“Just love people, be present, be real, be authentic. Those are the things that keep it real, keep us human, keep us in a shared experience.”

In our final episode of Season 1 on Finding the Helpers, we have an interview that manages to tie all our other interviews beautifully together. Mary Affee is a licensed clinical social worker, PhD candidate, and specializes in play and trauma therapy. She left her bustling practice in North Carolina to return to her original home of New York City for four weeks to be a therapeutic presence for frontline medical staff in hospitals as they faced the height of New York’s COVID-19 peak. 

Like many front line staff and our other interviewees, Mary stressed a few times during this interview that she is not a hero. Mary’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer at 16 years old, and Mary truly saw this deployment to New York as her time to pay it back to the medical staff who saved her daughter’s life. 

As we listened to Mary’s story, it was clear to us that with her clinical background, personal experiences, and the four weeks she spent working in New York hospitals, that Mary was not only going to help us share another powerful story, but that she tied together so many of the profound lessons we have learned through these interviews in the past four months. 

You will find more about Mary's interview on our blog.

Thank you for spending this time with us. Thank you for listening and helping us share these essential stories. As this is our last episode for the season, we want to share that interviewing all of our amazing guests has been such an honor for us. As we look forward to Season 2, we will continue to highlight the frontline of COVID-19, but we are also looking to expand our focus to other situations where individuals are working tirelessly to support their community in need. Please feel free to continue to communicate with us on ideas for interviews. We look forward to coming back soon but until next time, stay safe out there.

Please with connect us by emailing us at [email protected]. And finally, please subscribe to our podcast, rate us, leave a comment, and share the podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. We need your help to share this important story.

A special thanks to Mary for her time. Thanks to Josh Carter for the theme music (find more at https://prettylittlegoat.com), and to Lindsay Bingaman for writing our blog.