Finding Hope and Her Voice After Loss with Vanessa Abraham

James Berges 00:01 
Imagine waking up in the ICU, unable to speak. Now imagine you're a speech-language pathologist, someone who helps others communicate daily, but suddenly you can't express your basic needs, an ironic twist of fate. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:13 
That's exactly what happened to today's guest, Vanessa Abraham. After a traumatic incident left her on a trachan vent, she experienced firsthand what many of her patients would go through, finding herself in her patient's shoes, and with all the fear, frustration, and isolation of being unable to communicate. 

Vanessa Abraham 00:34 
okay what am I going to do with this next chapter with what I have been given as a speech pathologist and the skills and the knowledge that I have learned by being the patient in the bed, how can I use that to better the profession, to give people hope. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:49 
Welcome to the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. I'm Mai Ling Chan, and together with James Berges, we're getting you top tips and resources for building and scaling your disability-focused offerings straight from the forefront of disability advocacy and leadership. 

James Berges 01:07 
You know, Mai Ling, as clinicians, we often come in as experts with our objective data and our measurements, but Vanessa found herself on the other side of the equation, and her story shows how lived experience can transform not just your practice, but your entire perspective on patient care. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:24 
Absolutely. And she didn't just use this experience to be a better clinician, James. She also turned this into a powerful book. The title of it is Speechless, where she leads with absolute vulnerability, advocating for herself, and also working with the clinicians that were surrounding her. And she also reached out to people that she knew. It's an amazing story.

I love it for all of us speech language solidists who kind of think that's not going to happen to us. But when it does, it's just amazing when you have such support from our SLP community. And it recently launched. And so we're really excited on the timing of being able to share her story on the podcast. 

James Berges 02:03 
Absolutely. And as the first episode, we're so excited of 2025, this is an inspiring one.

You'll learn among other things in this episode, how Vanessa navigated the sudden shift from speech pathologist to patient, the crucial role of augmentative alternative communication, AAC, she had to find other ways to communicate in her recovery. And why vulnerability and lived experience can make us better healthcare providers and people, honestly, and how she turned that process of turning trauma into triumph through her writing and the whole vulnerability that goes with writing a book about your lived experiences, especially traumatic ones. 

Mai Ling Chan 02:43 
Absolutely. And I know a lot about that, you know, with the Become an Exceptional Leader series.

And also for our listener, whether you're a healthcare provider or someone's, you know, actually experiencing communication challenges, or you're just interested in storytelling, this conversation will really open your eyes to what it truly means to lose and find your voice. 

James Berges 03:02 
You know, mainly speaking of facing unexpected challenges at the time of this recording, I'm here in LA, there's still wildfires that are being contained probably by the time, hopefully, fingers crossed that this episodes released, it will all be somewhat back to normal, but it's, it's an eerie feeling and, you know, you can go business as usual, have your New Year's resolutions and then something just unexpected disaster hits and it really puts things into perspective, doesn't it? 

Mai Ling Chan 03:31 
Yeah, it definitely does, James. So how are you and your community holding up? 

James Berges 03:35 
Well, yeah, right now. So we're here January 15th. I can report from the past as you're hearing this amidst all this devastation. You know, it's the worst fire in L.A. history. It's eerie. You know, I'm looking out. The sky is clear where I am in Silver Lake. But there is this weird feeling of like almost almost even survivor guilt of looking around and seeing knowing friends of friends who lost their houses.

And it's a mix of gratitude. Trepidation. I evacuated for a couple of days and I'm cat sitting. So I brought the cat with me. The cat didn't want to go to a bathroom in new places. So we took him back. Different kind of challenges. But, you know, I'm just really grateful that my family and the people closest to me are OK. But another unexpected but beautiful thing is L.A. gets this reputation for being sort of a fake place. But I have never seen the community come together in such a real way when it matters. So sometimes it takes these challenging moments to show us what really matters and how community comes together. 

Mai Ling Chan 04:43 
That's so true, James. I really love that you're sharing just a little behind the scenes of the LA Glitzy community. It's good to know because all we see is what's in the newspapers, of course, right?

And, you know, it kind of like that, you know, Vanessa also found strength in her support system. She reached out to her husband, her school support team, and it's these connections, right, with real people that helps us to navigate the toughest of times. 

James Berges 05:07 
Exactly. Whether it's a personal health crisis or natural disaster, community is everything. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:13 
It is speaking of community. We have a special offer for you linked directly to Vanessa's recent book launch.

