Storytelling with Impact

A Perfect Life Uprooted – Salima Saxton at The Moth in London

February 6, 2025/in Family, Mental Health, Personal Stories, The Moth, Trauma/by Mark Lovett

The Moth has been hosting storytelling events for 20+ years, and the thousands of storytellers who have graced their stages are proof that every story is unique, and that the best stories come from our personal experiences.

In this story told at The Moth London Mainstage on September 28, 2023, Salima Saxton talks about how her (nearly) perfect life was uprooted when her husband had a nervous breakdown, and the changes they entire family made in order to build an even better life.

I’ve encountered a lot of people whose lives were interrupted by an unforeseen event. In this situation it was a mental health issue, but for others it could be a physical health crisis, death in the family, or one of many other scenarios. And quite often these people don’t feel that their story is anything exceptional, not worth sharing on a stage. But I can assure you that there are people out there who will benefit from such stories, so spend a bit of time watching Salima’s talk and thinking about she constructed it. Here are a few of my own observations.

Salima begins her story by taking us to a specific point in time, and it happens to be a day, Valentine’s Day, that we assume would be a happy day. But such is not the case, as the mood turns dark when her husband, Carl, comes into the room. Over the next minute it becomes apparent that Carl is struggling, although we still don’t know any of the details, or the reason why. She has our attention.

Rather than tell us what’s happening, Salima takes a step back in time to share the moment when she first met her husband, and in doing so, we return to a romantic story line, one which culminates in their marriage.

We get a sense of their domesticated life in a shishi neighborhood where their kids attended private school, where they didn’t learn much, which gets a laugh, and thus keeps the tone of her story uplifting at this juncture.

The tone shifts again with her comment about their lives lacking joy, and that brings us back to the opening of the story, to Valentine’s Day, nearing the half way point of the story. Think about how much has been said in 5 1/2 minutes.

In short order their lives are turned upside down in an effort to take care of her husband, and we get a clear sense of Salima’s self-determination to do whatever it takes. We also hear a change in attitude as she “couldn’t give a fuck actually”.

When hearing a well-told story you sometimes hear a brilliant line that defines the topic. In this case, “when your life explodes and it morphs into something far better, the fear evaporates, disappears, distills, just goes into the atmosphere”

With calm returning to their lives, she beautifully brings the story to an end. An impactful personal story connects the audience to the storyteller, while at the same time inspiring us to reflect on our own lives, and what’s really important.

Valentine’s Day. It reminded me that most success is a wiggly line on a grubby piece of graph paper. I used to think of success as tick, tick, tick, ambition, ambition, ambition. Now? Now I think of it as… Finding the people, finding the places that make you feel safe and bring you home.

Transcript

00:00 So, it was Valentine’s Day. My husband Carl came into the sitting room and he closed the door. He was wearing a big thick winter coat even though it was quite mild outside, and he was shivering, he was trembling. I didn’t recognize him.

Something terrible has happened, he said.

00:22 My husband Carl is a coper. He is a man with a plan. If you want someone on your team, pick Carl. He’s an oak tree.

Then he said, I just can’t do this anymore. Whatever I do, it is never enough. He had a business. He has a business. He’d been navigating it through COVID, through Brexit, through all of it.

And I’m embarrassed to admit right now that I just kind of got used to him being stressed all the time. I barely saw it anymore.

And then he added, do you love me? Can you still love me? Because sometimes I just think it would be better if I wasn’t here anymore.

01:11 I met Carl when I was 22 in the waiting room of an audition room for a Bollywood film. Neither of us got the part. I asked him for the time, as a really spurious reason to talk to him, because he was simply the most handsome man I’d ever seen in my life.

On our first date, I asked him if he wanted children over the starter. I cried over the main course. I am a crier. And over dessert, I very optimistically asked him for a second date. Miraculously, he agreed, and six weeks later, he asked me to marry him.

