Introduction and the Nature of Life Transitions

Margi Dehlin [00:00:03] Shapes. Oh, society loves their shapes.

John Dehlin [00:00:09] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button or on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:00] Teacups for Love Candy Coated this recording was taken at the Utah Thrive Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in June of 2019. So welcome to coming home. When I wrote down these reflections clearly, I was hoping that some of it would resonate with you. So that is my hope.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:22] But if not, thank you for holding space for it here today. So I'm a crier, so I did not wear mascara today and I did snag some toilet paper. But y' all I cry. So you've been warned. So let's begin with a poem by Mary Oliver and it is called the Journey.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:52] One day you finally knew what you had to do and began. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life, each voice cried, but you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, Though their melancholy was terrible.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:24] It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:59] I like to think of life transitions as the ultimate invitation, the call to live more deeply, to be a bit more aware of our own fragility and strength, to practice compassion for ourselves and for others. I have had many invitations.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:23] Have you? Death and loss, marriage transitions, parenting transitions, starting a new career moves, faith transitions. But some other potential invitations might be ending a career, beginning college, experiencing empty nest, coping with physical or mental illness, enduring debilitating pain, divorce.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:52] Sometimes I wish invitations were more inviting. But regardless, life transitions may offer us the potential of bringing us back to ourselves, to what we value, to how we love, to what we dream about, to how we choose to engage with the present moment.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:17] Our very humanness is inherently linked to how we navigate these changes in life. Do you have a sense of who you were in your beginning, before structures or expectations found their way into your young head and heart? Do you have moments that you remember where you felt entirely at peace with being yourself?

Margi Dehlin [00:04:49] As a girl, I grew up on the east coast in Maryland, and outside my home we had a good amount of trees, enough to lose myself in. I can still see myself there, a young girl, maybe five, wandering amidst trunk and branch, my arms outstretched to touch and feel every nub and crack and rough patch, the dance of sunlight streaming through the umbrella of leaves overhead.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:22] There was a little stream that ran through it all, and my brother and I would find our way to the water's edge, take off our shoes and immerse our feet into the muddy sludge of the creek bottom. In retrospect, the forest was one of the first places I really felt fully relaxed in myself.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:41] I felt enough, no striving needed. I could just be. In addition, I have a memory of my dad, a consummate lover of water. I will always pair him with ocean waves, lakes and our backyard pool. My dad would spend evenings swimming with my brother and I long after the sun went down, the night sky spread out about before us like a blanket. He would turn off the pool light and invite us to lay on our backs for a moment, our ears under the water so the world went silent. Our bodies felt so supported as we floated effortlessly.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:21] The stars seemed to emerge suddenly they were the lights in the darkness. They seemed to say, you are not alone. My connection with tree and bird and star and sky bonded me to myself and to those I shared these moments with. I loved the feeling of moving my body, the sensory experience of hearing the crush of leaves or feeling the pull of water. Perhaps inevitably, I left this girl in the woods.

Guest [00:06:54] For years

Margi Dehlin [00:06:56] I was too busy hustling to connect much with myself, too preoccupied with proving my worth. Amidst the noise and confusion of life, a cultural, religious and familial structure stepped into my life that seemed to offer an enticing promise of stability and safety in exchange for freedom and self discovery.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:24] I inherently believed that I was not to be trusted, that my worth was negotiable. I needed to follow the plan, fall in line. And I was reminded of this all through my life in a myriad of ways. Does this sound familiar to any of you?

Margi Dehlin [00:07:46] Coming home is a way of explaining the the journey back to ourselves. It is fraught with pain, turmoil, renewal Loss, resilience, courage, uncertainty, and wonder. For most of us, we didn't know what we didn't know, so we hardly felt lost.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:09] We may have just felt tired or anxious or striving or numb or wrong or disconnected. Or we may have also felt strangely right and solid. The past 10 years have offered numerous life transitions, and with those, a path that has led me back to myself.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:34] I have a list of five insights to share. I offer them here, tentatively, realizing that all of our stories look different. Know that I hold my story loosely. I vacillate between feeling empowered by my past and emboldened by the sense of identity it affords me and feeling a general distrust of any fixed perspective or story that entices me into a sense of knowingness. Life is undeniably uncertain.