So all you have to do is go out on social media, check out our Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, like and comment on any of these posts. And it has to be obviously for this episode and within, let's say one week of the post being posted. And we're going to be choosing two winners and she will contact you directly for your mailing info. 

James Berges 05:37 
Thank you so much. Yeah, go ahead and like and share the posts that are coming out this week, and you get those books, free books, beautiful, inspiring things to help us in 2025, which is already off to a crazy start for me, but I hope you, dear listener, are finding some peace and inspiration in the beginning months of this year.

And so with that, let's dive into this powerful conversation with Vanessa Abraham. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:03 
Okay, so here we are for our first interview of 2025 and the first interview of season seven of the exceptional leaders podcast. I am so excited to have a fellow speech language pathologist here with us today, Vanessa Abraham, and she's going to be sharing a very personal journey to becoming very public.

So welcome, Vanessa. 

Vanessa Abraham 06:27 
Hey, thank you for having me here today. I'm so excited to talk to you and share my story. Excellent. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:33 
Thank you. I say very personal, but I also think very vulnerable.

And we usually don't see that side of speech language pathology because we are the ones that are treating and supporting and caring and uplifting. And Vanessa is here to share with us her very personal side of experiencing a medical journey, and then also how she's decided to share this very publicly.

So Vanessa, can you tell us a little bit first about who you are and what you do as a speech language pathologist? 

Vanessa Abraham 07:02 
Yes, definitely. So yes, as you said, I am a speech pathologist, I work in the school settings part time. I work at a high school setting. And going on almost six years ago, I came down with a very rare variant of Guillain-Barre. Left me paralyzed in the ICU. I was a speech pathologist that was speechless.

I used AAC, I used eye gaze, I used anything from an alphabet board to, like I said, eye gaze to text to speech. And finally, when I was able to tolerate the passing year, I was able to communicate again. So I've been on the other side. And it's been quite a horrific journey. And now I'm at the point right now that I'm transitioning, not transitioning out of being a speech pathologist, but I'm transitioning into book writing, I've decided to use my medical journey to help others to help educate medical professionals, educate allied health professions and universities on some of the things that you don't necessarily learn when you're in grad school. 

Mai Ling Chan 08:12 
Excellent. Let me just take a step back for our listeners who aren't so medically educated.

And so you went through all of the different types of augmentative and alternative communication. That's what the AEC is. And she spoke about using eye gaze and alphabet board and text to speech. So these are all different ways to be able to communicate using like reaching out and pointing to a symbol, typing out the word, and then it would play it out loud. And so these are alternative methods of communication. Vanessa, can you also share why you weren't able to speak? 

Vanessa Abraham 08:43 
So I had a tracheostomy, which left me unable to communicate. And let me tell you, from a speech pathologist standpoint, that is one of the most anxiety-producing experiences of my life. 

Mai Ling Chan 08:57 
Have a good one. 

Vanessa Abraham 08:58 
Being speechless in a hospital bed, not having the means to communicate, having everybody around me talking for me was absolutely one of the worst experiences as I reflect on my ICU stay. It was horrible.

And now I'm a big advocate of getting patients some means of communication. I don't care if it's like I said, you download. One of the things about me was that I was a speech pathologist. So I was laying in the bed speechless and I knew, hey, there's got to be a better way of communicating. So as soon as I gained some more mobility, I was able to download text to speech. But that was because I was a speech pathologist. If I wasn't a speech pathologist, I wouldn't have known that. So I'm very passionate about that. 

Mai Ling Chan 09:43 
Yeah. So let's just think about for our listeners being in the perspective of you wake up after a traumatic incident and you are not able to vocally speak.

So Vanessa, how did you communicate with your significant others, you know, your family to even tell them, I need a communication board, you know, like I need something because they're not in our world. 

Vanessa Abraham 10:04 
Yeah, that's a very good question because yes, they were not in my world. At that point in time, it was through, and my mind is very fuzzy because of all the heavy medications they had me on, my husband was able to kind of piece things together to relay to my speech pathology team at work that I needed some form of communication. He was able to communicate with them like, she can't talk. And it was that communication between my husband and my team that they were able to say, oh my goodness, Vanessa needs some sort of communication. But if it wasn't for my school-based speech pathology team to make that connection, I wouldn't just continue to be speechless.

They showed up, they had eye gaze devices for me. Yeah, it was pretty profound, but if I didn't have that connection, like so many patients that get admitted to the hospital setting, if they don't have those connections, then they're left speechless. And that is terrifying. 

