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Sometimes you meet a person and the world suddenly looks a lot better, more hopeful, easier to navigate.
Sometimes that person becomes so important to your life that you simply can't imagine how you existed without them.
I wanted to know everything about her.
I wanted to basically be her.
And then she became a friend.
She became my number one person to go to for advice and support.
She knows about all of the craziest things I've ever done and I know that she'll never tell those to anyone.
This is Rae describing Maria, a mentor, guide, life coach, and cheerleader, all wrapped up into one.
She is loud.
She is funny.
She can command a crowd.
She's assertive.
And so, especially when I come to her with vulnerable questions and I don't quite know what to do, I can always trust that she's going to be like this is fine.
You know, like, let's talk about options.
Like she's, she doesn't seem unsure about anything ever, even when she is.
Ray met Maria at an all girls camp in North Carolina in 2016.
Ray was 15, a young person who needed a lot of guidance.
Maria was a new counselor decked out in sandals and tie dye.
And at 22, she had a lot more life experience.
That summer they began a lasting friendship that both of them would come to lean on, as they confronted life's biggest questions about identity, love and growing up.
From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Welcome back, friends.
I'm delighted to bring you season nine of the podcast.
Nine seasons.
It thrills me to have such an engaged, committed community of listeners.
So thank you for being here.
Before we get to today's story, I want to tell you a quick one of my own.
A few years ago, I started dating someone.
For more details, you can listen to the episode Meredith Explained from season five.
So when that relationship continued to be good, I kind of freaked out, and I have a lot of experience being single and investing time in family and friendships.
But being coupled was pretty foreign, like as a concept.
As my new relationship grew, I started thinking about what it all meant.
I wondered, is this actually what I want for my life?
Should a romantic relationship be a main priority when it hasn't been for so long?
What if loving a significant other changes who I am at my core?
In an insecure moment, I confided in my friend Brendan about this.
Brendan had always struck me as someone who was pretty good at being single.
He was now coupled with another one of my friends.
Despite their level of seriousness and how it was changing his life, he didn't seem that stressed about it.
I asked Brendan, how do you not freak out about the way this romantic relationship is altering your whole world?
He basically shrugged and answered with some advice.
He said something like Meredith it's best if you stop thinking macro, philosophical thoughts about the meaning of your relationship.
Just get up every day and ask yourself, do I want to be with this person?
If you do, great, keep it going.
Because if you go too big picture about any of life's big questions, You might get too scared to try or do anything at all.
It was the best advice I'd heard in a long time.
And believe me, I'm swimming in advice.
I read a zillion relationship books for work.
I go to therapy often.
I've interviewed Esther Perel.
But it was my friend Brendan who helped me realize I didn't have to have huge answers.
I could keep showing up for someone simply because I wanted to.
It was that easy.
I think about Brendan's advice a lot.
I think he probably had no idea how much his casual counsel rewired my brain so I could be present for my relationship and enjoy it.
Help can come at unexpected times in unexpected places.
When it arrives, it's good to notice it, to be grateful for it.
In that spirit, we're calling this season's theme, Thanks for the Help.
We'll be telling all kinds of stories about the ways in which people got help in their romantic lives.
From pivotal conversations with parents, to crucial therapy, to exes turned matchmakers.
As I told my editor recently, it's going to be some feel-good shit.
So strap in for the best vibes.
We start today with the story of Ray, who's a longtime Love Letters listener.
I'm Rae.
I'm 23 years old.
I'm currently based in Maine.
I just graduated school last year.
I use they, them pronouns and identify as queer and transgender.
Rae grew up in a rural university town in southwestern Virginia.
So driving to school, you know, you get stuck behind tractors and stuff like that.
And definitely a good small town in terms of safety, but...
Not a great place to grow up.
When you're figuring out whether you're queer, you're questioning all of that.
Not exactly the safest place.
My parents were divorced.
My dad moved out of town, and I was mostly with my mom.
She was a stay-at-home mom, so she was always around, always helping me with homework and everything.
By the time Ray starts high school in 2015, they know they're queer, but they don't fully know what that means.
For context, same-sex marriage is legalized nationwide that same year.
There's a gay-straight alliance at Ray's school.
But it doesn't feel like a great time for Ray to come out or explore anything.