01:56 The following summer, we were married in a London registry office. Me in a red vintage dress, him in an ill-fitting suit. He still looked really handsome. We cobbled together a reception at a pub down the road. A chef friend of ours and made a big chocolate cake, and we bought tons of boxed wine from a cash and carry.

So on my side, my family. There was my dad, very angry because I’d walked myself down the aisle. There were my extended family, the Buddhists, the Amnesty International members, the Liberals, the very earnest guests. On the other side was Carl’s family. They were different.

There was a man called Mickey Four Fingers, whose name really explains the man. There was a group of ex-cons whose gold jewellery competed for attention with their gold teeth. And then there was his dear dementia-ridden mum, Pat. She’d actually been a getaway driver for her naughty brothers in the 80s. She was an amazing woman, but now she just called everybody darling, very, very charmingly, but mainly because she didn’t really know where she was or who any of them were.

So it was a joyous, it was a sad, it was an awkward, it was a stressful occasion. And it made both of us yearn for elders that could be there to hold our hands in such big life events.

03:30 We both wanted to rocket away from our upbringings. Carl, partly for physical safety. Both of us, no, really for physical safety. Both of us for emotional safety. And together we did that. I also had ideas of success from 90s rom-coms and TV series.

You remember, The Party of Five, the O.C.. I had an idea that if I had a kitchen island, freshly cut flowers, linen napkins and a gardener, like just a weekend one, then somehow the perfect TV family would just walk in.

04:09 So together, Carl and I did actually do some of that. We lived in the shishi neighborhood. I had a tiny dog that I carried under my arm, Raymond, because he couldn’t really walk very far. And our three kids, they went to a progressive private school where they called the teachers by their first name, didn’t wear uniform, and didn’t learn so much. But they were happy in their early years, at least.

I hadn’t had this kind of education, by the way. I’d been to a state school. I’d ended up at Cambridge. I’d really been like a happy geek at school. And sometimes Carl and I wondered what we were doing, kind of pushing ourselves to such an extent to make sure that our kids went to that kind of school. I think it was another idea of ours to be safe, to be successful.

But there wasn’t much joy in all of this, you know. We were just busy, frantically scrabbling up this hill all the time. Yeah, we had the kitchen island, we did have linen napkins, but they were grubby and they were mainly kept in the back of the kitchen cupboard.

So that Valentine’s evening, when Carl said to me he couldn’t live like this anymore, it cut through all of it. He kept saying to me, do you love me? Can you still love me? Do you love me?

And I kept saying, you are loved. Oh my God, you’re so loved. I felt angry. I felt angry at him. I felt angry at me. How could we have got this so wrong that the boy in the ill-fitting suit was asking me whether I still loved him?

I phoned our family doctor who said that she thought Carl was having a breakdown and that he needed medication and respite immediately. I phoned a friend whose husband had had a breakdown a few years earlier. And I remember standing on the front lawn in my pajamas. It was dark. I was freezing cold. And I was kind of whispering into the phone so my kids wouldn’t hear, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. I mean, who cares?

So I realized that things had to change really quickly. This life of ours that we had created was a weight around us, and Carl in particular was gasping at the surface for air. I had to change things immediately. I knew it. So I told Carl that.

I said that we were going to move to my childhood home, that we were going to take the kids out of the school and we were going to do things very differently, and look after him. He’d always looked after us.

So I did that. It was a bit like triage, I suppose. I gave notice to the school. I started to pack up the house. And then I would drive out of London with my car filled to the brim to set up my kids’ bedrooms in advance of us moving. I would do that at that end. I would go to the tip, visit schools, and then drive home to London sobbing.

07:30 I felt like I’d… I’d just taken a shrinking pill. I felt like everyone in London with their game faces was saying, who did you think you were trying to live this big life? I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed for feeling ashamed. I remember saying to people, oh, please don’t tell them because I think it would make really good gossip. But then there are the people, and there are the moments that stand out for me.