Mai Ling Chan 11:11 
Yes. Okay, so here I am thinking like, how do I tell my husband it's in the third drawer in my filing cabinet in my office. He and I created a medical, no tech AAC board. And yes, there are many out there Vanessa, I know you've even seen them.

But during COVID, he and I and people that are on his team, which he's a I always get this wrong, he's chief marketing officer for a hospice faith hospice out here in Arizona. So we connected with nurses and other people to create a richer AAC board, you know, things like asking for somebody religious, you know, or ask just, I mean, it was really deep, and it's about five pages long. So how could I tell him exactly where it is, you know, go get that, that's what I need, because that's what we were trying to get out to all of the hospitals at the time, it was free, you know, just print this out, download it and have it available. And I know anybody who's listening who's in AAC, everyone's nodding their head yes, right now, because that's where we have been pushing all these years, at least have something some type of board, right? I mean, like your staff, they should have just come in immediately, you're on a track. Here we go. You know, let's give you this. 

Vanessa Abraham 12:18 
I know. And it's missing. And that's what's scary right now is that people are missing exactly what you're saying. They're missing that piece of how important having some form of communication, something that resonates with that patient.

Like you said, do they need any type of a certain type of blanket? Do they have something that gives them comfort? Comforts are big things for me too in the hospital setting. What helps reduce their anxiety? What do they need around them? Do they need a certain person? Do they need a certain, not that I was eating at the time, but just having something that is meaningful to that patient too. You know, once I progressed and was able to use the alphabet board or the paper, they were able to customize it a little bit more to meet my needs, but it was still very limited. Things have changed a lot since then. Like I said, it's been almost six years, so at least things are changing in the world, but they're not changing as fast as they should be given the technology that we have right now. 

Mai Ling Chan 13:21 
It should be a staple. No tech, just print it out. They should have that.

Okay, so the Exceptional Leaders podcast is for people like us who are creating something totally out of nothing, something innovative, something new. And it doesn't have to be new, but it is something that didn't exist before. And the reason why I was so excited to have you on the show, Vanessa, is you are a perfect example of someone who is a lay person. So I say someone who is a parent, a person who has a disability, a therapist who's working within the community, who has a brilliant idea and has the courage to take this forward and to make it something out in the world. And so this next step, Vanessa, is so enormous. And I would love for you to take us back to when did you decide that you were going to share your story? 

Vanessa Abraham 14:07 
Oh, well, you know, it's been one of those things that I've always wanted to share, but it was a matter of accepting where I'm at and saying, okay, this is where I'm at. What am I going to do? I'm still relatively young, still have years ahead of me, hopefully.

We never know when I last ate. Yes, you do. But I think, okay, what am I going to do with this next chapter of my life? Accepting where I'm at and saying, okay, what am I going to do with this next chapter with what I have been given as a speech pathologist and the skills and the knowledge that I have learned by being the patient in the bed, how can I use that to better the profession, to give people hope? That was another one, a big one for me is using my experience to give people hope so they don't feel alone. I've been that patient in the bed that feels alone and scared. I had a very young child at home at the time and the fear. So yes, that's what's prompted me to take that next step. I love that. 

Mai Ling Chan 15:09 
But I'm taking notes here because I'm like, this is stuff that we need to share. How do I give people hope?

I've been that person that was laying there in the bed. It's incredible. And I will say, I'm guilty of it. I'm raising my hand in that working in the medical setting for years, I definitely, after a couple of years, walked in and I wasn't feeling the compassion for people. And I hate to say that because you're just so used to it. Every day you walk in and people are on trinks and vents and this is what you do. And to now flip that and say, oh my God, it could be me, that's an incredible perspective. So you decided, okay, I'm ready, I'm going to start writing. And so I've done several books and this is not to tout anything that I'm doing, but I just want to let you know is I know this journey. I've added my story to each of my four books and it's always like, what am I going to write about? There's so much and yet I'm not sure what's important. So how did you start your journey? 

Vanessa Abraham 16:02 
Well, and I'm going to be completely honest with everybody, I started it about four-ish years ago. And I kid you not, I would write a paragraph or maybe one chapter every few months or maybe one chapter a year. And it was going nowhere. It was absolutely going nowhere. What I would do is I'd open up my laptop and I'd type a paragraph for a few pages and I would close my laptop and I would close it for a couple of months because it was too emotional. It was too scary for me to relive all that. Every time I would type a paragraph and it brought up a memory of trialing the PMV or when I was going through my tube feed or sitting in the radiology doing barium swallow studies, trying to relive that was too traumatic. And I would just close my laptop and walk away for months, if not a year.

