Why Do People Cut Themselves?
Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content
Description
This week, Stephanie and Jackie are switching roles to answer a simple question: Was I a suicidal teen girl? We start in a closet, revisit a high school therapist, talk to a self-injury expert and watch a tortured student film festival entry. And crying. There’s lots of crying.
This episode features: Dr. Robin Hornstein & Dr. Janis Whitlock
Resources from the episode:
- Cornell Self-Injury & Recovery resources
- Healing Self Injury: A Compassionate Guide for Parents and Other Loved Ones, by Elizabeth E. Lloyd-Richardson & Dr. Janis Whitlock
- Hornstein, Platt & Associates Counseling & Wellness Centers in Philadelphia
- Manage Self Harm with the Calm Harm App
- Self-Injury Outreach & Support resources
- Self Harm Crisis Text Line resources
- Text “TWLOHA” to 741-741 if you or someone you know is struggling with self-harm.
If you or someone you know is struggling emotionally or feeling hopeless, it’s important to talk to someone about it now. Contact one of the resources below for a free, confidential conversation with a trained counselor anytime.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Crisis Text line: Text “Connect” to 741-741
The Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
Season 2 of Last Day is created in partnership with The Jed Foundation. The Jed Foundation (JED) empowers teens and young adults with the skills and support to grow into healthy, thriving adults. You can find tips, tools and resources for taking care of your emotional health available at: www.jedcares.org/lastday
To follow along with a transcript and/or take notes for friends and family, go to https://lemonadamedia.com/show/last-day shortly after the air date.
Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.
Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows.
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Iris, Dr. Janis Whitlock, Dr. Robin Hornstein, Mom at Jackie’s Movie, Jackie Danziger, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Speaker 5, Wilma, Ronnie
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 00:00
If you are just tuning in, I encourage you to go back and start listening from Episode 1, it’ll make more sense. As for what you’ll hear today, we have worked hard to ensure that our storytelling around suicide is as safe as possible. But we can’t address this issue by tiptoeing around it. Instead of warning, who should and shouldn’t listen before each episode, we want to encourage you to press pause if and when you need to. We’ll be here when you’re ready to press play.
Jackie Danziger
Well, that was just about to save you. I don’t even think I’m in a good state. Now, as much as I want to just say a lot of things came out there was a lot of crying and I realized that given the right situation at the right moment, it might be something important to talk about. I’ve lost you. That was my phone, disconnecting? As I ramble, manically.
Jackie Danziger
So, I’m just gonna keep talking to you as if I’m connected to you, because I can’t stress enough. These are the hangers. I don’t have my headphones on to even know if this audio is any good. And if I was a producer, like I am supposed to be a producer. This is absolutely the opposite of the scenario of how I would want to explain this.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is our producer Jackie; you’ve heard her before talking to herself while standing in her fairy tiny New York closet slash recording studio. Back in September, she texted me at the end of a brutal workday, asking if I had time for a quick check in. I said, Yes, of course. And by now I can read the way Jackie breathes, and immediately knew something was up. So for the first time, I flipped the script, went into producer mode, and told her to get in her closet and start recording. This is how the tape starts.
Jackie Danziger
It’s a whole conflict because right now my stupid husband who’s so kind and generous, did laundry. And he did what I always asked him not to do, which is to use my closet as a closet. So now there’s also clothing hanging in here too. So it’s just a whole mess. But anyway, I had my therapy at 8:45 on Saturday, because that’s the only time that I’m sure to be free. And I was talking and it was the day after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. And anyway, I just had a full-scale meltdown with my therapist about the fact that the most triggering aspect of this whole thing has been listening to people who self-harm.
Jackie Danziger 02:41
Because that’s like a whole part of my rich tapestry of background that I never talked about and never think about. But I’ve had to talk about and think about a lot this year. And it turns out, I’m still so I didn’t realize how sad I was about that whole period about my life because I have polished it as part of my own story. Do you know what I mean?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Honestly, no, I didn’t know what she meant. I mean, I just started babbling trying to catch up. I think I said something like, just to confirm, are you saying you had a history of self-harm?
Jackie Danziger
Yeah, I was like a big cutter girl.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I mean, I was completely shocked and trying to play it cool, but completely shocked. Also, this is just so Jackie saying something a little bit brutal in this very nonchalant, cool as a cucumber way. The backstory for this closet conversation is that we’d been talking about possible plotlines for the season. And bullying came up a few times. And I misunderstood something she was saying. And I asked if she had been bullied as a kid and her reaction was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Who in the world would bully me? But I was tortured. And spoiler alert, I was my own bully.”
Jackie Danziger
Because I’ve always been the person I am right now, which is that I’m more cruel to myself than anybody else in the world. like nobody would bother me the way that I bother myself. Do you know what I mean?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 04:04
This time, yes, Jackie, I do very much know what you mean. And also listener, this might be a good time to point out that asking do you know what I mean? Is one of Jackie’s tells. It really comes out when she’s flustered or insecure or put on the spot. But anyway, yes, for over a year. She and I have been working together for a million hours a week and I can vouch for the fact that she is tough on herself and me and the show when it comes to getting stuff right. She’s a little intense, which I said you were.
Jackie Danziger
I know I was gonna say I was like this should not really be a surprise, but I think of it as being surprising. And I think of it as being this totally like, weird, dark part of like an absolute past. And I think the most distressing part about this season has really been realizing how not surprising and how completely like it makes sense. And listening to Janice during our JED meetings lately. She’s so talks about self-harm. And she also talks about this idea of like, well, there’s triggering, like, the stuff that’s already there. Like, if you are somebody who’s in recovery, and you hear somebody talking about doing drugs, you can want to do drugs, or there’s the kind of person that’s never done drugs, but you see it in a movie, and it looks really fun.
Jackie Danziger
And you tried for the first time. And there’s just certain elements about it, where it’s like, Oh, right. Oh, I sort of fall into the first camp, which is not to say that I want to cut myself again. But I definitely, for the first time in probably, like, probably almost a decade, have thought about how much I love to do it. Which is something I don’t think about that often. But it’s making me feel so sad to remember what an integral part it was of like, my true self-care routine. Do you know what I mean, like I saw it as like this way. It’s like, this is how I stay normal.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And it’s this very intense moment that I realized we would probably make an episode centered around Jackie. So I decided it would be a good idea to turn on my own microphone. What do you even do? Like I don’t, I am so fucking ill equipped to talk about this, by the way, so like, forgive me.
