THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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These show notes come via the Otter.ai service. The transcription is imperfect. But hopefully, it’s close enough – even with the errors – to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.

Malissa Smith  00:00

And then I out of my thesis I started to do papers and presentations to talk about women’s boxing because I felt it was really important to amplify the fact that there are women who are really working at the highest levels, physically as elite athletes in any way getting an appreciation for the work that they do. And

Achim Nowak  00:23

welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I’m your host, Achim Nowak and I have conversations with exceptional humans, who have created bold, and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform, so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests. And please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am just delighted to welcome Melissa Smith back to the my fourth act podcast. Melissa is the author of a history of women’s boxing, first published in 2014. It is the first comprehensive history of the sport, ring magazine dubbed it the Bible of women’s boxing. Melissa is also the co host of the popular war room podcast. She’s a founding board member of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, and I’m happy to say contributed a powerful essay titled How boxing uncaged me to a book we all put out last year via bubble or press the difference. Melissa’s follow up to a history of women’s boxing, titled The promise of women’s boxing, a momentous new era for this weird science is out the first week of June. So this is going to be a great month. And we’re going to have a conversation about boxing and life. Welcome, Melissa.

Malissa Smith  02:01

Oh, thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be back with you. I can the

02:06

feeling is mutual. When asked a question to which I know the answer, but I think it’s a great way to start. How did you start boxing yourself?

Malissa Smith  02:17

Well, that’s been a long journey. When I was a kid, I used to like to watch boxing, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. It just took me a lifetime to figure out that I could actually do it. When in my early 40s. I think I was 42 I had a fairly large surgery that took me some time to recover from and I thought, well, if I could live through that surgery, I can go walk myself into a boxing gym. And I did precisely that in January of 1997. I walked into Gleason’s gym. And there began my own journey in the sport one which I learned a lot about myself, which was I think the greatest part of that experience aside from learning skills and exercising itself.

03:03

What since we’re gonna talk, obviously, about the history of women’s boxing, you started off and this iconic gym the Gleason’s gym where lots of boxing giants, male and female train. I had the blessing of being in the last iteration of Gleason’s, I know it’s moved a few times. But when you walk in there, you can’t help but see all of the memorabilia on the walls of all these famous boxers who trained there. So what was it like for you to walk in there and know that in a way, this is like sacred ground, which is where you started? Well,

Malissa Smith  03:37

it really was, you know, it was certainly sacred ground. You know, it was the house of fighters like Muhammad Ali, who was a childhood hero of mine. But as I began to train, you know, when I would come in at seven in the morning, it was pretty quiet. It was before I would go to work. And I had my daughter and I would take care of her, run to the gym, come back, bring it to school, or drop her off at school early and go to the gym to work out before I went to work. But I started to notice that there were a lot of women there. And that surprised me. It didn’t Howard me and as I began to dig deeper, I realized, wow, there’s a Lisa Ashley. She’s a boxing champion. Yeah, and I’m doing sit ups next to Melissa Hernandez who was like the next big thing in boxing as a champion. She’s box seven. She’s in a big fight. That’s going to be 12 rounds at three minutes around. This is really something special. And as I began to kind of dig into it further, I realized that part of my own journey and boxing was also going to be one of starting to tell the stories of the women that I work with in the gym, and I started a blog called Girl boxing in 2010 to begin to tell those stories because I realized so little was being reported out in the world about the tremendous exploits of these phenomenal athletes.

Achim Nowak  04:57

We’re gonna get to the Web In a moment, but just because you’re already alluded to how boxing impacted you, I know you wrote this essay called how boxing and caged me which is a powerful choice of language. Before we get to your two books, which are fantastic, how was being in the gym being surrounded by these women athletes? What did that unleash in you?

