More Than A Survivor: Rape, Activism and what comes next with Sarah Super
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But obviously it's not always fine, and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain. To just be honest about how they really feel. About the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking.

It's almost like that Pandora's box of like, are we sure we want to go there, Nora? Like, are we sure we want to open that door in the back of my brain, like past the dust and the cobwebs and just like, are we, are we actually gonna, you know, hit that Willy Wonka red button and like blast into that space? Yeah.

If you've been listening to our show since the beginning, you might recognize that voice from our seventh episode titled Unbroken. That voice belongs to Sarah Super, a rape survivor who lived through many people's worst nightmare. In February 2015, Sarah was moving on from a breakup with her ex-boyfriend Alec Neal.

She and her mother had gone to Mexico for a girls' trip, and Sarah returned to her St. Paul, Minnesota apartment feeling refreshed and peaceful. She didn't know that Alec Neal had been hiding in her closet waiting for her to return. She didn't know that he had a knife and a sheet. She didn't know that after she unpacked and got ready for bed, he would rape her, cut her, and that she would escape with her life.

and that he would flee, and that she would find herself in a legal system that shames and silences victims, and that she would be the one to break that silence and make the space for others to do the same. She didn't know that she would become a voice for survivors of sexual violence. In 2015, Sarah was profiled in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is where I first heard her story.

I still remember putting down the actual newspaper and rushing to find a way to contact her and let her know what her story meant to me. And I wasn't the only one. A bunch of survivors reached out to me at that point. The ones that, the stories that struck me the most were the people who I had grown up with, the people who I had gone to college and high school with, and the women in my life who I knew as these precious little girls, you know, and friends.

and now to hear them and reconnect with them after so many years over this experience of violence that we shared. And so it was those people that I just felt like this is happening to so many of us. And it made me grateful to have spoken out, but there's also been so many experiences that I feel like I've had to deal with because so many people are learning about sexual violence and how to respond to survivors at my expense.

When I broke the silence, I think there was actually, in some ways, an illusion that I was being really supported. And I certainly wanted to carry on with my life, and I don't really even know what support would look like because there are not enough kale salads and bubble baths to heal anyone from their sexual assault. And this is a huge myth that self-care heals trauma. It's a total denial of understanding what trauma is and how traumatic experiences happen. And traumatic...

sexual violence, sexual violence happens in the context of a relationship. So it's not necessarily a romantic relationship. It's just the relationship between two living human beings, right? It could be strangers, it could be family members, it could be school and student, it could be whoever it is. It happens between people as human beings. And so

To say to a person that you can heal in isolation is to actually negate the fact that the damage that's done is the damage that's been done between people and that what you really actually need, I think, is for people to rebuild your sense of trustworthiness, that people are worth trusting, that the world is ultimately good and that people, that you are deserving of being loved. I ended up

running into people, you know, six months, eight months, nine months later, and just in the grocery store at a movie theater. And it's like, it's at that moment where it's awkward and they have to bring up the fact that they didn't say anything. And they'll say something like, Sarah, I've been following your story and, you know, thank you for what you're doing. And

It's nice and you're glad that they at least acknowledge the fact that they know. And at the same time, it's like, I don't want to have to be reminded of this everywhere I go. And I can say that if you knew me previously as a human person and you knew this happened to me, it's almost as if to say, yeah.

That you're consuming this as a story, as if following my story is like, what's next? You know, chapter three, allocate sentence. You know, chapter four, break the silence day. It's like... This is actually my life. I'm a real person. This really happened to me. Why do you think people don't say anything? I think most people have said, I didn't know what to say or I didn't know what to do. And so...

I would like to create a culture where survivors of sexual violence can say what has happened to them and get the support and the reaction that they deserve, which I think is an outpouring of validation and compassion. And so I have actually kind of taken it on myself to try and teach some people that it's important that you say something because your silence feels like apathy. And it's the same apathy I felt from my perpetrator while he assaulted me.

So it's a powerful feeling. When Sarah says that she took it upon herself to teach people, she really took it upon herself. Sarah created an organization called Break the Silence, which held events where other survivors could come and break their own silence about what they had survived.

These were calm, holy, and heartbreakingly full spaces where anyone could stand up and tell their story no matter where or when or how it happened and be met with ears and hearts that were truly listening, with eyes that didn't look away even when they were filled and overflowing with tears. Where survivor stories were not met with silence but with the same sentences over and over. You are strong.