Jackie Danziger 06:13
That’s why I’m like, we don’t have to go through everything now. It’s just one of those things.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
[Background Noise from Iris] Honey, that is so amazing. I am so proud. That looks incredible.
Iris 06:23
And I didn’t even know what I was making.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is my kid, Iris. Barging in at exactly the wrong and also exactly right moment. Because you know what? This conversation, this exchange sums up what producing a show about suicide in the middle of a global pandemic sounds like I’m working from home, which is to say, I’m living at work. And at that time, my kid is in Zoom school in the other room, and I am trying to be very Maria von Trapp fully aware that she’s having her own version of talking to herself in the closet. Okay, I’m gonna keep working. Okay? I’m gonna come see your science experiment a little, okay? Can you close my door please?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
She’s just doing science experiments by herself. Horrible.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I wish that she was doing a science experiment with all her friends in an actual school building. But everything is bananas right now and hard in a million ways. So she’s doing them alone in the living room. COVID has turned everything upside down for everyone. So this week, we’re reversing roles, and telling the story of what’s been going on behind the scenes, and how in order to deal with the present. Jackie’s had to cope with her past. To do that. She’s going to tell you her story, in her own words.
Jackie Danziger
I’m Stephanie whittles wax. And I’m Jackie Danziger, and this is LAST DAY.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And this is LAST DAY.
Jackie Danziger
And this is LAST DAY.
Jackie Danziger 08:16
So it was not my intention to tell Stephanie, all the nitty gritty details on the phone that day. I don’t think either of us thought this audio would see the light of day. But we often record our conversations for future script and story meetings. And this felt like that, just a check in where I also happen to be telling my boss slash friend slash creative partner what’s really going on. I don’t know if I can keep talking about these things in theory without really diving into it.
Jackie Danziger 08:47
But then feeling a certain responsibility to talk to you about stuff of realizing like, “Oh, this is gonna be harder for me in ways that I didn’t really think about.” Because, again, I don’t think about myself this way, because I don’t want to think about myself this way.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Why?
Jackie Danziger
Well, there’s something sort of tragic to me about, like, imagining myself as an angsty teen that like to journal and cut myself. Do you know what I mean? I’m like “Oh, that’s exactly who I wasn’t. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t… I totally am.”
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
But you, okay.. okay.. okay.. but you didn’t feel suicidal? It was truly like, it was like, like exercising or something? It was like a release tension or you did feel that?
Jackie Danziger
So I have to say that to me is where this whole question of is there a story here? Is that only through making this was I asking myself for the first time as an adult of “Was I suicidal?” Which is a crazy thing to not know. But I do think that if you were to I realized that if you were to ask like my best friends in high school, I’m sure they absolutely would have told you assuming there was like a 50/50 chance that I’d kill myself before I was like 25
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 10:06
Holy shit man, that’s fucking crazy.
Jackie Danziger
Yeah. It makes me so sad to think about but it just, anyway, it just made me having that realization of how thinking about how we’re talking to friends and family and thinking about for myself. What were like the signs I was giving out and what were my own, like near misses of like, if I had, if any number of choices had just been a little bit different. I think I absolutely could have been one of the stories that we’re talking about.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 10:34
Okay, so… Sorry, I’m trying to get all this. When the season started, you were worried about what impact this is going to have on your relationship to the friend you had who died by suicide. It was like, that was the thing.
Jackie Danziger
I just knew that that was the trigger.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Right, exactly. But what you’re saying is that doing this season, you have come to terms with your own suicidal ideation that you never really faced.
Jackie Danziger
Yes, and not only didn’t really face, but it’s the kind of thing that I definitely had is a very tidy part of my backstory of like, this was the thing I did when I was a teen because I was a super artsy, very emotional teen. And it never really bordered into anything else. And I never think about it, and it has no real relevance to any other aspect of my personality. Do you know what I mean? But it totally does. It totally does. And totally doesn’t away that’s like “Oh, no, this still lives in me.” It’s still totally lives.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Dude. Oh, that is heavy.
Jackie Danziger
It’s so heavy. But I’m also like “Or I’m just very exhausted.”
Jackie Danziger
Just to back up really quick. I feel like I should give you some context. This conversation took place almost a year exactly from when I first met Stephanie back in September 2019. Do you remember 2019? Boy, it was a simpler time. I was just about to start a huge project producing a limited series podcast for NARAL Pro-Choice America about how the anti-choice movement was built from scratch. super intense, super ambitious. But it was a little slow to start. So I had some free time. And I don’t love free time. So when I saw a job description for a 10 hour a week gig with a new show called LAST DAY, I jumped.
Jackie Danziger 12:30
Stephanie and I fell in work with love, and it has been happily ever after ever since. Sort of. Before I knew it. I was working 20 to 30 hours a week on LAST DAY, on top of the 50 plus hours a week I was devoting to NARAL. In a lot of ways, it was amazing. Because I was producing work that I was really proud of. But for eight months, I spent every minute from 6am to 8pm. Either thinking about opioid overdoses, or sifting through decades of right-wing propaganda. Taking in that much intense content, actually give me a reason not to fully absorb all the other intensity of the new cycle.
Jackie Danziger
But going right into LAST DAY season two and then losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the floodgates just opened. This is gonna sound really dark. But even though I feel like everybody’s been having their experience of like, low level hopelessness since COVID, and I’ve been so busy. And so just like, yep, of course, I feel a sense of dread that everybody else is going through. But you know what, I really have to keep working and oops, I didn’t get to take a break. But that’s okay. Because there’s no such thing as a break. Because where would I go? It’s COVID. I’ll just keep working.