Malissa Smith  05:22

Well, I think the thing that I found in boxing is I figured out fairly quickly that I wasn’t really interested in competing. And that’s quite something because a lot of what men and women do in the gym is precisely pursue a path towards competition. When I found in the journey was really one an interior battle, I was battling myself, my own demons, my own traumas, and what I found in working out and really working hard and going 1618 2024 rounds of training at a NGO, I was unleashing the things that had always held me back in terms of my own ability to be a creative person, my own ability to own my emotions, my own ability to expose the traumas that I had experienced across the lifetime. And that boxing process was almost like I was beat, I’d hit the bag, and it almost felt like I was hitting me right, opening up those scars starting to reveal the daylight, to the daylight those things that had always held me back. So I credit boxing with giving me the opportunity to explore and find myself physically, and expressing my own sense of power physically by working as boxer, but also exploring how I could tap into my own power for the thing I also love which was writing, which I had always held myself back from, you know, I’ve been wanting to write a novel, you know, since I was 13, write poetry, you know, ad infinitum into the night, but always wrote, but never felt the freedom to express myself in a way that I felt empowered by the process. And that is something that boxing brought to me is the opportunity to feel safe to be creative.

Achim Nowak  07:13

I appreciate how you connecting, what boxing did for you to the courage to pursue writing, which was another dream of yours. And part of what tickles me about your story, I’d love for you to tell it when you have the history of women’s boxing. And I’m going to use this for you were a civil servant in a very senior role in the New York City government administration, how somebody in that role ends up writing a book that is by many considered the definitive history of women’s boxing. That’s not an obvious thing. How did that happen? That’s the first book and then we’re gonna get to the new book.

Malissa Smith  07:51

Well, yeah, I bet I had to earn a living, I did a lot to avoid writing, there was a famous New Yorker cartoon of two women, I guess it was I saw it first in the 90s to women of a certain age, at lunch wine glasses on the table. One is slightly leaning the leaning into the other. And she says very confidentially, you know, I got married to avoid writing. So I felt like my entire life. Let’s want to avoid writing, boxing sort of unleashed that, wait a minute, no, no, you’re living in some truth here, girl you can write. And as I mentioned, I started the blog, I really started to get to know, women in the sport. And I went back to school part, I did that because I had never gotten my BA. And in order to advance in the civil service world, in New York City, it would be helpful for me to have a bachelor’s degree so that I could apply for higher level roles. So I went back to school, I got my bachelor’s degree, and I was enjoying it so much. I decided to go for my masters now, this was in 2010. Right around the time that I was writing Roblox in blog. And I went back to school, I was getting a master’s degree in liberal studies, because I figured least if I’m going to do this, let me have some fun. I was always fascinated by the idea of boundaries and how boundaries collide. And I have been a traveler in my life as well and had been to various international boundaries, and was always fascinated by how different they are, you cross a border, and you’re in a completely different reality. But I think about boxing, and the fact that I was starting to really appreciate females in the ring, and their ability to box and their ability to do so against tremendous odds. And I realized that our conception of boxing was completely defined by masculinity. And I thought, Well, wait a minute, why don’t I do my master’s degree thesis on that? So I did, I wrote a thesis called boundaries in motion and I looked at women’s boxing as the case study to try to tease out well what is the gender binary when you look at us portlight boxing, which, again is hypermasculine. But we do it anyway. And what does that mean? And out of that, yes, I was going to work every day in a fairly high level role as a procurement specialist, lots of bureaucracy, they’re taking care of my daughter and in a marriage and all that all those things, but my intellectual life was really piqued. And then I out of my thesis, I started to do papers and presentations to talk about women’s boxing, because I felt it was really important to amplify the fact that there are women who are really working at the highest levels, physically as elite athletes in any way getting an appreciation for the work that they do. And at this time was, the women had just been approved to work it to become a sport in the Olympics. So I really tried to show what the meaning of that was. And out of it, I got the opportunity, I was offered the opportunity to pitch a book. And one of the things I noticed when I was writing my thesis is there really was no book about women’s boxing. They were articles and journals. There were some academic research that have been done, but no book that said, Hey, here’s the history of the sport. So I pitched it. I wrote it, I did tremendous amount of research that teased out 300 years of history, which is kind of astounding, even to me.

