Content note: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship. Sometimes the yes that changes everything looks, at the time, like an escape. Angela Harger Thompson has been a storyteller since she was four, waving a feather duster in her sister's home movie. At 30, she packed…
It was Brittany's brother who decided to reconnect with their dad before his wedding, and that quietly pulled her back in too. By then her father was in the late stages of alcoholic cirrhosis, and he would know her one minute and not the next. She ended up seeing him…
There was never a moment where Brittany said she didn't want to talk to her dad again. She just stopped answering his calls, then moved to Virginia for grad school, and the distance made the silence permanent. It lasted almost fifteen years. She says estrangement was never really freedom, because…
Brittany says what she wanted from her dad was simple. She wanted him to sit with her and go back through what happened, and to hear him say he understood how hard it had been for her. Her 21 year old self couldn't understand why he wouldn't. She's not sure…
At 21, Brittany asked her dad to come to her therapist and talk through what the family had lived through. He said no. Looking back, she doesn't think he was able to. What he probably wanted was a pretty normal relationship, holidays and a call once a month and not…
When Brittany stopped answering her dad's calls, she knew she needed to. She also felt guilty all the time. He would remind her he'd paid for her first three years of college, and she started to wonder if his version of the story was the right one and she was…
Brittany says her only regret is that she didn't get a few more good phone calls with her dad. She felt it happening even before he died, telling herself, call him, you're going to regret this. She works at feeling sad about it now, and after fourteen years the guilt…
Near the end of her father's life, Brittany wanted to call him. She would walk around the house holding the phone and not be able to do it. She knew the fear belonged to her childhood and that he couldn't hurt her now. She understood all of it and still…
After her father died, Brittany realized the only conversation left between them was the one happening in her mind. You're still in a relationship with that person, she says, and now you're the one in full control of it. What surprised her was how present he felt afterward, and the…
I asked Brittany what she would say to the version of herself standing by her father's hospital bed. She said you get to tell the story. You get to not know things and still tell it, and you get to hold the good memories from when you were little right…
Brittany Perham wanted to call her father. She was still afraid. The full story: https://youtu.be/6pFGIVmKDEI
Content note: this story includes addiction, estrangement and the death of a parent. Brittany Perham stopped answering her father's calls in college. His drinking had become frightening, and she needed distance. The silence lasted almost fifteen years. In the last year of his life, she found herself back in a…
Brittany Perham had a childhood her friends still call perfect. And underneath it was a father whose drinking nobody in the family talked about. By college, things had gotten scary enough that she stopped answering his calls. The silence lasted almost fifteen years. In his final year, she got a…
Brittany was in college when her parents were divorcing and her dad started calling her crying and drunk. Then her brother had an asthma attack out of nowhere and spent a year in and out of Mass General. She remembers thinking, I have to get myself a therapist. It was…
Chloe spent most of her life behind a persona she built to stay safe. Now she says it feels like she is not in prison anymore. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ndMwNbBtZY
Please note: this story includes gender identity, transition and a mention of past struggles with mental health. Chloe Kelly was 45 when she understood she was trans. She had spent decades building a persona to blend in, and years of quietly wondering why life felt so heavy. Then one lunch…
Chloe was asked what she would say to the person she used to be. Not a lecture. Not a shake. Just a hug, because that person got her here.
Chloe is traveling the world, writing a memoir, and living by her own rules now. She got joy tattooed on her back in Buenos Aires. She means it.
Chloe talks about what self-love actually looked like once she stopped performing and started living as herself.
Chloe spent decades earning what she calls man points, playing a role so well that even she could not see through it. This is the short version of a very long story.
Chloe talks about carrying a secret from childhood into adulthood, and what it took to finally stop being ashamed of it.
Chloe talks about what shifted in her friendships once she started living as herself. Some relationships fell away. New ones opened up in ways she did not expect.
Chloe describes what it felt like to live inside a quiet sadness for years, even with a good job, a good home, and a partner she loved. It's one of the most honest descriptions of that feeling I have heard.
Some of us carry a weight for so long that we forget it isn't supposed to be there. Chloe Kelly spent 35 years being very good at being someone she wasn't. She learned the rules early. Play sports. Earn man points. Don't stand out. Never let anyone see. She got…
