People Change

Hey folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Riskyll here, Ida Zulelian. I thought to myself, well, if I'm her first born, and this is the way that my own mother feels about me, there's got to be something wrong with me. Bad and more, but first, have you ever found yourself saying, man, I thought I'd be farther along by now, farther along with some project, or life goal, or self-development, any aspect of your life, does that bring a story to mind, a time you got sidetracked, or a reality you'd never anticipated, a thing you'd been taught was true that turned out not to be, pitches your stories for that theme, I thought I'd be farther along by now, whatever incidents from your life that brings to mind.

And remember, we're always taking pitches for our New York and our LA shows, and always taking pitches for radio style stories if you live anywhere in the world. Everything you need to know is at risk-show.com slash submissions. Folks, I have become such a fan of Bombas, and Summer is better with Bombas. Their thoughtfully designed clothes make it feel effortlessly at ease from breezy, tagless teas to second-skinned soft underwear to perfectly cushioned, sweat-wicking socks.

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Hello folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, this is Oceanus Orientalist, buying me now, and we're calling this week's episode People Change. It's a huge part of my personal philosophy right there that even with trauma in early life, or deeply ingrained habits, people really are remarkably capable of learning, growing, and transforming their lives. Some people might even change from saying hello kids at the beginning of the episode to hello folks.

I don't know, we'll see. I've always wondered why the fuck I say kids. And listen, Risk is going through a monumental period of potential change right now, but bigger ones than that one, planning new projects, jumping through new hoops. So it's a great time to sign up for the Risk email newsletter to keep up with exactly what's going on with us.

There's a yellow bar at the top right hand corner of our website, Risk-Show.com, where you can sign up for the newsletter, or you can just email me directly about it at Kevin at Risk-Show.com. Now, in a little bit, we're going to hear from Ida Zulelian. But before that, a story that comedian Dave Ross shared last November, he was at our live show in New York. You can find Dave at DaveToTheRoss.com, and here he is now.

Well, the story we call, you're fired? I used to work at a startup. I don't know if you've ever worked at a startup. It's beautiful.

It's like magical in there. It's what they do. They make it magical, and it works. I was in right away.

I worked at a startup like not long after college, and you walk in, it's like big ceilings, big open floor plan. There's just the amenities are crazy. When you get the job, the first day they give you a tour, and it's just incredible. It's just like we have two fridges, and this one's only for Diet Coke.

When you're me and you're 24, I was very excited. They're like, this is our Peloton or whatever, back then, the equivalent. This is our Xbox. Some people, they work all day, and then they just stay after to play the Xbox, and that's a trick where they're trying to get them to stay and work more.

This is a hellscape, and we all need a job, and it's not really that big of a deal to most people, so they just sort of let it go. But I was like a punk or whatever. I listened to anti-flag, and I had big shorts from the fact that when I said anti-flag, you guys didn't carry me out of here on your shoulders. I'm guessing that maybe you don't interact with a 40-year-old to act 14 in Pittsburgh, but it was a big part of my adult life and my youth.

I mean, and so I am an adult life. I mean, who are we kidding? You can see me right now. I really like internalized at a young age fighting the system and capitalism, and so I'm here, and they're like, they are literally trapping us to work there.

They had they had catered lunch every day, but the thing is, if you stayed for the catered lunch, it was a meeting, so they couldn't make it mandatory that you stayed for the lunch, so I never did. And they would ask you to work on the weekends, because we're a team and we're a family, and it helps the company, but they didn't pay me for the weekend, so I never stayed over the weekends, and I was always telling people, like, it's fucked up, why are they making us do this? They're fucking using us, and everyone was like, it's not that big of a deal, Dave. I was like, whatever, you guys are sheep, and I was the first person in the history of that company to be fired.

I really went out in a blaze of glory, and I was like, again, I was 24. I was like, I'm never working, and I start up again. These places are fucked up. Hell no, dude.

And then two years went by, and I got a job at a startup. I needed a job, and what can I say? I did like it, because I was a punk kid from the suburbs, so I was very into punk things, and I was also very afraid all the time, still am always. I wanted, you know, because a startup is like sort of a punk thing.