There was the friend that flew across the ocean with squish mellows for my children and words for me saying, we have got this. We have got this. There were the class mums who organized my son’s birthday party. There was the woman in the playground who squeezed my hands because she could see I was feeling really wobbly.

All those signs of kindness had actually always been there, but I’d been too busy looking for other things. So for about 13 weeks, I lived on coffee, sausage rolls, and adrenaline, and by that April my kids were in their new school, Carl was beginning to resurface, and I could kind of exhale again.

That February 14th took the sheen off everything. I couldn’t give a fuck. Can I swear? I don’t know. I couldn’t care less about… I couldn’t give a fuck actually. About appearances suddenly. I just couldn’t. I felt like I’d woken up.

We lost the Deliveroo. We lost complicated cupcake flavors. We lost hotel people bar watching, which I love. We lost the perfect butter chicken tully. Oh, and we lost 24-hour access to buttons, chocolate buttons and Pringles. We lost the people for whom a postcode matters. Most surprisingly of all, we lost the fear.

Because, you know, when your life explodes and it morphs into something far better, the fear evaporates, disappears, distills, just goes into the atmosphere. I’m not scared anymore. There’s just like a little firefly of fear. And that’s to do with the health of the people that I love.

10:16 There was an afternoon last summer. I was sitting in the garden in the farmhouse that we now live in. And it was sunny. And I was watching my husband and my son tear up the lawn on the ride-on mower. There were my two girls, and they were leading their friend’s horse, Stan, to get a bowl of water just inside the front door.

And there was our cat, Tigger, failing to catch a mouse in the hedgerow. Tigger was an indoor cat, actually, in London. But now, well, gone is this skittish creature whose mood you could never predict. Instead, we have a creature that leaps up trees, parties all night, purrs by the fire. She knows exactly who she is. I think much like all of us.

11:10 Valentine’s Day. It reminded me that most success is a wiggly line on a grubby piece of graph paper. I used to think of success as tick, tick, tick, ambition, ambition, ambition. Now? Now I think of it as… Finding the people, finding the places that make you feel safe and bring you home.

Thanks.

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Rhaina Cohen: Why Friendship Can Be Just As Meaningful as Romantic Love @ TEDNext 2024

November 26, 2024/in Emotions, Family, Friendship, Relationships/by Mark Lovett

During the week of October 21, 2024 I had the pleasure of attending TEDNext, held in Atlanta. The event is a new initiative from the folks who produce the TED Conference. There were enlightening talks, insightful discussions and revealing discovery sessions. This post is the fifth in a series highlighting some of my favorite talks.

I’ve always thought of relationships as constituting the fabric of life, with those closest to us becoming metaphorical threads woven into our human tapestry. But are all threads treated as equals? In her TED Talk, Rhaina Cohen speaks to “…a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance.”

I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but that statement rings true for me. In my experience, if you’re not in a romantic relationship, the most prevalent question is, “Are you seeing anyone?” It seems that not having someone to share your life with means your life is somehow incomplete. Which is to say, the story of your life is missing a few chapters. But Rhaina has a different take — one in which friendships can be just as rewarding.

Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there’s an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to. Friendship.

Rhaina uses a variety of story blocks, from her own experiences, to an American Supreme Court case, platonic co-parenting in Canada, statistics about marriage, a reflection on ancient Rome, and platonic life partners, to name a few. While a lot of TED Talks deal with learning something new, in this case I felt her talk was more about shifting perspectives, encouraging the audience to think beyond the status quo when it comes to the value of the friendships we build and maintain.

Transcript

There is a Supreme Court case that you could mistake for a sermon. It’s the case that recognized that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Here is a sense of what Justice Kennedy wrote: “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.”

He goes on to say that marriage offers care and companionship, and the decision argues that these are basic human needs that everyone should have access to, whether they’re straight or queer. Validating.

