[00:00:00] Emily Race-Newmark: Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

Today we are going to talk about an issue that can feel so insurmountable, which is in part due to its intersectional nature, and that is homelessness. 

Throughout the United States, there has been a rise in the population of people experiencing homelessness, and yet, it feels like the solutions being put out there haven't done much to reduce this problem.

Enter Miracle Messages, an organization who's tackling this issue from a deeply human and interpersonal level, which, as we'll hear more about today, is perhaps the only place to start if we truly want to create a shift in this area of our society.

If you, like me, have found yourself looking at the rise of unhoused folks in your neighborhoods and questioning what can be done about this, then this conversation is for you.

Kevin (Miracle Messages): [00:01:00] Miracle Messages, we have a mission statement that's pretty straightforward.

So we say, "no one should go through homelessness alone," wish I could end a word early. No one should go through homelessness. But while we have homelessness in our society, it should not be a fundamentally isolating, otherizing, dehumanizing, disconnecting experience. In fact, we should embrace and get closer to our unhoused neighbors.

Rather than push people away and start from a place of trust and make sure no one goes through homelessness alone. The second part of the mission statement is, "no one goes through homelessness alone and no one feels helpless on this issue."

And right now, not just homelessness, if we think about all the things going on in our country, around the world, it's so easy to fall into a sense of just terror, frustration, anger, and then maybe apathy at one point, cynicism, "what can I possibly do?"

I have seen, at least on the issue of [00:02:00] homelessness, that this is an issue where there's plenty for everyday people to do. And in fact, we have to be part of the solution because quite frankly, we're also part of the problem. 

Emily Race-Newmark: You just heard from Kevin Adler, who is the founder and CEO of Miracle Messages and the author of the book "When We Walk By", a must read guide for ending homelessness in America. . I had picked up a copy prior to conducting this interview and underlined so many pages as Kevin and his co authors really answer some of the fundamental questions that I've been sitting with, and discussing with my own loved ones when we're wrestling with how we can personally address the homeless issue in our communities.

We will touch on a lot of those resonant points made in the book here in this interview, which we originally recorded in April of 2024. 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): I find that a helpful starting place in my journey on this work is starting from a premise of, I don't know a thing about homelessness. What business do I have doing this work? And I started with that, but I also started with [00:03:00] a real desire to learn, curiosity, and a family connection.

My Uncle Mark was homeless for about 30 years, and he lived on the streets of Santa Cruz. I never thought of Uncle Mark as a homeless man, but he was just a beloved member of my family. After he passed away I started thinking, "Gosh, everyone I'm walking by, that's someone's mother, that's someone's father, that's some kid's beloved uncle."

 My journey really began wondering what life was like for people like my Uncle Mark, as I walked by them on the streets. What do they wish I knew about their life? And so I spent a year getting to know my unhoused neighbors as neighbors.

I invited 24 individuals who are unhoused to wear GoPro cameras around their chests and narrate their experience of what life is like on the streets. And watch that footage that I got back from them and was really just heartbroken by what I [00:04:00] heard and what I saw. 

Folks continuously ignored, overlooked, disparaged, the world seemed like they were totally oblivious to them.

But in one of the clips I watched, I heard one unhoused individual say something that really struck a chord. And they said, "I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing. Only when I lost my family and my friends," and that was the insight that led me to start thinking about what I now call relational poverty, as an overlooked form of poverty on the streets; an isolation of loneliness, a level of severe disconnection coupled with stigma and a shame that makes it very hard to form relationships. 

One day deciding to just ask people if they had any family or friends they'd like to reconnect to.

 The first person I met, his name was Jeffrey. He said he hadn't seen his family in about 22 years. So I sat down with him. I [00:05:00] recorded a short video to his niece, his nephew, sister. Went home that night, did a Facebook search and found a group connected to his hometown.

Posted the video there with a short note. Within an hour, the video had gone viral. Classmates had commented on the posts, "Hey, I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction. Does he need a job? I work at the congressman's office. Does he need health care?"

First 20 minutes of the post, his sister got tagged, got on the phone the next day and it turned out that Jeffrey had been a missing person for 12 years.

And so that turned out to be the first of what became Miracle Messages and was able to help him and his sister get reconnected on a phone call and then in person a little bit later. And started doing this work full time because I knew Jeffrey wasn't the only one. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Wow. Yeah, that story really struck me when I read it in the book. So I'm glad you're emphasizing it here because one, just the GoPro experiment, if you will, itself was [00:06:00] so interesting to bridge that divide as you start describing like, "between us and them," these ideas that we're separate people and through that discovering, as you mentioned, the insight and relational poverty. I have never considered that to be a form of poverty.

