Hello, it's Andrea. I am recording this on November 8th. For my U.S. listeners, this has been a hard

week for a lot of us. And I know so many of us are feeling sad and scared in the wake of the

election. And listen, I don't have any hot takes on what happened here or what's going to happen next,

but I do have a perspective that I thought might be helpful and hopefully bring you a little

bit of comfort right now. These last five years of my professional life have been really devoted

to raising awareness about munchaus and bi proxy and in various

ways trying to figure out how to combat these huge systemic issues that prevent us from protecting

kids from abuse. And what I'm realizing this week is that this has taught me a lot about how to stay

motivated in a fight that feels impossible a lot of the time. And especially,

it's taught me how to combat hopelessness, which I think is something that a lot of us may be

feeling right now. So I wanted to share a little bit about what I've learned. So this all started for

me five years ago when my novel came out and I met Dr. Mark Feldman. He has become a mentor and a good

friend in real life as well as a friend of the show. In January of 2020, he invited me to the

American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children's annual conference. And this is where I met the

other members of the Munchausen by proxy committee, many of whom have become friends

and are frequent contributors to the show. This was my very first time meeting anyone who understood

what I'd been through. And meeting this group of people who really cared about this issue was

life-changing. Importantly, it was clear to me pretty immediately that A, there was so much

work to be done, and B, that there were specifically things that I could do to help, that as a writer

and a storyteller, I could be useful to the cause and the community, that I had a role. And increasingly,

this role has become really dominant in my life.

And because I'm using the thing I love storytelling to do this work, it's really energizing,

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