Remember a time when you were watching a morning show on your way out the door, or a sitcom after work, and suddenly something interrupted your regularly scheduled programming: something unexpected and big and frightening, but far away. An earthquake or tsunami, a mass shooting or a terrorist attack. You talked about it with your family and your friends and your coworkers. You followed it in the news for a couple of weeks. Maybe you even sent supplies to victims or donated money. But at some point it fell out of your perspective. You resumed your daily routine, and nothing really changed for you. It was more of a news story than anything else; it wasn’t personal.
For people like Chrystel, what felt more like a far off news story for most of us was far different for her: it was her life, her story, one of the defining moments of her adolescence. Today’s episode looks at something major and focuses in on one person and one story. Even when we talk about issues and epidemics they are at their core, after all, a collection of stories and experiences, and they’re completely more personal than we often make them seem.
