Unfiltered Resilience: Dawn Olson's Journey

I’d go with #1. It names what Dawn personally has at stake, which is her home care and the risk of a nursing home. It doesn’t take sides, and it still makes sense after Election Day. If the episode comes out a while after the election, #3 is the better fit, because it’s about staying engaged after you vote.

Spotify description

This one’s a little different. It’s a special episode about elections, and no, I’m not going to tell you who to vote for. That’s your decision, not mine.

What I want to talk about is what’s at stake for people like me. Medicaid pays for the care I receive in my home. It’s what lets me live independently and stay part of my community. If those services get cut or become harder to qualify for, I could end up in a nursing home, not because I need to be there, but because I’d lose the help I need to live safely at home.

I also talk about how these decisions reach far beyond me: parents raising kids with disabilities, rural hospitals that might be the only one for miles, and the caregivers already working in a struggling system. I share why paratransit is a necessity and not a convenience, what it was like losing my job after cuts, and how an accessible ballot marking machine made early voting easier for me.

Most of all, this is a reminder that your voice matters, and not just on Election Day. Do your homework, contact your legislators, show up, and keep paying attention.

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I threw a pizza party for my caregivers. That’s it. Just pizza and some time together outside of our usual routine. My agency’s response? My caregivers were told they couldn’t contact me outside their shifts, and one of them was taken off my care.

In this episode I’m talking about personal care attendants, the people who help me shower, get dressed, and get positioned so I can actually sleep at night. This isn’t about blaming them. It’s about standing up for them.

I get into why I’m leaving my agency (and why I’m a little nervous about the new one), what happens when untrained strangers keep showing up at your door, and how one of my best caregivers got pushed out. I also have something to say to agency owners and to the lawmakers setting pay at around $12 an hour with no benefits.

Boundaries matter. So do relationships. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Most people get on a plane and worry about legroom. I get on a plane and hand over my legs.

When I fly, my wheelchair goes under the plane with the luggage. And my chair is not a bag. It is how I move through the world. So every time I watch it get wheeled away at the gate, there is this moment of here we go, hoping it comes back in one piece. It has been broken before. It has been lost before. One time it ended up in Dallas while I sat in Salt Lake City, and I had to borrow a chair from a hospital overnight just to make it through the trip.

In this episode I tell you what flying is really like for me. The searches. The time an agent talked to everyone around me except the person actually sitting in the chair. The day my TSA Pre-Check did not matter at all. And a new rule that says airlines do not even have to fix your wheelchair when they break it, like my legs matter less than somebody's suitcase.

I am still flying. I have a trip planned for spring. You do not get to stop living. But I want you to know what it costs, and what it would feel like if I could just roll onto a plane and stay in my own chair. The first place I would go is Nova Scotia. I would go in a heartbeat.

If you have ever had to fight to be treated like a person, this one is for you.

I answer every email: [email protected]

This is the finale.

A heads up before you start: this one goes to harder places than the last. We talk about children being punished, secluded, and shamed, and about what happened inside institutions. If that's close to home for you today, it's completely okay to skip this one or come back to it later.

When I was a little girl, my mother gave me a piece of gum before she left the school where I'd been sent. I dropped it, a staff member threw it away, and when I fell apart, they put me in an isolation room. For most of my life, I thought that meant something was wrong with me.

In this final conversation, Karyn Harvey — the psychologist who helped me name my own trauma — tells me what those adults actually missed. Not because they were monsters. Because they were taught a model of control, when what a frightened child needed was comfort. And hearing a professional say that out loud gave me something I'd been waiting my whole life for: the freedom to stop blaming myself.

If you were ever the kid nobody read correctly — the one called difficult, or too much, and never told why — this one is for you. You weren't being bad. And it wasn't your fault.

Thank you for being here, for all of it.

With love and gratitude to Karyn Harvey.

I answer every email: [email protected]

Today is a first for me. I have never interviewed anyone on this podcast before, and I will be honest with you, I was nervous. Now that it is done, I am really proud of myself.

My guest is Karyn Harvey, a psychologist who has spent about 40 years working alongside people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That is her resume. Who she is to me is a friend, a mentor, and the person who helped me put a name to what I had been carrying my whole life.

This is part three of the series, and it turned out so big I split it in two. Part one is about one thing: what trauma actually is, and the relief that comes when someone finally tells you it was not your fault.

Karyn talks about being told early on that you cannot do therapy with people with IDD, and going back to school anyway. About what happens in a group when someone realizes they are not the only one. About people in their sixties and seventies only just learning that the weight they had been carrying was put there by something done to them.

For me it was simpler than that. I wasn't being naughty. It was trauma, and nobody had ever told me.

Next time, Karyn and I go somewhere harder. We go back to the piece of gum.

Until then, hold onto this: behavior is communication.

Last week I told you the story — the school, the piece of gum, the dark room. This week I want to take you somewhere quieter.

This is the part I don't usually say out loud. What it's actually like to carry this. How it came rushing back the first night I spent in a nursing home, decades later, until it felt like I was four years old again being left behind. How a presentation about Holocaust survivors made me realize I'm not alone, and I'm not crazy for feeling the way I feel. And how, for most of my life, I believed I was bullheaded and stubborn — until someone taught me the word was actually determined.