When Structures Fall and Identity Unravels

Margi Dehlin [00:09:10] First, structures will fall. Now, this is a particular bummer for those of us who find an innate sense of relief or comfort in order or having a plan or knowing what to expect. So for me, my religious structure was the first to fall.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:34] Let's call our structures towers. This is a bit of a crude tower, but I'm sure you all appreciate the effort. You get the idea. So it would be definitely a more sophisticated tower with way more boxes, way more grand, but you get the idea.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:54] So let's say our structures are towers and they're made up of blocks, and each block represents a value. Well, throughout our church experience, our job was to listen and obey. Why? Well, because the church not only supplies the value, it also tells you what that value looks like in practice.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:15] So we are socialized and taught also where to put the values in the tower. Is it foundational or is it more toward the top? So obedience is an example of a square on the religion tower. It's foundational. Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:31] So it kind of goes on the bottom. And here's what it looks like in practice. Obey the prophet, obey your parents, obey your leaders. Do what you're told as a general rule, because you don't know. Right. So what are some other values really quick that were in your religious tower?

Margi Dehlin [00:10:54] Anyone? Don't question. Anyone else? Repent. Repentance. Absolutely. Have children? Yes. Be good. Be perfect. Great. Thank you. Well, bit by bit, this. This tower is built over years, and it becomes an operating system of sorts. It lives in our brains, and like a lens, it affects everything we see.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:39] The tower stands and directs our decisions. Decision after decision builds and creates a life. And that life works until it doesn't. Right. When that tower falls, and that can take days, months, or years, we can feel like we're standing amidst the wreckage of our entire lives.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:07] The landscape feels foreign. We don't recognize ourselves, and the loss can feel unbearable. This shatteredness seems to invade our consciousness at the exact moment we have officially lost all sense of how to cope and navigate this new terrain that lies ahead of us.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:32] And that's just one tower in my life. I have also had my marriage tower fall a couple of times. Each time, we had to burn that baby down. This burning cleansing has come with a crisis of sorts every time.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:04] Intimacy, conflict, patterns, they all seemed to come to light with tremendous suffering. One time, we lived apart for several weeks in order to have the space we needed to begin again differently. Working with a coach the entire time.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:26] Our old marriage literally had to die in these moments in order for a healthier love to emerge. My parenting tower has fallen, too. After competing for years as a competitive runner, all that drive and focus went into motherhood.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:51] I worked hard to provide magical childhoods for my children. I so wanted to protect them. We would read books out loud, snuggle by the fire, take walks in the woods, bake, create and pretend. This space was a hallowed space for me, and it brought me tremendous joy to honor my children's young hearts and minds.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:16] The world we created together was beautiful, magical even. But my drive to protect was doomed to fail. The world awaits. Life takes hold. And soon enough, our world was penetrated by realities that were far more painful than we had ever anticipated.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:39] I have a daughter who is the survivor of sexual assault. I have a child who suffered years of extreme systemic bullying. The children absorbed the atmosphere amidst our best efforts of deep marital tumult and a public excommunication. So protection was out the window, and so was control and expectation.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:05] The challenge and grace of parenting is that we are doing it amidst our own process, so our parenting can only be as enlightened as we ourselves are. The tower we had built in childhood was not created to last, and it fell hard.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:25] We left our children alone in some of their most challenging times. When we failed to offer them our unconditional love and regard for them in a way they could truly receive. We thought we were giving it. But instead, our fear and expectation only reinforced the disconnect and their feelings of shame and rejection.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:52] My identity tower has fallen. My sense for who I was and what I dreamed for myself was rocked to the core. Who am I? What do I have to offer? What makes me feel alive? What is my purpose? And how do I move forward?

Margi Dehlin [00:16:19] My existential tower crashed abruptly in the months preceding and following the death of my father, any assuredness or philosophical fixedness I felt crumbled entirely when he took his last breath. For months following his death, I would spend entire walks just questioning and pleading with the universe in a one sided conversation.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:54] Where are you dad? Where did you go? What are the towers that have fallen for you? Structures will fall. This is an inevitable part of being awake to our own existence. We are wired for growth. We are made to evolve. But that conditioned operating system can be pesty, especially when we have been taught, socialized and repeatedly reinforced or punished to equate conformity and staying within a predetermined structure for life as heroic, divine and Celestial.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:41] Insight. 2 Groundlessness is part of being alive. So when any tower collapses, we often experience the new and terrifying feeling of groundlessness. Noah Rashada, the host of Secular Buddhism podcast, has an episode called Groundlessness that brilliantly introduces the idea that to be alive is to be in a free fall of sorts.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:15] That is the reality. We are free falling through life, much like being dropped off the side of a mountainside cliff with no bottom. If what Buddhism suggests has merit, why are so many of us only feeling this way now?

