went through this, that's not going to remind them that they're experiencing a loss. That's going to demonstrate empathy and that
00:26:17
Speaker
they're present and that they see their pain. So it really validates what they're going through. Yeah. 100%. Yeah.
00:26:26
Speaker
If you can share with us anything that you're currently working on or something that you might have planned to start working on? Absolutely. It's not a competitive field, so I'm not worrying about anybody stealing it. I have just submitted a publication for a project that I did last year, actually developing a toolkit for follow-up care.
00:26:50
Speaker
And so that is something that healthcare professionals can use to continue providing care to families for one year after their loss experience. I'm really excited about it. I really, really hope that it starts to be utilized because having that support can really make a huge difference. If nothing else, just having a phone call that says, I remember that you experienced this. I'm thinking of you. Is there anything you need can be really important.
00:27:20
Speaker
Is there somewhere that they would go to buy this publication? It's under review right now, so it hasn't been published yet. Okay, so you'll have to share it with us when it gets published because I kind of want to buy it for... The local hospital, yeah. Yeah, honestly, yeah, for the practices, but I mean, I'm sure it's going to be able to afford it easily, but just to even promote it, because it's really, really, really important. That's one of the most important things is when the families come back to the office.
00:27:49
Speaker
Right. And one of the things that so many people who haven't had this personal experience, they don't understand is that actually one of my participants said this so beautifully. It's not like a book. There's not a beginning and an end. So as soon as you walk out of that hospital, that's not the end of the experience. The experience is still going and it changes. And a lot of times it gets much harder after that point because not only do you not have that,
00:28:15
Speaker
little baby with you, you don't have the social support, there's that silence. And so that ongoing support is just critical.
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's very true. And actually it makes the provider or the support person, whoever's giving that ongoing support, but if it's a provider, it makes that provider such a big part and such a good part of the patient's experience, the parent's experience for their loss. It just brings a little bit of positivity to it. Absolutely. And healthcare professionals play such an important role. I mean, it's kind of terrifying as a nurse to know that I can either make somebody's experience much worse
00:28:55
Speaker
Or I can make it much better. But the good news is I can make it much better if I just make these little changes, if I acknowledge the loss, if I recognize what's going on. And even a kind word of asking, did you name your baby? Or what do you want to tell me about your baby? Or do you want to talk about it? Just sitting down and being present, even just sitting in the room with somebody who's grieving, you don't have to say anything. Just acknowledge that they're going through it.
00:29:24
Speaker
and be present with them. Yeah. Yeah. Holding space. Holding space. Absolutely, yes.
00:29:34
Speaker
So do you have any personal advice that you would give someone if they wanted to know how they would support their own sister or their own family member when experiencing loss? I would say that listening. Just ask if they want to talk. Recognize that sometimes they might not want to, but sometimes they might want to. And sometimes what they're saying might not make sense, but it doesn't matter. Just sitting with them and listening to them. Another thing that can be really helpful is remembering milestones.
00:30:05
Speaker
like the due date or the birthday, recognizing milestones like this would have been the first day of kindergarten or they would have had a driver's license this year. Just saying simple things like, you know, Aiden would have been eight years old in May or remembering those things can be really meaningful. It lets people know that someone else remembers their baby.
00:30:30
Speaker
Because if there's not that memory of the baby, then there's no evidence that the baby existed. And sometimes parents fear that that memory is the only thing, and that if they let go of their pain, they're letting go of their baby. That's so true. That's so true. Yep. And it doesn't have to be letting go. I mean, that memory, it can stay alive. So the more conversations there are, the more permission. I mean, it's really that permission to talk, that permission to grieve.
00:30:59
Speaker
and just that acknowledgement, that remembrance. Yeah. And look, cause like you said, the bringing it up is not, they haven't forgotten. So you remembering the date is not going to make them more sad. It's going to make them happy that you remembered. Absolutely. How can our listeners support or participate in your research and help project PoppySeed? I am always looking for people who are interested in being research participants. And if they are interested, they could email.
00:31:28
Speaker
Project poppyseed at yahoo.com. And even if they can share the resources, if they know somebody is grieving or who's recently experienced a loss, just let them know because it's more about supporting people. It's all about supporting people in their grief.
00:31:48
Speaker
I do have a Facebook and an Instagram page. I'm trying to post more. I'm not very good at posting, but each time I have a new resource, I try to add that on there so it can be shared through social media as well. That's awesome. Yeah, it's hard to keep up with the online platforms. Oh my goodness. Yes. Nicole, you're good at it though. Yeah, I try. Is there anything that you wanted to say that we did not ask you? I do want to say thank you for
00:32:17
Speaker
what you guys are doing. I mean, you're working to break the silence, and you're creating a space for people to share their experiences and to talk about their experiences, and that's really powerful. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Nikki, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your knowledge and expertise with our listeners. Also, thank you so much for the important work that you do for both present and future families in the Lost Community.
00:32:41
Speaker
If you have any questions for Nikki, please email us at storyteller at the blindsided.com. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next episode. Thank you so much for tuning into the latest episode of The Blindsided Podcast. We truly appreciate your support and time you spent with us. If you have a personal story you'd like to share on the show, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can send us an email at nicolewiththeblindsided.com or desiré at the blindsided.com.
00:33:08
Speaker
For more episodes, make sure to follow on your favorite podcast app. Just search the blindsided podcast and hit that follow button. You can also connect with us on social media too. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at the blindsided podcast. We love engaging with our listeners and hearing your thoughts on each episode.
00:33:26
Speaker
And before you go, consider leaving a rating and review for our show. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners who might find value in the stories and discussions we share. Once again, thank you for listening and being a part of the Blindsided community.