It doesn't help that Ray comes from a fundamentalist Christian community.
The dominant thing to do in high school is go to youth group activities.
I just was vague.
You know, I said, I think I might be queer.
Maybe I'm bisexual.
I didn't say anything with confidence, because I was always sort of about what people around me would say.
I had one friend who would always go to the Gay Straight Alliance meetings with me, but both of us would say yeah, we're going as allies.
We sort of we had this understanding that neither of us would talk about our own identities, but we would sort of be there for each other because it felt like we were the only ones.
Sometimes
I did every sport pretty much.
I did cheerleading, lacrosse, swimming, cross country.
I was into music too.
But Now I realize I was sort of wary of the creative things and stuff that would expose me or stuff that felt like it was really personal, because I wasn't ready to dive in to myself at that time.
It was really scary for me.
In the summers, Ray goes to camp.
It's a huge part of their life from an early age.
There are sleepaway camps and also some day camp experiences, including one where Ray has a first kiss with a boy.
He was 13 and I was 11.
And we went to this square dance together that everyone in the little town would go to.
I remember my friends did that thing where they like, they're like, he's outside.
He wants to talk to you, you know, that sort of thing.
And so I like walked outside and we were just sort of standing there.
And he kisses me on the cheek.
And I, at 11 years old, go, you missed.
And then I kiss him on the lip.
Honestly, the best, like, line I've ever said.
And I'm 23 years old now.
I'll never beat it.
It's amazing.
It's so good.
It's so good.
The summer Ray turns 12 years old.
They go to a new sleepaway camp.
It's an all-girls camp, which is nice.
And it feels much more open.
There are people from all over the United States.
I mean, the camp's in North Carolina, but there are people from Florida, New Hampshire, California—
People have different perspectives on everything and people don't feel as confined.
There were kids there with dyed hair.
There were kids who now looking back, I'm like, these were kids who were overtly queer.
And I'd never really seen that in a way that was celebrated.
And at camp, everyone was celebrated.
There were kids who went by platypus, frog, grape.
These were their camp names and no one questioned it.
You know, it's like you're going to archery and they'd be like, all right, grape, are you here?
It was so accepted.
And that was really cool.
Ray has some blissful summers at this camp.
They start coming out to friends.
It feels like a safe place.
In 2018, they become a counselor in training, which is a big deal.
That's when Ray meets someone new.
A girl we'll call Dylan.
The first day, I meet this girl who I had never met before because she went to a different session.
You know, she was a counselor, and she was clearly gay.
I want to protect... her identity, obviously, but can you paint a little picture for me?
Yeah.
If she listens to this, she'll know, but I think she'll enjoy it.
So she had the short hair.
She had a rainbow belt that she was wearing with her staff uniform.
You can't really customize the uniform that much.
It's like a certain colored shirt and shorts, but she had the rainbow belt.
And I was like, mm-hmm.
So how does it progress?
What happens?
So we're all introducing ourselves.
And I go to shake her hand, which I don't know what kids do, that at age 17.
But I went to shake her hand and she was like no no, like bring it in.
And she gives me a hug.
And we were there for about two and a half weeks, three weeks.
And in camp time, at the end of like week one, we were already like holding hands.
We were sitting next to each other at staff events, all that stuff.
She was my first kiss that felt like important and felt real.
And that was probably after a week of knowing each other.
We were like walking back up together to the cabins and we just sort of stop and look at the stars and then we're sitting on this rock and she's like.
She's like, can I kiss you?
And I say, yeah, I just, I haven't kissed someone in a while, so I might not be good at it.
She's like, oh, it's fine, which is very sweet.
And she did not miss.
No, she did not miss.
I was sort of mesmerized by her and what she represented.
So we started talking and she told me that she was in a band back at home and she had other queer friends.
I mean, she was involved in activism.
She was out to her parents.
She represented a world of possibility to me that I hadn't accessed yet.
But when I was talking with her, when we were together, it sort of felt like that could be possible for me too.
This all sounds great, and it is, except Ray is a rule-following person by nature.
Ray starts thinking, wait, I'm now on the camp staff, and so is Dylan.
What if we get in trouble?
Also, Ray is freaking out a little bit about what people in real life might think about this new relationship, not just at camp, but family and friends back at home.
