248: What if an invisible disease blew up your life?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I'm facing the mirror and I'm having these catastrophic images of how my life has just changed in this moment. Who am I and what just happened in my life? How am I going to take care of myself? How am I going to see the world?

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 248. What if an invisible disease blew up your life?

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I am from a more rural town of Minnesota, about 30 minutes west of Minneapolis. I grew up in a town of about 5,000 people. My parents both came from growing up in Minneapolis in large Catholic families.

My mother really wanted to get out of her circumstances. My grandfather, her father did not think women should have an education or drive. And she took the route of determining that she needed an education. And she's put herself into school.

My mom was like the quintessential bombshell. 5'8", Icelandic, blonde, blue eyes, beautiful features of high cheekbones. And I think my dad really saw her as a prize, as a status symbol. And he kind of put his foot down on that early. And I think she was not even 20 or close to 20 when they got engaged.

The marriage was a catalyst to get her out of a toxic home environment because her parents' drinking had escalated quite a bit.

My mother really wanted a big family. I think she really wanted to reconcile and resolve this pattern of abuse. She even started a grassroots nonprofit to support people who are suffering from domestic abuse. So I think she really wanted to change this ancestry, and she thought she could do it through having a large family and then becoming an educator. She has her master's in early childhood development.

From the outside world, my family was probably perceived as kind of a golden family. We had a beautiful home on an expensive lake, nice cars and boats. And so from the outside, it appeared that we had it all. But on the inside, there were so many mixed messages that lent to feelings of instability and chaos.

I lived with the threat of eruption of argument or anger, more specifically from my father. I lived with this unsafety that something was going to happen or I was going to do something that I couldn't predict that would set him off or set off a series of arguments that make you feel unsafe.

My grandmother would say things to me like, I don't know what's wrong with you. Your brother and your sister are my favorites. Often she would say to me after drinking, you're the birth from hell.

That messaging is really something that has taken me a lot of therapy and years to break down and realize it had nothing to do with me. But as a small child, you really internalize that, that there's something wrong with you. As a child, I was incredibly imaginative. I was artistic. I was just expressive and I was emotional.

As an early child, I felt that I was perceived as kind of a super artsy, overly emotional, not intelligent child. And I felt very alone as a child. I felt very separate. Like I was a nuisance and an inconvenience. I never felt that anybody wanted to spend time with me. My emotions were too much.

Why do I have these feelings of being lonely no matter how many friends I have? All these boxes seem to be checked, yet I don't feel great. And the reality is that your tiny brain can't make logic of it, right? My little brain used blaming myself. I was incompetent. I was a nuisance. I was overly emotional. To make logic of chaos...

The role that I stepped into because of that was the fixer and the caretaker. Whether that's change everybody's mood or go take care of something that people are spinning on. Wanting everybody to be happy and everybody to feel safe. Wanting to be a people pleaser. Anything that goes wrong, I take on. The most

detrimental way that these beliefs and these patterns manifested in me were my relationships with men. I ended up in an incredibly abusive physically, mentally, and emotionally relationship. And I was ripe for the pickin'. I was insecure. I wasn't ready. And it is such a slow burn. This programming of control slowly coming in.

By the end of my senior year, it went from little control tactics and isolation from my friends to more extreme and violent.

I was physically held down a lot, being strangled until I passed out. I was physically tortured a lot, being kicked to the floor and told I'm a worthless bitch and told I couldn't leave this person because if I did, they felt worthless and they would kill themselves.

I just felt trapped. And I didn't have the mechanism in me to get up and leave at that point. I shut down. And I went in. And I isolated. And I held that secret and those experiences so tight to me because I thought they were a reflection of me and who I was for so long.

That pattern keeps getting repeated in every relationship. I always felt inadequate. And I found that I picked people whose tanks were kind of empty like mine. And so unhealthy patterns just form themselves.

From a very early age, I was always interested in art and I was always creative. It was always there for me and it was always a skill or a talent that I had and I was praised for it. So it was something that I wanted to cultivate because I didn't feel praised for much. I didn't feel that I had a lot of skills.

I literally see the world in so much color and so much texture. It's so beautiful to me. It's so rich. It's so magical. And so to be able to look at something and then create something and go through this process of letting how I perceive it and how I experience and how it feels to me to come out of me is refuge and it's beauty and it's mine.

It was a safe and a happy place for me. And it was a place of my own.

