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“People loved my mother. She nearly killed me.” With that stark paradox, we open a story that refuses easy answers. Sadie Green grew up in rural Minnesota with a cleft palate that required surgeries and a mother who was celebrated by neighbors while inflicting severe, escalating abuse at home. Decades later, Sadie returns to the pages she wrote in her thirties—memories captured during a winter of solitude—to understand how fear is rooted in her body and how fear has shaped her relationships and sense of self.

We move between lived memory and documented fact: hospital notes from the University of Minnesota, five surgeries paid for by proud parents with little money, and a rare removal from the home in 1970.

Pam and Sadie examine the nature of memory, why doubt is normal for survivors, and how evidence—medical records, witnesses, removal—can steady a story but not remove the doubt that family denial thrives on.

If you value survivor-led storytelling and conversations that make space for complexity, press play and stay with us as the series unfolds with new episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe, share this episode, or leave a review with one takeaway that stayed with you.

Special Thanks to our supporters, who have made this podcast possible.

• Lucy Mathews Heegaard: Audio Engineer
  • with music via Epidemic Sound
• Terry Gydesen: Photographer

• Polly Kellogg
• Kate Tillotson
• Dawn Charbonneau
• Jacob Wyatt
• Molly Tillotson
• Julian Bowers
• Wendy Horowitz
• Pat Farrell
• Lynette Tabert
• Laura Jensen
• People's Farm Collective
• Deborah Copperud of "Spock Talk" podcast