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Music Hello and welcome back to Big Mood, Little Mood.

I am your host, Danny Lavery, and with me in the studio this week is Laura Lee Abbey,

a writer and the star and subject of a new documentary podcast series from Paradiso Media called 17,

Conversations with My Teenage Self.

Laura's essays have also been featured in Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and Vice.

Laura, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so happy to be here.

I'm so glad and grateful that you're here to spend a little time giving advice with us,

especially because, like, today's letters, I think, are really, like,

they sent me back to high school, at least, the first one did.

And there's some really, like, big issues here that, you know, involve questions of, you know,

where can I direct my empathy, what are assumptions that I might make about certain perspectives

and how can I be useful without trying to overload anyone with too much at one time? So I'm glad

that you're here with me today because I think I'm going to need some help. I'm actually glad

I'm here too because I feel like you are so patient and thoughtful with your reactions and I'm such like a hot head. So I'm just

here to kind of watch the master and pop in whenever I can offer anything. Any help?

I'm happy to go with that setup. We'll do the good and bad routine. Would you mind reading that first letter?

...