I definitely went back and forth between having such an incredible time and feeling like I was myself with her and then worrying so much about what people would say if they found out.
I wanted to make a good impression.
I wanted people to hire me back and think I was professional.
But tied up in that was the fear that also I was doing something wrong, because I, just in my head, I still thought of queerness as something wrong, you know, something that wasn't good, wasn't right, and I was fighting all that.
But that was just the narrative that I'd heard for so long.
Rae needs help, and they know just who to go to.
Her name is Maria.
Technically, Rae had met Maria two years prior, in 2016.
Back then, Maria was the new counselor who was taking a gap year between undergrad and med school.
You know, she'd wear the tie-dye, she'd wear her, like, sandals and socks.
I remember she had, like, a fanny pack. to be clear, it was a cool fanny pack.
Over the summers of 2016 and 2017, Ray and Maria get to know each other as counselor and camper.
She was just so incredible, so fun.
I remember talking to her about not about queerness per se, but just telling her a little bit about my life and feeling really comfortable with her.
And then, you know, the next year is sort of the same.
The next year, I just keep talking to her whenever I have free time.
At the time, Maria doesn't share that much about her own life because she's older.
But Ray and some other campers figure out some personal stuff on their own.
My friends and I were doing some sleuthing into Maria's life, as you do with your really cool counselors.
And we had sort of found out that she was in a relationship with one of the other counselors from camp.
We didn't know how long it had been going on, but we knew, based on our Instagram stalking, that she was.
And so I knew that she, you know, I knew she was queer.
And I knew also that she had experience with the toils of camp life and camp love.
So back to 2018.
Ray, now a counselor in training, is freaking out about dating Dylan, this other young counselor at camp.
Ray needs to talk it out. and Maria seems like the exact right person to go to.
At this point, Ray is turning 18, and Maria is 24.
So I came to Maria and I told her that I had never felt this way about anyone before, that this was sort of you know, changing everything for me.
Like, I couldn't do this back home.
I'd never been with a girl before and I was terrified of losing her, and I was also terrified of losing my job, and I sort of didn't know how to navigate that.
She told me, she was like, listen, you're not going to lose your job.
Just don't be stupid.
She's like, you can have both, but also at the same time, this is not the only girl in the world.
It was important for her to clarify with me that there aren't two gay people in the world.
There aren't three.
There are millions.
And that is just something I couldn't conceive of.
I thought that this was my one chance to have a queer relationship like ever.
When I picture these conversations, I picture them like in like the kind of bunk I've seen on TV.
Is that where are you?
Is that what am I doing that right?
So very much so.
But me, so me and Maria, we were both on staff.
And so we would have these conversations.
It'd be funny, like the kids would be doing a little activity, you know, on on a hill or something.
And we would be like 10 paces to the left, sitting in rocking chairs, or you know, looking over, looking at the mountains.
And I'd be like, Maria, I need so much help.
Like, I'm in love with this girl.
What do I do?
All while watching kids like hula hoop down below.
Ray continues to confide in Maria about these experiences.
And pretty quickly, Maria's counsel begins to feel essential.
Another thing that Maria and I share is like is a religious background that, for a long time, made each of us feel like being queer was wrong or being queer was impossible.
Her background, you know, she was Catholic and I was more just like Christian generally.
But she told me about how it was really hard to work through that.
And sometimes it still is.
And that she was worried about her family and how they would accept her queerness, because I think they were more committed to religion then than she was at the time.
And so I was actively working through breaking away from a fundamentalist Christian group back at home.
It was really, really hard for me to be in a space that straight up said you know, we don't support gay people, we don't support queerness.
And I would tell her about that and she would sort of talk me through it and be like it's okay, you have to make the best decision for you at the end of the day.
Rae winds up ending the camp romance with Dylan because it seems to be in the cards, quite literally.
Dylan's there.
All my close friends are there.
And we're doing a tarot card reading.
And I'm getting my cards read.
And I don't really, you know, I sort of believe selectively in tarot and stuff like that.
But the reading is basically like you are doing something incredibly wrong.
If you continue down this path, like there will be retribution.
It was very much, it felt very pointed and terrifying.
And then you ended it?
And then Me and Dylan we go into like the little kitchen area and we sit down and I was like I don't feel good about this.