You are courageous. You are inspiring. I believe you. I stand with you. And I watched for years as Sarah showed up for survivors in this way and in many others, from protests in the freezing cold to media appearances to building America's first ever permanent memorial to survivors of sexual assault, a literal monument in Minneapolis.

Today, the nation's first permanent memorial to survivors of sexual violence will be dedicated in Minneapolis. It's located at Boom Island Park. I spoke with Sarah Super, a victim survivor who spearheaded the effort, about the memorial and the dedication. It's the first of its kind in the United States. And for those who haven't seen it... Sarah didn't just break the silence. She made sure to keep making noise.

Because Alec Neal was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison, but someday he would get out. And when we first spoke in 2016, this was a very big, very real fear. I fear the day he gets out.

Because it wasn't just rape, you know, because that night was going to keep going and I escaped whatever else he had planned. But there are, you know, signs, the duct tape that he filled his car with and left in my closet and the notes that he wrote. I mean, one saying, I'm going to gut you from head to gut you with a G. I'm going to gut you from head to toe.

I just, you know. He left these notes? Yeah, in the closet that he was hiding in and face mask and gloves and bed sheets. You know, I said, I asked the police when they were getting all this stuff. I'm like, what are the bed sheets for? You know, and thinking maybe he would have raped me on his own clean bed sheet. And I don't know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I have sheets. Why would he bring these? Like, I don't know. I'd probably ask the same thing. Yeah. And their response was usually to carry a body bag.

When we talked in 2016, Sarah told us that Alec would have to serve two-thirds of that 12-year sentence, which put his release date somewhere around 2023. In 2016, that felt like kind of a long way off, but in the summer of 2023, when I ran into Sarah at a human resources conference, the date had come and gone.

Alec was free, and Sarah was at a human resources conference in a branded polo shirt, totally out of context for how I and many other people knew her, as synonymous with her rape, and with the work of supporting survivors of sexual violence with her organization Break the Silence.

And I was out of context, too. I was a speaker at the event wandering around an expo floor, and we both glitched a little. What are you doing here? What are you doing here? How have you been? And Sarah told me that she had been good.

It was entirely a job, but also not a job. It was unpaid. It was volunteer. It was self-directed, totally self-motivated. I don't think there was ever a person who would have said like, oh, I'll do that and I'll do it for free too. And so I think it was a job that was entirely a job, but also not a job.

And so I could never like step aside and I never felt like I was able to, to opt out or necessarily to, at some point it became so significant and so public that I felt like it was hard to even slow the pace down or just to like, Hey everybody, Sarah needs a break. You know, like I really wasn't able to do that. And it also would go against like kind of

my inner instinct and drive to actually slow down. But the workload was, it wasn't like a job description. It really was me interacting with the world and namely survivors of sexual violence who had never gotten the support they deserved and

And actually feeling like, okay, I have time, privilege, money, energy, a personal story, a personal connection to do something with that. And so...

I did a lot of things. I was an event organizer. I was a volunteer manager and recruiter. I fundraised $700,000 plus to build a memorial to survivors of sexual violence that's now constructed in Minneapolis. I was a lobbyist at the Capitol as a volunteer for five years trying to pass a law in Minnesota, which got passed in 2021.

I organized a choir for a few years of my life that I felt like would be healing for survivors to just be able to sing. I was an activist that I organized protests and public demonstrations and then also just like an educator. And I wanted to have a social media presence that I thought gave people the information they needed to support survivors in their life.

Alongside all of these accomplishments, Sarah also had a paying job, a career as a training consultant. So Sarah would work during the day for her job and at night and weekends at her calling. I'm actually proud. I really feel like it was truly like movement oriented. It wasn't like, oh, we're a nonprofit and we're going to set our strategic plan for the next three years. And here's what we're going to execute.

It was like, oh, my God, this story in the newspaper just hit. And now we're going to do this, you know, hashtag Me Too went viral. And the next day we had a launch petition to eliminate the criminal statute of limitations to reporting sexually violent crimes in Minnesota. And so it was that fluidity that I think allowed us to get so much done, but also the

Another way of seeing that is saying like, oh, there really weren't boundaries here. Oh, yeah. And I mean, all of that, all of those things that you listed, they are so impressive. They are so many things to be proud of. They're also such big things to do on top of having a job that pays you, being someone's daughter, someone's friend, being a person in the world, and also being

working through your own traumatic experience. Yeah. And I was even, as I was thinking about talking to you today, I was thinking about how it's actually easy. I would almost find it easier to rerecord that first episode where I'm, it's easier for me to tell my rape story than it is to talk about break the silence. Like it's easier to tell people what happened to me on that personal level than

where I feel a sense of solidarity and connection, it's harder for me to talk about Break the Silence where I felt really alone. Like there are so many people who know the wounds of rape and sexual violence. There are very few people who know what it's like to go through the court process.