Jackie Danziger
So that I just didn’t have the sense of like yeah, well, life is really dark. It just was like, yeah, of course, life is dark. Life is always dark. This just feels extra dark. And something about her death has triggered all of the 2016 hopelessness, but hopelessness of 2016 put in the context of today, which somehow felt so much worse. And it was the first time since I was a teen where I really started to be like, wow, I don’t know that I do see the point on going on. And that was also just like this, like, oh, and again, not literally, but definitely that sense of like Janice and Courtney being like, what does it mean to just feel hopeless? And I was like, this makes me feel hopeless.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 14:18
Oh, yeah. That is dark.
Jackie Danziger
Yeah.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Do not despair. You are loved. You are needed.
Jackie Danziger
I’m not going anywhere. I’m not gonna cut myself. That’s the other part where it’s like, you know, I’m too.. I’m too fucking proud to do any of it. But I definitely feel it for the first time in a while, but I’m just like, I’m so sad. I haven’t felt sad like this in a minute.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I haven’t ever heard you sad like this.
Jackie Danziger
I know. I’m not. This is not like a default setting for me.
Jackie Danziger
I’m not gonna lie and act like I don’t have big emotions, I absolutely do. But I spent half of my 20s convincing myself I had no right to be an artist and then the other half working really hard to get where I want it to be. So until recently, I tried not to let my sad days sabotage my work. I have a happy life. I make things all the time. I do like exactly what I wanted to do. And it’s like, the crazy thing about me when I think about this, is that like, if 15-year-old me could see what I do now, she would be so psyched, do you know what I mean?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yeah.
Jackie Danziger
So, so sad. It’s like so cheesy.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
No, it’s not. It’s not, I totally relate to that sentiment, like, it’s not cheesy. It’s so like, universal, what you’re saying.
Jackie Danziger
I think the weird thing about the amount of emotions I’m feeling right now is that a lot of it is just realizing like, I don’t know, I feel very, very grateful. Because my mother, even though she was like, such a source of my angst as a kid also knew that when she figured out I was cutting the first thing she did, well, she found me a therapist, she didn’t just find me a therapist. She found me like this radical progressive queer therapist, who was like, this lady that would like, give me Patti Smith’s CDs for my birthday. And like, she just was like this cool lady that just thought I was cool. And now I’m like Facebook friends with her where I’m also like, we should talk to Robin Hornstein.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 16:32
Oh, my God we should. Yes, we should. So you better dig up them files, Robin.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
Ironically, so we have somebody who has been working on shredding files, and I guess we had them by provider, and they hadn’t done all of mine. So they were in there. And I said “Can you do me a favor?”
Jackie Danziger
Surprise. We got Robin. And it’s Dr. Robin Hornstein by the way I butchered her name in the midst of my emotional meltdown in a closet. She not only tracked down my file, she sent someone out to a storage unit to grab it for our call. We connected online about 10 years after I stopped therapy with her. But just hearing her voice on the phone brought back all these old memories. I first started seeing her back in 2002 when I was 14 years old.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
You came in and you had your I guess your mom had discovered that you had cut yourself, I think on your knee at that time. And you would left the knife out. So she found it. She decided you should come in for some therapy.
Jackie Danziger
Depending on who you ask. There are two to three versions of the story that led me to Robin. I remember the knife incident. But there was also a standoff in a department store dressing room. I was trying on bathing suits. My mom came in she saw the cuts on my legs. And she was understandably pretty upset with me. So she ended up calling into affiliate radio show called Voices in The Family with Dr. Dan Gottlieb on WHYY. They chatted off air and he gave her Robin’s info.
Dr. Robin Hornstein 18:08
You know a lot of what we talked about was you’re trying to fit in. And your passion, which was always in theater and art and everything dramatic and fashion like you had you walked in with like I remember clearly you had very vivid clothing and you loved you know, big earrings and beautiful colors. And it was just like you were, you made a statement when you walked in.
Jackie Danziger
And that statement was “Hello world. I am a bold, confident artist.” Because that is the person that I desperately, desperately want it to be at that time.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
A lot of what we talked about then was that sense of who am I? And do I like myself? And do I want people to get close to me? You know, friends. Who do I want to know me? And feeling a lot of distrust. I think with your family, because there’s a lot of chaos in the system that was going on for you. And I think you were you in the first session described yourself as the person where I wrote it down. Who was supposed to keep the family together. That was your job. You were supposed to make everybody like everybody and you were supposed to make it easier for Monique, you’re older sister. And kind of going back and forth between that and feeling like your own sense of like anger and like nobody was paying attention to your needs, your pain, your fears.
Jackie Danziger
I should be clear; I had a lot of privilege as a kid. I had a big supportive extended family. People encouraged me to be creative, took me to the theater, sign me up for piano lessons, all of it. But my ACES score is a 4. At home, it felt like people did not see each other clearly. My dad would get sad or angry really quickly, so would my sister. Both of them drank, people would say exactly the wrong thing to each other, push each other’s buttons, and then that person would go lash out at someone else. And I felt like I could see it coming from a mile away, and would try to do my best to distract or delay a meltdown. But it didn’t always work. So in short, I was stressed out a lot as a kid.
Dr. Robin Hornstein 20:23
You know, and loneliness came up in, like a lot of the sessions, like, there’s a lot of loneliness that you would describe. And you wrote a lot of poems too.
Jackie Danziger
I did, I feel like you introduced me to journaling, or at least you encouraged me to keep doing it. And then I would come and I would share them. And then I would have saw, I remember the other day, that I would record songs, I would play you my songs, and you know, different things like that. But, I wouldn’t have put it this way until I was thinking about it, but constructing different personas in the method of peacemaking. So it’s like, well, I don’t feel happy right now. But I know how to play happy.
Jackie Danziger
I don’t feel like this right now. But I know how to play it to get the outcome that I need. And I think because of that, I then had such a hard time figuring out what my authentic self was. Because it was easy to make friends, it was actually very easy to make connections, but it never felt real. It never felt like was this me? Am I being myself now? Or am I just doing that thing to get what I want out of a situation.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
And in some, you know, in some ways Jackie, that’s both your personal story. And a story that fits for so many teams, just sort of that sense of like, I’ll just, I’ll play a role. And if I play the right role at the right time, somebody will love me or, or go deeper and just notice who I was. Because I think, you know, when I think back on it, even when you came in and read me a poem, you were both sharing, but you were also making sure I was just like one step away from the feeling of it, you would read it.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
And I’d have a feeling I remember reacting, I’d have tears in my eyes. Or I would like to say to you “Wow, that’s really heavy or sad” And you’d be like “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to convey.” You know, because the thing is, you’re so I mean, you’re so intelligent. I think you just could rise above all of it and be like, well, I’ll just sum that up. Yeah, so I was trying to convey the sadness instead of I am sad.