And so I went on to study art in just the University of Minnesota. And so I was just waitressing, painting and doing this internship. And then very quickly had work in a photo studio for a major department store, which like opened this window into a whole world that I had no idea existed. And it was magical. And all these creative people would come together to make these things happen.

managing budgets and managing personalities and writing schedules. So this very left brain part of me was tapped into.

In my 20s, I was much more carefree than I was in my 30s. I was super social. I loved to party. I was always having a good time. And within my early to mid 30s, I was very successful and I've developed through it and I've changed. I've evolved. I've moved up and I'm good at it, but it detracts. It detracts from that personal art time.

In my mid to late 30s, I never had had a successful relationship. I felt that not being partnered or finding a partner to have children with really reflected my value. And so I really buried my head in working as much as I could and having as many clients and projects as I could and being good at it. And it imploded. Yeah.

I was over capacity and I was stressed out and I had spent years beating myself up thinking I failed and I got sick. I got a really bad respiratory flu-like infection that doctors kind of don't really know what it was, but I was really sick. I had a trip planned to Nicaragua with a friend. We were going to go to surf camp.

I was lethargic through it, but feeling better. And she ended up leaving to go home and I went on to travel by myself. And I went scuba diving there. And I met two friends from Israel at my hostel and they encouraged me to play cards with them and drink rum. And we ended out at a club and sitting on the beach at three in the morning.

The next day I woke up and it was like I was looking through horizontal plastic blinds in my right eye almost. And I've always had 20-20 vision.

At first I thought like, am I, is this a weird hangover thing? But it wasn't going away. So there was supposedly an island doctor that no one could find. And so I started calling doctors at home and they were concerned that my retina was detaching. So stress escalated at this point because there's like one boat a day to get off the island.

But I got back to mainland, to Managua and Nicaragua, and I went to probably the most advanced eye clinic in the city. That doctor asked if she could take a special scan of my eye. And right after it was done, she told me I needed to go to the hospital because it wasn't my eye that was the issue, it was my brain. My optic nerve was inflamed and it was on my brain and there was a neurologist waiting for me at this hospital.

I spent three days in the hospital there being treated with IV prednisone. And the doctor there arrogantly, prematurely diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis.

I've been told I have multiple sclerosis. And then I'm just being wheeled off to these tests and I'm pushed into an elevator. And there's a mirror there and I'm facing the mirror. And I'm having these catastrophic images of how my life has just changed in this moment. Who am I and what just happened to my life? And what's going to happen to me? How am I going to take care of myself? How am I going to see the world?

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After leaving the hospital in Nicaragua, I immediately seek care within the United States to determine if I actually have multiple sclerosis or not and what is the cause of my optic neuritis attack, which an optic neuritis attack is an autoimmune response. And they can just be an autoimmune response and happen once or twice and never happen again.

In order to diagnose multiple sclerosis, people have to have more than one marker. So those markers can be lesions on the brain, they can be certain types of relapses like optic neuritis or paralysis.

I was going through all this testing to try to see if there were multiple markers that would lead to the diagnosis of MS. But I don't currently present any other side effects or symptoms of demyelinating diseases, and I don't test positive or register in my blood.

And according to my doctors at the Mayo, I am one of 30 known patients in the world that present the way that I do, whose nerves inflame in the same way and that we don't have those markers. So how we present and how our symptoms are of the attacks and how the nerve inflames is very distinct. I don't present normally and I don't have other symptoms or side effects. So how do we categorize me and therefore treat me successfully?

That was the kickoff for this five and a half year journey that I've been on with this invisible disease that no one can diagnose. My symptoms of my attack have always been very subtle. It's a little bit of upper eye soreness, especially when I look up or look down, but it's distinct. And it's a change in my vision.

So I'll notice like a bubble cloud in my vision or a blurriness or like saran wrap over part of my vision or something's darker. Like I just kind of wake up with a little bit of eye pain and a vision change and then I know I'm having an attack. Then I call a doctor and then it's like emergency rush to try to get me in and to get treatment as fast as possible because the longer it goes untreated, the more probability that I will have permanent vision loss.

While the symptoms of the attacks are mild, the implications are large. If I were not to get treated and I just let the attacks go and let it run its own course, the damage to my optic nerve could be greater and therefore more vision loss because the longer the nerve is inflamed, the thinner the nerve gets and the less it can function.

But the treatments that they use to potentially bring down inflammation as quickly as possible, hoping that there brings some recovery in vision, there's no guarantee, are debilitating. Those treatments are incredibly hard on the body. And the aftermath of that and the side effects from that are horrific and catastrophic and can take me months to recover from.