Talking to people about what is it like to write a victim impact statement is one example of I'm privileged to get to that, to have that experience, but I'm also, it's isolating. I would say that is true tenfold around leading an organization based out of a personal traumatic experience that's also deeply connected to all of this pain and trauma. Yeah.

It was really hard for me to do the work based out of my own trauma and being in a spotlight in a way. You mentioned it's easier to tell the story of your rape than it is to tell the story of, you know, break the silence, your organization. I think for me, there's just so many more expectations of like, how does one lead a nonprofit or how does one do professional work?

And I don't have those expectations tied to healing and surviving. That like, I really see there's so many different paths of how to heal and how to move forward. And so there's like a gentle part of me that says, you know, you're still here. And that's powerful. That's a resistance. That's a perseverance that takes strength.

The part of me that looks back and sees the professional work is the critic that says, you should have been more timely in that. You should have been more on top of this. You should have been managing those donations differently. It's literally the critic of how do you judge someone's work rather than how do you judge just living a life with gentleness. ♪

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It's not as though you started out and said, how can I make this a big and all-consuming organization for me personally?

I honestly, thinking back to it, I was 26 when I was raped. And when I was 25, I felt like old in a weird way, which is hilarious 10 years ago. But I remember that the time between college and that moment before I was assaulted, it felt long and strenuous for like me.

a sense of like crossing a threshold or like my soul's threshing of really thinking of what am I going to do with this liberal arts degree, you know? And I had attempted three master's programs and I only finished one of them. I would, I would literally any, any master's program that didn't require a GRE, I was, you know, applying to. Just no standardized testing for me. And,

And I learned something in every piece of it. And I chose to drop out when it didn't feel like it was the right fit anymore. But by the time I finished my master's in human resource development, I landed like a dream job at Hennepin County. I was doing internal training, learning and development work there. And within four months of getting the job, I was raped.

And it's just one of those moments where you see yet another person, often, most often a woman, have their career kind of derailed by these experiences that happen in private spaces. And I really connect to that, actually. I really feel like my experience of sexual violence was a professional derailment from the life that I was setting out to lead. And so all of that work

that came from it really wasn't, it wasn't, I was already satisfied professionally. It wasn't about becoming the finding meaning and purpose. Like I had meaning and purpose in my work. I was more responding to the thing that I heard that was surrounding me that others weren't hearing and weren't noticing. Yeah. I literally wrote while you were writing. It's like, this was an interruption to your life that then became a

a huge part of your life, like became your life in a lot of ways. Yes. It was one of those moments where I'm like, okay, I'm really doing this work around, you know, supporting sexual assault survivors. Why wouldn't I want to get paid for it full time? And so I ended up working in this field as like working for the nonprofits that already existed and also running my own stuff on nights and weekends. And so it truly became everything I was and did.

Or rather, like what I did is also who I was and it damaged me. Tell me about that. Well, I really suffered significantly and frequently from migraines, which had never impacted me. So there was literally a physical like barrier to often doing the work where it was like my body wasn't allowing me to just look at a computer or look at my phone and

The week after, so the memorial was built and we had a dedication ceremony that happened virtually because it happened in the fall of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. And a week after the dedication ceremony, when everything felt like, you know, the publicity was kind of done, you know, it's just minimal, but it was done.

And it felt like, okay, this project is like over in a significant way. I developed like a heart problem or like I started having this like irregular heartbeat. And I found myself in like a cardiologist office doing a stress test and wearing one of those like heart monitors for a few days. And, you know, it just was almost like,

My body was pushing through, pushing through, pushing through. And then again, what I know so many people experience when it's the time to rest or the time of relief, your body's like, whoa, what have you been doing? So on just like a very physical level, there was a lot of physical pain. But emotionally, it just, I felt so vulnerable and so unsteady.

And I don't want – there were so many people who supported me and loved me through this. But it doesn't stop, like, the wrath of social media, you know. And I didn't have, like, a staff person being like, oh, this next email might be hard for you to read. Like, no one softened anything for me. Yeah.

