Andrea Gunning

Her father struggled with mental illness, and her mom was busy keeping the family afloat.

It had a real impact on her.

She always had a lot of friends, but on the inside... I still felt so alone and like a freak.

For the first time in her life, Saskia's not dating.

Through this work and therapy, she's breaking patterns, sitting with her pain, putting herself first.

As I was listening to Saskia and Jess's last recorded session, I heard something that made me smile.

Saskia was looking back on the early days of working with us and how much has changed since then.

But slowly, through lots of interviews, check-ins, and visits, our team earned Saskia's trust.

Today, our conversations are as much about what happened to her as they are about what shows we're watching, what our pets are doing, good days and bad days at work.

Saskia's walls are down.

And to me, that's an honor.

We're really the first new people Saskia's let into her world in a long time.

Once the project ends, we're not going anywhere.

But Jess wants Saskia to take this experience of learning to trust us and translate it into trusting others again in her everyday life.

In addition to Marisa, Saskia has her friends, the ones you've heard from throughout the season.

But it hasn't always felt easy to open up to them.

Before Mike, Saskia was the silly, bubbly one in her friend group, no matter what she was going through on the inside.

But connection is a two-way street.

Sometimes her friends haven't known the best way to show up for Saskia, if they should or could talk about what happened.

When we were in Maryland, I brought that up with Saskia's friend Heather.