Four years.

I was standing in the shower this morning thinking about that number.

Four years since Tom died.

And for perhaps the first time, I wasn’t thinking about four years in terms of how long he has been gone.

I was thinking about who I have become in those four years.

There is no version of this story where I am grateful Tom got ALS. I will never be grateful for ALS. It was horrible. It took things from him, from me, from our marriage and from our family, piece by piece.

I was prepared to love my husband.

When he got sick, I learned how to be his caregiver.

What I was never prepared for was to outlive him.

But life, fate, the universe, whatever you choose to call it, forced me into a life I had never imagined for myself.

ALS broke me.

Tom’s death shattered whatever pieces were left.

And eventually I had a choice.

I could spend the rest of my life staring at those pieces, wishing desperately that I could put them back exactly the way they had been.

Or I could start putting them together differently.

There is a Japanese art called kintsugi where broken pottery is repaired with gold. The cracks aren’t hidden. They become part of the piece.

I think that’s probably the closest description I have for what these last four years have been.

I did not rebuild the life I lost.

I rebuilt myself.

And somewhere in that process, a completely different life began to emerge.

Caregiving humbled me.

There is really no prettier way to say it.

There were days I didn’t shower. Days I didn’t brush my teeth. I gained weight. I stopped taking care of myself because there simply wasn’t enough of me left after taking care of Tom.

There were hospital stays when the services available to families today simply weren’t available to us. I spent weeks at a time in hospitals, washing myself up in a public bathroom because going home wasn’t really an option.

Tom needed me there.

He felt safer when I was there because he knew I would advocate for him. He knew I would ask questions. He knew I would fight when something wasn’t right.

So I stayed.

I put my life on hold for my husband.

And when you live that way long enough, certain things stop looking very important.

I don’t particularly care about having the nicest car anymore.

I’ve lived in the bigger house. Turns out a bigger house is mostly extra rooms you don’t visit and more shit to clean.

I used to love expensive purses. Now I’ve essentially carried the same little crossbody for three years because it holds everything I need.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting things because of what they might tell other people about me.

I stopped asking what looks successful.

I started asking what feels like a good life.

And those are very different questions.

Something else has changed that I’ve only recently started noticing.

I react differently when I’m placed in situations I’ve never been in before.

Years ago, discomfort often became self-doubt.

If someone asked me to speak in front of a room, take on something bigger, or step into a space where I wasn’t quite sure I belonged, my first reaction was often some version of:

What could I possibly have to offer?

I still think that sometimes.

When I first started speaking publicly about our story, I genuinely couldn’t understand why anyone wanted to hear it. Sometimes I still find it strange that something I am still learning from myself can be useful to someone else.

And yes, I still get nervous.

The difference is that I no longer automatically interpret nervousness as evidence that I shouldn’t be there.

Now I can recognize:

This is uncomfortable because I’ve never been here before.

That’s different from:

I don’t belong here.

Maybe I’m not supposed to know exactly what I’m doing yet.

Maybe a new place is supposed to feel new.

That shift has followed me into this next phase of my life too.

I find myself in a completely new career, one I never planned for and certainly couldn’t have imagined years ago. I’ve only been in this new role for a week, so I have no idea exactly what it will become.

But I know how it feels.

It feels meaningful.

It feels like work I want to do, not simply work I have to do.

And there is something incredibly freeing about showing up without feeling like I have to prove myself all the time. I can be honest. I can be curious. I can ask questions. I can learn as I go.

I don’t need to be the smartest person in every room.

I just need to be fully present in it.

For a long time, so much of what I did was connected to Tom, to caregiving, to fighting for what he needed and eventually to carrying some of that work forward after he died.

That will always be part of me.

But this feels different now.

It doesn’t feel like I am continuing something only because of what happened to him.

It feels like I have found something that belongs to me too.

And I really love that.

Maybe this is the biggest change of all.

I don’t really ask myself anymore what I want my life to look like.

I ask:

How do I want my life to feel?

I want to feel useful.

I want to feel curious.

I want to feel connected.

I want to laugh.

I want meaningful work.

I want conversations that matter.

I want to travel and experience things.

I want to spend time with people because I genuinely want to be with them, not because maintaining the relationship feels like an obligation.

I want peace.

I want love.

I want joy.