It's a person that's like, I'm starting to get Tony, not to start. I started, and corporations are like, we're not giving you money for that. We're not doing it. I'm doing it.

It's like impressive. But then also there's air conditioning and health benefits and stuff, and a $900 aerodynamic share that you can sit in. So yeah, it was perfect for me. Someone who was never going to fight back but was going to think about it.

But this company was like, I don't even know how to tell you, like that first company, I mean, that guy who ran a company, he was just evil. This company had all the trappings of a startup except they didn't do that stuff where they like tried to get you to stay for lunch. They didn't try to get you to work for no pay. When they asked you to work, they paid you more.

It was very like making sure you're okay. It was like a company that took care of you, it really felt like it for me. And also I was a web developer now at the last company I've been a researcher, so I was feeling very fulfilled and validated, and I really liked working there. And then like, after I've been there about a year, the CEO called a meeting of the entire company in the conference room and that's 85 people that worked for this company.

I wish I could put you in my brain. I loved it there. I was so excited to have a meeting with all these people I liked. Like I was like, yeah, we're gonna find out more about this company where I like it.

And she gives us this PowerPoint presentation that was confusing. It was like, they put a lot of work into this PowerPoint presentation. They had worked on it for a long time. There was music, and it was very dramatic, and it was all about our numbers.

And it had a very positive tone. It was very hopeful and about strength and the future. But it also included all this information about how our usership was way down. So it was very confusing.

I didn't know what they were saying. Sharts, graphs, usership down. We have all this new funding, usership down. This is what we're gonna do with our funding.

This is what our company is gonna look like 10 years from now, all this stuff. And then the lights come up and she says this thing that to this day still drives me insane. She says, so because of this new round of funding, isn't this exciting, we have 50 new positions we're hiring at the company. But because the usership is down, all of the old positions are gone.

Right, which is an insane way to tell 35 people they're fired right now. And then she says, so when we leave this meeting, you walk back to your desk at your desk to find an envelope inside that envelope is a letter that tells you whether or not you still have a job. And I was like, what? I'm on survivor?

What is happening? This is unbelievable. And then she said the craziest part of the meeting at the end. She said, and there's cupcakes on your way out.

And people ate the fucking cupcakes. Can you believe that shit? To a grown man. I was like, put the fucking cupcake down.

I was so fired up. I was so fired up. Everything I said at this point is totally true about my childhood. I just spent the entire time listening to anti-flag, the clash.

Everybody who was mad at the government, the police, the establishment. And then I just kept on not ever arguing with the establishment. My whole life. I never caught school.

I never didn't do what a teacher said. You know what I mean? And so I had all this, like, welled up inside of me that never came out. And now I'm inside of a system that's trying to kill us all or whatever.

I just like exploded. And I was like, saying to people, this is fucking bullshit. I can't believe they're treating us this way. I don't even know this was fucking possible.

Do we manipulate people to this degree after they've treated us so well? Was this all gaslighting? Fuck these people. And I walked back to my desk.

I opened the envelope. I read the letter. I said, I still had a job. I was like, hell yeah.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I need this job. I need this job very badly.

I'm paycheck to paycheck, man. Thank God. Thank you so much. So I'm standing there victorious.

The CEO's assistant sort of like tiptoes up to me. Tiny little 22 year old girl. And she's like, Dave, can I ask you to come into the CEO's office with me? I'm so sorry.

We gave you the wrong letter. And for all my posturing and being angry at the system, I do actually need this job. So I just crumbled. That was it for me.

I was a puddle. I eared my way to the CEO's office. Slum down a chair. She's this very well dressed woman in her mid 50s who like really seems like feets.

Like she has her shit together. And now she is like turned layoffs into a game show. Like I hate this woman, you know. But I'm like crushed by her.

And I just sort of slum down. And I was like, well, can I pad my last check, please? And she was like, why would I give you a last check? And I was like, holy shit.

I think I worked the last week. I'm pretty sure. And she was like, yeah, but you still have a job. And I was like, my letter said I had a job.

And she goes, oh my God, I'm sorry. We gave you the right letter. And so I've now been pulled in so many directions that I have no problem telling this woman how I feel. And I honestly like can't tell you, because like, why didn't I ever challenge authority before in my life?