Jackie Danziger 22:21
I’m still sort of like this. I have very deep, meaningful relationships with people. But when I am emotional in a way that feels messy or out of control. I tend to process that on my own. And when I do share, it’s become a story. Like, for example, I’ll say, you won’t believe how sad I was this morning. Rather than calling someone and saying I am really sad right now. After the break, we’re joined by a member of our team who is a legit self-harm expert to talk about why some people convey sadness by cutting.
Jackie Danziger
We’re back. Shortly after the September call with Steph in my closet. The next person I opened up to on our team was Janis Whitlock, her JED advisor. Because she’s the director of The Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery. She’s authored countless articles on the subject and co-wrote a book called Healing Self Injury, which is a great resource for parents and families. She is the one person I know who gets a twinkle in her eye when I say we’re going to talk about self-injury. Because the stuff that makes most people nervous. That’s what she leans into. Let’s just start there. Why does this topic make people so uncomfortable?
Dr. Janis Whitlock
Well, it’s viscerally feels a lot like suicide to people. And, or like a suicidal gesture, you know, the brain cannot understand like that. There’s some like how on earth could you want it to die, like on purpose, right? Like there’s something in me that is just really absolutely doesn’t want to die.
Dr. Janis Whitlock 24:01
At the time, I didn’t consciously think of cutting as a suicidal act. Instead, it felt like a way to keep going. And I’m not alone here. The technical term for this behavior is Non-Suicidal Self Injury, or NSSI. It’s defined as the deliberate direct and self-inflicted destruction of body tissue for purposes not socially sanctioned without suicidal intent. And this is the new and important part, intended as a means of regulating emotion.
Dr. Janis Whitlock
We understand it is a distinct phenomenon that is really intended to self soothe. And that’s a very different thing. Like if you know if the communication is I just, it lets off steam or it just lets me release or I can’t cry, but this helps me do it where the goal is to feel better to come into equilibrium. That’s what I consider non suicidal self-injury.
Jackie Danziger
Janis started researching and SSI back in 2004. When very little was known about it. Back then, it was seen as an attention seeking behavior that only impacted a small group of people who were just wired differently than everyone else when it came to pain. When she first started conducting studies at Cornell, she didn’t expect many people to sign up. But they did. And the results surprised everyone.
Dr. Janis Whitlock
We had to estimate what percentage of people we thought might be self-injurious. And I think we’re gonna estimate like 5% to 10% max.. max.. max.. And I was shocked, shocked when it came in at 17%.
Jackie Danziger
NSSI is pretty widespread. And you see it in a wide variety of people. It impacts people of all gender identities, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Today, there are over 16 recognized forms of non-suicidal self-injury, some may sound more familiar than others.
Dr. Janis Whitlock
You know, there’s cutting, but there’s also carving and burning and embedding or punching, getting in fights or punching walls.
Jackie Danziger 26:04
Interesting tidbit. Men are more likely to self-injure in social settings, while high or drunk. So it often just looks like common aggression. Imagine a guy who picks a fight in a bar. From the outside, he just looks like a macho jerk. But on the inside, he might be sad, and just looking for a way to punish himself. Women usually start younger, endure for longer, and use more serious methods like cutting, which was the case for me. But maybe it’s worth asking, why are we even talking about self-injury? If by definition, it’s done without suicidal intent?
Dr. Janis Whitlock
Well, I think it’s pretty well established now that even in community populations of young people, it’s a pretty, it’s a red flag for suicide. So in a way you get, you know, it’s like a warning sign potentially. So there’s another a good number of people who never who self-injure to make themselves or to help themselves feel better, who never really entertain the idea of suicide. But there’s a good number that do.
Jackie Danziger
Amongst people with a history of NSSI, 70% have attempted suicide at least once. And 55% have tried several times, the risk is highest in the first six months after a self-injury episode.
Dr. Janis Whitlock
When you start to see a real like where you start to feel or see or sense, a real sense of deep, fundamental questioning of why am I alive, you need to ask and ideally before that, when the loss of the will to live not loss. It’s just eclipsing like you can’t move to connect with the will to live any right then, then somebody really like needs to get found somehow.
Jackie Danziger
And I’d say that’s a pretty good segue back to Robin, because well, I’m still not sure if I actually wanted to kill myself. I definitely was feeling disconnected from the will to live when I met her, which is something she never made me feel ashamed about.
Jackie Danziger 28:00
I remember our work together. But if you could just describe like, if you have somebody coming in and doing this, do you start right at like, why are you doing this?
Dr. Robin Hornstein
No. Not really. Okay. Okay. All right. So, let’s take a peek. Let’s take a look at the world. Right? So what I do is, it’s almost like a forensic, you know, like, look at okay, so when was the first time you thought of doing this? And what was happening? Did anybody else do it? You know, where did you learn to do it? How do you know? How did you pick, you know, like a razor blade versus scissors versus a pin versus a knife like, people use all sorts of means. So like, I want to understand when it started, which is exactly the flashpoint of when someone said, enough is enough. And then I want to go back to what enough is enough of what?
Jackie Danziger
I don’t remember the specific circumstances that led up to the first time I hurt myself. But I do know that I started with a decorative hat pin. I don’t even know why I as a teenager had a decorative hat pin. It was essentially just a big needle about the thickness of the tip of a ballpoint pen, and I just scratched back and forth on my upper arm until I bled. Over time, I turned to more efficient tools like x-acto knives and razor blades. I felt very disconnected from my body and my brain. And I had separate grievances with both. I felt very scatterbrained and grotesquely emotional. And I also just spent a lot of time feeling bad about how I looked. I come from a family of exceptionally beautiful women. And I didn’t feel like I was one of them.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
You know I remember you talking about the fact that you were like curvier than your mom and what does that mean and what do curves mean and like you know, am I fat and should I fix this, is this a problem? Instead of this is like you know, this is the shape of my body and it’s beautiful and people will like it and I have to like I live in it. This is you know where I live, but I don’t I think part of you wanted to be out of it. I think there was a dissociative quality to the cutting that helps you kind of not even feel like you were in there.
