248. When Your Sibling has OCD with Austin Kang
Continuing the Relationship OCD series, Carrie welcomes Austin Kang, founder of Behind the Scenes, to explore what it’s like to have a sibling with OCD, the emotions that often go unspoken, and how families can support a loved one without losing sight of their own needs.
- Why siblings of people with OCD may feel overlooked as their family focuses on managing the disorder.
- How resentment, guilt, fear, and grief can affect sibling relationships, even when there is deep love.
- How to support a sibling with OCD without accommodating their obsessions and compulsions.
- Practical ways to protect your identity, maintain friendships, and make time for your own interests.
- How faith, peer support, and the right resources can help siblings navigate the challenges of OCD within the family.
Episode Summary
Why Do Siblings of People With OCD Feel Like They Have to Be the Easy Child?
Austin Kang is a high school senior, mental health advocate, and founder of Behind the Scenes, the first OCD support group in North America dedicated to siblings of people with OCD. He started the organization after struggling to find support for himself and realizing how many other siblings were going through similar experiences.
When Austin talked about being the “easy child,” I thought about how easily a child’s needs can get pushed aside when a family is trying to help someone who is struggling. As his brother’s OCD worsened, Austin tried not to add more stress to his parents. He wanted to be the child who didn’t need much. But what happens when a child gets so used to staying quiet that nobody realizes they need help, too?
Can You Feel Resentment Toward a Sibling You Love?
Through his work with Behind the Scenes, Austin has heard siblings talk about canceled plans, disrupted routines, and the uncertainty that comes with having a family member with OCD. Then comes the guilt. How can you be upset with someone who isn’t choosing to struggle with a mental health disorder?
This is something families need to talk about more openly. Loving someone doesn’t mean every part of the experience is easy. You can love your sibling and still miss how things used to be. You can want them to get better and still feel exhausted by what your family is going through. Those feelings don’t make you a bad sibling.
How Do You Help a Sibling With OCD Without Giving In to Compulsions?
Austin admitted that he initially thought accommodating his brother’s OCD was a way to show love. He wanted his brother to feel better, and saying yes seemed like the natural thing to do. It took time for him to understand why accommodating obsessions and compulsions could actually make things harder in the long run.
This is a difficult balance for families. You want to ease the suffering of someone you love, especially when you can see how much they’re struggling. But sometimes, helping means resisting the urge to fix everything. Austin shares how he learned to support his brother without taking on the role of a parent or therapist.
What Happens When You Keep Putting Your Own Needs Last?
Austin talked about how siblings can slowly lose parts of themselves while adjusting to life around OCD. Plans get canceled, friendships become harder to maintain, and hobbies get pushed aside. Before they realize it, so much of their lives revolves around someone else’s struggles.
For Austin, basketball became something he refused to give up. He also made time for people he trusted and connected with others who understood what he was going through. I think this is a reminder that caring for someone doesn’t mean you have to stop living your own life. Your needs still matter, even when someone you love needs extra support.
How Can Faith Help a Family Navigate OCD Together?
Austin shared how his family’s experience with OCD changed his faith and his relationship with his brother. He didn’t fully understand God’s presence during the hardest moments, but looking back, he could see how his family had grown closer through the experience.
If you’re a sibling of someone with OCD, or a parent trying to understand what your other children might be experiencing, I encourage you to listen to this conversation. Austin shares more about the emotions siblings often hide, how he learned to support his brother without accommodating OCD, and why he created a support group for people who often get overlooked.
Transcript
Carrie: Welcome back everyone to our relationship series on the podcast. We’re talking about all different kinds of relationships. We talked about being single with OCD, married, and today we’re talking about a very special type of relationship, having a sibling who struggles with OCD. And so here with me to talk about this is Austin Kang.
Austin is a high school student and mental health advocate focused on expanding awareness and supporting siblings of individuals with OCD. He’s the founder and executive director of Behind the Scenes, the first OCD support group focused on siblings in North America. He has been involved as a IOCDF advocate and member of Orange County Regional Council for OCD in Southern California.
I’m just really excited to have you here and to talk about this. I mean, you’ve presented at conferences, and this is just something that you’ve really dove into advocacy for.
Austin: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to film this episode with you, and yeah, it’s just a surreal feeling to talk about my experiences as an OCD sibling and my experiences advocating for other siblings across the world, and I’m just excited to dive in.