Because I was afraid. And that's like why most people don't. I was afraid of getting hurt. I was afraid of getting yelled at.

I was afraid of getting in trouble. Now I'm in front of an authority figure that is fucked with myself and all my friends and then invited me into her office and then did one more thing wrong. I mean, thank you so much. Thank you for this opportunity.

And I was just like, what's wrong with you? Why did you think this was okay? You could have just let us go. Also, did you give people severance?

You could have given people severance? And she was like, well, we didn't have the money. And I was like, did you have the money two months ago? And then turns out I was wrong about her.

She just started weeping. She was very sad. She did not think this was going to go this way. She felt horrible.

Honestly, in retrospect, a nice person who made one mistake. And I was just lecturing her about what a piece of shit she is. And I'm 27. And she's 55.

And she ran a company that went successful out of fucking nowhere. And was like, I don't want to fire people. And then she was like, maybe this will be fun. It's not fun, lady.

And now you're going to yell that by a small boy. But also in my defense, fuck her, you can't do that. You can't fire people that way. It's just mean.

And I told her that. I was like, this is mean. I know you feel bad, but this was mean. And you can't, you can't do this.

I'm sorry, but you can't. And I stood up and I walked out of her office and I went back to my desk and I worked there for two more years. I knew that job. I knew that job very badly.

Before I go, I want to say, I do, one of the reasons I like telling a story is there's a small chance she'll hear it and I just want to say I forgive you. I really do want to say that because I think that if I had made that mistake, I could see myself being like, maybe this will be less painful. I don't know. And then I kick myself for the rest of my life.

And yeah, I forgive you. We all fuck up. We live in this world now. We're like, isn't it interesting how more than ever we all know what's going on?

We know, like, we've done a lot of finger pointing. I hated her for a while. For a long time, people were like, ah, my landlord's fucking me. And then you would talk to a landlord.

Landlord would be like, ah, the banks are fucking me. And then you talk to the banks and they're like, ah, we are. Yeah. We're the problem.

And I guess I just wanted to say that we all know that now, right? So we do something. I'm clearly not gonna. Well, you guys, you guys should.

Thank you so much. I'm Dave Ross. Hey, folks, that was a hilarious story by Dave Ross. But speaking of startups, you know, businesses that are in precarious situations where people don't know their future, we have a very crucially important announcement to make to you right now.

I'm with the business director of RISC, my partner, my better half in running RISC. JC Cass is here. Hey, everybody. It's great to be here and great to talk to you all.

And JC is going to run us through something I've already hinted at other places recently. The fact that we are in an extraordinarily tight squeeze this summer financially. Yeah. So there's a lot to talk about.

So we're going to take you through what's been going on behind the scenes and why we are in this position so that hopefully you can help get us out of this position because we do feel like, you know, we have an incredible fan base. We're so grateful for everybody who's been supporting us on Patreon and helping us out through all the years. And we've always wanted to increase that to kind of get to a more secure place. But now it's kind of do or die.

So a lot of us are not sleeping well. A lot of us are not knowing what the future holds. And we would just really love to let you guys in on what's going on so that you have a kind of sense of the urgency and you can make an decision whether you want to jump in there and financially support. So there are about almost 20 people working on the show, but there are eight of us for whom it's really our main source of income.

And yeah, we're all really worried and just worried about how to keep this thriving and flourishing and the ironic thing is that we are very confident that we will be making enough money in the fall and winter of this year to have everything going smoothly again. Yeah, definitely. That's what's so hard about this time is that basically we're in what I'm calling like a lemon squeeze, which is like in hiking when you have to get through like the tightest part of two rocks that are almost impossible to get through. But if you just exhale all your air and squeeze your body to the limit, you might be able to just crunch through just by a hair and get to the other side.

And that's exactly where we are. So I'm like, I just want to get through the lemon squeeze so we can get back to things being more stable. But if we don't make it through the lemon squeeze, things are going to get even more dire. Right now we've had to ask a lot of people on our well, basically everybody on our staff to delay pay.

I am currently going without pay for a few months, which is terrible for savings and terrible for stability. But I've done this before for risk. And I'm willing to do it again whenever I can, even though it really sucks. But I'm hoping that every little bit that we can do to sacrifice and pull together will allow us to make it through that lemon squeeze.