Jackie Danziger 30:06
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Robin, just won therapy bingo. When I started, I think it was just a way for me to wage war on my body. But eventually, I found a lot of power in the fact that I could just unplug from it. And I brought this private thing into my public interactions. If I found myself getting upset, I could stop myself from bursting into tears by making a fist digging my fingernails into my palms. These little tricks made me feel less weak. But eventually, it went too far.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
I specifically remember a time when you cut deeper than you thought, and you scared yourself because you didn’t feel it. And you came in. And that was when you started really slowing down like cutting maybe once a month, and really being upset about it and really negotiating with yourself. And we had contracts and we would talk about it. And I think you realize at that point that had you missed, have you gone deep enough, even deeper or gone to one side or another, you could have died, like you could have cut into an artery, you could have bled out, right? Like that was possible.
Jackie Danziger
I don’t actually remember this moment. I’m not even sure that I know which of my scars correspond to the story. But hearing it, hit me pretty hard. The thing is, I very consciously did not cut myself anywhere near my wrists. I didn’t want to get caught. And I didn’t want to be seen as a suicidal teen girl. But I do remember Robin having to explain to me that there were arteries besides your wrists. And that regardless of where he was doing it, cutting too deep could require medical attention.
Jackie Danziger
And I did not want that. Also, I just want to say that hearing this, especially listening to it again, and again, while editing the episode, I felt a little squeamish. It gave me a small taste of the discomfort that average people experienced when they think about this stuff. So, how do you talk to somebody who’s doing this to themselves without starting from that icky, uncomfortable place?
Dr. Robin Hornstein
The best way to approach any of this is with curiosity, right? Somebody is telling a story, they’re writing it on their body, you know, why are they writing it on their body? Why is this the way they’ve chosen? Are they passively suicidal? Are they merely trying to like, take away the pain by giving themselves a pain that they can focus on. And I think as long as you’re open and not judgmental about it. In general, most people are more than willing, especially teens to talk about, you know why they did it. You know, everybody wants to be known. And maybe we can call that getting caught but more to be known like I am in such pain, look what I’m doing to myself.
Jackie Danziger 32:53
Given the chance to do it again, I would not voluntarily choose to be found out in a Macy’s while wearing an ill-fitting tankini. But that experience did lead to me getting the help that I needed really early on. I wasn’t telegraphing it to the world just hoping that anyone would come by and save me. But I was definitely driven by this deep, deep desire for someone to see me and understand me, which is very relevant to the next piece of the story, where I as a teen started making art as a way to express myself. I did it through writing, music, theater, and unfortunately film.
Jackie Danziger
I say unfortunately because one teen movie in particular has been haunting me ever since we started this season. It is literally called Understood. And I thought it would be a really fun thought experiment to revisit it live with Stephanie Wittels Wachs. Okay, so I want to just give you as much intro as I have, which is I have not seen this movie since I was probably like 17 years old.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
All right, okay, I’m so excited to see this.
Jackie Danziger
Me too.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And it’s sort of like based on personal experience. It’s sort of inspired by your life or just your life inspired your work in a sort of general way.
Jackie Danziger
So it is a movie poking fun of the cliche that I was afraid. I would seem like.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Great, and there is a female protagonist in this movie?
Jackie Danziger
Oh, played by me. Did I not mention that?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 34:21
Oh, wow. Oh, no, you did. Oh, you’re acting in this.
Jackie Danziger
Yes. [UNCLEAR].
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Starring, directed, edited. There’s a lot going on here.
Jackie Danziger
I was always exactly the person I am today.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Truly. We are born as we are. We are born as we are. All right. Okay, let’s see it. I’m excited. Oh, my God [UNCLEAR]
Jackie Danziger
“I live in one of those towns where everyone takes great pride and fitting into their perfect little boxes.” Okay, just set the scene a little bit. We open on a close up of a teddy bear, we recorded this whole thing in the bedroom of my friend’s little sister. So you see little league trophies, a Dixie Chicks poster, a purple butterfly painted on the wall. And then the camera pans over to a bed, where I am lying down as if in a funeral shroud covered by a canopy net and surrounded by fluffy stuffed animals.
[Stephanie laughs in background]
Jackie Danziger
I’m dressed as a stereotypical goth girl, black eyeliner, dark lipstick, I’m wearing a black tank top with holes that are held together with safety pins.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Oh, my God.
Jackie Danziger
When I leave, I’d like to be remembered as a free spirit. Independent. I’m unique. People around here don’t understand me. No one understands me. People look at me and wonder why I’m not like them. It’s because I’m better.
Jackie Danziger 36:12
But this is, you can see where it’s like oh, yeah. If this is a joke, but if it’s not a joke, it is like repellent.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Oh, it doesn’t feel like a joke to me. This doesn’t feel like a joke to me. Oh my god, I want to hold her.
Jackie Danziger
So I’ll tell you right now, this is the opposite reaction I was hoping for. Do you hear the desperation of my voice as I a 33-year-old woman try to justify the creative choices of a 16-year-old girl. The last thing I anticipated was for Stephanie to A, take this seriously and B, have empathy for this main character. The whole premise is that she’s the worst. The next few minutes of the movie are just more of this angsty teen walking around the super bright environment. Montage is juxtaposing her drafting a suicide note with her playing on a yellow swing set. PS, this part of the script really just stolen directly from Winona Ryder’s character in Beetlejuice. But then the music changes and my character Emily wraps it up.
Jackie Danziger
I say goodbye.
Jackie Danziger
And from here, things get really dark. My character pulls out a pastel jewelry box opens it up and there’s a pile of red and yellow Tylenol.