And then I work backward.

What choices create more of those things?

It probably sounds incredibly simple.

It wasn’t simple for me.

For most of my life, I think I became whoever the circumstances required me to be.

I became a military wife.

I became a mother.

I became a professional.

I became a caregiver.

I became an advocate.

I became a widow.

Some of those identities I chose. Some were handed to me. Some I fought like hell to become good at because the people I loved depended on it.

But I also think I spent a lot of my life being guided by expectations.

What does a good wife do?

What does a good mother do?

What does a successful professional look like?

What are people expecting from me?

I’m not particularly interested in those questions anymore.

I care much more about whether the person I am becoming feels true to me.

One of the parts of caregiving I don’t think we talk enough about is what happens to everyone else in the family.

Trey was young when Tom became sick.

He needed his dad.

And eventually his dad could no longer be the dad he needed.

He also needed his mom.

And I wasn’t always able to give him all of me either.

I gave him what he needed in the ways I could. I loved him fiercely. But looking back, I can admit that during some very important years of his life, he didn’t always get me.

He got a mother whose attention was constantly divided.

A mother who was exhausted.

A mother trying to keep his father alive.

A mother managing a crisis that lasted years.

There was damage from that.

That’s hard for me to say, but it’s true.

And after Tom died, Trey and I had work to do too.

I apologized.

He forgave me.

We’ve talked.

We’ve grown.

He’s understood things as an adult that he couldn’t possibly have understood as a teenager.

And somehow, through all of that, we have built this incredibly beautiful relationship.

He’s about to turn 24.

He’s a grown man now.

I don’t need to parent him the way I once did. My job is different.

I get to guide when he wants guidance.

I get to listen.

I get to enjoy him.

And I genuinely enjoy the man my son has become.

There was a time during ALS, and certainly during the deepest grief afterward, when I couldn’t imagine that we would get here.

But we did.

Not because nothing happened.

Because we were willing to talk about what did.

After Tom died, I knew that someday I wanted to love again.

I assumed that someday would be years away.

I also knew that if I ever had another relationship, I wanted to walk into it differently.

I didn’t want another person to be responsible for healing me.

I needed to know myself first.

So I became familiar with myself.

I learned how to be alone.

I learned what I liked.

I learned what I didn’t.

I worked through my grief instead of constantly trying to outrun it.

I listened to it.

I began loving myself differently, not in some inspirational-quote-on-a-coffee-mug kind of way, but by genuinely getting to know the person underneath all of the roles I had spent decades filling.

And then life completely ignored my carefully imagined timeline.

Grant came along.

At first, I was simply happy to have someone to laugh with again.

God, I had missed laughing.

I had missed talking.

I had missed having someone to tell the stupid little things to.

Then came the good-morning texts.

The hand-holding.

The conversations.

The tiny, ordinary things you don’t realize you’ll miss until they’re gone.

And somewhere in all those ordinary moments, we built something extraordinary.

One of the things I value most about our relationship is that neither of us has to erase the life that came before it.

We talk about Tom.

We talk about Clare.

I love learning about Clare because understanding the love they shared helps me understand Grant.

He is the man I love today, in part, because he was loved by her.

And I am the woman he loves today, in part, because of the life and love I shared with Tom.

We didn’t come into this relationship pretending to be blank slates.

We came with whole histories.

And somehow, because we are both able to simply be ourselves, we meet each other in the places we need to be met.

There isn’t a lot of performance in our relationship.

There isn’t a lot of trying to be what the other person wants.

We are just ourselves.

And remarkably, who we authentically are seems to fit.

It has taught me something else.

When you finally give yourself fully to a life, a friendship, a relationship, or work that actually fits who you are, what comes back can be pretty incredible.

So who am I now?

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

Who am I when I’m no longer Tom’s caregiver?

Who am I when I’m no longer his wife, but will always be his widow?

Who am I when my child is grown and doesn’t need to be parented anymore?

Who am I when the career I spent decades building is behind me?

Who am I when so many of the identities that once defined my days have changed?

Apparently, I get to decide.

And I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood that before.

I’m someone who has found work that matters to me.

I’m a mother whose relationship with her adult son has become one of the great joys of her life.

I’m a widow who still loves her husband.

I’m a woman who unexpectedly fell in love again.