Margi Dehlin [00:18:32] The short answer is that our beliefs, our towers, made us feel safe. All we had to do was believe. If we held onto the iron rod and gave our lifetime and resources to it, we wouldn't fall. But the moment our towers fall, that lens and those blinders fall too. But in truth, we have always been falling just like everyone else.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:01] Now we are just aware of it. Amidst the free fall, you may feel an intense pull to immediately rebuild. You may even long for the old structure. That's normal. I invite you to instead pause, breathe. There are insights here in this space, and you will be here again and again in life.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:30] So don't rush to fix it. Hold tight. How many of you have felt the feeling of groundlessness? What does groundlessness feel like to you? Scary. Overwhelming. Stressful. Out of control. Perilous. Vulnerable. Two immediate responses that stem from this new awareness of vulnerability and uncertainty are fear and grief and loss. Well, let's tackle fear first. So Elizabeth Gilbert writes a letter to Fear in her book Big Magic. Let's take a look at that.

Guest [00:20:27] Dearest Fear, Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you'll be joining us because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life and that you take your job seriously.

Guest [00:20:43] Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I'm about to do anything interesting and May I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring.

Guest [00:21:05] There's plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home. But understand this creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. You're allowed to have a seat and you're allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You're not allowed to touch the roadmaps. You're not allowed to suggest detours. You're not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you are not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:50] We will know fear as long as we are alive. Welcome it in. Fear is a part of daring greatly. You will feel it. Just don't let it drive Grief and Loss I invite you to tend to your grief.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:10] Make space for it. Explore grief practices that work for you. After the loss of my father, I added a grief meditation that I found in a book by Desmond Tutu that is actually on my blog if you're interested. But I added that to my regular practice and by setting up that time to actively grieve, I felt like the pain and sadness they were able to flow through me. Not stick and stay.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:38] But you can also write. I prefer the idea of writing freely. Whatever comes to mind versus trying to kind of essay it. Create rituals of healing. The simple act of doing dishes for me is an honoring ritual where I feel connected to my dad because it's something I remember him doing.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:59] Embrace pleasure. Get out in nature. Move your body. Speak about your loss with a safe person. Grief points us to what we value most. We live differently and we love differently after loss. Third, insight. You will need healthy coping strategies.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:26] All of us could use a healthy coping skill tool belt. Can you see it? And if you would rather not wear a symbolic tool belt, then how about making a list? Get intentional. Write down 10 things that you could choose from when you're feeling emotionally vulnerable.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:43] Have that list accessible. Consider implementing grounding rituals that include a few of these strategies for when you're feeling frayed or vulnerable. Whatever you do, slow down, simplify, tend to your needs. First, some ideas. Meditation Test out a meditation practice. Apps like Insight Timer or Calm or Headspace. Make meditating amazingly accessible.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:14] Read books or listen to podcasts that normalize or explore the role of suffering. Expand your mind. A few of my favorites have been Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser or Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, Magical Journey by Katrina Kennison and for podcasts, I really love Secular Buddhism with Noah Rashada.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:38] Connect with pleasure. Pleasure reminds us of our own aliveness. It links us back to the beauty of the present moment. So get a massage or savor dark chocolate or soak in a hot tub or enjoy healthy sex. Pleasure heals.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:59] Try yoga. Yoga is a wonderful way to exercise and practice mindfulness at the same time. Incorporate nature breaks. Something as simple as walking on a trail can invite our minds to step outside our thoughts. We notice the life around us and our senses come alive.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:17] We see the repurposing of what dies. We witness the seasons as an undeniable structure of life. Does nature stay the same? It's always changing like us. Exercise intentionally. Pick a form, any form that gives to you. Don't run if you don't like running.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:40] Moving your body is a wonderful way to burn off extra anxiety and it helps you sleep. Practice mindfulness. Be where you are. You can go back to your breath. You can get in touch with your senses. That can help what you smell or what you touch. What you see.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:01] Notice when you feel flow. For some people, they feel flow running in the mountains, other people painting or playing music. Explore Buddhism stoicism to see what resonates with you there. Write Grief is actually processed differently when we write it down.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:21] Writing is particularly effective at allowing us to feel a sense of relief. Cultivate meaningful relationships. Connect with those who see and value you for who you are and allow yourself moments of receiving. Remember the importance of humor. Watch Ellen clips or the Graham Norton show or we watch a show called Bless this Mess that makes us Laugh.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:49] But humor is a huge healer. And lastly, seek support from therapists and coaches because we all need it and we all deserve it. It's hard enough, so no need to add a layer of feeling alone in it. Insight4 begin again.