The four main income streams for risk are advertising on the podcast, Patreon, touring shows, and corporate workshops for storytelling that we do all the time. Because of the pandemic, all of our revenue streams were interrupted in early 2020. And that meant that we were going to run out of money in a couple months, but then we got an SBA loan that saved our lives and let us get to the other side of that catastrophe. Shortly thereafter, advertising kind of came back, corporate workshops came back pretty well.

The Patreon was going strong during the pandemic because you guys knew that we would die without it. So thank you again for that. And touring, as you guys know, took a long hiatus due to the pandemic. And when we tried to bring it back in like late 2021, early 2022, it really didn't go the way we had hoped.

People were still kind of iffy about coming out to live shows. And then we lost our touring agent because he had to deal with some personal issues that meant that he couldn't work at the time. So we've been agentless and tourless for a while. We were also advised not to tour by our agent, who was saying that lots of similar shows with even bigger budgets were stopping touring, because it was just way too taxing for way little do little return.

So that's why we decided to take some time off from that. But we do have a potential new touring agent that we're very excited to work with. And we believe that we could get risk shows back up and running in late 2023 in a more lucrative way than before, which we're very, very excited about. So we just want to get to that point.

The problem is, since all of our income streams are way down right now, if not non-existence, we're worried about our ability to get to the end of the year. So that's why we're doing a huge Patreon push right now, where we're asking you guys to step up and donate as much as you can on Patreon or outside of Patreon through PayPal.me slash risk show to get us over the hump so we can get to the place where touring is back and making us good money. What's going on with advertising is that our former network was sold about four times during the time that we were with them, which means they were constantly in disarray and confusion over like who's in charge? What are we doing?

How do we get things done? And we were just not properly monetized. So when we started working with our new podcast agent, who's been incredible, her first advice was, you guys got to move to a new network who can monetize your show properly. So we started that process.

It was supposed to take eight months. Some crazy things happened in the podcasting advertising industry that made it actually last more like a year. And when you switch podcast networks, if your network that you're with knows that you've got one foot out the door, they can no longer prioritize you for selling ads because there's a long lead time with that. So from the time that our previous network knew that we were looking for a new network, they really deprioritized selling ads on our show.

So for many, many months, we were not getting the proper ad income from our former network. Now with our new network, we are super excited to be with them, they're doing an awesome job. But the way that podcast advertising works is that when you switch networks, it takes months for the new ad load to kind of ramp up as your new team talks to advertisers, places ads, you know, they might sell ads that aren't scheduled to go on the show for three months. And there's also this thing where with the way advertisers pay ad networks and then ad networks pay podcasts, there's a huge delay from when you get onboarded to when you start actually receiving money as a podcast.

And that's exactly where we are now, which means that we basically had our advertising income completely disrupted for about 10 months. And that is our main source of income. So you try living without your main source of income for 10 months and see what happens, you know, it's not good. But we do believe that by fall, we will start getting that ad income again, which means we will be pretty much over the hump if we can get there, which we can't without your support.

So please go support. And with corporate storytelling workshops, we have been revamping a lot of stuff that we do on our website and with our classes and all that kind of stuff. And in addition to that, there's this economic climate where a lot of corporations are kind of putting on the back burner, the idea of bringing an outside trainers. And so corporate workshops have not been as robust as they usually are and have been for the last like 10 years.

And so we are getting to the place where we're reaching out to all of our previous clients, we're scheduling new classes, we're doing everything we can to get corporate workshops back online. But it may take a while, and it's kind of up to the client to hire us. We're also starting our own classes and our own events so that nobody needs to hire us, we can just go out there and do what we do and, you know, benefit from that. But that's also going to take a few months.

So we're kind of at this crucial point where it's like, we've got all these great ideas and we just need to implement them, but it's going to take a little bit of time. And in that time, we're going to run out of money if we don't have proper fan funding. So that is basically the long and short of what is going on with all of our various income streams. And we're really excited to get to the other side of this because we're pretty scared right now, but we need your support to do that.