And yet, on this platform, we have so many conversations about the importance of community and connection and how we need to weave that back into our ways of living. So it makes perfect sense. 

I would just want to pause on that topic for a moment, see if there's anything else you want to break down in terms of why relational poverty is important for us to look at and start solving for in the issue of houselessness and homelessness. 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): Yeah, that's a great question. I think we've all just emerged from a global pandemic that in order to do our part, if we were fortunate enough to do so, we were asked to shelter in place, to stay at home. And I don't think it's coincidental that in the aftermath of this pandemic, we've had a much [00:07:00] more of a awareness around loneliness as a society. 

We've had the surgeon general come out and talk about loneliness and disconnection as a public health concern, as an epidemic. I think there's a familiarity that we've all abutted against —a bout of loneliness and disconnection that I think many of us would say has been hard. And when you ask a person experiencing homelessness about their experiences, as one person put it in the early months of the pandemic, "You don't need to teach me about social distancing. That's my life already."

if you're unhoused, or if you're on the extreme margins of society and you're experiencing what I call relational poverty, it's not just loneliness times two or three, it's a level of life and death outcomes that not having social support or having the social support you do have being so [00:08:00] economically depressed and having so few resources. 

It's actually remarkable that more people aren't experiencing homelessness. 

When we look in the U S right now, one out of every two Americans is a paycheck away from not being able to pay rent. 47 percent of people say they don't know where they'd get $400 for an unexpected emergency.

When you hear numbers like that, you almost have to ask this question of, why aren't more people experiencing homelessness? The theory that I put forward and the work and research we've done that has so far shown that there's something to this is family and friends and community and church and synagogue and mosque and informal economy and relationships-- social capital is making up the difference for tens of millions of people in the United States right now from falling over the edge into homelessness or barely getting by, doubled up, tripled up, having a [00:09:00] lifeline, having a little bit of side work when you need it, having someone that you can couch surf with— this is critical.

So if you don't have that, or you've lost that, it can be devastating.

If you fall into homelessness, the HUD definition of homelessness, so you're unsheltered or you're in a shelter, the experience can be so otherizing and isolating that it makes forming new relationships much harder. 

Your identity becomes either that you're experiencing homelessness or trying to hide the fact that you're experiencing homelessness, in which case then you're not able to have the open conversations that really can be critical to forming trusted bonds. 

 Between 2015 and 2019 in San Francisco, 60 percent of successful shelter exits, meaning people who left a shelter congregate environment and were housed versus disappearing or falling back into the streets, 60 [00:10:00] percent of those successful shelter exits were as a result of family and friend reunification.

30 percent supportive housing and 10 percent transitional housing. 

So it's not to say that we don't need to invest in housing, that we don't need all the other services we talk about. We need to acknowledge homelessness as the intersectional issue it is —that intersects with healthcare, behavioral health, incarceration, racism, discrimination, foster care, housing. We have to look at this other system that's going on, relational poverty is a big part of it, but what I would talk about is how we treat our unhoused neighbors.

Do we interact with them? Do we see them as them versus us? We don't look at ourselves as housed people, and yet we've defined an entire group as a monolith by what they're lacking in terms of homelessness. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Would you say houselessness or homelessness? 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): I say homelessness. I have heard... 

Emily Race-Newmark: And unhoused is... 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): Yeah. For me, what it is, is it's whatever the language, it's less about precision of words.

 Feel free to disagree if folks out there are like, [00:11:00] "oh, don't say this," we can have that conversation. But the importance is actually changing the standard nomenclature a bit to create a little bit of friction and pause in how we talk about what often is "the homeless". 

Emily Race-Newmark: Yup.

Kevin (Miracle Messages): So honestly, whether it's 'unhoused neighbors', 'people experiencing homelessness', 'individuals experiencing homelessness', 'houselessness', anything is better than the status quo of "the homeless" and "homeless people", which I think allows us to really create this kind of us versus them dichotomy.

So that's my stance on it. I'm not a language police, but that I think a little bit of friction is helpful. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, no, I appreciate you explaining that because that was another question of mine. 