Building New Values and Coming Home to Yourself

Margi Dehlin [00:27:13] Create. Test out new ways of navigating and slowly build your own tower. Why wade through groundlessness and coping? Why wait to build? Well, you're more apt to build a structure reactively out of your own discomfort if you rush it. You need time to connect with yourself amidst the fear and grief and loss to know what you really value.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:39] So now that you've taken some time, you have the insights that you have gleaned from your coping practices and you can use them so I use this visual in coaching. It's a sunshine exercise. And what you do is you start with the values inside circles. I recommend anywhere from 5 to 7 to start with. This can feel tremendously empowering. So what do you value in your life today?

Margi Dehlin [00:28:08] You may begin with values that are entirely new. They weren't in your tower before. Or you may choose to reclaim old values, but change their meaning. Service or contribution is the perfect example. Same name, but it may look different.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:26] So you want to make them broad enough that, for example, there's like a health value. And then what you do is you add rays to your sunshine, and the rays are how you would see this value in your life.

Margi Dehlin [00:28:45] So if I showed up, this is what I would see. So if you see for an example in the health, you'd see one ray as daily meditation. Another one would be sleep, eating whole foods. Then hang up this visual where you can see it.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:04] And this works great for marriages as well. It works great for families. Make a list of your values. Make them into sunshines and show how they would show up or what they would look like in your daily life.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:19] Because what we want are values in action. Note this tower is your creation, and it is fundamentally different from the original tower in several ways. Number one, your values come from you, your value tower. Or maybe it's a marriage, identity or existential tower. They're not prescriptive.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:46] Your values point you in a general direction of how you desire to interact with your reality. You can use your values to guide you when you feel unsure or scared or overwhelmed. Your values honor and reflect you. Your tower is not an escape from reality. It allows you to connect with yourself amidst reality.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:09] And lastly, your tower will always be changing. Testing out new ideas, learning and growth are crucial aspects to the building. Our towers are alive. When my religious tower fell, I decided to build a values tower in its place.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:29] I have also rebuilt my marriage tower, my parenting tower, my identity tower, and my existential tower. You may need to rebuild more than one. Don't rush it. Take your time to test out and explore what works for you. Now, just a note.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:51] This is the gift and privilege of our lives to build a life and relationships that truly reflect us. I look at my marriage tower and feel a sense of ownership and awe at how far John and I have come.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:16] I see my parenting tower and feel a connection with my children I never could have felt while trying to control their existence or while looking to them to fulfill me or or to heal my wounds. My existential tower is something I tend to Regularly, as I am learning to accept the fact that my dad is no longer here and I will not be here indefinitely.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:46] I read a poem recently that speaks of the cherishing and loss of a loved one so beautifully, and it's called Separation by Ms. Merwin. Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:07] I try to integrate the parts of my father I cherished most into my being so that in some way he lives on through me. I think of his awareness of beauty in people, movies, music, nature. It was not an exceptional thing to be on a walk with my dad and have him stop and exclaim about a bird or the sky, his love of poetry, his gentleness, his appreciation of classical music, the twinkle in his eye and the warmth of his smile.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:41] How he always offered a love that felt like an emotional bulletproof vest. His refreshing and undaunted approach as a mental health professional to help relieve suffering in those he saw. This process of feeling loss is not neat and tidy, and I expect that I will always miss him in my world.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:10] The fifth in sight. The idea of coming home. What does that mean really for me? It means that I have reclaimed who I am in a very intentional way. Coming home describes the process of rebuilding my identity. Tower.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:32] I have a sense for what my values are, what I will sacrifice for how I want to spend the time I have in this life. I have a sense for what feeds me and what tools help me come back to myself when I have lost my way.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:51] I no longer hustle from a place of deficit. I am inherently worthy. I listen to my own voice. And I am not afraid to question it either. This isn't heroic. It's not romantic. It's not. It takes effort and it can be messy and frustrating at times. Why?