So you can do that by signing up on Patreon. And with any fan base, probably only about 1 to 5% of listeners or supporters actually sign on to fund whatever project they're into. So if you're thinking like, that's okay, somebody else will do it. No, they won't.

You got to do it. So please go to our patreon, patreon.com slash risk and go to our PayPal dot me slash risk show if you'd like to support if you're like, I don't want to do either of those things, but I would send you money some other way, just email us at kevin at risk-show.com and we'll talk to you about how you can do that. And we're also going to be figuring out a lot of cool ways that we're going to be fundraising where you might be able to buy things like a tarot guard reading from Kevin or a one-on-one zoom hangout or whatever it might be. Based on our financial projections, we feel that it would be incredibly helpful if we could raise, I mean, it may sound crazy, but like if we could raise $50,000 over the next few months, I would say by the end of September at the latest and in our Patreon up to $20,000 a month, once advertising income starts coming in September, we will be in a far, far, far more stable place.

And above and beyond that, we're hoping to bring touring back, we're hoping to bring kind of social events and innovative events and curated conversation events and dinner parties. And we're trying lots of new things to bring in new revenue and also create a much stronger community among both our fans and people in the wider world. So if you've listened to my latest Patreon check-in, which is free even for non-members to access, you'll be able to hear me crying about some of this stuff. And I just have to say that one of the things that's been a little bit heartbreaking in the past several months is the staff seeing me that way sometimes and me seeing members of the staff with tremendous sadness and worry in their eyes and just, you know, working harder and harder for less money.

Yeah, a lot of us are having trouble sleeping, a lot of us are just worried all the time. I've been incredibly stressed. I've been working my ass off for the last few weeks, like to the exclusion of everything else, even while I'm thinking like, well, am I even gonna have a dollar to my name in four months if things keep going this way? But I'm busting my ass because we've been here before and we've gotten through it before 100 million percent because of the support of fans without which we cannot survive.

And so I believe that we will make it, but we've got to do the work and you guys have got to join us on this mission, there's nothing worse than having to ask our staff to delay pay or go without pay for a little while or anything like that because they're so passionate and they're so dedicated. And I think everybody on this team does an incredible job and is so smart and so kind and so resourceful and so driven and I love to see that and I would like to pay them on time and in full because even when we do that, it's still not a lavish lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination for any of us. We are all just squeaking by, but at least we can speak by when things are working. Everybody who works here does it because they believe in the mission of spreading empathy, spreading truth, allowing people to express themselves and making the world a better place through stories.

And I just want to see us all be able to continue doing that. So that is a lot. That's a lot. Again, sorry for interrupting the episode with all of this information.

But all of it is just to say that we love you all so much. We appreciate you all so much. You have changed our lives infinitely. And we really do believe that this show, this team, this mission has a future.

We just need the resources to be able to create that future. And yeah, as always, you know, our Patreon is at patreon.com slash risk. People can make one-time donations at paypal.me slash risk show. And if you want to send us money in any other way, you can always email me at kevinatrisk-show.com.

Yeah, and there are tens of thousands of you out there. But with any fan base of any show or any musician or anything, a teeny, teeny, tiny percentage of the fan base ever actually donates, which is fine. There's plenty of things I love out there that I don't donate to, you know, we're all the same in that way. But if risk really means something to you, if you're one of those people who feels like risk has saved my life, risk has made me do friendships, risk allowed me to have a sexual experience I never would have had or whatever it might be.

Think about what dollar value you might put on that. Think about maybe other things you've spent money on your life that were kind of a waste that you kind of wish you hadn't spent that money on. Risk is not that risk is the thing that brings real value to your life. So think about that.

Come up with a little dollar amount and throw it our way, because, you know, sometimes when you're part of a big crowd, it's easy to think, ah, somebody else will do it. No, they won't. So please do it. All right.

Yes. That is our message. So thank you so much for listening and now back to the show. We love you guys.

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You can find them at your nearest supermarket or high street pharmacy. For more information, visit causadil.co.uk. My mother and I have always had a very difficult and tense relationship. The best way to describe it is fractured.

It's fractured now, still. My memories of her, I think about a woman in her bedroom with the door closed. Most of the time, very sad and depressed. She was married to my dad for 16 years and it was an abusive marriage.