I literally just wake up and there's a vision change and then all of a sudden my entire universe is flipped upside down again because I'm rushing to the hospital to go on a medication or a treatment that causes me post-traumatic stress. It's like walking over the threshold into hell but knowing that if you don't, I could be blind. This is terrifying because I don't know when it's going to happen.

I'm looking to these doctors who are the best of the best. And I know that they want to help me, but they don't know. No one knows. At the end of the day, these decisions are my own to make. And I don't know if they're right. And I just have to be like, I did my best to save my vision. I don't want to, and I can't imagine my world going dark again.

I am terrified of not being able to see color. I'm sad and I grieve the idea of not being able to see more parts of the world or see people's faces. I know that people who lose a sense live very fulfilled lives, but the idea of losing your sight, I would learn, but right now I don't know how I would navigate the world.

I work in a visual industry. I'm freelance. I don't have an employer. I don't know what I would do for work. I don't know how I would support myself. I'm on my own. And sort of that picture of dependency is scary for me. So I was 38 years old when I met this man.

I really initially perceived it as like a fling and it was just fun for me. And it was a nice little, you know, boost to my ego after I'd been through all this crap. He painted a picture that he was very into and ready for the idea of having a future with me. But there was always this part of me that was just not buying it and not totally feeling it. That gut instinct was always there.

But I started to open up and let my guard down to the idea that there may be a potential with this person. One night, we were on a little island, and one night we went to this romantic dinner, and I just really felt compelled to lay it all out there.

He had been projecting to me that we were monogamous and physically monogamous. And he came back with, like, I see you as somebody who could be in my future. And he maybe believed him at the time, but it wasn't really who he was. This person was having a lot of unprotected sex with a lot of people in different parts of the country.

So there was just an incredible amount of deception. He was playing out the role of the man that he thought he should be in the relationship that he thought he should be in and denying who he actually was. And I just happened to be the roadkill in that story. So at one juncture, I confronted him.

He said, I apologize for lying and I apologize for this. And his last one was, I apologize for being malicious. And this ripped me open.

I was completely broken by the idea that he knew that I had been coming out of this horrible health scare that was triggered by stressors. And I had just gotten some control and clarity and feeling good. And then I was a wreck. I was lost. I went everywhere and every which way to feel better and to heal. And so I was just in these layers of trauma. And that stress triggered my second attack.

I had this attack and I was then again railroaded with an insane amount of prednisone and anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, depression. You have extreme fatigue, but you can't sleep. You have brain fog. You have tremors. You have stomach issues. You stutter. The list goes on.

I didn't trust anything or anybody. I didn't trust myself. I had gone from a woman who had traveled to probably 20 countries by herself to having trouble walking to the grocery store that was two and a half blocks away that I had been going to for a decade.

My third, fourth, and fifth attacks were in such a condensed timeframe that the reality became that if I don't figure this out or get a handle on it, I will go blind and I will go blind much more quickly than I had ever anticipated.

And I do have a friend who did go blind in his 40s due to undiagnosed optic neuritis attacks. So it's hard to live with this sort of ominous threat that so much could be taken away from me. And that's a dark tunnel.

There is a high correlation between people who have autoimmune disorders and people who have adverse childhood experiences or what is known as ACEs. Anyone who scores more than a two with ACEs, there is a correlation with autoimmune disorders and more so specifically in women.

The thought behind this correlation is that when you are growing up or when you're being developed or hardwired in an environment that is chaotic or there are constant feelings of being unsafe, it wires the body to eventually learn to attack itself.

Thinking back to my childhood, even though it appeared that things were very normal, white, upper-middle-class American family, and the perception was that all my needs were being met, there was a level of stress in my household that was high all the time.

your flight and fight mechanisms, they don't respond appropriately because you're experiencing inappropriate situations. So I think that my body's internal stress response system got thrown out of whack. And I've done many years of PTSD therapy, and I've used things like acupuncture and meditation and massage to get me out of that state, that fight or flight state.

But I'm very aware that through the progression of understanding my previous trauma and then coming into having this health issue, when I get into situations where I feel abandonment or instability or unsafe, my internal mechanism, my stress response system is off.

My second attack was after being violated by a person I was dating. My third attack was right after I was told I needed to move out of my apartment in the beginning of the pandemic within, you know, five to six weeks. My fourth attack happened after I purchased a home and the person that I purchased the home from breached purchase agreement and tried to break into the home and wouldn't give me my keys and harassed me.