And it wasn't until spring of 2024, I got together with Maddie Marie, who is my ghost writer. Love her, yes. Yes, she's wonderful. And she just said, Vanessa, you need to do this. And she was just like, just said, let's do this. Let's do this together. I can help you with this. And I told her, I said, I'm off in the summer. Is there a way that I want to put this to rest? I want to get it done. I want to move forward with my life. Now is the time. If I don't do it now, I just can't keep living my life, knowing that this book is sitting there for another year. And I said, I'm off all summer. Let's do it this summer. So that was summer of 2024, this last summer. And we did it. We got it done. We went to the editor, publisher, and it's going to be launching here soon. So, but it was a scary, scary, vulnerable journey. It was not easy reliving everything. But I can finally breathe a little bit, knowing that this goal of mine that I've been sitting on for four years is now coming alive. 

Mai Ling Chan 18:12 
If you're like me, you can't get enough of books, podcasts, blogs, and other ways to find out how to create, grow, and scale. That's why I brought together 43 disability-focused leaders to give you more of what you're looking for. You will hear their stories in three best-selling books, which focus on general offerings, augmentative and alternative communication, and speech-language pathology. I invite you to search for Becoming an Exceptional Leader on Amazon, so you can learn intimate start-up pearls of wisdom, and keep growing your brilliant idea.

Now let's get back to our amazing interview. So I want to give a little shout-out to Maddie. Maddie Murray is a speech-language pathologist, and she's the owner of her company, which is my own ghostwriter. I definitely recommend that you reach out to her if you're interested, and she's worked with several people that we know already, and she's just so gracious and patient and kind and just a perfect person to help to coach you to bring out your story. 

Vanessa Abraham 19:09 
Wonderful. It's kind of funny, but some of my best moments writing my story were between the hours of like 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. because it was quiet and I could really focus and I was alone.

And there were many times that I would text her at, you know, 2 a.m. sobbing saying, what do I do? How do I say this? This is so hard for me. And she'd come back with some fabulous ideas and ways to navigate the book, but also convey the emotions that I was feeling in writing. So it was a very, very, very positive experience, although it was very vulnerable. 

Mai Ling Chan 19:48 
That's the word. Oh my gosh, that's you.

I think you're stealing my bullets here. That's exactly where I wanted to go with this is So as speech language pathologists, we usually are doing the professional talk, you know And as I referred to before, you know, we are the ones that are the therapist we walk into a patient's room and we are providing You know, hopefully giving them some you know guidance on progression right and so this for the first time is you on the other side of this and we have that graph where we know that Progression is not, you know constantly uphill So sometimes we do have these plateaus and it just flat lines for a while and and we know this but as the patient It's so much harder, you know to accept that so vulnerability and writing Vanessa are you as I guess honest and genuine, you know with these pieces of like fear and Disappointment and things like that in your book

Vanessa Abraham 20:41 
Yes, 100%. I talk about a lot of the suicidal ideation that goes on in recovery. That was huge for me, the anxiety. That was a big thing for me in the ICU setting, and the doctors and the nurses were all very concerned just about my anxiety level.

But in terms of the vulnerability of now launching the book, there have been many times in the past 60 days or so that I say, in my head, I'm thinking, oh, we have to stop this. I cannot let my story and this whole vulnerable story of my life, of what I was feeling, the fears, what recovery looked like, me going into my speech therapy sessions, crying, sitting there incomplete, going through the grieving process. I can't have this story going out for the world to read. Stop, stop, stop. And then I come to my senses, take a few deep breaths, go for a walk, and I come back and I go, no, this story needs to get out there. I need to educate people. I need to educate people on PICS, P-I-C-S, Post Intensive Care Syndrome. This book needs to get out there because there's so many things that, as speech pathologists, as occupational therapists, as nurses, physicians, that we just don't know. And it's not that it's nothing against them. It's just that they don't know because they haven't been in the bed and I have. I need to use this. But again, it's one minute I'm like, stop production. No more. I call Maddie. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. And then she talks to me off my cliff and says, Vanessa, you got this. We can do this. But it's scary. It's scary launching a book and being so vulnerable and opening up your heart and soul to the world. 