In the realm of myths to bust or narratives to shift, I wanted to dive into that with you a bit. Because I feel like if we're going to really focus on solutions and what we'd like to see more of, part of that is interrupting our current paradigm of thinking around quote unquote the "homeless". Who are these [00:12:00] people exactly? What are some myths around what it means to be without a home?

Kevin (Miracle Messages): What we see as people experiencing homelessness is a very visceral, visible and upsetting segment of people experiencing homelessness —unsheltered individual, chronically homeless, often intersecting with severe untreated mental health illness and/or substance abuse issues.

 That is what many of us in urban environments have as the mental framework of homelessness. 

That's part of homelessness. And in West Coast cities and some cities around the country, that's actually a significant part of the homeless population. That's not the entirety, and in most areas, that's not the majority of people experiencing homelessness.

In the book, my co authors and I, we estimate that about six million [00:13:00] people experience homelessness over the course of the year. Any given night, the HUD definition is six-hundred thousand will be on the streets on any given night over the course of the year.

We think it's about 10X that will experience homelessness, but a lot of those folks are totally invisible to you and me. Mothers, single women tend to be a part of what's considered more of the invisible homeless population. 

LGBTQ youth constitute estimated 9 percent of the overall youth population in the United States, but account for 40 percent of the unaccompanied youth homeless population. So 4X over indexed. 

 Young people, children in general, millions of school kids who are doubled up, tripled up staying at shelters, and again, you wouldn't see as experiencing homelessness on the streets, but are absolutely without the kind of stable housing that we all need to be healthy, happy with fully productive [00:14:00] lives.

Even among the population of people experiencing homelessness that we do see as chronically homeless or unsheltered or individual on the streets, overwhelmingly men, male identifying, but not entirely. Even among that population, I think sometimes when we talk about mental illness and substance abuse, we often think about that as a cause of homelessness. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): And sure, there's people where that's the case, but it's much more of an effect of homelessness than a primary cause.

Most of the folks that I've talked to, there may have been traumas stemming from childhood, perhaps. The number one determining factor of likelihood to experience adult homelessness is youth homelessness.

Your adverse childhood experiences score, the higher that is, the more likelihood you have experienced homelessness. Foster care, a third of young people who age out of foster care by the time they're, I think 24, 25 years old, 26 years old will experience homelessness. And [00:15:00] that goes up to 60 percent for Black young people who age out of foster care will experience homelessness.

And then we're not even talking about incarceration where if you are incarcerated, folks are often dropped off at a Greyhound station, left with very little money. It's illegal to be homeless in many jurisdictions. We have anti camping, anti sleeping, anti loitering ordinances that essentially make it illegal to be alive and be experiencing homelessness.

Job loss, cancer induced financial toxicity, which is you have a cancer diagnosis, you lose your job and you can no longer work and you have chemotherapy and you can no longer pay your rent and you lose your house. So there's all these things that happen leading people to fall into homelessness.

Mental health issues, substance abuse issues are an issue on the streets. They're also an issue among housed people too. The difference is often access to treatment and being able to [00:16:00] have that treated and having a support network around you. 

I think it is important to look at all the different intersections of homelessness and systemic failures in our society to get to a place where we can recognize homelessness not a result of individual failings, but really about systemic forces in which some people are unfortunately victims of.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, thank you for summing it up, if you will, because I think that's really what I want to leave folks with is, if there's any part of your psyche, and I know it's been a part of mine, of where it's like, "It's their fault," or, "they should have done xyz," one, I just see that as another sentiment of individualism of blaming people for systemic issues. 

But also really misunderstanding how we collectively are in this moment where that is a path for so many people. 

And for those that have avoided that path, I would say, I can look at my own circle of friends, even myself, the moments that I've been saved by social capital, saved by friends or family who are able to give me a place to stay, lend me some money, there's all these things that allowed me to [00:17:00] never hit a rock bottom moment. So just acknowledging all of that. 

 Again, in your book, you break this all down. But there's just something to be said also for why don't you just get a job? There's unhoused people who have more than one job and they're still unable to... 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): 45 percent of unhoused individuals have some form of employment and another 40 percent have a disability that makes it so they can't work. 

We need to do a lot more as a country to make employment accessible for people experiencing homelessness. 

In the United States of the 3000 counties all across the country, I believe it is, there's no community where a person who's a minimum wage earner working full time will have enough for the fair market value of a two bedroom apartment. And less than 1 percent of communities where that same hardworking individual working full time can afford the median fair market value price for a one bedroom. 