I just felt like any mistakes that were made would still be a reflection of me. Any inadequacies. And it took a long time to feel like myself actually again. There's no training program that tells you when you open yourself up or are sort of exposed to this much of the world, voluntarily or not, how to handle it? Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm sure you've experienced that. I mean, just the sense that you're doing something well and it snowballs and how to be seen by so many people, how to be in relationship to like an abnormally large number. Yeah. It's not normal. Like you're not, I don't know a person who's like very well equipped for that. And I

I think you said it like takes, it took a long time to feel like yourself. Who did you feel like? Honestly, I think of like a, like a LinkedIn headline, like Sarah super rape survivor, you know, like that's who I felt like. I'm a person who's compelled to do good in the world, but I also feel like I was doing good in the world. Like by being a human being in relationship to others who has a

And emotional bandwidth to show up for friends and family and colleagues to participate in public discourse and read the newspaper without feeling like if I do or if I turn on the news, it's not going to enable me to do my work that day. Because it's a tipping point of emotional exhaustion.

I hear often, and I bet you do too, I hear from people who have been through something similar to what I've been through who say, now I want to make something. Now I need to do something. I need to do something with this experience and I need to turn it into something else. And every time a person approaches me with that conviction, with that sense of passion, I almost always ask them, what if you didn't? Right?

You know, like what if what if surviving was enough? Yeah, I mean, the desire to make something can be a really great source of healing. If I could give some advice, I guess I would say don't don't necessarily make something that you can measure. Right. Like make a connection. And I think that's probably the most life giving part of this story for me has been

the people that I've now connected to and that I resonate with and who are able to kind of hold the suffering when that shows up for me in a way that feels supportive. You know, people will reach out and you said, you know, there wasn't a buffer or enough of a buffer. There might not ever be enough buffers for the kinds of inputs that you're receiving with this work. And, um,

It's an honor to receive somebody's story, to be a safe place for somebody's story. And it can also be a really re-traumatizing experience. How did you take care of yourself and your healing while also stepping into a pool of trauma every day? It wasn't really the stories that re-traumatized me. It was...

I guess two things. One is when someone felt like they desperately needed me and I couldn't offer that. So that was really painful where they're like, Sarah, I need to meet with you. I need to talk to you. I'm like, I can't manage that right now. So that was really heavy for me. And also critique, you know, or just saying like, I don't like this or I think you're doing this wrong. And

And just having that come from lots of different angles, you know, obviously unsolicited by a lot of people. Sometimes I don't even know in spaces that I don't even participate in necessarily. Those were really hard. And, you know, survivors feel very differently. Our experiences are different. Our needs are different. And so the idea that I could be everything for everyone is clearly impossible. But the, the,

the expectation that I set for myself of like, oh, I don't want to cause anyone pain. And I want everyone to feel included and invited into this and that everyone can feel supported. And like, I still kind of feel that way. And it's, it's hard for me just to be like, no, I'm just gonna, you know, the people who don't like my work and just, you know, ignore it. And I think so much of it, the critique is also from, there's still so many gaps

And there's still so much work to do specifically on this issue that I see that isn't being done or isn't being fulfilled. So their anger and their frustration is really is righteous and valid. It's just I wasn't able to hold that. Yeah, to hold that and also to respond to a need that is bottomless and an experience that is kaleidoscopic in a way that

reflects back the experience of every person who is coming into contact with this work. And I can kind of feel the weight of that even just having you talk about it too, which is like you are this person who has that deep need to do good in the world, to make those connections. And

when you do things out of that, that really genuine desire and can't make every single person happy, like that's really difficult. That is a very hard thing, you know, and I think it would be hard if you were getting paid to do it, but I think it's even harder when it's

Yeah. And I think I feel responsible because I think what Break the Silence did felt so unique to me.