Carrie: Tell me a little bit about what it was like for you having a sibling with OCD, and how did that impact day-to-day life?
Austin: For me, I was in middle school, just to provide some context, when most of this happened, when my brother’s darkest episodes occurred, was when I was in middle school, my brother was in high school.
He’s four years older than me. Throughout high school, he was just the happiest and smartest, kindest kid I knew my entire life, and he still is. He’s my role model. But in high school, the assignments- Kind of added up and growing up he had ADHD, but it never really caused him to run into major issues. And then high school hit, assignments came, and I think the combination of ADHD and OCD caused him to struggle.
Just to provide a picture maybe, he would have an English assignment, maybe an essay that would be due in the next few days. The ADHD wouldn’t allow him to fully focus on writing the essay, and then the OCD being in there, when he would write an essay, he wouldn’t think it would be good enough to turn in, so then he would either delete it or play the avoidance game.
And so for my family, it was really hard for us to see him like that because when he knew an assignment was due, he kind of stayed in bed and refused to get out and go to school. And so I think that my family’s emotions were kind of determined by whether or not my brother got out of the house to school that day.
But it’s pretty hard for my family. I remember that household quietly reorganized itself around my brother’s needs, not because anyone decided it would, but because that’s what OCD did to my family. I kind of learned a second language without trying, which doors to close quietly, which questions not to ask at dinner, when I can’t make my extracurricular activities because my brother’s OCD took over the day.
I remember one specific occurrence was when I was on the way to basketball practice and my mom’s phone buzzed. She made a U-turn right away without saying a word, and it was because my dad called her saying that my brother had multiple missing assignments, and that was just something that we’ve never heard in my family because he was just always on top of everything.
It took a lot of time for my family to get used to it, but I think that I talk a lot about it in the OCD sibling guide, something that’s called like the glass child. I like to call it the easy child because that’s what people called me growing up. It sounds like a compliment, but really it meant that I had learned to make myself invisible at times, and that’s what a lot of the guide is really about, kind of finding that balance between, as a sibling, finding what you need, but also supporting the sibling with OCD I think the biggest example with that was me not answering FaceTime calls with my friends in middle school because I was just so afraid that they hear something in the background, ask me a question that I didn’t want to answer.
That was how my life changed in middle school with having an OCD sibling.
Carrie: That can be really hard, I think, when you’re trying to balance your needs and trying to balance another person’s needs in a family system. And I know, like, a lot of people, for a variety of different reasons, maybe there was conflict with another sibling relationship, or maybe there was a sibling that had behavior challenges and always got in trouble.
So I think there are a lot of siblings probably that can relate to what you’re saying, where it’s kind of like, “If I fly under the radar and I’m just invisible and I do my work and well-behave, then everything will be fine and I won’t kind of like cause any problems, and we’ll just kind of like go along to get along.”
Is that kind of like what you felt like you needed to do kind of to survive that time?
Austin: Yes. I felt like I couldn’t add more stress to my family’s plate, or at least play this role of appearing perfect, at least to my parents, because I was told a few times, “We have so much going on with your brother. You need to do this more and you need to do that.”
And that’s no shame on my parents. I honestly think that they’re the best parents ever, and I think that they’ve grown along the process as well, because I don’t think that when they had kids, they were handed a handbook that pretty much explained how to handle this traumatic experience. And I’m really proud to say that they’re my parents because ever since my brother’s gone to college, they’ve had multiple conversations with me about how they honestly apologized, and I would downplay and say it wasn’t that important, but I guess it was.
But I felt like I added pressure on myself to kind of appear like I didn’t have any problems so that my parents could fully dive in into helping my brother.
Carrie: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How did your relationship with your brother kinda change or evolve from where it was before the OCD diagnosis and then when he got the diagnosis and you guys were managing all these challenges?
Austin: I think for me, my experience, I understand, is slightly different or honestly a lot different than other siblings. Through behind-the-scenes support group, I’ve had numerous conversations with fellow siblings, and they share how their relationship changed a lot and how they had to adjust a lot. And don’t get me wrong, I had to adjust a lot, but I felt like my relationship with my brother always remained the same and we always knew that there was deep love there.