Achim Nowak  11:32

One thing that really intrigues me is that after you wrote the history of women’s boxing, which was I think, quickly recognized as an important book around women’s boxing. You went in a way from being an outsider because you, you’re trained at Gleason’s. But you became an insider in the world of women’s boxing and in the community that promotes women’s boxing. I love that. But can you give us an example of how that happened and what it feels like to suddenly be not just an author on the outside, but a voice who has a chance to champion women’s boxing? Thank

Malissa Smith  12:13

you for that question. It’s been an incredible journey. And I’m humbled by the acceptance that I receive from the women of the ring. I think my first contact really was with Sue Fox, who was a herself a pioneer boxer in the 1970s. And then in the 1990s, like 25 years ago, created a website called women’s boxing archive network. And her idea was to have a place on the internet for women to go because they felt so fractured, and there was no activity, no glue to hold them together. And her wbn site became that glue. And she worked with journalists who were starting to write about women in the sport and had them contribute articles. She herself would travel to fights out west to document the activities and the actions of women in the ring, and came up with her own bill to applaud women and wrote bios on them and really wasn’t important for us. I got to know her start in 2010. When I started my own blog, she was really helpful to me as a resource when I was writing the first book. And then we became friends and colleagues. And when she created the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame, which was the first of its kind to recognize women of the sport, because in most polls of Fame’s women were never even recognized the major international boxing Hall of Fame and kind of stood in New York, it was not recognizing female boxers. So she said, you know, we’ll create a women of our own. And she honored me with inviting me to become a founding board member. So I became very involved in that process and in writing up the BIOS and being involved in helping this selection process for the inductees on an annual basis. And our way of doing it was very unique, because we invited the public to recommend people for us to vote on, which was a very, very different process. Usually, it’s not that they come up with these names. But we invited the public and we said, You know what, if you know a woman boxer or someone who was aided boxing for women, send us the name, and we’ll vote on them. And so that became a really different way of thinking about it. And it also helped to create a larger community of which, from that I was able to leverage the powerful work being done by the women’s boxing Hall of Fame, enhanced my own voice on social media and to leverage the historical information that I had to really write about and to speak to the importance of the athletes from the 90s and the art Since the 2000s, who had come before, but those athletes in the world after the first Olympics in 2012, to really start to amplify their voices and their stories in the sport as they tried to negotiate a world that, you know, really didn’t want the minute, quite truthfully, and continues to be very difficult for them to overcome in terms of finding promotional opportunities, or pay equity or even care for their health.

Achim Nowak  15:28

I kept hearing as you’re talking the idea of amplifying voice, stronger voice, it’s your voice, but it’s also the voice of all other women boxes, who you’ve met and who you admire. One of the ways in which you’ve amplified your voices, you’re a co host of the War Room podcast. So I want to invite you to shamelessly plug the podcast What do you want to talk about? And what’s the voice and point of view that you get to have in that podcast, Melissa? Well,

Malissa Smith  15:57

you know, I have two amazing partners, Eddie Goldman, who’s been around sports journalists for the generation generations. He’s amazing. We call him the conscious of combat sports, because he takes no prisoners. And he’s avid he was like, you know, I’m just going to tell it like it is. Yeah, and our other partner, Chris Baldwin is an actually a trainer out in California. So she comes at it from a different perspective. But she’s a remarkable facilitator. She’s great at asking questions and graded generating interest in finding folks for us to talk about our perspective, though, is really sports, just when, especially in the boxing world, a lot of the boxing media is concentrated in very few, very few outlets. So the topics that are covered are really very controlled are often based on the PR pieces that come out from the very large promoters, we take a different tack, again, we consider ourselves sports justice. So we really tried to amplify the stories of folks whose voices aren’t being heard. We also look at things like corruption in sport and what the impact of corruption is, we will take a topic like the opening up of sports betting and what the impact can be on the sport and how it can foster an atmosphere of corruption. And we also look at issues of women in sports, particularly in boxing and how they really have still to this day, tremendous strides where women have been at the tops of cards have had the opportunity to actually have real paydays of million bucks, but most fighters still don’t get that kind of opportunity, that kind of amplification, and that kind of promotion. So we’re there as voices for folks who may not have the opportunity to really speak their truths.

Achim Nowak  17:45

You are releasing the promise of women’s boxing about 10 years after your first book came out. And we already talked about 2012 You know, women’s boxing the Olympics, but to you I’ve been blessed to actually meet a few women boxes. And I’ve learned so much in my conversations with him. But I love for you to talk about because I know things have changed and there’s still a long way to go. But if order some milestones in the last 10 years where you go, gosh, these are some positive ways in which Women’s Boxing is evolving, and moving forward.