By the time I was 12, she decided to leave him. It was me and my sister. It was five years younger than me. She were married shortly afterwards and I was so happy because she was so happy.

He was this wonderful man that she met. She was in love and I thought to myself, I'm going to get my mom, all of her, her happy self. I'll get hogs, I'll get kisses, I'll hear, I love you. But that's not how it was.

I know now why she behaved the way that she did, but I couldn't understand it then. She was difficult to please. We got into arguments all the time about almost anything. We fought so much.

My younger sister was mostly overlooked because I was the oldest, I was the target. I think we were like the ghosts of her marriage that she wanted to forget about and that's maybe why she behaved the way that she did. One memory I have that repeats throughout my adolescence because it just happened over and over again. I was 14 and she was sitting at the living room couch and we got into a really bad fight.

I wanted to hang out with my friends. She didn't want me to hang out with her. I had pushed too far I guess and she had screamed at me and we'd had this awful argument and so I just want to make it better. I don't want any tension.

I don't want conflict and it's just sitting in my chest. I go to the living room. She's staring at the TV and she knows I'm standing there but she doesn't look at me. And I say, Mom, I just want to make everything okay.

You know, can we just talk about this please? And she doesn't even look at me. It's almost like I'm not even there. She says there's nothing to talk about.

We have nothing in common which always puzzled me. I don't want to talk about this. And I walked away and every time we fought, most every time, especially during my younger teenage years, this was our dynamic. Me trying hard with her and her pushing me away and it was humiliating after a while because I felt unloved.

I thought to myself, well, if I'm her firstborn and this is the way that my own mother feels about me, there's got to be something wrong with me. And so when I got married, my big dilemma eventually became because I did not want children but I knew I knew I was going to miss out on this great experience. And so my husband and I decided, okay, let's have a baby. But I was so scared.

I was scared of being like my mom. I was scared of being a bad mom. I knew that I should not do the opposite of what my mother did and be a smother. And I also told myself, you are not being a child into the world so that they can be responsible for giving you what your mother could not.

This is not why this is happening. And so very clear, I told myself, you're going to do this and you're going to do your best and you're just going to do what's natural. And after three years of struggling, we were finally able to have Sophia. One of my best memories were at the ice skating rink.

She's five. It's the first time she's been on the ice. She's holding my hand and she's holding onto the railing and slipping and sliding everywhere. It's like an hour and a half and she's determined to skate.

And I don't have the heart to tell her it may not happen in one shot. And then all of a sudden, this team of hockey players get on the ice and start tearing past her. And she turns at me and she goes, we're not leaving until I can do that. So my feet are numb.

They're called. They're killing me. I want to go. I know this is her moment of perseverance.

And I'm like, you know what? Sure, let's do this. And we stay for another hour and a half. And by the time she's ready to leave, she's skating towards me, wobbling, unassisted.

And it reminds me of two days before her birthday when she first took her first steps walking. Another fun memory is when she used to take dance and she dragged me into Sephora before her dance classes and wanted to give me a makeover. And I would leave looking like a complete clown and I wouldn't want to wipe the makeup off and people would be staring at me on the street. And I was just so happy to have these times with her because this was all new to me.

I don't have happy memories of me and my mom. I don't, maybe one or two, but that's about it. And now she's 10 and she writes horror stories and she's obsessed with reading the book The Shining, which we've let her do against our better judgment. So she'll walk through the door.

After school, she'll be like, I'm skipping my shows. I need to write. And she'll go into her room and she'll write for two or three hours stretches, but I'm not allowed to see anything apparently because it's too scary, which is hilarious. And then she'll wander into my office and she'll be like, Mom, can you help me with like time?

I don't know how to shift from one time to the next. And all of this just delights me. But I will say it has not always been easy because she's had a fierce attachment to my husband, her dad, fierce, abiding. Even before she could talk, she would drag me up the stairs and point up from the landing and say, You go now, because she would want all that time with her dad.

And she would carve out these moments, me and daddy time, where she didn't want to include me. And it was really upsetting, you know, I mean, they would be laughing in her bedroom during bedtime and she'd be four or five at the time. And I'd walk in and the laughter would just stop and she'd look at me as if I was an intruder and I didn't belong. That was really difficult because there was no way I was able to separate that from my mom.