I’m someone who likes traveling and laughing and sitting around talking about absolutely nothing.

I’m someone who has become increasingly uninterested in impressing people.

And maybe most importantly, I’m someone who has finally stopped allowing other people’s expectations to determine who she should become.

For the first time in my life, I am letting me guide me.

This isn’t a story about conquering grief.

I haven’t.

I don’t think that’s the assignment.

And I certainly don’t believe there is some universal point when a widow or widower is supposed to be “better.”

Grief doesn’t work that way.

But at some point, I realized I had a decision to make about my own life.

Would grief be something I carried?

Or would grief become the place where I lived?

I chose to carry it.

Tom will always be part of me.

His death will always hurt.

ALS will always be part of my story.

Caregiving will always be part of my story.

Widowhood will always be part of my story.

And yes, those experiences will continue to shape some of the work I do and some of the choices I make.

But I am no longer living for Tom.

I am living for me.

Even writing that feels significant.

For years, my life revolved around keeping someone else alive.

Then it revolved around surviving his death.

And now?

Now I get to live.

I don’t know exactly what my life will look like five years from now.

Hell, I don’t know exactly what it will look like next year.

And strangely, that doesn’t scare me the way it once might have.

Because I know something now that I didn’t know before.

I know how I want it to feel.

And today?

It feels remarkably close to what I imagined.

I feel fulfilled by my work.

I have a beautiful relationship with my son.

I love a wonderful man who makes me laugh constantly and allows me to be exactly who I am.

I have friendships I choose because they bring something real to my life.

I have curiosity about what comes next.

I have peace I didn’t think I would ever feel again.

And I have this growing sense that the rest of my life doesn’t need to prove anything.

I don’t have to live up to anyone else’s expectation of what a widow should look like, what a woman in her 50s should be doing, what success should resemble, or what chapter is supposed to come next.

I just have to keep asking myself one question:

How do I want this life to feel?

Then I can work backward from there.

Maybe that’s the gold running through the cracks.

Four years later, I haven’t put my old life back together.

I’ve stopped trying.

I’m building something else.

Something imperfect.

Something authentic.

Something entirely mine.

And for however many years I am lucky enough to have left, that’s how I want to live them.

Thirty-six years ago today, we stood in the courthouse in Agana, Guam, and got married.

When the judge asked Tom if he took me to be his wife, he answered exactly the way he was supposed to.

“I do.”

Then he turned to me.

I looked at Tom, smiled nervously, and answered…

“Yeah.”

For the next thirty-two years, Tom made sure I never lived that down.

Every anniversary he’d laugh and remind me that while he had said, “I do,” his wife had answered, “Yeah.” He loved telling that story, and I loved rolling my eyes every time he did. It became one of those little pieces of our marriage that belonged only to us. And if I’m honest, I can still hear him laughing about it today.

The older I get, the more I realize our story was never about where we got married. It was about everything that came after. We were kids when we met. I was nineteen. We married when I was twenty. We grew up together.

We learned how to be adults together.

We navigated military life, deployments, moves, college, new careers, new homes, pregnancy losses that nearly broke us, a NICU baby, the incredible joy of raising Trey, countless ordinary Thursdays, and eventually a disease neither of us saw coming.

Somehow, through all of it, we never stopped being us.

We laughed more than people probably realized. We argued—usually because his job demanded too much of him and I wanted more of him at home. He had an incredible work ethic, and if I’m being honest, it drove me crazy sometimes. Looking back, it’s one of the very things that protected me after he was gone.

Tom was a protector in every sense of the word.

He was an Air Force cop. He built a career in criminal justice. He worked tirelessly to make sure our family was secure. If we heard a strange noise in the middle of the night, he’d grab his weapon and clear the house while I stayed safely in our room, never once doubting that whatever was on the other side of that door, he’d handle it.

Looking back now, I realize that was how Tom loved.

Not with long conversations or flowery words.

His version of, “I love you,” usually sounded more like, “Whose ass do I need to kick?”

It makes me laugh even now.

He made me feel safe.

Not because life was easy.

Because no matter what life threw at us, I knew with my whole heart that we’d figure it out together.

I was proud to be his wife. I hope I never forget that.

Anniversaries after loss are complicated.

