A Mother, Then and Now
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2016
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In celebration of Mother’s Day and Radio Diaries’ 20th anniversary this month, we’re revisiting Melissa’s story. As an 18 year old, Melissa recorded an audio diary as she gave birth to her son Issaiah. Over the next two decades, Melissa and her son faced many challenges, from eviction notices to a life-threatening medical diagnosis. Melissa recently recorded a new “grown-up” diary chronicling her life as a single working mother and introducing listeners to teenage Issaiah. In this episode, listen to both of her diaries and a behind-the-scenes interview.
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Radio Diaries. This is Joe. |
| 0:03.0 | And this is Elisa. |
| 0:05.0 | And we want to thank everybody who has donated to Radiotopia's annual fundraiser so far. |
| 0:09.0 | We are coming to the end of the road, but we still have yet to reach our goal of a thousand donors. |
| 0:15.3 | So we want to let you know some of the things that your donation supports here at Radio Diaries. |
| 0:21.5 | We just finished our big series, The Unmarched Graveyard, and there's some expenses that you might expect, you know, paying for our producers, paying for research, paying for some gear, and there's some unexpected things. |
| 0:34.0 | Elisa, is there anything that was kind of unexpected? |
| 0:37.0 | For sure, like with the first story that I worked on, I interviewed a woman named Susan |
| 0:41.2 | Harlebert, whose son had died and was buried on Hard Island. |
| 0:45.4 | And after I interviewed her, I realized that she had actually never visited her son's grave. |
| 0:50.1 | So we decided to set that up. |
| 0:52.0 | You know, I went to pick her up a couple hours north of the city that cost us some gas money. |
| 0:56.4 | We put her up in a hotel and I bought a bunch of pizza and bagels to power us through the weekend. |
| 1:01.7 | And it was a really beautiful and |
| 1:04.0 | carb-filled couple days. |
| 1:07.0 | We hope that gives you a glimpse at some of the things that your donation helps |
| 1:10.0 | to support here at Radio Diaries |
| 1:12.0 | and we hope that you'll support us and the rest of the shows in the Radio Topia family. |
| 1:17.0 | You can donate today at radiotopia.F.M. slash donate. That's Radiotopia. F.M. slash donate. |
| 1:24.0 | And thank you so much for your support. Radio Topia. From PRX is Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries. I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 1:40.0 | Radio Diaries was born 20 years ago this month. To celebrate we've been catching up with some of the original teenage diaries that we worked with back in 1996 when we started the series Teenage Diaries. |
| 1:52.0 | Hello? No, wrong button diaries. Hello? |
... |
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