Jackie Danziger
And this is also again supposed to be funny. They’re Tylenol. Can you believe she’s gonna do this with Tylenol?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
You’re gonna kill yourself with Tylenol. You’re lining them up.
Jackie Danziger
Before taking the pills. My character calls a friend. I’m really hamming it up here.
Ronnie
Hello?
Jackie Danziger
Ronnie, I’m calling you to say but..
Jackie Danziger 38:06
The mom, played by my friend’s mother, walks in. I hang up the phone. And the mother just looks at the pills on the carpet.
Mom at Jackie’s Movie
We talked about this. Will you look at me when I’m talking to you, this is serious. What is this Tylenol? I mean, this isn’t even going to do anything. All this is going to do is damage your liver. Did you even think this through? This is just stupid. Your father? Well, we both want to talk to you. So meet us downstairs.
Jackie Danziger
I roll my eyes hang up. And then the credits roll a film by Jackie Danziger.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Okay, I have a lot of questions. One is, how did the adults respond to this suicide movie?
Jackie Danziger
People were horrified. And I could, I was like, it’s so clearly a joke. Why, like, there’s so much indication and now watching. It’s like “Oh, this is very distressing.” I’m gonna let you into my head a little bit here. What I actually found distressing was Stephanie’s reaction. I just sat through 10 excruciating minutes of what I thought was going to be fun in a dark twisty last day bread and butter kind of way. Instead, I was horrified that she was horrified.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It is the least comical thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Like I’m so distressed by it. And like the context for this is that as this is happening, you are engaging in self harm or you’re not currently?
Jackie Danziger 40:02
I think I am. I think I’m like almost sure that I am.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
How do you feel? How you feel now for you then now?
Jackie Danziger
Sad. I feel sad watching. Not even like from again like a super genuine sad of like, Oh, I feel but I feel sad to think about how the very nature of it was sort of the sad as you’re saying cry for help, but also a sense of like somebody understand the levels of meta I’m trying to like convey my feelings to you at and really being like sort of repellent. Yeah, yeah. But I will say again, the saddest part about it to me is how completely differently I saw this than everybody else. Remember that thing Robin said about me conveying sadness rather than sharing sadness.
Jackie Danziger
This watch party actually happened before that call with Robin. So I wasn’t conscious of this language yet. But a part of me clearly recognized it. Because this is the point where I start feeling emotional. I’m still sort of holding it together. But I can feel a shift. What I’m not saying clearly is, back then I thought people would be freaked out by what I was doing to myself. So I created this thing that would give me a little bit of distance, and allow us to talk about stuff in a lighter way. But instead, you seem freaked out right now. And it feels like you don’t know me at all.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Was that your actual style at the time? Also, like that’s how you like [UNCLEAR]
Jackie Danziger
No, not at all.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Oh, I need to see pictures of you.
Jackie Danziger
No, my high school style actually was annoying in a completely different way. I was like, like rainbow bright.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Interesting.
Jackie Danziger
The thing is that I’m making fun of a certain definition of sadness. That’s really it. I was making fun of performative sadness.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Right, you were making fun of performative sadness, but you were really feeling this sadness.
Jackie Danziger
Exactly. This is what was so offensive when people took it seriously, where it’s like, is this what you think of me, but I’m doing so much work to like, hide this. And it’s at this point that I realized I have completely left myself emotionally vulnerable, and Steph takes this opportunity, as any good producer really should to ask the probing questions. What was I hiding? What was going on at that time, I tell her about getting caught, how my sister struggled as a kid and her behavior when she struggled, got labeled as bad. And then she was not treated well.
Jackie Danziger 42:25
So I did everything in my power to be good. And I tried to use artmaking as a form of escape. So now making art and being good, are wrapped up in some crazy making redemption, seeking perfectionism that I bring to my work life. So when I think about like, how miserable I make everybody, half of the time where it’s like, it needs to be better, is still coming back to that initial thing of like, don’t be the bad one.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s sad. Yeah. That’s really sad. Yeah, this season has been rough for you. It’s been rough for you.
Jackie Danziger
But again, as somebody that has so many like layers of obscuring of like how am I actually feeling? I still find myself. When you say that when I say that my immediate gut reaction is and I don’t even know why. We’re just like crazy. Do you what I mean?
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yeah.
Jackie Danziger
Like that is like still, genuinely my honest reaction where it’s like, oh, my God, and I guess I’m just like, dumb.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Which is like, what the mom says, “What are you stupid” ^You think you can just like, it’s like, that’s the voice that you have internalized. It’s not only just like, I’m the bad one. But it’s like, I’m the dumb one. I’m the not good enough one. It’s all of that stuff.
Jackie Danziger
Yeah.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I mean, like, is there a version of we obviously had to do an episode on self-harm, because it’s so tethered to this topic. It’s inextricably tethered to this topic. But is there a version of this where you could have gotten away with not telling your story?
Jackie Danziger 44:16
I think that if we had done this six months ago, I totally could have done it. Like I have a tremendous amount of compartmentalizing skills in terms of like, bury this, put it here, leave it in your journal. And I just feel so completely thin skinned at this point that I actually do. I think that’s why I’m so mortified by all of it is where it’s like, oh, yes, I think there are almost all other scenarios of making this season that I could have gone through without saying it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Have you made another thing other than understood, that puts you and your experience as the central character, like, is this understood too? That we’re making here but actually, the real story?
Jackie Danziger
Maybe? Apparently? Certainly not intentionally.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Okay, here’s my question that I asked everyone at the end of an interview. What are you doing to take care of yourself today?
Jackie Danziger
I’m go work friend. No, I should, I probably should like leave my house for a minute.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Yeah, go take a walk.
Jackie Danziger
I did take a walk. I actually reached out to a friend. Had a great conversation about how I was feeling and how she related and empathized. I did all the things that usually snap me out of the funk. And yet, the funk remained. And now’s the time to tell you that we set out to frame the story about how I’m this hopeful example of what works. But like every other part of the episode, it did not go as planned. A lot happened between the closet talk in September where I was already feeling tender. And the watch party in December, where I am totally exposed. And all along the way, I stopped doing all the everyday things that really helped me.
