Title:

Episode 10: The Shoot

Description:

After months of surviving courtrooms, exchanges, and silence, I stepped back into the world. I started protesting. I worked with an artisan boutique. And then—I did a photoshoot. Just jeans, a bra, and a jacket.

This episode is about what it felt like to be seen again. To reclaim my body. To remember who I was before the losses piled up.

It was the night I met Eddie.

His motorcycle got stuck in the sand.

Me and the girls pushed it out while he stayed seated.

I didn’t realize it then, but that moment told me everything.

Themes:

• Post-separation trauma
• Maternal identity
• Re-emergence and reclaiming visibility
• Emotional labor and early red flags
• Female embodiment and truth-telling

Content Warning:

This episode includes themes of maternal grief, emotional imbalance in early relationships, and the subtle beginnings of control. If that feels too close today, come back when you’re ready. No pressure.

After the driveway exchange, I didn’t feel strong. I felt broken. In this episode, I talk about what came next—what it looked like to survive the aftermath. The grief that settled into my bones. The rage I never expected. The stories that were told about me while I was fighting every day just to keep going. And the moment I started reclaiming my voice.

This story is for every mother who’s been misjudged. For every woman carrying her pain in silence. And for anyone who’s ever had to rebuild from the rubble.

Themes:

• Post-separation abuse
• Maternal grief and trauma
• Emotional recovery
• Identity and reclaiming power
• Family estrangement
• Surviving legal and systemic injustice
• Turning points in healing

Content Warnings:

This episode contains sensitive content including references to emotional distress, maternal rage, post-separation abuse, and the grief of losing custody. If you’re not ready to hear those themes today, that’s okay. Come back when you’re ready. No urgency, no shame.

They weren’t even allowed to cry.

Sometimes it was their father putting hands on Ash.

Sometimes it was their grandmother threatening to send them to their room if they showed any emotion.

So I stopped saying goodbye in the driveway.

This episode is about the violence of drop-offs, and how I learned to reroute love — how I started pulling over a few blocks away just so we could have a moment to hug, to say hello, to say goodbye. Because the driveway wasn’t safe. But I could still create something that was.

It’s also about the road trips, the exhaustion, the music, the Ohio hotel with the water park — and how I mothered in the margins of what was left to me.

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In this episode:

• Emotional abuse at drop-off
• Creating safety through routine and ritual
• Road trip traditions: hotel stops, goodie bags, and Johnny Cash
• Grieving a life you’re still building
• Loving children through state lines and silences

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Start from Episode 1 to understand the full story. Each chapter builds on the last.

Don’t Call Me is written and hosted by Em.

There’s a lot I don’t remember from that time. That’s how trauma works — it fogs the details and burns the feelings in sharp.

But I remember this: I used my rent money to rent a car. Drove straight to Rochester. Brought my babies home for the summer. And for six weeks, we lived.

We swam. We hiked. We drew all over each other with markers. They made friends. They got dirty. We built new traditions. I set up bedrooms for each of them, so they’d know they always had a space — that this was their home, too.

I got them into counseling even though I wasn’t “allowed” to. Because I knew what they’d been through. I knew what they were still holding.

This episode is about the cost of reclaiming joy, and why even six weeks of freedom can change a life.

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In this episode:

• Reclaiming motherhood during summer
• The trauma of custody exchanges
• Loving children through manipulation and grief
• Creating joy in the cracks of pain
• Counseling as resistance
• What it means to give children a sense of home

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Start from Episode 1 to follow the full story. Each chapter builds on the last.

Don’t Call Me is written and hosted by Em.

I was finally in a home that felt peaceful. Coffee on the porch. Open fields. A friend who saw me as human.

And still, I was losing my children in real time.

This episode is about what it means to be a mother completely shut out — while still very much alive. It’s about decisions made behind my back. My own family working with my ex to enroll my daughter in a private school she wasn’t ready for, letting my five-year-old ride a four-wheeler, ignoring everything I tried to say.