We treated each other the same. I guess the only thing that changed was that I had to understand that what he was going through was not personal, it’s just disorder that was going on in his brain. And I felt like even though he was going through this stuff, I still had enough time to talk to him about the things that we wanted to talk about.
We still did the things that we like to do, like we love watching sports, we love talking about sports. We love talking about what’s going on in each other’s lives. And so when I was writing that portion in the guide, I know I included some things that I’ve went through, but most of it was about what emotions other siblings go through, through research that I found online.
And I think that that was one of the harder chapters for me to fully engage with because my relationship with my brother didn’t really change. I felt the emotions that I talk about in the guide for a little bit, but I didn’t let that really overrule what I knew my brother and I had, and that was just deep love for each other.
Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s really good. I think it can be challenging depending on, like, the nature of someone’s obsessions and if somehow, like, you become the target of those obsessions. So people may have experiences where, like, a sibling is viewed as contaminated or a sibling is viewed as like, “Hey, I need to avoid you because I’m afraid of harming you.”
I think probably those experiences vary widely. But just to say, like, I mean, whatever feelings people have that come up as siblings in these types of family dynamics are valid and important for them to have support around. And so I think that that’s good that you guys have these support groups where you can talk about it.
Austin: I think that’s a really interesting point that you brought up about the sibling being the target. I had a really interesting conversation with another OCD sibling at the IOCDF conference this past summer in Seattle. And he was about a 10-year-old boy with an older brother And his brother was going through PANS and PANDAS, and he was the exact target of his brother’s obsessions and compulsions, and how his brother demanded that they stayed away from each other, and how that was really hard for the little brother because obviously there was deep love between both of them.
But I think the older brother with OCD was just kinda struggled to show it because of his obsessions and compulsions. And so I completely understand that there are siblings who go through different things. I actually find that beautiful in my conversations with other siblings, whether it’s at support groups, whether it’s at the conference, because everyone’s experience is different, yet at the same time we can connect overarching theme of being an OCD sibling
Carrie: I know that this is a challenge that all families have, and we talked about this in the marriage episode as well as, like, how to support your spouse without accommodating them.
So from a sibling standpoint, like relationship, how did you learn kind of like, how do I support my brother? Because you’re in this really weird role of like, I’m not his parent, so I’m not here to tell him what to do, but I’m also not his therapist, so I’m not here to say like, “Hey, your therapist said such and such, and you need to be doing this or that.”
How did you find those ways to support him without just, like, giving into accommodations and the compulsions?
Austin: Yes. This is a topic that I’m very intrigued by and I love talking about because I find the sibling relationship to be one of the most beautiful things because it allows a sibling to kind of say things that any other person might not be able to say.
I know in my experience with my brother, sometimes he doesn’t want to hear the things that my parents are gonna tell him or what his therapist is gonna tell him, but rather a little brother who just says, “Nate, I think that you can do this right now. Like, I’m very proud of you, but we can put in a little bit more effort here.”
And hearing it from me, I understand, is very different from hearing it from my mom or dad. I think that I always remind people who join the behind-the-scenes support group that the sibling role is to be a trustworthy confidant so that the person with OCD can go to in times of need. And I understand that even though my brother’s very close with both my mom and dad, sometimes he’d rather talk to me about a certain thing that he’s going through, maybe because he thinks I’ll understand more or I wouldn’t judge him as much.
Not that my parents judge, but rather my parents would obviously want to give him advice, and like, “This is what you need to do.” But rather, I pride myself on being that person who kind of just hears him and just says, “I understand you, Nate. Like, I know what you’re going through, and I’m right here if you need me.”
Honestly, that’s gotten a little bit harder because he lives all the way across the country from me now, but when I do get to call him… In fact, I was driving home from practice thirty minutes ago, and I was calling him driving. Those moments are what I think about all the time because it’s just beautiful.
I don’t think there’s another adjective to describe it. But to answer your other question about without accommodating, when I was in middle school, I didn’t really understand that because I thought that accommodation was how I can show love because it’s like, oh, I need to edit myself so that my brother can do his obsessions and compulsions.
But when I first heard that accommodation actually isn’t the way and actually feeds into his obsessions and compulsions, I didn’t believe it at first. I was pretty skeptical of it, and I think for a few months, actually, I kind of rebelled and was like, “No, I’m just gonna keep accommodating. This is how I love him, and this is how he can feel better.”
