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Nobody Told Me!

Helena Dea Bala: ...that I would find myself in every stranger I met

Nobody Told Me!

Nobody Told Me!

Entrepreneurship, Business

4.2671 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joining us on this episode is Helena Dea Bala, author of the book, "Craigslist Confessional:  A collection of secrets from anonymous strangers".  Helena took a leap of faith, quit her job, and posted an ad on Craigslist saying, 'tell me about yourself.'  Over the years, she has met up with strangers from Craigslist and documented their stories, coming to the conclusion that behind the scenes, we are all struggling with the same issues.
 
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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

0:13.4

I'm Laura Owens, and I'm Jan Black.

0:15.7

And joining us on this episode is Helena Deiabala, author of the new book Craigslist Confessional, a collection of

0:23.0

secrets from anonymous strangers. And since 2014, Helena has been meeting people on Craigslist

0:29.0

and documenting their stories. And even just from that, we are so excited to talk with you.

0:33.7

You must have so many amazing things that you've learned about people and humanity in general.

0:38.1

So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm very excited to talk

0:44.0

about the stories in this book. Let's start out with your background. You were an immigrant to the

0:48.6

U.S. who became a lawyer and then found that that wasn't fulfilling. And you found a very interesting way to try and seek fulfillment.

0:56.3

Talk to us a little bit about that.

0:57.5

It wasn't just swimming or picking up a hobby.

1:00.5

Yeah.

1:00.9

So I came to this country when I was not even 12, barely 12 years old.

1:06.9

And I came from Albania with my mom.

1:10.0

We sought political asylum here.

1:12.6

And the first few months, I would say probably even year after we immigrated to this country,

1:20.1

were very, very difficult in that my mom, who was a former family medicine doctor and my dad, who joined us later, who was an

1:29.3

ambassador, they both took on jobs that were quite challenging in order to make ends meet.

1:37.2

And so my mom and I actually ended up cleaning houses for a long while just to kind of make a

1:43.2

little bit of money.

1:43.9

And that was my first foray into this

1:47.0

world, or rather this idea that things look different from the outside than they actually are

...

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