But what do these words say to you if you’re single? Anybody single here? I mean, there should be quite a few of you, because in the US, the percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a record high. Married people, you’re not off the hook. I’m going to get a little morbid for a moment and have you contemplate what happens if your marriage doesn’t last until the end of your life, whether because of divorce or outliving your spouse? In the US, about 30 percent of women over 65 are widows.

The reality is, any one of us is unlikely to have a spouse by our side until our last dying breath. Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full, unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there’s an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to. Friendship.

I got the sense that friendship could be this stronger force in our lives because of a friendship that I stumbled into. We would see each other most days of the week, be each other’s plus-ones to parties. My friend has this habit of grabbing my hand to hold, including when I brought her to my office, and then I’d have to be like, no, not in the office.

(Laughter)

But I mean, I wouldn’t let my husband do that in the office either. It’s just, you know, setting matters. But it was only an issue because for us, affection is a reflex. And I knew it couldn’t be just us. I went out and interviewed dozens of people who had a friendship like ours, and I wrote a book about them. And the kinds of friends that I spoke to, they don’t just have a weekly phone call. They’re friends like these.

Natasha and Linda are the first legally recognized platonic co-parents in Canada. And this is them with their teenage son on vacation. Joe and John have been best friends for many decades. When Joe was struggling with alcohol and drug use, John got him into recovery. And then John decided that to support his friend, he would also become sober. Joy took care of her friend Hannah during Hannah’s six-year battle with ovarian cancer. And that included flying out to New York, where Hannah got specialized treatment. Joy had trouble actually sleeping overnight in the hospital, because she was too busy watching to make sure her friend’s chest was still rising and falling.

Some of the friends that I spoke to had this friendship occupy the space that’s conventionally given to a romantic partner. Some had this kind of friendship and a romantic partner. It’s not either/or. As I spoke to these people, I realized that they were at the frontier of friendship, helping us imagine how much more we could ask of our platonic relationships. Which is true, but another way of looking at it is they’re doing something retro, even ancient.

In ancient Rome, friends would talk about each other as “half of my soul,” or “the greater part of my soul.” The kind of language we now use in romantic relationships. From China to Jordan to England, there was a practice called “sworn brotherhood, where male friends would go through a ritual that would turn them into brothers.

About a century ago, friends would sit for portraits like these, with their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies up close. What I took from this history is that if we don’t limit friendship, it can be central to our lives.

But today, not everybody recognizes that. I spoke to a mother who really tried to get her son to make dating a priority because she wanted him to find emotional wholeness. And her son told her, “I found it in my platonic life partner.” His best friend, who he had known since high school, who had moved across the country to be near him, to live with him, in fact.

The mother said, “I don’t understand how you can be partners with someone you’re not romantic with.” Understandable as a reaction in a culture that treats friendship as the sidekick to the real hero of romance. We get that message from rom-coms, from Supreme Court justices, also from policy.

So Joy, during the six years she took care of her friend, she was not entitled to family medical leave. When Hannah died, Joy was not entitled to bereavement leave, because the two of them were considered unrelated. In our government and workplace policies, friendship is invisible.

Sometimes this diminishment of friendship comes from the outside, and sometimes it comes from the inside. A woman wrote to me about her friend who she considers her person. She spent so much time with her friend’s kids that she was given car seats for them. She’s also divorced and tried to find a new spouse because there was a hole she wanted to fill in her life. Then she read stories of people like Joe and John in an article I’d written. And she realized there was no hole. She had been happy all along, but she hadn’t known, been made to believe that it was possible to have a friend be enough.

If we can recognize what friendship has the potential to be, and if we can recognize that there is more than one kind of significant other then we can imagine more ways for us to find love and care and companionship. And we can support people who have these kinds of friendships. So the mother I mentioned, she’s completely changed her tune. She now admires the commitment between her son and her son’s friend.