But I think it really hit me when I saw that his obsessions and compulsions were getting worse when my family was accommodating him, and it was kind of a wake-up call to me of like, oh, how can I support him better? And I had a conversation with my parents, and they were telling me about how actually not accommodating him shows him that you love him even more because you’re trying to tell him that these obsessions and compulsions shouldn’t control your brain and that you should be the one controlling- These obsessions and compulsions, and, um, I think that moment motivated me to kinda show my love in a different way, in a better way that I soon realized.
Carrie: Yeah. I think families really have to learn a specific toolbox, have a specific set of tools for dealing with these different scenarios when they come up. Because sometimes, like, the most loving thing you can say to someone is no in a variety of different situations. Or, like you said, to say, like, “Hey, you can do really hard things, and I believe in you, and, like, I’m gonna be right here with you as you walk through that.”
We talked a little bit about the different emotions that siblings deal with and feeling, like, maybe invisible Or feeling like their needs aren’t necessarily attended to. Are there siblings maybe that you’ve encountered that react differently, maybe that they start acting out in order to get attention, especially I’m thinking like younger children, or have you seen some of those scenarios?
Austin: Yes, from my experience, I’ve heard a multitude of emotions. I think the most common one, and the one nobody talks about that much publicly, is resentment and guilt that comes from that resentment because I think the love is always deep down, but they just resent the rituals, the canceled plans, the days rerouted without warning, the things like that, like the things that siblings kind of had to do growing up just because OCD was present inside the family.
And then, like I just said, the guilt that comes from that resentment because they’re guilty for being mad at their sibling when they know that their sibling is just going through a disorder. I think that another emotion that pops up in conversations is grief. And when I say grief, I don’t really mean like, oh, the grief that people feel when someone died, but rather the grief that they didn’t get the relationship that they expected growing up or for the version of their family before everything organized around managing the person’s OCD symptoms.
For example, I remember growing up in middle school and I’d look at my friends and be like, “Why does my family have to go through this OCD presence in my family and why can’t that person go through it instead of me, and my life is super hard?” And man, I think that connects to something that I realized later on in high school about my faith, was that I was told by one of my mentors that God gives his strongest warriors the hardest battles.
And it kind of gave my family motivation to say, “Okay, someone had to go through OCD, and he picked my family because he felt like we could get closer to him throughout this process.” He wanted us to pray about it and grow in our faith because there was a presence of OCD in my family and I felt like God used the presence of OCD to strengthen my family.
And my brother talks about this, he’s also a devout Christian, and he talked about how God really carried him throughout the process and how he actually wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. In fact, if someone were to ask him, “Would you press a button where you relived your whole life but you don’t have OCD?”
He wouldn’t press it because he felt like he grew closer to God, he grew closer to me and my parents throughout this process, and he felt like he’s a stronger man because of it. That was something that made me really happy. But to return back to your original question, another emotion is fear Not necessarily, “Oh, I’m very scared of this specific moment that’s coming up,” but rather I’m just scared that at any moment something can pop up.
And I remember coming home every single day, and I was just very scared of what my parents were going to tell me when I asked, “Did Nate end up going to school today?” And if they said no, then I automatically became sad. I didn’t wanna do anything anymore, and that’s what I mean by fear. And that’s also a very common emotion that I see in the support group sessions because everyone’s just so scared of what can come at any given moment.
Carrie: You look at OCD, like it’s a disorder that waxes and wanes with stress. This is one thing that we know, and so I can imagine from the sibling standpoint, maybe your sibling has gone through some treatment or they’re in treatment, and things seem to get a little bit better, and that doesn’t mean that they’re not gonna have a setback, and so there may be a lot of anxiety surrounding, “Oh no,” like, “They’re doing pretty good now, but are they gonna have a setback, or are they gonna go through something stressful, and then we’re gonna be back feeling like we’re in that cycle again where we’re fighting really hard against this OCD?”
I think that’s, that’s just really helpful information that I imagine people who are listening to this episode are gonna feel really seen and heard, like, “Oh yeah, I’ve definitely experienced some of those emotions with my sibling relationship.” How do you feel like people can prevent just feeling like they’ve lost their identity or find some type of voice in the family when there are these ongoing, like, mental health challenges?