Jackie Danziger 46:04
Journaling in the morning, working out, eating well, seeing people in person, etc, etc, etc. I’m sure you all have your own list of shit that has fallen to the wayside. But abandoning my routine, continuing to spend all my time working on very intense material while also looking at myself under a microscope. As Wilma said, in season one, I started to feel like I was walking around without skin, I cried into a microphone a lot.
Wilma
“I’m so shocked by how sad this is.”
Jackie Danziger
“I’m not at the point where I can think about it without getting emotional.”
Wilma
“I look back at this as like such a good, important positive moment of growth for me.”
Jackie Danziger 46:43
Everything just felt like it was spiraling out of control in the same way that it used to feel when I cut. Only, I don’t do that anymore. So after the break, I try a different approach to that same old feeling.
Jackie Danziger
We’re back. Now, watch party was a turning point. And it happened just hours before my interview with Robin, which was supposed to be this joyous reunion, where I get to thank her and let her see how far I’ve come. But now it was like “Dear Robin, I regret to inform you that I am currently insane. I’ve made no progress since our time together. And I’ve welcomed you here for my impromptu intervention.”
Dr. Robin Hornstein
First of all feelings are feelings, they’re fine. Every feeling is a feeling and you’re allowed to have all of them. And then there’s the reaction to the feeling and what we do with that pause we take before we act, right? There’s a reaction, then there’s an action. And if the feeling leads to a distortion about yourself, we have to lean in to like, say that some not true. Like, are there elements that may be, may be, sure. But you know, is it true that everyone hates me? Is it true that I’m ugly? Is it true?
Dr. Robin Hornstein 48:02
And all the feelings that like people have it’s the human condition that people have those feelings, and especially people who are highly sensitive, or people who get depressed or people who have bipolar or like ADHD or if you put all that together. You know, somebody who’s anxious, they tell themselves a story. And then they buy the story. And then they don’t like themselves instead of just saying, well, that was a big feeling. So why is that [UNCLEAR]
Jackie Danziger
Can you talk about what you mean, when you say a highly sensitive person I have like the two understandings of it. One is as a woman, when someone says “Oh my gosh, you’re so sensitive” where you immediately [UNCLEAR] hey, it’s like, “Oh, that’s a bad thing. And then there’s the actual idea of a highly sensitive person, as it’s related to psychology, can you just break them down a little bit more?
Dr. Robin Hornstein
Sure, there is nothing worse as a feminist than hearing somebody say “You’re so sensitive” And that is, right? That’s terrible. And I agree with you. No, the idea of a highly sensitive person is somebody who actually is someone high in empathy. And in that empathy, it is really hard to find the boundary between themselves and other people. And so they feel they can pick up other people’s emotions, they sense them, they try to fix them, heal them as much as you did when you thought you should fix your whole family, right? When you were younger. And they’re not somebody who can just kind of flick away, you know, a feeling easily they are really they need to chew on it and understand it, and they may sometimes be picking up and carrying other people’s emotions for them.
Jackie Danziger
So obviously, this is relatable. I’m easily influenced by what I see other people feeling. Take the watch party. When Stephanie looked worried for me, I felt worried for me. This might also be why no matter how much I fight it, working on the season has been emotionally draining. And all of this relates back to something that Janis said to me during our first meeting together.
Dr. Janis Whitlock
A lot of people that I met who struggled with self-injury and all those things related to it. Those people tend to be very, they’re very sensitive like they have. And by that I don’t mean vulnerable. I mean, they have antenna, emotion antenna, energy antenna, like they just pick it up from the environment and inside themselves. So they, and it’s a gift. We say this is a gift. It’s just, we don’t have, we don’t help people know how to work with that. And they often end up feeling weird, alone, wrong. I mean, I’m sure you know, like lots of stuff. But the reality is, you have extra perception.
Jackie Danziger 50:39
When I’m taking care of myself, my so-called antenna pick up on things that are really helpful. I can be insightful and proactive. Because I learned to anticipate conflicts early on. I always have a backup plan to a backup plan, which makes me valued at work. But when I’m feeling exhausted or overwhelmed, I still pick up on all the emotional cues from every direction, but I do not process them accurately. And when that happens, the distorted story starts to replay itself again and again. And this year, and highjacked another slightly distorted story that I’ve been telling myself.
Jackie Danziger
I had really had a very tidy narrative of who I was and where I am now. Which was really, I was very angsty as a teen. Nothing really was going on. But I just was so sad because I was sad. And I was artsy. And I used to cut because I was just so frustrated, and I had all these really big feelings. But then eventually I was diagnosed with ADHD. And I realized that what I had experienced as sadness and depression was really frustration that I couldn’t like get what was in my head out into the world, and I couldn’t like achieve what I thought was going to be good. And therefore I could never feel accomplished enough because I was never going to be able to make it work. And then once I figured that out, and I spent a few years developing my coping skills, I was able to start on my journey.
Jackie Danziger
And now I am here. It was so lovely. And it was like, surely I’m not done. And I’m always going to be a work in progress. And I’m still in therapy. But it does, it didn’t have to be so bad. Then, talking to all of these people for the season, and hearing what the root cause of some of these, these really big issues. And these are people who have been hospitalized had suicide attempts, things that because they weren’t in my story, the further away I got from them, the more it was able to then diminish the things that were in my story was like, ah, I don’t think I have something in common with someone who’s been hospitalized multiple times.
Jackie Danziger 52:35
And yet, when I hear how they think of themselves, that’s exactly how I thought about myself. And maybe there’s still a part of me that feels that way. And that was really shocking, because I didn’t, I really did think that I had like put that far enough away through therapy through good work. And therefore, it wasn’t, it wasn’t here anymore. And realizing that it still is a part of me has been very, very emotional. I’ve like cried many times while making the show.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
I bet. I bet. And I think part of the tears that we have when we identify with something we either longed for or we identify with is that the story we have working on it doesn’t mean it’s a new story, right? Our story of our lives. First of all, it’s incredible. And it’s who makes us it’s what makes us who we are. But we always I think no human gets through life without longing for a different story. And I think sometimes people do all the work in therapy or they go into spirituality or they go into like, they’re big meditators. And they think I’m rising above instead of no; I’m living alongside and with my story.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
And there are moments that it’ll be accessible to me and I’ll remember it and other moments where I get you know, I use the buzzword of like the life that we are in now triggered and suddenly it’s like shit, oh, wait a minute. I thought that was gone. And no, it shows it just you know, it’s like a song on in a jukebox. It can play again and maybe somebody else pushes the button and plays it.