Like it's not just the tarot reading, but like I've just been feeling like we're doing the wrong thing.
You know, I don't want us to get in trouble.
And she's like, seriously?
She's like, really?
And I was like, yeah.
And we just sit there.
You're officially the first love letters breakup story by tarot card reading that I've ever heard.
It's so bad.
It's so bad.
When camp ends at the end of that summer, Ray and Maria stay in touch.
Ray reaches out when they need advice about other opportunities for romance.
They reach out again when they come out to their parents toward the end of high school.
Every few months I would text Maria, usually about some dramatic thing in my life that had happened or something I needed advice on.
I definitely talked to Maria throughout my senior year about various things.
In the beginning of college I remember texting Maria and saying telling her that I had reconnected with another girl from summer camp who was going to the same school as me, and I remember asking her if I should have sex with this girl to get it over with for the first time and Maria said no, don't do that, and normally she doesn't flat out tell me not to do things.
But she was like no, don't do that, like please, there's no need to.
You know, rush into this like I don't think you'll be happy if you do that.
As they both get older, the age gap begins to feel different to Ray.
It feels smaller.
Eventually, Maria shares new details about her own experiences, even some things about her own camp romance that she had kept from Ray when Ray was younger.
By the time, Ray is out of college and Maria is entrenched in med school.
They have a more mature friendship.
Maria is no longer just Ray's counselor, and she's not just another friend.
She's not an older sibling. she's something different.
She offers guidance, care, and a glimpse of a happy future.
But with every conversation, Maria starts to realize she isn't just giving advice anymore.
She's getting a lot from Ray, too.
This is Maria.
A lot of the times, especially with teens, we treat them as children and kind of assume they're unaware and kind of, in a lot of ways, disempower them from their own journeys and I think that's the biggest thing I learned as a camp counselor is just that you have so much to learn from them, too.
So when Ray comes to Maria with one of their biggest questions yet, it starts a conversation that ends up being such a big help to both of them.
More when we come back.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of Okay, we're back.
So even after camp, when Ray and Maria text, Maria always calls Ray Teen.
It's a cute nickname.
Like, hey teen, tell me everything.
The nickname is also a reminder of the inherent dynamics of the relationship.
Ray looks up to Maria and Maria because of age maturity, life experience says And on top of everything else, medical school just knows more.
Most of the time, anyway.
Maria, I definitely for a long time had her on this pedestal of like.
She is an all-knowing queer person and also she's a doctor and so she knows just everything and she's always right.
And there have been moments where Maria has given me advice that maybe I haven't taken, and then I've been glad that I haven't taken it.
We've had conversations now where she's told me about mistakes she's made in her own relationships and ways in which she's been unfaithful or she's said mean things to partners.
And that shows me that she's a real person.
Maria laughs when she remembers meeting Ray at camp that first summer.
Because Ray turned out to be pretty different than what Maria first thought.
The first time I met Ray, I'm pretty sure they had like a tennis skirt on.
I thought they were this, I don't know, like country club type person.
I don't know.
So not, and you've met Ray, like so not who they are.
Maria says that when Ray began asking for her counsel, there was a lot she could have said.
Maria could have shared that she'd only been out herself for about a year.
She could have disclosed that her own camp romance, the one Ray had figured out on Instagram, had changed her life in complicated ways.
Because when Maria and Ray first started talking, Maria was still wrestling with her own queer identity.
I kind of was very secretive about it.
I don't know how to explain it.
It's like, it felt like my identity was, like, very fragmented.
I was still whoever, like straight Maria was to the world, but then, like in secret, I was like dating this person.
I was like so in love with.
Even as Maria, the grown-up was helping re-navigate their first queer relationship, Here was this younger person taking big steps.
Ray seemed to have this courage that Maria wished she could emulate.
I think, in reflecting on our relationship, that's something that's so striking, because every time that they came to me for advice, I was not in some ways in a place to give advice.
And a lot of the times I was giving advice that I wasn't taking.
I've always felt kind of behind them with Ray, because I would reassure Ray and Ray just has this freedom like just self-actualization.
They're so capable of owning themselves in a way that at the time, in all of these points in our life, I was doing maybe like a fraction of what they were doing.
