JC's Kids Won't Talk To Her

Proxy with Yowei Shaw

Yowei Shaw

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 589 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The case of the mother whose kids won’t talk to her.

JC’s adult children have cut off contact with her. They’ve told her why. But JC still doesn’t understand what happened — or what, if anything, she’s supposed to do now.

So reporter Kim Nederveen Pieterse finds JC a proxy: Chess Dugas, a woman who cut off contact with her own parents and now talks publicly about estrangement on her YouTube channel, The Scapegoat Club. Together, JC and Chess have the kind of conversation neither of them can have with their own families — about no contact, boundaries, gifts, guilt, missing your mom, and whether estrangement always has to feel so final.

This is part one of our two-part story on estrangement.

From the episode:

— Chess Dugas — makes The Scapegoat Club on YouTube and TikTok: @thesscapegoatclub

— Joshua Coleman — wrote New Rules of Estrangement and publishes the newsletter Family Troubles: www.drjoshuacoleman.com

— Kim Nederveen Pieterse — listen to more of her reporting: www.kimnp.org

New to Proxy? Try Bisexual Wife Guy for a classic case, or Bob and the Forgiveness Spell for another story about family rupture, anger, and what it means to let go without pretending nothing happened.

For episode liner notes, show gossip, and dispatches from the emotions beat, get our free newsletter File Under Feelings at proxyhq.org.

Proxy is an independent show, supported mostly by listeners. Paid members get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, live Proxy hangs, and the satisfaction of keeping emotional investigative journalism alive 🍏

Visit — proxypodcast.com

Get in touch — proxythepod@gmail.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello?
0:05.5	Hello, bedruggle podcast spouse.
0:08.9	Hey.
0:09.8	So, Kyle, you demanded to be present for this quick campaign update.
0:14.2	Well, yeah, I mean, it's been like eight episodes, and I, you haven't let me be on it, which can I just say is bullshit. I thought you would not mind because you're always complaining about me making you work too much on proxy. I know. Well, I don't know. I just thought I thought it was cool. You like a little of celebrity. You want some air time. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to introduce yourself to listeners who don't know you?
0:39.5	I'm Kyle Polly.
0:40.7	I'm the indentured engineer.
0:43.3	I'm mixed proxy for free.
0:45.2	Right.
0:45.6	For the love and gratitude of my partner.
0:49.2	And for the good of the world.
0:51.0	And for the good of the world.
0:53.4	Okay.
0:53.6	So last episode, we launched a campaign to get to
0:55.8	1,500 paying Patreon members by October 9th to cover the cost of making a year two of proxy.
1:03.2	Kyle, because it gives me too much of anxiety to look at the Patreon numbers, can you tell me where
1:09.6	we're at?
1:17.6	Yeah, I checked this morning and it looks like we have 560 paying members.
1:27.3	Fuck yeah. That's awesome. That means we got 160 signups? Yeah. Okay. 160 in the last two weeks. Thank you to everyone who took a break from washing
1:30.5	dishes, to everyone who was on their commute, and remember to sign up once you're out of the car.
1:37.4	Because I know so many people listen to this stuff while they're doing something else.
1:42.0	Even if you're not able to financially support us right now, we totally get it. We love you. Thank you for listening to the show. Thank you for writing in. Thank you for telling other people about proxy. It means the world to us. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys are fucking sick. But that is not all. We have another exciting update.
	...

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