An heiress who would happily spend $1,300 on a nighter with friends and $2,000 on cabs a month because ‘walking is for peasants’ had a life-changing experience at a TV show where she was paired with a struggling mom-of-two.
Nadia Nuseibeh, for whom money had never been a problem, had to spend a few weeks with the mother who hardly earned the bare minimum to make the ends meet.
The 24-year-old had to get out of her comfort zone by leaving her home where she lived with her oil-rich family, as a part of 5Star’s Rich Kids Go Skint.
The TV show required her to go and live with former drug addict Natalie Russell.
The time Nadia spent with 40-year-old Natalie and her two kids gave her a view of the hardships for the ordinary people in the real world.
Natalie who works part-time and uses universal credit to make ends meet is the financial polar opposite of Nadia.
She suffers from back pain but can’t take a day off, and works every hour she can to provide for her two boys, aged 16 and 11.
Despite all her hard work, there are months when Natalie ends up being in debt. Nadia, on the other hand, is the daughter of a multimillionaire, brought up in all the luxuries you can imagine.
Nadia and Natalie became friends during the time they spent together. Nadia said she felt like her whole life was spent in a ‘fake La La Land,’ where she didn’t know what the real world looked like.
Before moving in with Natalie, Nadia said: “I feel that I’m gonna feel guilty just for being born in a more privileged family with more opportunities.
Nadia spent her life without ever having to cook or to earn money. She ordered food delivery as much as four times a day and simply paid with the money she got from her parents.
Nadia’s dad, who suffers from a motor neuron disorder, advised her: “I think this experience will do you a lot of good.”
When Nadia saw how Natalie and her kids Kaliel and Ilai lived, she was in a total surprise.
Natalie told Nadia that she’d do anything to provide for her family, and she replied: “I think that’s amazing and I feel like such a piece of s***.”
With time, the two became friends and had thoughtful discussions on the differences in their worlds.
Nadia said: “I felt more emotional in the past couple of days than I have in a really long time. In my world, you have to pretend that everything is perfect all the time and you’re laughing and you go for drinks.
“You’re kinda living in this fake perfect La La Land where no one talks about problems or emotional struggles. And everything they talk about is the economy or what the next trend is or what restaurant to eat at.”
Explaining her problems, Natalie said: “I ended up homeless at 15.
“And then I ended up in prison. I overdosed at the age of 18 and when I started to turn things around, I was pregnant with Kaliel and it was so scary for me.
“I came [to the local YMCA] with my bin bags of things and my little pregnant belly.”
At the end of their period together, the two of them promised to keep in touch.
Nadia, who had really learned in-depth about the problems the world faces, told Natalie: “You’re so lovely and kind-hearted and you opened your home to me and it hurts me that someone so amazing as you would go through all of that.
“You really do inspire me. There are so many people, specifically people that I know, that their problems are nothing.
“They should be so grateful to have a roof over their heads, a meal on the table, a roof for the night. Nobody talks to you about it, it’s all hidden and it’s all pretend perfection.
“It was like an out-of-body experience, so surreal. I didn’t think I would get what I did out of it.”
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