My best friend Ellen and I get together to talk about studying abroad in Argentina, going to NYU, and how we relate to the Kardashians.

When my mom pulled up to Eisenhower Elementary to pick up my brother and me after school, our third and fourth grade selves noticed our cats weren’t in the car waiting for us like they usually were. She looked at me very seriously and with sad eyes: we had to give them up, she said. Cats weren’t allowed in the homeless shelter.

I knew moving there was a possibility—we had been living in hotels for a couple of weeks, and cheap houses before that, staving off our last resort as long as we possibly could. But mom’s labor couldn’t keep us housed, and the homeless shelter was the only place left for us to go. We would be moving there today.

From banter with the adult volunteers who came to play cards with the shelter kids, to rummaging through the donation bins from our local Walmart, to getting sexually harassed by a grown man, these stories in this pivotal place shaped me. I'm 13 years older and remember that place in this episode. These are my stories from the homeless shelter.

You can consider donating to the shelter I lived in here: https://theconnectionnp.net/index.php/donations

We all have a relationship with money. We have to: being here on Earth requires us to participate in this relationship to survive. In this episode, I talk about how my relationship with money has evolved after growing up at the bottom of the income distribution to being an adult on the opposite side. I discuss feeling ashamed of poverty, making money as an adult, and how I moved from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance.

A year ago, Emily Neave and I both started working as nurses at a hospital in New York, where our love story began. We talk about our first paychecks, doubting ourselves, learning from our mistakes, why we work, what we regret over the last year, and so much more.

I grew up in Nebraska. When I tell this to a New Yorker, they often look at me like I'm a mythical creature, probably full of stories about cornfields and farms. They're totally right; this is that story, but it's also the story of what it's like to not fit in as a young gay man and find my way to self love after growing up in a place that taught me to hide who I am.

Welcome to Growing Up Gavin.