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As a homeless teenager writing college essays in her rusty Toyota Corolla, Emi Nietfeld was convinced that the Ivy League was the only escape from her dysfunctional childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience narrative. She had to prove that she was an “overcomer,” made stronger by all that she had endured.
 The truth was more complicated. Emi’s mom was a charming hoarder who had her put on antipsychotics but believed in her daughter’s brilliance—unlike the Minnesotan foster family who banned her “pornographic” art history flash cards (of Michelangelo’s David). Emi’s other parent vanished shortly after coming out as trans, a situation few understood in the mid-2000s. Her own past was filled with secrets: mental health struggles, Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for herself. And though Emi would go on to graduate from Harvard and become a software engineer at Google, she found that success didn’t necessarily mean safety.
In this episode, Jess and Jess have a very honest conversation with Emi about what it actually means to overcome- and our obsession with "resilience porn" as a culture. As per usual, the conversation gets a little uncomfortable, as Jess B confronts her own reality: She makes a living sharing about her resilience. The bottom line is that we have to hold space for the complexity in all things- that is something everyone can agree on.

Meet Emi:
Emi Nietfeld is the author of Acceptance, a memoir from Penguin Press. After graduating from Harvard in 2015, she worked as a software engineer at Google and Facebook.

Her essays have appeared in New York Times, Longreads, Vice, and Boulevard, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and noted in The Best American Essays 2021. 

She lives in New York City with her family and is available for select speaking engagements.

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