And then my last attack, I was dealing with the stress of a family member who was in crisis and the expectation was that I resolve and take care of that chaos. So these attacks are caused when I'm in a space of feeling unsafe or not being able to take care of myself.

Around this period, my friend Sarah had bought this blow-up doll off of Amazon to play a practical joke on her sister. I borrowed it and I actually took it to a cabin and scared my friends with it over the weekend. And I ended up buying my own doll.

I just literally started to play with them and use them to scare people, not just at this cabin, but then like back at home. I remember my friend was coming over to go run and she would always use the bathroom before we go running. So I put them on my toilet, scared the shit out of her. It was sort of this tool that could pull me out of like sort of the trauma and the weight of the moment. It was just this playful levity thing. And we ended up taking Raphael to Mexico for the weekend for my 40th birthday.

I think my friend actually had named hers Raphael and I carried on the name Raphael, but for some reason I was always very specific about spelling his name with an F. And I learned that Raphael spelled specifically with an F means God or angel of healing. Raphael started to sort of appear as this counter character who brought levity and who was a safe man who

It drew me back out of being afraid. It drew me back out of not trusting anything. It brought my joy, my playfulness back, my innocence. Raphael definitely took a pause in my life as I started to heal and come out of that. He sort of disappeared and was very rarely brought out and put in the drawer again.

When the pandemic really blew up, my health was good. I hadn't had an attack in about two years. And I was feeling healthy and I was taking care of myself. And I nested into this idea of staying home. And I started to sort of like literally and metaphorically clean out every single drawer in my house and in my life. And I found Raphael.

I pulled them out and I blew them up and I put them at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee. And I wrote this Instagram post about how I empathize with people at this time, because I had gone through this before, sort of this idea of knowing about our health and our future, not knowing what's going to happen with our employment or our income. But it wasn't just me that couldn't go to concerts or see friends or couldn't get out of bed or leave my house. It was the whole world.

So I wrote this first post and then sporadically Raphael started to show up in my Instagram with just more narratives and his personality was starting to form. He already was the symbol of levity and playfulness that I needed when things felt insurmountable.

But when he came out the second time, he really started to evolve and he really started to go from being like a prop for fun and playfulness to this presence every day in my life to help me navigate the difficulty that everyone was facing. He just became my man.

I work in the Minneapolis advertising community and certain creatives latched on to this concept. They latched on to Raphael and so they would send me private messages about him or ask questions or give suggestions on what he should do or they'd email me something and then he'd say, how's Raphael today? And so his personality and his life sort of started to form

And he became real and a character. And it was so fun. It was so fun to watch other people embrace it. And Raphael takes on whatever they need him to be.

Having Raphael was a window and a door and an opportunity into this part of me, this creative, liberated, playful, unexpected part of me. I'm living through some really uncomfortable things that people do not like to talk about. And Raphael is kind of like the rebellious fuck you to that because like a plastic man in a Speedo can say what we're thinking and it's

Have it not be so strange or weird or uncomfortable because he's uncomfortable. He's weird. He's not anatomically correct. He wears a Speedo. He's got crazy eyes and a permagrant. He's a mirror. I have to look at things that I don't want to necessarily deal with or questions that I don't necessarily want to ask because I don't have the answers for them.

Raphael is all the bits and pieces of myself that I don't know how to figure out yet. I'm not ready to figure out. He's the strong pieces. He's the weak pieces. He's an extension of me. He's the stronger part of me. He's the weaker part of me. He's the more resilient part of me. He's the one with the better sense of humor. He's like a Swiss Army knife of tools.

I can let it go through him. I don't have to be hard and strong and see it right and be positive and perfect all the time just so that it doesn't make other people uncomfortable. Raphael can do all that for me.

Raphael has become my anchor. He's my safety. He's my mascot of the good things in me and that I have. Like he's real to me. I know that he's not like a walking, talking, animate person or that he's gonna come to life. But he exists in my world. I don't have a sexual relationship with him. He is literally a pool novelty toy with nothing mechanical about him.

I kind of wish that I was attracted to inanimate plastic objects because life would be a lot simpler. But yeah, no, there's nothing sexual going on here, though. A lot of people like to have fun narratives with it. But unfortunately, I'm attracted to people who are complicated and have a lot of layers and are confusing and are confused.