They didn’t protect her. They didn’t protect me. They just wanted things to look okay.

And I’m still grieving what they did to those kids.

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In this episode:

• The unraveling of motherhood in plain sight
• Family betrayal and emotional abandonment
• The grief of watching your children’s needs be ignored
• The fight over school enrollment
• What people mean when they say “healing takes time” — and what they miss

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Start from Episode 1 to understand the full context. This isn’t just my story — it’s the silence so many mothers live inside.

Don’t Call Me is written and hosted by Em.

I didn’t want to go back to work. The thought of someone asking what happened… of trying to explain where I’d been, why I looked hollow, why I flinched when people were too kind… made me sick.

But I went.

And that’s where I met Ann. The kind of person who doesn’t just see you, she stays. This episode is about learning how to accept help without bracing for the backlash. It’s about Jeep rides with the top off, off-key karaoke therapy, and the moment I started to believe I could be loved without owing anything back.

Because sometimes the first real healing begins when someone simply hands you a ride and expects nothing in return.

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In this episode:

• Returning to work while still deep in trauma
• The fear of being asked what happened
• Building trust through friendship
• The emotional toll of being estranged from your children
• Learning to receive help without fear
• Why Ann mattered

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Start from the beginning of the season for the full story. Each episode builds on the last.

Don’t Call Me is written and hosted by Em.

Episode 6: The Year I Started Counting

Before the shelter, there was David’s couch. Panic attacks in my sleep. A body that refused rest because the world wasn’t safe anymore.

This episode walks through what survival actually looked like — not the hashtags, but the night sweats, the silence, the isolation, and the decision to rebuild anyway.

I share what it meant to sleep in a loft bed in a studio apartment, grateful just to own a microwave again. I talk about student loans as survival, Shakespeare as a mirror, and what it meant when Roz handed me a birthday gift in the shelter and told me to celebrate every year I survived. I do now. Every year. Because I’m still here.

I talk about the kids. What it cost them to stay in touch with me. Why I backed away. And how it feels to carry the weight of building a future no one was willing to believe in.

If you’ve ever been the one rebuilding while people pretended you never existed — this one’s for you.

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Content:

• Panic attacks, trauma response
• Life in a domestic violence shelter
• Rebuilding from nothing
• Estrangement from family and children
• Abuse of narrative and power
• Birthdays as survival markers

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Listen from the beginning of the season for the full story. These episodes are layered and connected.

Don’t Call Me is written and hosted by Em.

In this episode, Em unpacks what it felt like to shave her head in the wake of assault—how something that began as sacred and freeing slowly turned isolating. People looked at her like she was unwell, like she was dangerous. What began as power became proof against her in the eyes of others.

Even the wig she wore for protection didn’t soften the stares. When the investigator from Child Protective asked why she shaved her head—and why she played with her wig—Em expected judgment. But instead, she felt seen. The woman already knew. She recognized the trauma pouring out of Em’s body, and she asked not to accuse—but to understand.

This episode follows Em’s decision to leave New York, after being disbelieved by her family and discarded by a system that claimed to protect. She stayed through Christmas, hoping for some thread of belonging to appear. It didn’t. After the new year, she returned to Illinois and, by late January, moved into a women’s shelter.

This is a story about the loneliness of being holy, the betrayal of those who needed you to be quiet, and the long road back to safety.

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those not responsible for harm.

Topics in this episode include:

• The sacred act of shaving one’s head after trauma
• Alienation, shame, and reclaiming appearance as armor
• Being seen by one woman who understood—without judgment
• Family denial and redefinition of sexual assault
• Leaving behind everything to survive in a women’s shelter

Trigger Warning:

This episode discusses sexual assault, trauma responses, familial betrayal, and the experience of living in a shelter. Please listen with care.

🎙 Don’t Call Me is available wherever you get your podcasts.

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