For a long time, I thought they were hard simply because I missed Tom. Now I realize they’re hard because they remind me of the story we thought we were still writing. When we stood before that judge in Agana thirty-six years ago, I wasn’t just promising to love him.

I was giving him my future. We expected to grow old together.  We expected to watch Trey build his own life together. We expected to figure out retirement together. We expected to become that old couple finishing each other’s sentences.

Those weren’t just dreams. They were the future we believed we were building.

When Tom died, I didn’t just lose the man I loved. I lost the story I thought we still had left to write.

I think that’s why anniversaries are so bittersweet.  They don’t just remind me of what I had. They remind me of the future I expected to have.

I’m not grieving because I regret the life we shared.

I’m grieving because I loved it enough to believe it would last a lifetime.

And yet, somewhere along this journey, I’ve also learned something I never expected. The greatest gift our marriage gave me wasn’t only thirty-two extraordinary years. It was the woman those years helped shape. Tom taught me what partnership looked like. He taught me loyalty. Commitment. Resilience.

He taught me that love isn’t measured by grand gestures, but by showing up for each other, day after day, especially when life gets hard. Those lessons didn’t end when he died. They became part of who I am.

Life has taught me something else, too. A heart shaped by a great love doesn’t lose its ability to recognize goodness, hope, or joy. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts Tom ever gave me.

So today I’ll celebrate the story we lived.

I’ll smile at the memories that still make me laugh.

I’ll probably cry because I miss him more than words can adequately express.

And I’ll be deeply grateful that, for thirty-two years, I got to share my life with one incredibly handsome, fiercely protective, slightly stubborn, definitely a smart-ass, and a wonderfully funny man who loved me in all the ways he knew how.

And just in case you’re still keeping score…

Yeah.

I’d still choose my 32-year life with Tom over and over again.

Happy Anniversary, Tom. I love you.

Ten years ago, I landed in Washington, DC for the first time and felt immediately overwhelmed. Lost. Small somehow.

It was spring break 2016. Tom, Trey, and I had come with one of my dearest friends and her family. They had treated us to the trip, something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. At the time, we hadn’t yet told Trey that his dad had ALS.

I didn’t know then that Washington, DC would become woven into the fabric of my life.

Over the years, I came back many times. Almost every trip tied in some way to ALS through the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, through I Am ALS. In a strange way, this disease brought me to this city, and despite the reason, I grew to love it.

But every version of DC carried a different emotional weight.

When Tom was sick, coming here meant fear. Fear that I was too far away from him. Fear that something would happen, and I wouldn’t get back in time. There is something terrifying about being a three-hour flight from the person whose life you are desperately trying to hold together.

Then came the trips after he died. Those carried a different heaviness. Sadness. The ache of experiencing things I could no longer share with him. I remember bringing Trey to an Elizabeth Dole Foundation event not long after Tom passed, and everywhere I looked there was this invisible reminder that Tom should have been there too.

Even as DC became familiar, it was never emotionally light.

Somewhere in the middle of all these trips, I came to Washington with Grant for the first time.

It was strange.

Up until then, DC had only existed in my mind as a place tied to Tom, to ALS, to advocacy, to grief. Every memory I had here traced back to that chapter of my life. So bringing another man, someone who represented a new love and a completely different season of my life felt emotionally complicated in ways I wasn’t fully prepared for.

But I was also excited.

Grant had never been to DC, and I found myself wanting to share it with him. We walked the monuments, explored the museums, laughed, ate good food. And slowly I realized something: DC no longer belonged only to my grief. For the first time, I was making memories here that weren’t rooted in fear or loss.

That may have been the beginning of seeing this city and honestly my life in a different light.

This trip, I landed in Washington almost four years after Tom passed away and ten years after that first spring break visit.

Something felt different.

Walking through the airport, I noticed the fear wasn’t there. The heaviness wasn’t there either. No anxiety. No sadness attached to the city itself.

Instead, I felt strong. Not strong in the fake “I survived it” way. Strong in a grounded way. Strong in who I am now.

I think my month across the Atlantic changed something in me. Crossing the ocean. Road-tripping through England and the Netherlands. Wandering through places I’d never seen. It was more than a vacation, it was growth. I stopped looking backward at my life as though all the best moments had already happened.