What does that look like on a practical level?
Austin: From my experience, I can see how identity loss happens gradually through a canceled plan here or a canceled plan there, a dropped hobby there, a friendship that kinda went sideways because they didn’t wanna accept OCD. I can see it, researchers actually call it role engulfment when a person’s identity becomes so organized around caring for someone that they love, whether it’s a sibling, whether it’s a son, whether it’s a mother, father.
But I think that there are numerous ways to prevent identity loss or at least reduce it. The first step is naming it, at least like understanding that there is a problem and that they have to work every single day to make sure that their identity is still there. I think that practically another way to help reduce it is by having these open conversations with people that they love, and I like to encourage siblings to find one person that they trust, whether it’s a friend, but I also encourage it to be an adult because they can provide certain aspects of advice.
Most commonly, it should be a parent, but if they don’t feel comfortable, whether it’s like a grandma, uncle, therapist at school, anyone honestly works because I’ve seen so many times one person talk to someone else and they see, “Oh, now I don’t have to go through this any- alone anymore. It’s kinda off my chest.”
I’ve seen numerous siblings go back to what their life used to be just by getting it off their chest and talking to one trusted adult. I think that another place to make sure that your identity is not being lost is by connecting with other people going through the same thing. So not necessarily a trusted adult, but by joining support groups like Behind the Scenes, joining other places that they can talk about it, whether it’s youth group, Bible study, to kinda connect with what they’re going through and have these open conversations with people that they know will not judge them and kinda understand what they’re going through.
That’s very important. So I like to call that peer support or even mentorship. Like I know one of my mentors is my youth group leader. And then I think another practical way to help it is to actually talk with the sibling with OCD. I know that’s really hard for people who are the target of obsessions and compulsions, but my experience when I talk to my brother About things that I know we both love.
It kinda helped my identity stay intact because huge part of my identity was loving my brother, and making sure that didn’t go away throughout the process helped me a lot. And then one final way is don’t give up your hobbies. I know, like I said, it’s definitely possible. It’s definitely hard. It’s definitely easier said than done, but growing up, basketball was my biggest hobby, and I would spend multiple hours in the gym every single day.
And I kinda told myself it was kind of a non-negotiable I put in my life, that I’m gonna be in the gym every single day, and then when I come home, I can talk to my brother and sort of deal with what’s going on at my house. In those moments, I tried to take my mind off of what’s going on at home by finding a hobby that I love, and that was basketball.
Carrie: Yeah. I think when we talk about just in any type of caring for other people, it’s really important that we care for ourselves first, and that we’re able to have an outflowing. We can’t pour from an empty cup, and so if we’re pouring into ourselves. And I think that comes back to spiritual practices as well, like making sure that you’re spending time with God and praying through these things and walking through these hard sufferings.
Is there anything else that you would say about, like, kind of how you’ve seen God work as you’re walking through this road with your brother? I know that you said that it brought you guys a stronger relationship with each other and as a family.
Austin: Yes. I think that when I was in middle school and when my brother’s OCD turned into depression when he was in high school, I think that– I wouldn’t necessarily say I was too young, but I didn’t fully understand the presence of God in that moment.
I felt like, yes, I grew up in the church my entire life, and we’ve gone to church every single Sunday, but it wasn’t until high school and when my brother was in college that I fully took Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, and I felt like in that moment it made sense. All the times that my brother was going through pain, it made sense that God had our family go through it to allow us to grow closer to Him.
Another visible place that I’ve seen God show up is through His design for the family and how the design through each relationship. I’ve seen my mom talk to my brother in ways, I’ve seen my dad talk to him in other ways, and I’ve seen the conversations that I’ve had with my brother, and each relationship is its own distinct relationship, and I felt like we kinda backed up what God designed for the family, and I felt like that was another place that I saw God show up.
I’ve seen God show up every single day that my brother attacked his therapy because I felt like God was the one who woke him up every single day and reminded him, “This doesn’t have to define you. Your relationship with me or with God defines him.” And so I felt like God was definitely showing up every single day, giving my family the courage and the energy and the ability to kinda attack this disorder.