The whole magic that Raphael has is that he creates connectivity between people on a real level. It has nothing to do with sex. Like that is primal and it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to connect with people and to see them and to be seen.

It's interesting that I've chosen to generate a narrative and have a life in isolation with an object that is literally toxic plastic when previously in my life I've had so many toxic relationships.

But I have total control over Raphael. It's awesome to literally just put him in the closet or determine how I want this relationship to go. And I'm sure that is generated from the belief and the feeling that I don't have control over what is happening around me or to me.

But Raphael and I, we can have our dreams. We can dream of living on a yacht and swimming every day or going to pools or sailing off into the sunset. Nobody else gets to tell me that they're ridiculous because they're just mine and Raphael's. As a patient, it is very isolating and lonely. And I feel lost a lot of times, too.

It still feels very lonely and isolating. And having this extension of me and owning it and directing it and having control over it is sort of this bridge to the outside world to keep me connected to it, to keep me held down on this earth.

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I'm a woman in her 40s and I'm considered socially past my prime. I didn't get married and I didn't have kids and I don't live a traditional life. I'm kind of a vagabond. I don't like having a lot of material possessions. I move around a lot. And for so long, I felt bad about that and like guilty about it.

And then something switched in me. And I don't know if it's a hormone that kicks in in your 40s, but it's kind of the I don't give a fuck hormone. I'm tired of trying to fit into a mold of what society wants me to be as a woman. And I have gone 44 years with this idea that I wasn't adequate or weird or not right or wasn't doing enough.

And so Raphael is kind of my fuck you to that. And it's my liberation. It's time to go, okay, am I comfortable in my skin or not? And if I'm not, we got to make some changes.

Unfortunately, on my birthday, my landlord at the time, who was my friend, told me I needed to move in five weeks. And it wasn't because they hated me or wanted me out. It was because family was moving home. And it was just really unfortunate timing because that was my only safe place in the universe. And like, you couldn't even go look at apartments at the time. And I had no employment. I didn't know what I was going to do. My sense of safety imploded. And two days later, I was in the hospital with my third optic neuritis attack.

So I was then in my house feeling wiped out from a spinal tap on a crap ton of prednisone, which is like rocket fuel in the system.

And I called a friend who also happened to be the VP of new business and strategy for a small advertising agency I had worked at. And I said to her, like out of nowhere on insane amounts of prednisone, what if I made a coffee table book about Raphael and I donated $5 of each sale to helping patients like me get

She didn't hesitate and said, "We're gonna do this." I'm calling Joe, who was the president of the company. And literally within an hour, I had a kickoff meeting for this project. And the creative director of the agency called me and told me how excited he was to work with me on this.

And so this agency donated their time to design and brand my book. And it turned into this whole project where multiple vendors in Minneapolis stepped in to facilitate the production of me self-publishing this book.

So there's a whole coffee table book. It's like a diary through the first beginning months of the pandemic. And then he's taken over my Instagram account, but sometimes he allows me to post on it just as me. So we go in intervals where he just spews out his ridiculousness or he shares something about the difficulties of being a patient. Or sometimes we're on there together giving each other shit. And sometimes it's just me expressing myself. So he's there. He's active.

want to use his website and him as a platform to provide not just levity and humor, but also utilitarian tools or insights for patients. Like, how do I fight these insurance claims? How do I approach my doctor? If that resource doesn't work, where do I go? What are my options? How do I articulate myself? What can caregivers do for patients? So he

He's my reminder all the time that like in this journey I'm on, which is sometimes in crisis mode, I still have a job to do and a trajectory and a mission. And he's my mascot. I don't sell a lot of books, but the success of that book was that it literally kept me alive forever.

and kept me connected to my people when it felt like there was no hope and I was going through such a difficult and debilitating time. It's been the best thing I've ever made. Right now after my fifth attack, which took the most vision incrementally, my left eye is 20/20. I'm really fortunate.

My right eye, however, my vision gets more gooey and darker. So I have a constant sort of vibrational halo effect. So taking in visual input or light input can almost feel overwhelming. Like going into a supermarket where there's a lot of packaging and a lot of things going on is what I hate the most. It also messes with my depth perception.

Sometimes I get these really beautiful, almost electric blue lights when my brain's trying to make a picture and it can't. And I almost can kind of see the nerves inside my brain. Sometimes I just wear an eye patch on my right eye because then it takes away all that noise. And then also people in busy places then recognize that I can't really see out of my right eye.