Mai Ling Chan 22:33 
Yes, yes. So my husband also is an author and it took him eight years to do his book. So it's very interesting and his is not a personal memoir, you know, what like yours is, his is more of like teaching, but we went through that same process with him too. And believe it or not, like you guys go through this feeling of imposter syndrome, like, am I the right person?

You know, who am I to be telling this story? And it's been amazing on the other side of it, you know, the publishing side to be able to be there for our writers. So tell me more about the actual creating the book, because there's definitely people who are listening like myself, you know, who have a story to tell, and they have no idea where to start. So how did you get on that journey? 

Vanessa Abraham 23:12 
Again, it comes back to Maddie because I've never written a book that was never in my life plan to write a book. Obviously, it was never in my plan either to be admitted to the ICU, but I just didn't know what to do. And it took, and this was hard for me, again, a vulnerable moment to reach out for help. I had to accept the fact that I don't know what I'm doing.

I've never written a book before. And I recorded podcasts with Maddie two and a half years ago, maybe. So that was where that relationship with her started. And then we reconnected this last spring with her ghostwriting business. And that's when I just thought, you know what? This book's not going to get done unless I have support. So it took asking for the support, asking for the help, admitting that I am not everything. I cannot do everything. Yes. Oh, yes. And that's not easy for us. That's really hard to say, you know what? This is my domain. I'm a great speech pathologist. I have a great story to tell. However, I just don't know how to put it together. So she really held my hand, guided me through the process. She got me through with the editing, the editing process, all the beta readers. And then we handed it off to the publisher in September.

And again, had to ask for help with the publisher because I didn't know what it took to launch a book on Amazon and to get all the help going with that. So I had to hire a publisher for that tomorrow. She's been wonderful. And then I also, social media is not my thing. I've been the past five and a half years living in the rehabilitation world. I haven't been posting on social media. I don't know a thing about Instagram and gaining followers and all of this stuff.

So again, another area that I've had to ask help. So I've got help doing that. And I've learned a lot. The whole journey has taught me a lot. I feel like in a way I went back to grad school. 

Mai Ling Chan 25:13 
Yeah. Yes. One of the things I want to spotlight here is that it takes monetary investment in yourself. You believe in this. People have asked me, oh my gosh, how much money have you made on the books? I have made money. I've made back my initial investment. But in addition to that, I have earned such experiences, the feedback from people about how helpful it's been, the opportunities to present. All of these things have been priceless.

I know that that's going to be coming for you also, Vanessa. I just wanted to give you kudos for believing in yourself and having the courage to financially invest. All of these people around you now, they're all experts in what they do, just like you said. You don't have to try to become a social media expert because now you've hired somebody to put in that place. Congratulations. 

Vanessa Abraham 26:04 
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the feedback because there's so many times that I go, oh my gosh, what am I doing?

But then I get feedback and reassurance from people around me. And I think I remind myself, okay, yes, I've got this. I can do this. 

Mai Ling Chan 26:20 
Yes. It's so precious is that you have the courage and you have the community around you, you know, your family's also supporting you to tell your story.

And I believe that that's how marketing has changed in the last like maybe five to 10 years. More like in the last five years is that people don't want the company, the business, you know, they want Vanessa and your story is going to impact people because they get to hear right from you. And now you have a product. And people with disabilities who are advocates, and they don't realize that sometimes they are the product, you know, showing up being available, answering questions on email. And then the next bigger piece is what you're doing, being on a podcast interview, doing your own social media, which for the listener, I definitely would Google Vanessa, you should see what she's done out there. I'm so excited for her because she is all of a sudden showing up like everywhere in preparation for the book. And it's just been fascinating, you know, to see that you can go from let's say zero followers to your niche followers. And that's another thing. Like at this point, I don't know, I haven't actually haven't checked. Do you have like 30,000 followers or do you have a couple thousand? Do you feel comfortable? 

Vanessa Abraham 27:31 
I don't know at this point because I haven't really, I've been doing other things with getting the book launched, but one of the things when you tapped on this is just a few seconds ago that I wanted to expand on is the sense of community and growing that community of followers that resonate with my story that I can truly impact. I mentioned a little bit ago this concept or this topic of PICS, post-intensive care syndrome, helping people with a lot of the depression, the PTSD type symptoms that we have after ICU, and growing that following of people that don't know about PICS. There's been many physicians, nurses, OTs, PTs, speech, you name it, in the medical field that I say, have you heard about PICS? Do you know what PICS is? Post-intensive care syndrome. And they just, they shake their head. And this again, educating, educating the community on some of the things, the psychological effects that ICU survivors deal with. Yes, we are grateful that we lived. We are grateful that they saved our lives. However, there's a lot of things that need to be discussed still that I wanna grow that community and gain followers to really, truly make that impact.