I gained a lot of strength in watching them grow up.
I asked Maria how she figured out boundaries for her and Ray, because a lot of us want to help younger people and be there for them.
As someone without kids, I always want to be a cool confidant to my friends' children, but I also don't want to be weird or say too much.
Maria says that with Ray and other campers, she was private about herself when the kids were young.
She mostly did a lot of listening, but she was also really thoughtful about what was okay to talk about, because in general she says straight kids get to talk about a lot of stuff without fear or judgment.
Like it's pretty common at a co-ed camp for straight kids to have crushes, talk about them, reveal them, even around adults.
Maria wanted queer kids at her camp to get the same experience.
That's like a normal conversation that we sometimes even encourage in like normal society.
For me, it was recognizing that it's OK for people to be queer at like age, 15 and 12, and whatever age it may be, especially in like, reflecting about me and Ray's relationship.
I didn't have anybody that I could have the conversations I had with them.
And it feels life changing.
Like I can't imagine how much easier my life would have been if I had had somebody like validate a lot of these things that maybe I
I had felt but ignored or, you know, maybe it wouldn't have taken me like six years to come out.
That special bond Ray has with Maria takes an important turn when Ray turns 20.
That's when Ray starts questioning their gender identity.
Naturally, Ray turns to Maria to talk it through, partly because Maria has always been that person.
But also by this point, Maria has decided in her last year of medical school that she wants to focus on family medicine and gender medicine.
You know, I'm thinking about getting a breast reduction or I'm thinking about top surgery.
I mean, that was the beginning of those conversations.
It was really scary for me to say that to anyone.
But, I mean, she's in the medical field.
She's always been super supportive of queer and trans identities and of me specifically.
So she was just a really safe place for me to go to.
And she was one of the first adults I can remember going to.
What was her reaction like when you asked that question?
She was just like oh teen, like i'm so proud of you for having these conversations, and she immediately would just flood my phone with all these questions like oh, have you looked into this?
Like you know, do you know what doctor you'd like to have a consultation with?
Have you told your parents?
What did they say?
So she was always very she covered all the bases in terms of like different ways that i could be comfortable or like options that i could look into to ask, because you talk about having an upbringing that maybe didn't make this so easy, right?
Like, how did that play out at home?
And was Maria able to help with navigating that?
I often talk about there being like two big coming outs in my life.
You know, one was telling my parents I was queer when I was a senior in high school.
And that went.
That went pretty well honestly, because both my parents were just very supportive and have queer friends respectively.
But telling my parents that I was queer, questioning my gender, that I was non-binary, that one was scarier to bring up.
And I sort of eased them into it.
You know, I was like, oh, I want to use she, they pronouns.
And I got some confusion in response.
And they didn't really know how to do that, didn't really try.
And then I said that I wanted to look into surgery.
You know, I wanted to look into getting a breast reduction or maybe top surgery.
But I always...
I always couched it in like, oh, I'm so uncomfortable, you know, like the physical pain.
Because I was into sports, you know, I was very athletic.
And so I was really scared to tell them that it was actually because of my like gender dysphoria.
And it was much bigger than just like physical pain.
And Maria was always a helpful voice.
Being like you know what your parents might not understand, but that's OK to be clear that yes, this is a unique situation when it comes to help and mentorship.
Not everyone finds a cool older friend who can listen, ask questions and then literally becomes a doctor with a specialty in the exact thing the younger person needs help with.
But even here Maria says that these conversations with Ray about gender and transitioning and surgery options really help Maria in her professional life.
Because, by the summer of 2021, Maria had started a residency in North Carolina and was providing gender care to young people just like Ray.
When Ray was going through considering top surgery, I had just learned about it.
I was just learning about pronouns.
I don't know what part of the generation of millennials I am where we miss that as young people, but this is something I was actively learning as Ray was going through it.
So it was like, I learned about gender and not being a binary.
And then like a month later, Ray came out as a non-binary person.
And so it was like simultaneously going on.
And so I was able to see the confusion and the anxiety around telling people and the anxiety around not knowing how everything fits together and not knowing like, what it means really.
And that's, those are my patients.
And I wouldn't know any of that if I hadn't seen Ray go through it.
I think I just have like more compassion and understanding that I think a lot of patients don't anticipate when they come see their doctor.