[00:18:00] Again, even if they're working full time, have a job, housing is just unattainable and too expensive and too scarce. 

We absolutely have to invest in more housing of all different types and programs like direct cash and some of the work we do at Miracle Messages and basic income to give people a fighting chance to try to self resolve and be resourceful and find housing that may not be obvious to us, but maybe a lifeline for them. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, what I'd love to transition to actually is talking about some of the initiatives that Miracle Messages has taken on and the success stories from that. What can folks do and what has been working? 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): Through Miracle Messages, we are always looking for new volunteers to sign up as phone buddies. 

We have a program that matches individuals experiencing homelessness, who are feeling isolated, who are experiencing relational poverty, with caring volunteers for 20 minute, 30 minute phone calls, text messages, once a week, [00:19:00] as a kind of digital pen pal program.

And we have right now over 350 pairs with volunteers all around the world. In Asia, Europe, Latin America, In Northern Africa, wherever folks have any kind of digital connectivity, anyone who has a phone, access to some kind of either Internet or Wi Fi, you can participate—20 minutes, 30 minutes a week. And then we match you with an unhoused neighbor in the United States.

 There's a training process. So you feel like you have a sense of, what do you say? How do you have conversations? There's a call logging process. So if the person says something that you don't feel equipped to help with, or you don't know what to do, you can always log that in the call and have one of our staff members follow up and, we can try to work with a caseworker if need be.

 There's a real great community that meets every week to talk about their experiences, highs and lows of being in this program. 

So I'm a participant in this program. [00:20:00] I have a friend Andres who we've been friends for almost a year now. He's added tremendously to my life, in addition to whatever I've done for him, and he's just become a dear friend. He's actually going to be at my wedding next month. So he's become a dear friend of mine.

And the other pathways in Miracle Messages is you can volunteer as a digital detective. So if you don't like interacting with people as much or you don't have as much time, that's okay. We need misanthropes, as well. You can sign up and instead of talking to people in phone calls and texts, you will do digital detective work. Online searches, making phone calls, writing letters to try to find loved ones, deliver messages from people experiencing homelessness to those loved ones, and help reunite families and loved ones.

That's our reunification services. We've done close to a thousand reunions since we started. 

And then "Hey, this all sounds too [00:21:00] complicated. I don't have time for that."

That's fine, too. You can donate at our website and actually, we have a basic income pilot and right now across the state of California, we have over a hundred unhoused individuals receiving $750 a month for 12 months as part of a randomized controlled trial looking at the impact of basic income and social support.

So absolutely would love to have your support getting money directly into the hands of our neighbors experiencing homelessness who often know how to use the money better than we do. 

That's the Miracle Messages offerings around relational poverty and poverty and trusting people and investing in people.

Beyond that, it's really important to share stories, maybe what we're having today. There's great videos, TED Talks on homelessness. Or any time you see homelessness in the news in your community, if the terms that are used are the reductive and talk about homelessness as a [00:22:00] monolith, speaking up and saying, "well, why are those the terms that are used? were people experiencing homelessness interviewed as part of this?"

Thinking about those storytelling dynamics. I think advocating for housing of all types in your community. You can't be for ending homelessness and against developing housing in your community at the same time.

So would invite folks to really rethink any kind of nimbyism that's going on and recognize that when we offer housing to our neighbors experiencing homelessness, our unhoused neighbors just become our neighbors who have life experiences just like us. 

The final thing I'd say is, the book that I wrote, When We Walked By, my intention was really to write a book that was accessible to a thoughtful, caring general audience on this issue it's really a trade book for a general public. 

And I'd invite folks to pick up a copy of the audio book or the print edition, and then reach out and let me know what resonates, [00:23:00] what's true in your community. We have a nice little community growing of folks who've read the book and then are volunteering with Miracle Messages or finding ways to volunteer in their own community. So we'd love to invite people to be part of that as well. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Amazing. I'm wondering, if I'm walking down the street and I see an unhoused person, I'm just engaging with them, making eye contact. What are those ways that in our lives we can shift our behaviors? 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): Totally. Yeah. So I've done about fifty events now for the book, and the number one question by far, what do I say to a person experiencing homelessness? How do I have a conversation? What can I do walking by?

I'll say this, the book is titled intentionally, When We Walk By, because we will walk by, inevitably. It's part of modern society, unfortunately. 