Malissa Smith  18:23

Absolutely, there has been tremendous evolution and in some cases revolution for certain types of fighters. I mean, the first was obviously having the Olympics. And this was like the last sport gendered sport, if you will, when finally the female end of it came on to the Olympics, and having the Olympics in 2012. It was in London, and there were 36 women who fought and what was amazing is that a British woman, Nicola Adams won the first gold medal in her world class for in boxing so that just amplified for the Brits how amazing women’s boxing really was. There was anecdotal it the decibel level at the arena was so high that it was hurting people’s ears just from the shouting and screaming excitement of the fans. But it’s the case that every fight anyway, but it’s usually women’s bouts. So the fight of the night that started sort of a rumble of opportunity of thought I mean everyone day after the Olympics was like, Okay, where’s all the opportunity when didn’t really appear, but by 2016 in the second in the Rio 2016 games, there had been changes. Women were starting to appear on more cards. Women had been actually on the day that Claressa Shields who’s the brilliant American boxer who was the first to win a gold medal for the United States in 2012. And then repeated

Achim Nowak  19:53

I may interject who wrote the foreword to your book, right who

Malissa Smith  19:57

wrote the foreword of my book and she’s from Play Michigan an extraordinary human being who’s had to overcome amazing odds and to be where she is today. But the day that she won her second gold medal, parenthetically the first American boxer male or female to have ever repeated. Heather Hardy, who’s a New York City based boxer, was the first boxer to appear. NBC television on their streaming service. In a fight with a woman named shillitoe. Vinson was an amazing battle sold out the entire arena. And even though it wasn’t a main event, and it actually came on, after the main event with a fighter named Meryl Spence, it was the fight of the night, it was the reason that everybody was in, like hanging on their seats to spend the entire night waiting for their battle. And to me, there was something wonderfully synergistic about the fact that Heather and Clarissa had these momentous opportunities that happened to them, and that they were able to grab the brass ring on the same day. And after that, things really pivoted Clarissa shields when she turned pro later in the year, you know, she earned $50,000 for her first bite, that’s unheard of for women. So it set a threshold and then there were other Olympians such as Katie Taylor from Ireland, who is beyond the pride of Ireland. She has really set incredible highlighted marks becoming an undisputed fighter, meaning she has won belts for sanctioning bodies in the same weight class. She has now done that twice. Clarissa shields has done that three times. These are amazing highlights. Most importantly, Katie Taylor for the American fighter or via Puerto Rico, Amanda Serrano, at Madison Square Garden, which we call the mecca of boxing, you know, the house that Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali built, they were the main event in the main room, for the first time in April 30 2022 sold out the arena. And I’m telling you being there was beyond electric, there wasn’t a dry eye in that house, that boxing built. When these women appeared on that stage, the motion was just overwhelming. And they put on this remarkable 10 Round battle that really proved that this was the best of the best. And if there’s anything that we can say encapsulates, for me the last 10 years in the sport between my first book and the second, it’s that passion for the for fighting. But more than that, the desire to fight the best the desire not to pet a career, but really to get out there and tango with their counterpart. So they put on the best possible show that they can for their fans, and for themselves, because that’s ultimately what it comes down to, is living in a kind of truth in terms of their own relationship to boxing, it’s not about being hyper masculine, or any of those things because they don’t exist for women. It’s really a contest through themselves and being their own best selves. I

Achim Nowak  23:09

really appreciate you for repeatedly reminding me and our listeners that even though we’re talking in a context of a gender conversation, this is also not a gender conversation. I love how you say that. Because this, this podcast is called the fourth act. So if you could wave a magic wand and create the next act for women’s boxing, looking to the future, what would you like to see happen, if anything for the sport for women in boxing?

