With her dad detained in a Cuban prison, Miami teen launches new podcast to cope with the pain
By her own account, Nathalie Aguirre, a sophomore at Southwest Miami High School, became a different person in the summer of 2017, when a head-on collision between two cars in Cuba’s Ciego de Ávila province left four people dead and two people injured.
Among the two survivors was Aguirre’s Cuban-born dad, Carlos, who had gone back to the island on vacation with his girlfriend. Nathalie had stayed behind in Miami. She shed tears of disbelief when she learned her dad had to be taken to an intensive care unit in critical condition.
Local investigators determined Carlos was at fault — even though Nathalie claims there was evidence that suggested a defect in the road triggered the crash. He was sentenced to six years in prison. The Aguirre family thinks Carlos’ American citizenship meant he never stood a chance of receiving a fair trial.
For Nathalie, 16, the hurt is still fresh.
“To this day it’s still so painful. Even though it’s been over three years, I still have days where I feel like it happened yesterday,” she said. “If I think about it, I could still cry all night.”
To help deal with the pain, Nathalie launched a new podcast last December, titled “Keeping Sane With Nathalie.” Based on “self-improvement,” the weekly show tackles topics ranging from finding happiness and coping with change to overcoming the feeling of being lost. Episodes are about 10 minutes long.
A key theme of the podcast, according to Nathalie, is a belief that it’s better to articulate and acknowledge sources of sadness, instead of letting them go unaddressed.
“I realized that there’s so much sadness in the world and I think we all try to cover it up, we try to pretend that everything is fine. But that’s not true,” she said. “I thought that by starting the podcast, I would be able to share with people that it’s OK to be vulnerable and sad. It’s OK to share your story … We will pick ourselves up, and we will get through this.”
Nearly a year into a pandemic that’s claimed over 4,800 lives in Miami-Dade County alone, Nathalie said many people could find solace in her podcast, even if their experiences with loss are different from her own.
“I can promise you my story is unique, but it’s something that’s so relatable at the same time,” she said. “The pandemic has caused so much loss, it has caused so much change in people’s lives. It has caused a time to reflect. And I think my podcast will be able to help with that.”
