Episode Notes: In the Middle of Nowhere, Everywhere

In this episode of Don’t Call Me, I take you back to a McDonald’s parking lot in southern Illinois—a moment frozen in time where I felt the full weight of the gap between how people live and how people survive.

At the time, I was living in a women’s shelter, far from my home state of New York and even further from the life I thought I’d built. I was angry—angry at my circumstances, at the indifference of the world around me, and at the people who seemed to live their lives completely untouched by the kind of pain I was carrying.

But this episode isn’t just about that anger. It’s about the truth I learned that day: that the gap between comfort and survival exists, and it’s a gap we all have a responsibility to see.

Through stories of resilience, connection, and the unrelenting weight of invisibility, I reflect on how that moment changed the way I see the world—and how it might just change the way you see it too.

What You’ll Hear:

• Life inside a women’s shelter: the people, the struggles, and the quiet acts of humanity that kept us going.

• The McDonald’s parking lot: where anger, grief, and isolation collided.

• The buck in the clearing: a haunting metaphor for the spaces we occupy when we feel unseen.

• A reflection on the gap between privilege and survival—and the choices we all have to make.

This is a story about pain, resilience, and the power of noticing what others might overlook.