Malissa Smith  23:42

Well, the first thing is, I would like for promoters to actually put women on fights. You know, I’m talking about all this momentum stuff that’s happened. There are these fantastic women with amazing skills, right? Extraordinary positive athletes at the peak of their careers, and yet they can’t get on a boxing card. And in fact, boxing in America right now through for a variety of reasons, has sort of lost some of its luster to other combat sports like MMA. So the Center for Women’s Boxing has actually shifted to the United Kingdom. There are two promoters match from boxing and boxer who have large what we call stables of female fighters. And they are the ones that are putting on really excellent boxing shows where they’re actually featuring women either in whether on the top of the card or as CO main events, but they also have younger hungry fighters who they’re exposing on their cards on the undercard of these bad shows. But in the United States that’s just not happening right now. And if I wave a magic wand I say put it up women on every card. You are going to they are making the change and what boxing can become because they always Despite exciting fights, they really want to be in the ring. They want to prove themselves as athletes. And by adding women to the roster of sports, you create a different type of intensity and a different type of excitement that can really galvanize the sport as a whole. So every time I see a card without a female badge on and I go, come on, guys, you’re killing yourself. You’re killing your own brand. This is what it’s about. So I wave a magic wand. I say my next step. Let’s see promotion. Let’s see women on cards. Let’s see equity.

Achim Nowak  25:33

It feels like a total no brainer dummies. But thank you for saying it. So clearly. You’re going to have a public book launch event in New York on June 15. At the wonderful Gleason’s gym, and you’re going to have some amazing guests. I think a couple of names have already been mentioned here. Would you shamelessly talk about what’s going to happen there because I think it’s so exciting.

Malissa Smith  25:58

Oh, absolutely. Yes, I’m having a book launch party, June 15. At Gleason’s gym in downtown Brooklyn, Dumbo, Brooklyn. It’s at 7pm part of this book launch event. I’m also going to have a women’s boxing Forum, which is going to ask the question, as the promise has been met. And on our forum as a moderator, we’re going to have Raquel Cepeda, who’s a remarkable author and filmmaker. She’s the author of How I became a Latina. She’s a boxer herself and the amateurs. So she really understands the sports game and as a filmmaker, she’s done some wonderful documentaries. So she will be moderating and I will have as guests Elise Ashley, Maureen Shea who are two what we call old gang boxers who really made a huge impact on the sport across their careers. Maureen is still actually boxing in her 40s Alicia box till she was 50. So she really proves that you know, you can just keep going for something you love. And we’ll also have Sparkol Lee, who is the first female referee in New York State, she has gone on to be a referee. And just so many championship bounce there there are uncountable, but also has been the referee for some really important women’s battles, which is part of why I want her on the panel. I will have Shillito, Vincent, Alicia, Napoleon and Ronica Jeffries. So these are folks that I know over the years folks that I box alongside and at Gleason’s gym. And I’m really excited for them to be able to tell their stories and give their take on what it means to be a female boxer and where they see the sport is going. After that I get to like, you know, do my thing. And from the book, it’s I’m also turning seven days. So I’m here to say, Hey, listen, you never stop, if you can keep going, keep going. So we’re going to have some birthday cake. And I’m putting together some music so we can dance and just have a great time.

Achim Nowak  28:06

It sounds like a totally fabulous book, launch slash birthday party. And so really the ancestry, the lineage of women’s boxing, how verbs now, because life has many facets to it, and one of the things I’ve just so admire about you, you’ve also written while you’re about boxing very openly about what it’s like to have become a caretaker for your husband, Jed, who has been a prominent New York journalist. So it’s interesting, somebody who had a very strong writer voice, but I believe he has officially has a dementia diagnosis and you’re watching him change. So you have become this public figure in the sport, and you’re taking care of the spouse who is changing around you. Would you just talk a little bit about what that’s been like for you?