So when we walk by, it would be important to think about why we're walking by. Are we recoiling and scurrying by because we're afraid or we felt unsafe when we pass this person? [00:24:00] If so, where did that fear come from? Is it because it was at night? Was it a low trafficked area? 

And if so, are there ways that maybe in the coming days or weeks, you could intentionally not walk by and create scenarios where you'd feel more comfortable connecting up with a friend and going on a walk, grabbing some socks and handing out socks. Those are one of the number one requested items on the streets. Imagine someone sitting out there in the elements wearing the same pair of socks. They get dirty, you get all sorts of infections. You're on your feet all day. They get wet. So handing out socks as a conversation starter.

 We have hotline cards that are available on our website. You can download and print off the the template. Phone number is very easy, it's: 1 800 MISS YOU.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): 1 800 M-I-S-S Y-O-U. So you can hand out 1 800 MISS YOU cards. 

And quite frankly, if you don't have any physical [00:25:00] items— granola bars are good, water bottles—but being able to look someone in the eye, say hi, and introducing yourself, "My name is Kevin. what's your name?"

Maybe having a conversation, I think is a great way to go. 

And then again, if you really just don't feel comfortable or safe or doesn't work for you in a unsheltered street setting to engage with people, maybe volunteering at a local shelter, soup kitchen. Joining a program like our Miracle Friends Phone Buddy program and starting there. 

And then what I'd invite you to is, as much fear as we may have for our neighbors experiencing homelessness, most crimes involving a person experiencing homelessness, they're the victim, not the perpetrator. People will run by, kick someone, punch them, spit on them, throw stuff at them, it's inherently very unsafe on the streets. And you're potentially walking by not just where they're sitting at that moment or standing for the moment, that could be their home, their place [00:26:00] of rest, their bathroom.

They don't have access to sanitation. There's a real vulnerability that they may have when walking by where they're at. 

So I would just proceed with that awareness in mind that anything you can do to have a conversation that's open where you're acknowledging their humanity as well as your own, can be a really helpful place to get past this homeless house dichotomy and really seeing our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness. But hopefully will not be forever defined by that as their identity. 

Emily Race-Newmark: One thing I wanted to follow up on there is the safety issue and this comes from my experience, again, living in Venice where the mental illness substance use seem to be more concentrated in certain areas. I can think of certain streets at times where either myself or people I were with had actually experienced being, quote unquote, attacked verbally or physically. And so that's created more of that fear of engaging.

So I just want to hold [00:27:00] that alongside what you said about, that's just, let's say, a small percentage, holistically, of who actually is unhoused. How can we help those people or engage with those folks or what have you discovered to be the way in there?

Kevin (Miracle Messages): You have to use your own best judgment. And if you don't feel safe or you've had bad experiences, who am I to tell you to do something that doesn't feel safe or makes you uncomfortable?

We have a severe substance abuse issue, opioid epidemic, and mental health crisis in our country right now. And unfortunately, that intersects with homelessness, as well.

There are folks experiencing homelessness who need hospital beds, not to be left out in the elements and certainly not jail cells. We've often criminalized addiction, mental health issues. 

I saw some stat while researching the book. I think it was upwards of 60 percent of the inmate population [00:28:00] across the country has some kind of substance abuse issue or addiction. This is a mental health issue. This is an addiction. It affects the physiology of your brain. And yet we've criminalized people who just need help and health care.

We didn't invest in the kind of nationwide network of local recovery programs that were intended after de institutionalization. I'm a believer that there is a role for involuntary treatments, involuntary holds. The challenge though is have you done everything possible before getting to that place where you're then prioritizing community safety, the person's well being over their agency, their freedom? Are they a threat to themselves or to others?

And just most importantly, perhaps, if you provide any kind of involuntary treatment or holds, what happens afterwards? What does [00:29:00] that period look like? Do they get discharged back to the streets? Or you just hold people inevitably? We don't have the facilities for that outside of incarceration. 

 I will say that my views on this have been heavily informed by family members of people experiencing homelessness. Who said, "Gosh, my brother, my son, my dad, my sister, that's no quality of life for them.

 This is heartbreaking for me to see as someone who loves them, the situation they're in, we've got to find a way to get them the help that they need."

Emily Race-Newmark: thank you for and you're kind of touching on one of my last final questions here, which is around the systemic aspect of all this.

 What about these interconnected systems that really need a overhaul? How do we the housed start to be a part of those solutions? Do we try to tackle all of them at once? Or do you recommend diving into one segment at a time?

