Emi Nietfeld: The Cost of Survival

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it really mean to “survive” when what you survive… lingers? Emi Nietfeld went from being homeless to graduating from Harvard. But the rags-to-riches story isn’t ever completely true. It skips over the hardest parts—complicated families, long-term trauma on brains and bodies, the ways we wish we could go back and undo what has been done. This is an incredible story about resilience—what it is, and what it isn’t. You’re going to love the way she talks about the power of her efforts. And the ways she learned to get back up, but should have never had to. In this conversation, Emi and Kate discuss: the cost of resilience the downsides of relying on the individual therapeutic to solve every problem (and why we should be looking for ways to create systemic or family solutions too) how hope and ambition can pull you toward a future the complexities of navigating the value of success when weighed against the lasting impact of trauma Emi carefully interrogates what it really means to “overcome” anything. It makes us all feel less alone when we can say, honestly, that some things can be conquered and some things conquer us. CW: brief mentions of suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self-harm, adverse childhood, hoarding, trans issues Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here. Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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1:27.0	Which means really that there's no evidence of disease.
1:31.0	And I've got to get used to saying it that I had stage 4 colon cancer and now I don't.
1:39.0	And that is beyond my wildest expectations for my life.
1:46.0	And they'll have to keep monitoring and I'll forever have to get colonoscopies.
1:52.0	And I swear colonoscopies are really not that bad.
1:55.0	You can just, you know, make the phone call schedule yours now.
2:00.0	I'll also remind you to do that because I have a t-shirt that says what doesn't kill you is waiting to get you again tomorrow.
2:07.0	Schedule your colonoscopy.
2:09.0	But it's, it's this deep belief that I have that it's really important for us to make more language for this space.
2:20.0	This space between what was and what will be the place between, you know, victim and survivor.
2:28.0	But people, you know, myself included, find it very difficult to live in the in between.
2:35.0	A space between sick and healthy, unwell and perfect.
2:40.0	So few words to describe what it actually means to survive.
	...

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