Ray is now 23.
Maria is 30.
Ray decided to get top surgery at the end of 2022.
They say their life has improved so much since then.
They feel more confident moving through the world.
They say they stand up straight because they want to. because they're not hiding anymore.
Ray no longer spends summers at camp, but in their new grown-up job, their camp skills do apply.
I'm now basically a summer camp counselor for adults.
I work for a travel company, so I take people on vacation and I'm, you know, their tour guide, their leader.
Ray has dated a lot and feels very good about that, too.
Ray remembers Maria assuring them that their first camp love wasn't the only person out there.
Maria was right on the nose with that one.
And she's also been on the nose about the fact that getting out of that camp circuit of people and those relationships, that that's a really healthy thing to do and it's really hard because there's something so comforting and magical, I guess, about that.
Like trying to have a relationship with someone that you met at camp.
But it's also really hard.
Rae also learned from Maria that there's such a thing as playing the field.
And that it can be a very healthy thing to do.
I've been surprised at Maria's willingness to let relationships go and jump into something new.
I mean, she's described a period of life to me that you know some of us would describe as like a ho face.
You know, maybe it shouldn't have surprised me, but I was sort of like, oh, okay, like, that's cool.
And it was nice to hear, I guess, that she was out there doing the same thing that I'm doing.
And Maria now has Ray's support as she takes her very own big next step.
After coming out, having long relationships dating around and balancing everything with a medical education, Maria has met her person.
So I'm marrying someone whose name is Mary Beth.
When I started residency, we met immediately.
We were obsessed with each other.
And then about a year and a half ago, we were both like, we never want to be without each other.
And it was in a lot of ways like that teen feeling, like the romance feeling.
But she's like my best friend and my favorite person to be with.
I tell Ray all the time, like, it feels like every day is the best day, even if we're tired.
She's also a resident.
So we're always kind of trying to find ways to spend time with each other.
But yeah, we're super in love.
And Ray loves being around us and we love being around them.
I also love her partner so much.
I need to get them the best wedding gift ever, because they I will never ever repay them for what they've done for me.
But the wedding is going to be incredible.
I've already told Maria I'm going to look my best and that The night might be a little messy.
You know, who knows?
Who knows what characters are going to be there?
We spoke to Ray and Maria in the fall.
The wedding was New Year's Eve.
Ray wrote me after, sent pictures, and said it was a perfect weekend.
Having had this experience where you get this wonderful mentor of sorts, do you think about being a Maria to somebody else?
You know, I do have a few campers that I keep up with and who keep up with me, especially like some queer and trans campers.
And I'm sort of navigating the same thing that maybe Maria was navigating when I was younger.
A lot of these kids are like, you know, 14, 15, 16.
And so I often, you know, wait for them to like, text me or call me, because I don't want to be this 23-year-old person who's entering their life without their request, you know.
So I'm letting them sort of steer the ship on that one.
But I'm making sure to always stay available because...
I know how important it is when kids feel like they're important to those like older, queer people in their life.
And like all those kids are so important to me.
I should say that when I put out a call for stories about relationship help, Ray wrote in with this story about Maria and said this
I don't know if I would be here without Maria.
Certainly this version of myself, the confidently queer and trans person who keeps an open heart and tries to do the hard but right thing, would not be here.
She has been a shoulder to cry on a lockbox for some of my more scandalous escapades and vulnerable emotions.
A fantastic host, a well of medical knowledge and a friend and mentor in all senses of these words.
Maria is just as grateful.
Ray and I really have a special connection in that we have gone through identity crises together.
I can't imagine my life without Ray.
However special they think that I am in their life, they're just as, if not more, in mine.
And I should probably tell them that more.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
Today's episode was produced by Jesse Remedios and Scott Hellman.
Ned Porter does our audio mixing, sound design, and mastering.
Maddie Mortel does our audience engagement.
Love Letters illustrations by Ali Riza.
Special thanks to Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
We are an advice column, so send all your questions about dating love marriage breakups, everything in between to loveletters at bostoncom.
We're online at loveletters.show.
Listen, fanny packs are fucking cool.
Fanny packs are cool.
They're really cool.
The right fanny pack on the right person.
I think it works.
Definitely works.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