Margi Dehlin [00:34:13] Because inevitably we will default to our conditioned way of thinking, especially when we're scared, triggered, tired, or unconscious. We just will. And it makes sense, doesn't it? We can have compassion and understanding for how this is our wiring. And so I practice mindfulness and awareness. I listen to those I love and I rewrite over those default settings again and again and again with a gentle hand. This takes practice. It's a life's work, for sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:57] In Brene Brown's Braving the Wilderness, she shares an interview with Maya Angelou with Bill Moyers. And in it, Maya Angelou expresses the idea quote, I belong to myself. What this means to me is if we are not willing and able to stand alone in our own truth or our values, we can never truly belong.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:19] We may fit in, but with fitting in, we are always the one being sacrificed. We take that hit. And so I have and will continue to stand alone. I voice myself to my partner when I need to my extended family at times, and in my community, we must belong to ourselves first, before true belonging with others can ever be possible.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:49] It has taken years to get back to that girl in the forest, the me of so long ago. On some level, she's been with me the whole time. It is never too late to come home to who we are.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:05] As I think back to that girl who loved wandering among the trees, who felt so complete, who felt fully alive in the space of night beneath the sky, I can see how my path has included a leaving and a coming home.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:22] And how do I know that I'm home? Well, that feeling, the one I had when I walked in the forest or felt sprawled out under the stars, is how I feel in my life. I can feel stressed, sad. I'm fully human.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:42] But at my core I also walk with an assuredness that I belong here as I am. Not because I'm so grounded or sure, but because I now know a bit of how to navigate and cope amidst the free fall of life.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:00] And I suspect you're experiencing this too. We have all likely seen our structures fall, have had a formal meeting or two or three or four with groundlessness, have had to learn to develop our own coping skills, and are amidst the noble task of rebuilding.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:20] Transitions are inevitable. They remind us that life can be thrilling, terrifying, merciless, surprising, beautiful, poignant, mysterious. I still don't like pain, but I don't fear its unique terrain like I did 10 years ago, because I've traveled it before.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:44] There's a familiarity to it. On the other side of fear and suffering lies a liberation in seeing that you have not only survived in the face of hard things, you have thrived. So I leave you with a poem called Parachute, by Gina Schwartz.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:11] I found myself wondering how best to thank you. For picking up, for dropping out, for pulling it out of me, for playlists and secret notebooks of words you pluck as if from strings in the sky, Cords you strike and covers, you lift. For risking failure in the name of truth, knowing truth wears many faces, for going the distance, for closing the gap, for a downpour of laughter. Just when I thought the sky would surely collapse under its own wind, for running towards and not away from, for saying, yes, that aches. But tell me, tell me anyway. Tell me everything.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:48] For slow hands and fast cars, for finding me after I found myself not a moment too soon or too late or too anything for meeting me here in this tumbling empty space and tolerating my free fall. They say the bad news is that we're falling, and the good news is that there's no ground.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:11] But I say the good news is we're falling, and this may be something we do alone, but this is not something we do alone. I could long for a landing or dread the crash, or I could simply say thank you, pull the string, let the winds carry me where they will traverse the wide open spaces of knowing and not knowing and, and yes, and of if and of when and of how, all the while keeping my eyes peeled for a hand on the horizon I can take in mine before finally drifting down.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:48] The first time I read this poem, I felt grateful for all the hands that have reached out to me to take mine amidst the darker times. We need each other. We need to share our stories. These places where we're able to feel seen and heard and valued are important and essential. It is true.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:11] But there is another way to read this poem. That hand I was ultimately waiting for. It was my own. I took it. I'm home. Thank you for tuning in today. For other Thrive presentations and future Thrive events, visit thrivebeyondmormonism.com.

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rabbit Hole an album chronicling the heartaches and rewarding discoveries of her Mormon faith crisis. You can purchase her album on itunes or by visiting mindygledhill.com.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.