Jackie Danziger
Here’s the thing about the mental health jukebox, there are only so many songs. Sometimes they’re happy. Other times they’re really sad. This last year has felt like the same sad song played so many times that the record has warped. This brings back one of the original questions that Stephanie asked me on the closet call, but I couldn’t answer for myself. Was I actively suicidal back then? And if so, is it just a matter of time before that button gets pushed again?
Dr. Robin Hornstein
I think you were passive. I don’t think you were actively wanting to die. I think you had so many dreams and clearly you’re realizing something then you know now you’ve got this job you love and you know. You want it to be somebody and you want it to be noticed and you want it to be admired and loved and safe and secure. And I think those things kept you going you. I don’t remember you ever saying, you know, I stole like 200 Librium. You know, like, I’m gonna do this, that was not how I saw you.
Jackie Danziger
When I think about it for me it was, I want to achieve these things. I’m just like real dream that I want to do. But I think I could probably do it. But by the time I’m 28, and I can’t imagine myself living past 30. I just couldn’t imagine myself as like, an adult. Which I think is also why I felt so emotional while producing this, where it’s like, oh, my gosh, I’m living a life that I never could have conceived of when I was a student.
Jackie Danziger
In some ways, also, like, I think this experience has been challenging for me, because I do feel so grateful for my life. There’s this part of me, like I said, that feels threatened by how sad this feels. Do you know what I mean? So that I feel so well. And now to feel this emotional is like, Oh, am I not? Am I not well? It’s scary to then realize I’m still like, that there’s any part of that darkness still there. If that makes sense.
Dr. Robin Hornstein 56:03
But there’s always darkness, right? There’s no life on. I’m not sure people who live in the light all the time are living a fully identified life, right? And it’s sad. And it’s scary. And I’m I see, obviously, you have feelings about it. And, you know, I don’t think it’ll ever. It doesn’t sound like it’s acting out against you, right? It’s just that you can touch that well of sadness and loneliness that you used to have so deeply. And that’s part of what makes you. And it also is part of what makes us human, in general is being able to carry those broken parts, along with how well we are.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
They stay, and they’re there, but they’re not leading us. They’re just there. And if we can honor them, and take care of them when they show up there and less like little younger parts of ourselves that might show up and get tapped. And we’re like, okay, so how do I take care of myself now, when I didn’t know how to take care of myself then, maybe that part needs nurturing.
Jackie Danziger
In some ways, it’s been pretty embarrassing to realize that I’m still holding on to parts of my younger self. I wanted to erase the stressed-out kid who would cry at the drop of the hat, and the chaotic teen girl who self-destructed because it felt like they stood in the way of the happy and successful adult that I want to be. Of course, obviously, we’re all the same person. The biggest difference is I do know how to take care of myself today in a way that I didn’t back then. Even now, I’m in the middle of a pandemic, and in the aftermath of a violent insurrection, and whatever else is going to happen between now and the time this comes out. When everything feels unmanageable. I manage.
Jackie Danziger
But my magic formula is profoundly unmagical. When I need a good cry or a good laugh. I watch cartoons, usually Steven Universe, I bother my husband, I call my mom, I dance in the kitchen to music while brewing coffee. My friend’s babies were the MVPs of 2020, I lived for a little video of them being adorable. For me, it was never really about physical pain. It was about finding a release valve for all the big emotions that I bottle up. And I would love to tell you that I am meeting that need by working out at 5AM every morning, but I’m not. I’m doing it with a bunch of really silly shit. But it is progress. And it’s progress that I started a long time ago.
Jackie Danziger 58:27
I cannot believe the number of people I’ve talked to for the show who say that they never went to therapy until they were in their 30s. And I can’t imagine how my life would be different if that was true for me. So I feel like meeting you when I was 14. I’ll never forget you giving me Patti Smith CDs on my birthday. Like it just was a very profound experience to say that I could be a different kind of woman and I could be whatever I wanted to be. And I do feel like that started when I was 14 when I met you.
Dr. Robin Hornstein
Jackie, it was my privilege to know you and work with you. You really, I like you were such a diamond and didn’t know it. And it was such a pleasure to be able to like help you along the way. And I thank you. I mean, brought tears to my eyes when you just said that I really enjoyed working with you and I love getting to connect with you again and seeing you at work.
Jackie Danziger
Here’s the truth. Sometimes I feel like a diamond and sometimes I really don’t. You can be who you want and still be sad. The go to way for me to deal with that is still to tell stories and make things, only hopefully, this is not understood the sequel. My character in this episode is not a repellent version of me designed to push people away. It’s been a really, really sad year. And for once I thought rather than conveying sadness, I tried to just share what it sounds like to actually be sad. And you know what? Now that I have, I feel better
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 1:00:05
Next week, the intersection of addiction and suicide
Speaker 5
Being me was too much. Like the combo that I got to was bourbon and benzos, which I was talking about that it immediately went to him in some person who was really new was like, that not a fun combination at all. I was like, No, no, it’s not fun. It’s oblivion. It’s just you blackout immediately. And that’s kind of what I was looking for. Yeah, I just didn’t want to exist.
CREDITS
LAST DAY is a production of Lemonada Media. Our supervising producer is Jackie Danziger. Associate producers are Giulia Hjort and Claire Jones. Technical Director is Kegan Zema. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and me Stephanie Wittels Wachs. We are so thrilled to partner with the JED foundation this season and grateful for all their wisdom and support. You can find them online at @JEDfoundation. And you can find more mental health resources at jedcares.org/lastday. If you want to hear more LAST DAY, we have an entire first season. Please go listen to that wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re there, please write us a review, rate the show and subscribe if you have not done so already. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia, and you can find me at @wittelstephanie. I will see you, next week.