So it's been fun seeing the momentum growing over the past few months, now that the social media has come on alive and there's a lot of discussions about the book launching soon. So it's been fun seeing it grow. 

Mai Ling Chan 28:59 
Excellent. That's another thing that we do talk about. You're in my Exceptional Leaders Network group is talking about community and how important it is to be surrounded and supported by people who get what you're doing. That's what we're doing in Exceptional Leaders Network, which is people who are all in this disability and advocacy community supporting each other.

Maddie is also in that group and I know that she's connected with a couple people also. What's really important is that we're not going out on Facebook and just getting lots of likes and followers of people who are not really a part of our target audience. Yours is even very niche niche and that's something that's also really important. We're talking about the medical area and I think that you could even go into nurses, obviously doctors, respiratory therapists. I'm thinking about all of these other networks, which is not just speech language pathology. I'm so excited because I really think that your story, your words is going to be very cross pollinating for these other professions and supporters. 

Vanessa Abraham 29:58 
Yeah, Maddie even told me that when she was writing my book, she goes, Vanessa, you need to realize that your book is beyond just speech therapists. Yes, yes. And I had to constantly remind myself of that, that you know what? You're right.

This book, yes, it can touch the lives and help speech pathologists that work in the medical setting. Even in school setting, it helps them that teach them that humanistic side of treating patients or students. But it's beyond. It's nurses. It's like you said, respiratory therapists. Oh my goodness. Yes, absolutely. Respiratory therapists. They were right by my side, helping me get out of bed and walk and using, you know, checking the ventilator settings. And so yeah, the book has the ability to impact, you know, college universities, medical professionals, doctors, you name it. So in patients, patients that were in the bed that need hope. 

Mai Ling Chan 30:48 
Excellent. Oh my gosh, this has been amazing. I'm so excited.

And we are dropping this episode the first Monday in February for 2025. For our listener, we're going to be dropping the first Monday of each month. And so, as I said, Vanessa's our first guest for 2025. When did the book launch? So we're recording this before, but the book launch date is... 

Vanessa Abraham 31:08 
The book launch date is January 16th, so by the time this airs, the book will be on Amazon. You can just type in, the book is called Speechless, and you can type in Speechlessbook or Speechless Vanessa Abraham, and it should pop right up on Amazon.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Speechless underscore SLP, just different ways of connecting with me and following and helping me grow my community. 

Mai Ling Chan 31:34 
I love that. Now, I'm going to ask a question that other listeners might be thinking also, which is, is it a copyright issue or did you go through anything to be able to use the word speechless?

Because I know we've heard that for, I think, it's a movie. 

Vanessa Abraham 31:44 
No, no, it's actually, let me grab it. So it is speechless.

But under the title, it's how a speech therapist lost her ability to speak and her silent struggle to reclaim her voice and life. So that's the whole but the big part of the title is speechless. 

Mai Ling Chan 32:01 
So because it's part of the other the rest of it, then there's no issues, right? It's just a word that you can use and so we always think of that type of stuff because we're doing our own businesses You know, you always have to watch for copyright.

So she just pulled the book off the shelf I would love for you to show it and I'm gonna grab a snapshot and I would love to post this that we recorded today

Vanessa Abraham 32:20 
This is a you and you're familiar with this how they send out the the the draft yeah 

Mai Ling Chan 32:26 
Yes, I love this. You know, the coolest part of this. So she's holding the only draft copy. And that's the coolest thing because for the first time in the whole world, this is where the book is. That's awesome.

Okay, well, thank you so much, Vanessa. It's been fantastic to have you on the show, your voice, your courage, your words. And I tell you, there's a couple of times here I got a little verklempt. I was like, don't cry, don't cry. I can't imagine what the book is like, right? I cannot wait to read it and to be a part of your launch together with you. So thank you so much. Blessings to you and your family. I can't imagine what everyone has gone through, but the light here is that you are sharing this with everyone. So thank you so much. 

Vanessa Abraham 33:03 
No, thank you. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. 

Mai Ling Chan 33:05 
We hope you enjoyed this episode and invite you to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share the show with people you think will find value from it. This helps the show a lot.

Or have a great guest referral, reach out to us at xleaders at gmail.com. 

James Berges 33:22 
And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox, just go to ExceptionalLeaders.com and sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for listening.