And so it felt like a place where survivors could reach out. And it wasn't, it wasn't a victim advocate agency, right? Like it wasn't a place with a crisis line. We weren't offering to go with people to get like an order for protection or restraining order. We didn't have like support group meetings. We were doing this really flexible thing. And yeah, it just,

It's obviously way beyond me, but there really wasn't another organization or infrastructure that I've seen that's just done it and fulfilled that need for survivors who aren't necessarily in crisis, but it's a really painful journey. And I think if you ask the regular person, how does someone heal from rape? They'd still say a really good therapist and a lot of self-care.

which I think is just a misguided notion of what it actually means to take a stand. And this is very much a cultural and political issue that's perpetuated by a lack of justice and accountability and healing and nuanced understanding of trauma. So there's plenty of work to do. When people say, oh, it's a therapist in self-care, what do you want to do?

tell them? What is it really? I think it's every interaction. People use that age-old adage, time heals. And that's just not at all true with trauma. In fact, the nature of trauma is a timelessness, is a distorted sense of then and now. And while it's not the passage of time that I think heals, because healing isn't linear,

I do think time allows for a survivor to have more and more interactions with other people, other responders, for other people to either be part of the healing or part of the harm. And I'm hoping that we're moving towards a world where the more time that passes, the more healing interactions people have, which means more healing overall. But I really think

It takes friends and family and communities to show that they care, to take this pain seriously, to validate the harm that's been done. I think there's a need to transform our justice system so that perpetrators can take accountability without having their human rights denied. There's so many ways in which we've just gotten it wrong and such a lack of

when you compare what victims need to what they get or what are their options, it's just, it's just painful. When we say a lot of therapy and a lot of self care, what I hear is you take care of yourself or it's your like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of mentality. You got this. And actually by, by passing the responsibility onto you, the victim, I,

I, as a community member, get to wash my hands of any responsibility of stepping up and being a part of the solution. It's obviously so much easier to be a bystander. And that's how oppression and violence thrives is when people just sit back and don't think it's their place. Yeah, that's for other people.

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your identity being almost flattened into a LinkedIn tagline. If there's something a better visual than that, I don't know what it is. Sarah Super. Rape survivor. Rape survivor. And I hate that for you. And I also have to admit that that work and that title and headline is

It converged even for me, even for a person who knows you in real life. And, you know, I'm like, I actually, yeah, I guess I didn't know what you actually did for work. Yeah, right. I know you like to dance. I know you like ballroom dancing. But what is the process or is there an inflection point where you're like, I have to step away from this? And how does that feel? Originally, it felt very strange. Yeah.

Like that reflex of like something's happening on Facebook or Instagram and I'm clueless to it, but it's a crisis and I need to find out what it is. Or like there's an emergency, something's burning on my phone and I'm just ignoring it. And actually it was like, no, actually it's okay. You know, not to say that there was an emergency. It was that moment of quiet of like, we passed that bill or we built that memorial and it

um, that I had this ability to, to actually step away. Um, so I guess originally there felt like this strange quiet and also that strange reflex of like something's happening and I'm missing it. Then there was kind of an identity crisis of like, oh, I, I mean, I felt in many ways proud of things I had accomplished.

but in a very stereotypical sense of like a career trajectory that I had been fed, you know, the first 18 years of my life. These accomplishments didn't add up to anything. You know, nothing changed for me. No one called me up and said, hey, I saw what you did in Minneapolis. I want to hire you for this exciting new job in New York City or something. Like no one did that. And that was okay. But it really was...

It was a sense of like, has this work been fully seen or what can I offer? I have all these skills and contacts and literally just like energy, enthusiasm. Where do I put it? And frankly, I have been questioning that. I think that's kind of still a question that lingers and comes up frequently.

Quite frequently. But I think there's a few different places where after taking a few years of what I deem as a break, I would say there are places where I'm noticing I'm being drawn into and it feels right to me. And it doesn't actually, it doesn't center around being a rape survivor or talking about sexual violence. How did you make the decision or...

How did you make the decision to step away from that work? And when did that happen? I mean, to some degree, I would say I didn't step away until I felt like things were

done or there was some level of completion that the statute of limitations bill that passed in Minnesota had taken five years or five legislative sessions to lobby that the memorial to survivors of sexual violence took, you know, five and a half years to work with local government and fundraise and construct and see that through.

And so it wasn't until I felt those things were complete that I felt like I was able to step aside and step away. One of the sad parts for me was the feeling that, that by me stepping aside, there wasn't someone like taking the reins or that because this wasn't, I had never made it into a paid position that it wasn't something that I'd wish for someone else to do for free. And I,

And so in a way, by me stepping aside, I was stopping a lot of the work for what was happening. I mean, just and I'm not trying to take too much credit, but I just by creating an unsustainable place, by creating something unsustainable for even myself, it didn't allow or invite anyone else to take it on and nor would I want them to have taken it on in the same way.