Kevin (Miracle Messages): If we look at all the systems and we look at the work that needs to get done, it can feel insurmountable, like why [00:30:00] bother? Where do you start? I think we flip that and we start with actually a very simple thing, which is getting to know one person who's experiencing homelessness.

Cause I know you, Emily, and you listener, whoever's out there, I know you're capable, smart, intelligent, good problem solver, well networked, well resourced. And if you get close enough doing what Brian Stevenson talks about of getting proximate to our unhoused neighbors, getting relational, extending social capital to people who may not have any relationship social capital outside of other people experiencing homelessness and caseworkers and law enforcement, I have no doubt that you'll get close enough to identify the unique wrinkles of challenges, context of why that person's experiencing homelessness and what barriers they're facing to housing. 

I think [00:31:00] relationships precede almost everything else going on that we're talking about. Hearts and minds on this issue, identifying ways to help—you gotta be in relationship first. I would just invite folks to get to know an unhoused neighbor as a neighbor, and as a friend, and see where that takes you.

Emily Race-Newmark: What do you think is the bottom line of why we should care enough to sign up for the phone buddy program or engage with an unhoused neighbor? 

Kevin (Miracle Messages): You can answer it in a few ways.

There's a spiritual, ethical, moral answer, I believe that the richest nation in the history of humankind should not have people living and dying on the streets or in shelters. I just don't.

There's a very solid economic rationale to doing this as well. This issue isn't going to be magically solved. And it's costing us as taxpayers a lot. Some estimates have put the average person experiencing homelessness on the streets cost taxpayers somewhere between $40,000 to [00:32:00] $80,000 per person per year to maintain them on the streets.

Police, fire, emergency services, sanitation, the shelter network. Just to think about that, that's a solid job in most communities. That's a roof over your head. We're spending that right now in maintaining a very broken status quo. 

And simply looking at quality of life. This doesn't work for any of us. If we think that homelessness is going to be confined to just a few coastal cities, this could be a lot worse before it gets a lot better. This is about the experience we have, our kids have, our neighbors have, our friends have. Do we feel safe, comfortable walking down the streets in our communities? How do we invest our resources?

Fundamentally, I think the person that you see who's experiencing homelessness, that is someone's son or daughter. That is someone's brother or sister, or as our shirts at Miracle Messages say, "everyone is someone, somebody."

If we recognize that that [00:33:00] person is not a problem to be solved, but a person to be loved, we actually know how to respond as people. Once you get to know someone as your friend, as your neighbor, as your family member, I believe you can no more walk away from them than you can walk away from anyone else that you love.

Andres, and Brian, and Devin, and Elizabeth, and Ray, And all the friends that I've made in ten years of doing this work, they're now family to me. And I want to do everything I can because there's no world where that person should be experiencing homelessness. And if we each commit to doing that little bit of work, I think we'll make a lot of progress on this issue.

Emily Race-Newmark: Perfect.

 I love to leave people with an immediate action to take and you've touched on a number of ways in, but if they were pausing the podcast, ending the podcast and were to take an immediate action to support all this, what would that look like?

Kevin (Miracle Messages): Go into miraclemessages.org, signing up to get involved. That would be a real tangible way to start out. Follow us on social media. [00:34:00] 

If you've read the book or once you get the book and you read it, would greatly appreciate a review. That actually makes a difference more than I realized, Amazon, Goodreads, being in conversation, talking about this work.

Emily Race-Newmark: Amazing. Kevin, thank you so much for all of your insights, the ways that you're leading and modeling what else could be possible and just really appreciate your time today and everything that you shared.

Kevin (Miracle Messages): It's my pleasure, Emily. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. For links to stay connected with Miracle Messages or sign up and get involved, head over to thisishowwecare. com and visit the show notes for this episode. While you're there, you can also sign up for the This Is How We Care newsletter where each week you will receive practices and prompts in your inbox from Kevin and other guests, all with the intention of making it accessible for us to co create the world we're envisioning across these conversations on this podcast.

Please consider sharing this episode with the folks in your life that you think would resonate with it or who would be inspired by this conversation. Sharing is how we get to connect more people to what they [00:35:00] care about, to see a vision for what's possible, and to take small steps in their own lives to embody what truly matters to them, aligning their life with their values. Through this, we are co creating a world that embodies collective care.

This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Anne, final editing from Andrew Salamone, and music by Eric Weisberg.