That realization is complicated because my life with Tom was beautiful. He was extraordinary. He was a loving husband, the most devoted father. Sometimes I still think nobody could have wanted to be a dad as much as Tom did. He loved us so completely.

And for a long time after losing him, I think part of me believed happiness belonged to my “before” life,

But standing in Washington this time, I just felt different.

I am happy.

Not pretending. Not surviving. Actually happy.

People who knew me during the ALS years still ask sometimes, with this softness behind the question: How are you doing? And lately, the words that come out of my mouth surprise even me.

I’m good.

And I mean it.

I’m doing work that doesn’t feel like work because helping caregivers, veterans, and families navigate impossible systems has become part of who I am.

I’ve opened myself up more. I laugh more. I feel lighter.

The exhausted, grief-stricken caregiver from 2016 through 2022 isn’t gone. But she isn’t leading anymore.

I will always grieve my husband. I will always miss him.

But grief is no longer the only thing living inside me.

Now there is joy too. Friendship. Purpose. Community. Strength.

There’s Trey, who has grown into such an incredible young man. Sometimes I look at him and think Tom would be so unbelievably proud of who we both became after everything we endured.

There are the people ALS brought into my life, this strange and beautiful family built through loss, advocacy, resilience, and love.

And yes, there is Grant.

There are blessings now I couldn’t see when I was buried under survival mode and heartbreak.

That doesn’t mean losing Tom was somehow “worth it.” I hate when grief gets wrapped in neat inspirational bows. If I could have had my old life back — Tom healthy and alive — I would have chosen it in a heartbeat.

But since life didn’t give us that option, I’m grateful for the strength that carried me through anyway.

Because there were moments I truly didn’t think I could survive this. Moments I didn’t want to survive it.

But had I not kept going, I never would have met this version of myself.

And honestly? I like her.

So to all my fellow widows walking through grief and wondering if they will ever feel whole again — I hope one day you look back and realize just how strong you became while carrying what felt impossible.

Today is a good day.

Earlier this week, I was looking out at an incredible view I never imagined I needed to see when I had one of those moments that just stopped me.

Who am I… and how is this a day in my life? Because this wasn’t the life I was raised to imagine. I grew up in a small Texas town in the 80’s where success had a pretty clear definition.

You find a partner. You get married. You buy a home and get an education. You build a good life. You have kids. You raise them right. And if you’re lucky, you grow old together. That was the dream. And honestly? I had that.

A great marriage. An amazing kid. A career I worked hard for and was proud of. A life that, by every measure I knew, was successful. I thought that was it. Not in a bad way—just in a this is what life is supposed to be kind of way. I didn’t know there was anything beyond that. And maybe part of that was because I hadn’t seen it.

When I walked through some of the hardest seasons of my life—losing babies, losing the life I thought I’d have, facing things no one had prepared me for—there weren’t a lot of people talking about what came next.

I didn’t see examples of what it looked like to rebuild. I didn’t see what life could be on the other side of that kind of loss. So I didn’t know what “after” could look like. I only knew how to get through “during.” And for a long time, that’s all I did.

Survive.

Until one day, it wasn’t enough. After everything fell apart, I didn’t have a big vision for the future. I didn’t sit down and map out a new life. I just knew I couldn’t stay where I was. So I started saying yes. Not because I had some big dream. But because I didn’t want to disappear.

Yes to things that felt uncomfortable.
Yes to things I didn’t feel ready for.
Yes to opportunities I didn’t fully understand.
Yes to life—even when I wasn’t sure I trusted it yet.

And somewhere along the way, something started happening that I still don’t fully know how to explain. Life started getting bigger. Not louder. Not flashier. Just… fuller.

The work I get to do. The people I’ve met along the way. New love. New adventure.

It is a life that exposes itself every day, and one that I am happy and excited to live.

And even more than that—

The peace.
The connection.
The ability to look ahead rather than brace for what comes next.

And sometimes—if I’m being really honest—I still have those moments. Sitting in the middle of my life… and thinking—How is this my life?

Because I didn’t know this kind of life was possible. didn’t know you could walk through that level of loss, sadness, and anger… and still find joy again. I didn’t know you could lose everything… and still build something meaningful. I didn’t know you could love again in a way that feels different—but still whole and beautiful.