I mean, I couldn't do it. The more she pushed me away, the more I wanted to stay away because it was unbearable. And my husband would say, like, we are a family, we are a dynamic, you cannot step away during those moments. And as she got older, it became less and less obvious when she would do it.

But I always knew that she wanted her separate time with her father. By the time she was nice, she was still super active. And she comes to me one fall and says, listen, I don't want to hurt your feelings or make you feel left out, but I want to play hockey with daddy at the park. And I want this to be a me and him thing.

You and I bake together and we cook together. And I just want this to be a me and daddy thing. Is that okay? What am I?

What am I supposed to say? Is this normal? I don't know. I don't have a blueprint.

I have no idea if this is normal. So I stay okay. And I still go with them to the park and my husband lets me play with her, but I can tell I'm just a poor substitute. And then late one November, I remember it was November, it was cold.

And late in the day, should I really wish dad was here, my husband was working, I want to play hockey. So I said, I'll play with you. And I knew, you know, I knew she would probably say, no, reluctantly, she's like, okay, fine. So we go to the park and we're playing and I could tell she's getting frustrated because I'm not running as fast as my husband.

And then all of a sudden I nicker in the leg by accident and she throws her hockey stick down and she's like, this sucks. This is why I like playing with dad and not you. I want to go home. I felt like she literally slapped me in the face.

I wanted to cry. Instead, I looked at her and I said, why are you so hard on me? And I knew I wasn't just talking to her. I had wanted to ask my mom this question, why are you so hard on me?

You know, why did you disown me three times and tell me you never wanted to see me again? Why did you tell me I have an ugly nose like my father? When I was playing shows downtown in New York, why did you tell me that I'd never cut it as a singer? Like, why?

Why those things? So in the spring, she turned 10 and she felt very emancipated. She said, mom and dad, I'm ready to go away. I want to go to sleep away camp for two weeks.

Said, all right, you want to do that? We'll do that. So we spoke to a few Armenian organizations and there was a great camp upstate about three hours away. And she was very excited.

It's time for me to be independent, she said. So I couldn't help thinking the three hour ride up how much daddy time she was going to need after this whole thing was over. We drove up. There was a section where you say goodbye to the campers.

Okay, she's like, it's time. I'm off now. We gave her a hug and off she went. I knew I was going to miss her.

And I knew what was most important that again, she was asserting her independence and her autonomy. And I really was so proud of her. So a few days passed by and we get two letters in the mail on the same day. The first one says, mom, dad, this is really hard for me.

This is much harder than I thought it was going to be. I need you to come and pick me up. And I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God.

And then we rip open the second letter and it says, hi, mom and dad, I'm having a great time. The kids who are great. And you know, I'm going to miss you, but it's going to be awesome. And I was like, all right, thank God.

So I was happy. So they upload pictures of the campers every day. And she looks tired. She doesn't look right.

And my husband's like, you're over analyzing her face. I said, I'm not. She doesn't look right. He goes, she's probably staying up late with her new friends.

Don't give it much thought. I call the camp anyway. And the director says she is having a tough time, but I've checked in with her and she's doing great. Campers are allowed to email once a week.

That's kind of all it is. So she said, I miss you, I can't wait to see you, but I'm doing okay. But the pictures, I mean, they were starting to bother me. The two weeks went by.

We drove up, I was nervous to see her, but I was guarding myself. I was really guarding myself because I didn't know what to expect as far as how much she was missing her dad. The parents stand all in one area, same as drop off. And the campers are coming out of their bunks.

And she sees me. And she runs towards me in this hard sprint that does not stop. I mean, she does not slow down. She knocks into me.

I almost, I almost fall on the ground. And she's shaking in my arms. And she's like, I missed you, I missed you. And I'm like, her hug is practically suffocating.

I missed you. And I pull back and she is, her face is drawn. She looks exhausted and she just blurts it out. I miss you guys a lot.

No offense, dad. She says, looking at my husband, but I miss mommy so much more than I missed you. And I was like, okay. But that was a part of me that was thinking, like, what happens?

Like, what happened at this camp? Like, it's so fresh. I don't want to push her. We get into the car and decide, let's stop off at a diner on the way.