What has it been like to figure out who you are now? I'm still figuring it out. Yeah, I would say even like last year is the year I became a woman. Like a lot of senses of just like owning more of who I am and making big choices for myself. I feel like I'm getting clearer, but I do feel like one thing I've settled on is life is a lot more than just what we contribute.

And I do feel that contributing is very important. Like I want to be, you know, constantly learning, constantly giving, but also happy and healthy. And I think there is a dissonance that sometimes shows up between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy the world. And more often, I think I tend towards improving it and at the expense of enjoying it. And I, and

maybe the balance isn't that everything sits at that standstill equilibrium, but that it actually kind of ebbs and flows. And there was a part of my life leading Break the Silence that was really dedicated to improving the world. And now I'm in more of a phase where I'm just enjoying the world. And maybe I'll swing back the other way in another time. But I think I'm finding out what it is to have a job that

That feels balanced to me. I get to work with good people. I get to do volunteer work that brings me joy. I'm dancing. I do yoga. I teach yoga. I'm becoming that multidimensional person that I was before I was assaulted.

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you becomes and needs to become truly the headline in your life. It is the most important thing that somebody can know about you at certain points in time, for a certain amount of time. I have a friend, Dr. Anna Roth, who's a psychologist who

has told me numerous times, it's not the time, like you mentioned, you know, it's just not just time passes. It's what you do with that time and what you do in that time. And how other people treat you in that time. And how other people treat you, what happens in that time. And eventually for some people, like what was the headline is like a footnote or something

you know, a page. It's not like the, it's not the name of the book anymore. And it doesn't mean that, you know, it's not important. It just means that it's not everything. That's right. And I think too, at the dedication ceremony for the Survivors Memorial, Tarana Burke spoke. And one of the things she said was that you cannot

tell the story of what happened to me without telling the story of my survival. And I think about that from just my sense of like, Sarah Super rape survivor, I'm Sarah Super rape survivor, who did this, this, this, and now is doing this, this and this, you know, and that it's, it's just, it is a part of the story that I've integrated, but it's not the end of the story.

We're almost exactly nine years from the night I was raped. But last February, I was preparing for the person who raped me to get out of prison. So it was very much a part of my consciousness, a part of my awareness of not just what happened to me, but also the fear of what else could happen to me. And honestly, that fear once again, like,

confronting the fear of death or confronting our own mortality inspired a lot of action of just like, this is short and we don't know what's in front of us. And there are things that I want out of life that I'm no longer willing to be so patient for. And it does, it sparks a lot of change. And one of those things is, you know, just,

stepping away from one thing in order to experience another. Yeah. And I think like it's important for people to be reminded that their lives, their value, their identity, their story in the world is more than just the worst thing that they've been through or the worst thing that's happened to them, that you don't have to sort of lop off all of your branches like the giving tree and

And that you can be proud of what you've given and proud of what you've done and have that be enough, you know? Yeah. And you don't have to cut yourself down to the stump, right? Like maybe just the apples that come back every year is a beautiful gift. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Just the apples, just the, even just the shade, you know?

Yes. Just the shade. Just being there. Your existence is the gift in a lot of ways. Right. In a lot of ways. That would have been a short book, but the boy sat in the shade and the boy was happy. And so was the tree. Okay. And she was- Honestly, boundaries. Boundaries. I am really- Sustainability. Sustainability. I am really proud of you, Sarah, and I'm really happy for you. And I'm really excited about your life for you. Thank you.

I'm Nora McInerney. This has been terrible. Thanks for asking. And if you feel like you are the giving tree, I hope you know that your existence is enough, that the shade is enough, that whatever you do, wherever you are right now, it's all enough. Thank you to Sarah Super for being a part of our very first season and what is for now our last season.

When I say that we are taking an indefinite hiatus after April 2nd, 2024, I mean indefinite in the way that dictionary.com defines it without fixed or specific limit, not clearly defined or determined, not precise or exact.

If you are listening to this on Apple Plus as a subscriber or on Patreon, we are going to keep making bonus episodes through at least August. Some of you paid for a year up front, in which case if we shut down either of these things, you will be reimbursed automatically for whatever's remaining on your subscription.

This is an independent podcast produced by Feelings & Co. Our team is myself, Marcel Malakibu, Claire McInerney, and Grace Berry. Our theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson. We do have a daily show called It's Going to Be Okay, where you can get a five-minute episode every weekday to start your day with the opposite of a doom scroll. And there are links to all the places that you can connect with me or us in our show description.

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