Maybe those examples were always out there. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to see them. But I am now. And if there’s anything I understand today, it’s this:

You can walk through hell and back…
and you don’t have to stay there.

You can walk through the valley—
but you don’t have to live in it.

You can find dreams you didn’t know were options.

And along the way, you might find people who grab your hand and walk with you. Some will stay. Some won’t. Because the truth is, not everyone knows how to walk through hard. But you will find the ones who do. And those are the ones who matter. I think that’s what drives me now.

Because I remember what it felt like to be in it—the fear, the loneliness, the not knowing what comes next. And now I also know something I didn’t know then. What if what comes next… is good?

What if it’s better than anything you could have imagined—not because it’s easier, but because you’re different? I don’t spend as much time trying to define the dream anymore. I am just so much better at listening to my heart.

What if, I just say yes?

Because I’ve already lived through the worst thing I thought I could survive. And I did survive. So now I ask myself—What’s the worst that could happen?

What if it works out?

And maybe that’s the point. I didn’t know I was allowed to want this life. But I do now. And I’m not letting anything—including myself—stand in the way of living it. Because it’s not just about putting one foot in front of the other, first you have to say yes to even begin moving forward.

Lara

Tomorrow I turn 56 and ten years ago tomorrow, Tom received the preliminary diagnosis of ALS. My birthday has never been the same.

It’s strange to realize that a decade can pass and still feel close enough to touch. Ten years. A full lifetime in some ways. A blink in others.

When Tom was diagnosed, we made an agreement — not out loud like a contract, but in that quiet, serious way you do when life has just punched you in the gut.

I would not waste another decade. Because I had done that before.

After we lost the twins. After John. After surviving a 24-week preemie and everything that came with that season of trauma. Ten years went by, and I floated. I was present, but not living. Breathing, but not building. Existing, but not awake. It took a full decade for me to realize grief had quietly stolen my thirties and the early part of my forties.

When ALS came into our home, Tom and I both knew — if I wasn’t intentional, ALS and his death would take another ten.

That realization is the fire that drives me now.

It’s why I leaned into the grief instead of running from it.
Why I went to therapy.
Why I let the hard conversations happen.
Why I chose to feel everything instead of numbing it.

It’s why I refuse to be sad about growing older. Aging is a privilege Tom was cheated out of.

Every line on my face is time he didn’t get. Every trip, every adventure, every wild “why not?” decision — none of it is luck. It’s work. It’s courage. It’s dragging self-doubt, guilt, and fear into the passenger seat and driving anyway.

I have been told on a few occasions that I’m lucky to be living this life.

I’m not lucky. I’m brave. When fear shows up — and it does — I remind myself: I can do hard things.

I don’t really feel like I have a choice. Or maybe I do. But something in me refuses to let death, depression, or ALS steal one more minute.

And yet — here’s the part I didn’t expect to write…Even in this full, intentional life… I am alone.

Grant and I are building something beautiful. It works for us. It’s steady and real and grown-up. We are committed. But commitment in your 50s and 60s is different than commitment in your 20s and 30s. We both have histories. Children. Grief. Long marriages behind us. We know we can count on each other. But when crisis hits? When something shakes the ground?

There is still this quiet, instinctual thought: I’m on my own.

I don’t know if that’s widowhood.
I don’t know if it’s surviving long marriages.
I don’t know if it’s trauma rewiring the nervous system to never fully relax.

Maybe when you’ve buried the person who was your “always,” some part of you never again believes in absolute permanence.

Maybe when you’ve lived through loss that rewrote your DNA, you carry independence like armor.

This post wasn’t supposed to be about that. But apparently, ten years has a way of pulling the truth to the surface. Here’s what I know on the edge of 56:

I am not the same woman who floated through her thirties and let ten years slip by unnoticed.

I am a woman who has loved deeply, buried her husband, grieved honestly, and still chooses life.

I am still scared sometimes. I am still alone in ways I don’t fully understand. And I am still moving forward anyway.

I have learned that time does not pause for grief. It either carries you quietly away… or you decide to stand up inside it. The last decade held diagnosis, decline, death, rebuilding, fear, therapy, love again, and more courage than I knew I possessed.

I did not float through the past ten years and I will not float through the next. The next ten years are not something I’m waiting to see happen. They are mine to build. Mine to risk. Mine to live.

And I intend to live them fully.