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A single sentence on a phone call—“We only have one daughter”—can divide a life in two. We sit down with Sadie to follow the arc from being erased by her family’s story to authoring her own during a winter spent alone in a Wisconsin cabin: a wood stove, a dog, a wary cat, and a stack of notebooks. Stillness pulls up images she has outrun for years, and the only way through is to let the questions stay.

Sadie walks us through the mechanics of memory work—starting in third person to protect herself, making a “grocery list” of scenes, and slowly shifting into the first person as ownership returns.

We also push against a popular myth: that reconciliation with family is always the preferred goal. Sadie explains why distance was her survival, how “she went crazy” became the convenient cover story, and why some doors must stay closed to keep a life intact.

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Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegard: Auditing Engineer
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
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