And whether it was my brother going to Florida for a month to receive treatment in his senior year Or whether it was my mom and dad never refusing to give up, whether it was me visiting my brother in Florida in that moment when he was receiving treatment, I felt like God was always there. And I felt like I didn’t see that in the moment, but when I reflect on it now that I’m doing so much advocacy work, and I definitely see it now.
And then one final symbol that I– we have in my family is we were at church one day and they gave us rocks, and they wanted us to write something that meant something to us as a family, and my mom wrote, “He carried Nate.” And that meant a lot to my family. It’s still in our living room downstairs, and something that I look at and it really reminds me of the beauty of God and the beauty of how we interact with Him every single day and how He interacts with us.
Carrie: Yeah. I think that’s a good point to note is, like, when we’re in the middle of the suffering, we may feel alone or we may feel mad at God. We may feel like, “What in the world is He doing?” And then when we’re able to really look back on the situation, we recognize, like, how much He was, like, intricately involved in your example in getting your brother into the right treatment and going through, like, these hard seasons of depression.
And now he’s in college doing his thing, and I think that’s great. Tell us about the Behind the Scenes, the resources that you have, and we’ll put the website in the show notes, but you can say it out loud, too. Where can people find out more about you and the support groups?
Austin: Sure. When I was a sophomore in high school, so that was around two years ago, I was looking to get involved or whether it was– Honestly, at first, I was just looking to find support for myself, and it was kinda hard for me to find support that was directed straight at the OCD sibling.
There weren’t any support groups out there, and so after having multiple conversations with OCD mentors, if you could call them that, they kinda helped me with encouragement and said that, “Oh, this is a wide gap that we need, and we need a support group for that, and we need more resources for siblings.”
And I kinda took a leap of faith, prayed about it, and ultimately had the first Behind the Scenes meeting. And I, I believe there were four people at that first meeting, but ever since then, people have helped me with advertising. It’s helped with going to IOCDF conferences or OC SoCal conferences, joining podcasts.
But I think that throughout the process, throughout the last two years, Behind the Scenes has grown a lot. The resources it provides are monthly support group meetings for an hour on Zoom. Honestly, at first I wanted to join in person, but they’re just people from all over the world actually joining our support group.
Mostly in America, numerous states, but a few international members, and I felt bad, and we had to join on Zoom. So we do that once a month. When I started the support group, I fully expected it to be people around my age who were going through similar things that I went through. But actually, the first bunch of people who joined were in their 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s with their own kids and different generations, and that was pretty cool to see.
I didn’t expect it. But since then, we’ve had a few high schoolers join, and it kinda took me back to where I was in middle school. But yeah, all ages are welcome. I always say all you have to be is a sibling, and that’s already enough. And then other resources are that OCD sibling guide. It’s a 10-chapter comprehensive guide walking siblings of all ages through emotions to accommodation to just kinda hope for the future.
There’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel, and that’s what I wanna remind other siblings. So those are the two main resources, but also there are emails that I send out with things that I see, and I like to call it a network of siblings because we really connect and talk about what we go through on a monthly basis.
Carrie: That’s great. I love that you’re doing that. And as Paul told Timothy, “Don’t let anybody look down upon you because you are young.” I think that you are doing great things out in the world, and I hope that you are able to continue doing this and kinda taking this charge. Where do you hope that this goes in the future?
Austin: Yes. I’m a high school senior, so I’m about to go off to college next year, but I definitely plan on hosting the support group each month, growing the network of siblings, and then attending IOCDF conferences as a presenter, as a person who can connect other siblings. But I honestly just wanna keep on working and see where God takes it.
I think that there are definitely more siblings out there to be reached, whether it’s collaborating with another sibling who can help run the organization or help me with providing more resources because that’s something I would love to do in the future, but honestly, just working and just trusting God with it.
There’s behindthescenesocd.org where you can sign up with your email, fill it out either as a clinician or as a sibling, and that’s where you can get a free online version of the guide. Feel free to distribute that as you like, send the QR code. You can also just email me straight up, austinkang32@gmail.com, if you wanna join the support group, get a copy of the guide.
I think it’s easier to just kinda fill out the information on the website, but either is good. Also, information on the Behind the Scenes support group can be found on IOCDF’s directory under Support Groups. I think that if you just look up Behind the Scenes or sibling support group, it should come up.
And so those are the three ways to get involved.
Carrie: Awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today and sharing your story.
Austin: Thank you.