So we go down the mountain and she's like, did you get my letters? Yeah, you were, you know, so upset when you first got there. And then you seemed so much better in your second letter. And she's like, wait, what?

So the first letter I sent you was the one where I said, I'm having a great time. It was the second letter that I said, I needed you to come and pick me up. And I realized that her home sickness had been so bad that she'd been white knuckling it for two weeks. And she'd been losing sleep.

She said, I wasn't sleeping while I wasn't eating well. And in retrospect, I should have contacted the camp. But that's a whole other thing anyway. I said, did anything happen?

She goes, I just wasn't as ready as I thought. I just missed you. I needed my mom's hugs. I needed your kisses.

She says, so we get to the diner and we place our order. Can I talk to you in the bathroom? She says to me, I say, sure, and I'm like, she's going to tell me something awful happened. I know it.

And she's holding a piece of paper in her hand, folded paper, we get in the bathroom. And she says, I just want you to know that I had a lot of time to think it came. And I really, really regret how much I've left you out. And I feel so much guilt about it.

And I didn't have anyone to talk to about it because I was talking to you about this stuff. So I wrote you this, she goes, and I wanted you to have it. So I said, okay, I open up the piece of paper and the title on it is Things To Do With Mom. The first thing on the list is by Mama Hockey Stick.

I was floored. You see these moments in movies, you see them on TV shows, you don't think they actually happen. But something changed after that. Something just flipped for us as a family.

And she sought moments to include me. There was no leaving out. Can I have private time with Dad? There wasn't any of that anymore.

And there were some moments where it could get a little, you know, it's not always perfect, but it's completely different for us. And I walk past Sophia's room sometimes, and I could hear her and my husband laughing on the other side of the door. But it doesn't feel distancing anymore. I don't feel like a stranger.

I don't feel like an intruder. I know that I could walk in there at any moment because finally I feel loved and that I belong. So please, please, please, let me get what I want to say. This is Risk.

This is Dream Academy Behind Me Now. And we just heard from Ida Zilelian, who you can find on Instagram at Ida Zilelian. Hey, if you didn't hear the special announcement that our business director, J.C. Cassis, and myself made before the commercial break, that preceded Ida's story, please go back and listen.

We want to make sure that all Risk fans heard that announcement and didn't fast forward through it because it says important as it gets. It's about Risk's continual survival. Now our next Risk Live show is in New York on June 22nd, and our next live show in LA is July 18th. Remember, you can always check risk-show.com-slash-live to find out more.

And on Patreon this week, Brandy Barber, the wonderful Brandy Barber, telling us about her college dancing days and her grandma Jean. I think that I thought I was going to be some sort of Martha Graham prodigy. And I think that I also didn't realize that if you call yourself a prodigy, you're not one. That's for other people to say.

You can find that and so much more bonus content over at patreon.com slash risk. And our latest Patreon member that we want to thank is Patrick Freeburn. Thank you so much, Patrick. We really appreciate it.

We're going to be adding so many more perks over there soon. And remember, if you want to make a one-time donation, rather than becoming a Patreon member, you can do that at paypal.me slash risk show. I've just sold my car. All right.

I've got a call in 30 seconds from me by any car. I drove to my local branch in 13 minutes. Gosh, it's getting sent to my bank. Oh, nice.

Just sold my car to we by any car. Just sold my car to we by any car. So find out how much you'll cost within seconds. And see you in the next video, but now we by any car.com.

I've been female blog for more information visit weby any car.com slash info. Folks, don't forget that on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. We're at RiskShow. And on Facebook, come meet fellow Risk Fans and us, the staff, at the Risk Podcast Fans discussion group.

Now, Juneteenth was this week. So on Thursday, we're going to do another Black Lives compilation. And next week, Jillian Markowitz shares about seeing a therapist who got very inappropriate. But that's next week.

And folks, today's the day. Take a risk. You're fired. Get the fuck out of here.

You're not fired. Please come back. Your services are valued. Goddamn it.

Get out. Clear out your desk. I'm sorry. I'm with that person.

I didn't need to fire you. Hmm, I can't decide. No, you're fired. Oh, okay.

Well, in that case, be a Monday morning.