So while the doctors cannot give me a specific diagnosis and therefore a trajectory of when I will have more attacks or how quickly will I will have attacks, the reality is, is that as this has gone on over the last five years, my attacks are speeding up in cadence.

the more attacks that you have, the less likely the nerve can have any recovery. And so if they don't slow or stop the attacks now, I could be blind, completely blind sooner than later.

It can be a very lonely, traumatizing, defeating experience to go through our medical system. And especially when you have something that is undiagnosable or difficult to diagnose. And I just want other patients to know that even though every day they're in there by themselves with their doctors advocating for themselves or on the phone with their insurance companies or trying to get appointments or find providers or answers, even though they're alone in it day to day,

They're not alone in the fight. As patients, we have to use our resources and our voices, not just to advocate for ourselves, but to advocate for others. And that this system has to change. It has to start recognizing that patients are human beings and we're not broken. There isn't something wrong with us, but it isn't up to anybody else.

I have the skills within me and the tools to heal myself. And that may not be keeping myself from going blind, but that's keeping my quality of life good and keeping my mental health and my physical health good. And it's all a cart for me. And maybe some days that's a fucking ice cream cone. Maybe some days that's not talking to anybody and taking baths. The prescription is mine and nobody else's.

People think that you'll heal from all these things one day and you'll sort of arrive and be elevated and become the butterfly. I don't believe that. I believe that there are so many layers to be peeled back.

As much as I can present myself in a certain way and hold it all together, there are times where that wounded child raises her hand and rears her head and I have to sit her down and have a talk and reconcile and say, we're okay and we're here now and we're safe and we're loved. We are not a nuisance. We are not an inconvenience.

While I am losing my sight literally in this world, I see more clearly a lot of things, including myself. I've started a new home for myself. I feel like I have an abundance of goodness and kindness in my life. And for the first time, I feel that I love my life and I love exactly who I am at this moment in time. And Raphael and I are still going strong.

Over many years I tried a lot of different types of therapies. You know, I tried EMDR therapy, I did talk therapy, I did some DBT therapy, I've done acupuncture, I've done San Pedro ceremonies, I've done rebirth breathing, I've done different courses and conferences and while I found them helpful, nothing really ever clicked completely.

For some reason, going on this process and this journey with this blow-up doll was the final tool that I needed. And I think I thought that I was broken and therefore I needed somebody or something externally or to input something that would finally get everything to work and to feel better and...

I realized I didn't have to like have this existential experience. I didn't have to climb Mount Everest. I didn't have to go on a vision quest or take something that was going to pull my mind out of my body or like somebody didn't have to fix me.

And I think that where Raphael was different was, one, I wasn't being told how to do it. Take this pill or go to this doctor or do this, you know, say these mantras or put needles here. I have the opportunity to understand that I was already equipped. I have the capabilities and the tools within me to heal me.

I created an extension of myself. That's all Raphael is. He's an extension of me. He's not a fetish. He's not a toy. He's a mirror. And I was able to sort of act out this relationship that I needed that was completely safe and have love and humility and gratitude.

gratitude and humor reflected back at me when I was alone and when it felt like the world was crumbling around me. What greater way to reconcile your adult you and your inner child you with a toy, with playfulness, with acknowledging these core parts of us that we dismiss or shelve as adults.

This was my process of learning to love myself. And like, I got lucky because I learned that by buying a blow-up doll from China. And I am as soft and tender as that plastic blow-up doll. If I let it, things will wound me. And I have to work so hard to stay on the trajectory of this is who I am. And it's great. Period.

Today's episode featured Gina Hesburgh. You can find out more about her and Raphael on Instagram at blowingupraphael or on her website blowingupraphael.com. That's Raphael spelled R-A-F-A-E-L. On the website, you can also buy Gina's book, Blowing Up, featuring her journey with Raphael during the pandemic and beyond. Gina is also offering listeners $10 off her book if you use the code HAPPENING.

Five dollars of each sale goes towards organizations that provide patient support and research for treatments for people with medical conditions like Gina.

From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein.

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Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the best known companies in the world were built.

In a new weekly series we've launched called Advice Line, I'm joined by some legendary founders and together we talk to entrepreneurs in every industry to help tackle their roadblocks in real time. Everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. A lot of times founders will go outside of themselves to build a story. And

And you can't replicate heart. You know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world because it doesn't allow you to get overconfident and think that you're invincible. Check out the advice line by following How I Built This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.