Malissa Smith  29:00

Yeah, you know, dementia is something that we all live with in one form or another, whether it’s our parents, or those of us who come to a certain demise to our aid, potentially a spouse or a loved one or sibling. In my husband’s case, he has something called Frontotemporal dementia. The behavioral variant that sounds like a lot, but what it really means is that the damage in his brain is really at the front of his brain, literally in the frontal and temporal lobes. Those are the areas that control our executive thinking, our ability to process information, our personalities. In his case, it shifts a little bit to the left to touch on the parietal lobe, which means his language comprehension is affected as well. He doesn’t have aphasia, meaning he can speak but his ability to comprehend languages is really challenged. This is something that was diagnosed most formally Six years ago, but we realized that he had it a lot longer. It just took us a while to figure out what was going on. But with that official diagnosis, it became obvious that he was unable to really process information and do things for himself. And now, I’m really during the COVID years, or during the COVID. Year in 2020, I started to work from home still, as a servant servant, she said, or theoretically, realize that he could no longer be by himself, then it had come to the point where it was not safe for him to be alone during the day. fairly shortly thereafter, I realized that I would retire from my civil service job and become a full time caregiver for my husband. And then there’s been an enormous journey and not without terrible challenges. The nature of a relationship with a spouse is one or, you know, there’s mutual care and love and concern and care for each other. And when one spouse no longer has the mental capacity to really care for themselves, it also means they can’t care for you. They can’t give you the things back that one expects in a marriage, especially a long term marriage will we’ll be permitted gonna have our 25th wedding anniversary in June. And yet, they will look at me and say, Are we married? And I’ll go, yes, we are. And they’ll say, Billy, you’re not kidding. It’s like, No, I’m not kidding. Wow, when did that happen. But it from an emotional standpoint means that there’s the unfinished stuff, a relationship that never got worked out, and never will, there’s a lot of sadness at seeing my partner, you know, be unable to care for himself, he can still walk and use his physical body. But he can’t prepare meals, he can’t take a shower, he can’t go outside, he can’t do any of the things we really take for granted. Without a tremendous amount of assistance and cajoling. It is a challenge. It’s a challenge in terms of the larger community. And part of the work I’m starting to do now in writing is to be very open and upfront about what it is to care for someone, but also to hone in the message to D stigmatize dementia. It’s just part of our lives. And as we age, as we live longer, it will become more and more a part of our lives. So it’s important for us to develop systems of communication of, of support for the caregivers among us. So they’re not alone and isolated, which is one of the biggest things that can happen. I mean, for me, I’m lucky, I’m able to have caregivers come three afternoons a week. So I have three afternoons that I can spend for myself, and which is what gives me the opportunity to write a book during this time. But the rest of the time. Yeah, it’s me and Jen, and it can feel lonely, it can feel isolating. And so reaching out, having caregiver support becomes incredibly important for all of us, for those who are actually have the main role as caregivers, but also for for those of us who have friends are doing it and realizing, hey, they may need a little bit of an add a girl or you know, do something nice for the caregiver, help the caregiver understand that self care is an important component of their process. And that’s something I started to learn in my boxing journey. But it’s really honing in on my caregiver journey, that I really do have to acknowledge my own self, acknowledge my needs, acknowledge my emotions, and live in the present with those feelings. Because if I don’t, I become depressed, I become angry, and I become incapable, not only of caring, Jed, but caring for myself. And that really is the most important thing.

Achim Nowak  34:03

And what I appreciate about what you just said, my language on it in a way, the more we normalize these transitions in life, because we can’t fight them. The more we give us permission to be human through it and real I was thinking about jet but I’m also thinking about every box from male or female at some point, will stop boxing professionally. That’s another transition, you’re losing something and you’re moving into something else and life will look different. And you can’t stop that from happening. It’s going to happen. We flow with it, right. So I appreciate your just the way you speak about this. So you know what I mentioned. The new book is the promise of women’s boxing, a momentous new era for the sweet science as we wrap up any final All words you would like to say to our listeners, some who may not be as familiar with women’s boxing as you are, what might you say to entice them to get them interested in the sport,

Malissa Smith  35:12

the sport of boxing is not just Verdell, there is art. And that’s why we call it the sweet science, because it’s very technical. And yet, it’s artful. There’s a real art to well executed boxing match, but you as an individual don’t have to be a boxer yourself, you don’t even have to necessarily watch the sport if you don’t want to. But what you can do is recognize the validity of female athletes and championing their journey in a sport that really doesn’t want them to be there some of the time. And in terms of your own personal journey as an athlete or as someone who may be coming back to their own physical health. Boxing is really something to think about. Because I gotta tell you, it’s good to hit the bag, works out a myriad of sins. And it also is an opportunity, especially for older women, to not only develop themselves physically, but gone a very long lifetime, where we were always told we can’t do this, we can’t do this, we can’t do this, we can’t do this. So that opportunity to really exert physical power in a circle of power is something that I highly recommend wherever you are in life. On

Achim Nowak  36:24

that wonderfully inspirational note, thank you, Melissa, I urge you all to check out the new book. And thank you for just the gift of this conversation, Melissa, I so appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my fourth act podcast. If you liked what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platforms. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim nowak.com. It’s where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors. See you there. And bye for now.