I also tell you what I'd say now to that little girl in the dark room. And why, to this day, I never sleep without a light on.

Healing, for me, isn't a finish line. It's daily. Some days I catch myself, take a breath, and give myself grace. Some days I don't. I'm still figuring out the difference between an explanation and an excuse. I don't have it all worked out, and I decided to be honest about that here.

If you've ever been called difficult, or too much, and never had a word for why — this one is for you.

Next time, I'm bringing you Karyn, the psychologist who sat with me through all of it.

I answer every email: [email protected]

Same as before — that pastes into Spotify as plain text with no markdown. Want a shorter preview-blurb version too, or is this good to drop in?

This is a hard one for me to share, and I want to be honest about that upfront.

I was born with cerebral palsy in 1959. When I was four years old, my parents were told the best place for me was a school a hundred and eighty miles from home — so that's where they left me. Back then, that's what parents of disabled children were encouraged to do. So this is my story, but it isn't only mine.

In this episode I tell you about a piece of gum my mother once gave me, what happened when I dropped it, and why that small moment has stayed with me my whole life. I also talk about the TRIAD grant — the program that finally helped me understand that what I carried all those years wasn't something wrong with me. It was trauma. And my feelings were valid.

I'm sharing this now because this work needs to keep going. There are people still carrying this quietly, who have never once been told that what happened to them wasn't their fault.

This is Part 1. Next week, I go deeper — into what it's like to carry this, and what healing has actually looked like for me.

And if you take one thing from today: the next time someone's reactions don't make sense to you, instead of asking "what's wrong with this person," try asking "what happened to this person." It changes everything.

I answer every email: [email protected]

I didn't know much about service animals going into this one. Not the cost, not the training, not what it actually takes for someone to get one. I'll be honest about that upfront.

I also want to tell you about a moment I'm not proud of — passing a woman in a grocery store with a small dog in her cart, hearing her say it was her service animal, and quietly wondering why. I had to catch myself. I only see what's on the outside. I don't know what someone else is carrying.

That's what got me thinking about Gracie.

Gracie is my cat. She's partially sighted, she's ten years old, and she's officially my support animal — paperwork and all. In this episode I tell you how she came into my life, what she actually does for me on the hard days, and something I don't say very often: sometimes I feel a little guilty about calling her my support animal at all.

This isn't the deep dive into service animals I originally planned. That conversation is still coming — my friend Dave, who used a guide dog for years, will join me soon to talk about what a trained partnership really looks like. This one is just mine to tell first.

Unfiltered Resilience is advocacy, lived experience, and honest conversation for anyone who has ever been told independence is a privilege, not a right.

I answer every email: [email protected]

Most people hear the word "transportation" and think of buses and schedules. I hear it and think of freedom. Or the lack of it.

In this episode I talk about what accessible transportation actually means for people with disabilities — and what it costs when the system fails. I tell you about an ADA meeting where my mom started keeping a tally of how many times the directors said "can't." I tell you about sitting in a cold hallway watching out a window, fingers crossed, afraid to look away because if I miss the bus I don't get a second chance. I tell you about a last-minute job interview I almost couldn't get to — and what I had to do to make it work.

I also talk about the holidays. About never being able to visit the cemetery on Memorial Day because there's no transit. About the days that are supposed to bring communities together becoming some of the most isolating days of the year.

And I tell you about the moment I hopped on a train in Washington D.C. and said out loud — free at last. Because for one moment, I was just a person going somewhere. Like anyone else.

This episode is not about complaining. It's about helping people understand that transportation is not a luxury. It is a pathway to independence. And until it works for everyone, it doesn't really work at all.

Unfiltered Resilience — advocacy, lived experience, and honest conversation for everyone who has been told independence is a privilege, not a right.

I answer every email: [email protected]

In my last episode, I talked about the word "can't" — that earthquake feeling when a system slams the door in your face. Today I want to talk about the complete opposite. Two words that have opened more doors in my life than almost anything else: just try.

In this episode I share what those words actually feel like — not the logic of it, but the feeling. The sunrise. The light at the end of a tunnel I wasn't sure had an end. And then I get honest about something most people don't talk about — that "just try" isn't always clean or comfortable. Sometimes the person trying still makes you feel like a burden. And that changes everything.

I take you into a physical therapy gym four years ago where nobody was sure what was going to happen. I tell you about a taxi driver who made me feel like a little child being scolded, right in the middle of something that was supposed to feel like progress. I talk about a lawyer who didn't promise me success but was willing to try everything under the sun anyway. And I share two personal stories — one involving a Honda Pilot parked on a hill, and one involving my shower — that remind me that the most important "just try" moments are often the ones nobody else sees.

This one is for anyone who has already decided something won't work before they've actually tried.

Resilience isn't always about having the answer. Sometimes it's simply having the courage to say — I don't know if this is going to work, but let's try.

Reach me at [email protected] — I answer every email.