I feel like I get to live in a future world where you can just build a life with your friends. I live not only with my husband but also two of my closest friends. One of them we kind of like had a courtship process to recruit him to come to our city and live with us. The other had a job in our city, and we invited her to stay.

It didn’t take long for us to start scheming with about a half dozen other friends, about trying to buy property together. The kind of place where we could raise kids alongside one another, our working title for the place is “The Village.” I don’t know if this will work out. I can keep you posted about it, but if it does, I feel really confident about one thing. That if one of us has a migraine at 6am and there’s a toddler bouncing around, or we get a terrifying diagnosis, we will not be a lonely person calling out only for no one to answer.

And this is what I hope for all of us. That we feel like we have permission to share our lives with whoever we are lucky enough to find, whether that’s a spouse, a sibling or a house full of friends.

Thank you.

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Justin Black: The Story Statistics Don’t Tell @ TEDxFolsom

August 10, 2024/in Education, Family, Personal Stories, Society, TEDx, Trauma/by Mark Lovett

The most impactful TEDx Talks are those which can alter our perspective on a subject of consequence. Sometimes that means clarifying the nature of a critical problem, or framing it in a way that adds relevance to our lives. Even though we were already aware of the situation, we now see it in a different light. In some instances, however, a speaker will introduce us to a topic we were not aware of before, or use a term that we’re unfamiliar with to describe an issue.

This was the case for me when Justin Black began describing his experience with inherited trauma. I’ve worked with a number of speakers whose childhood was affected by traumatic family situations, and our conversations included their relationship with family members, but I hadn’t thought of their experiences from a standpoint of inheritance. Justin’s talk at TEDxFolsom altered my perspective.

“And simply, what you can do, is be one caring adult. Not just working to help someone beat the odds, but change the odds for families and communities for generations and generations to come.”

Although the experiences of our youth impact us, often times negatively, we have the option of acting differently in adulthood, and thus, prevent the next generation from going down a similar path. But it requires awareness of these impacts, and a commitment to make conscious decisions that will create a better future, and as Justin demostrates, it’s possible.

As you watch his talk, take note of how Justin explains the issue in a number of ways: describing his experiences (both while growing up and later as an adult) meeting the woman who he would later marry and become parents with, and providing details on the ACES Assessment. At times his talk is painful, while at other times joyful. A key element that makes the narrative flow, is his use of humor.

There’s a transcript of his talk below, and I invite you to give it a read, as you’ll come to see how Justin structured his talk and transitioned from one story element to the next.

If you want to know more about the journey that Justin and Alexis have been on, as they help the world redefine what normal looks like I highly recommend reading their book, Redefining Normal.

Transcript

July 11, 2016, a day I would never forget, in the week that changed my life forever. I was a freshman at Western Michigan University, starting an orientation week at my scholarship program. And on the first day of orientation, I walked into a busy room filled with conversation. As a nervous freshman, I tried to find a table with the least amount of people, farthest in the back.

I came across a table with three students, and one student in particular, told me all about her summer of studying abroad in South Africa. I mean, from bungee jumping, shark cage diving, sky diving, even getting four tattoos while there. And then, it was my turn to tell her about my amazing summer, as a waiter at TGI Fridays.

But all in all, college for me was an opportunity to have a fresh start. Not a fresh start that showcased my authenticity, but pretty much the opposite. For me, I wanted to bury the memories of being the kid who didn’t have heat on Christmas morning. I wanted to bury the memories of being the kid who had his water cut off at various times of the year. And I wanted to bury the memories of being the kid who literally had to fight in school just to gain respect.

So college for me was an opportunity to hit the reset button and actually put on a mask. But Thursday, that Thursday, I felt exposed. Our first activity that Thursday consisted of two presenters passing out note cards to each student in our cohort. And with these note cards, they asked us to write something down that we had been through that no one would know by looking at us.

And not only that, pass those note cards to the front of the room to be read aloud anonymously. I mean, here I am, trying to run away from my past, and here it is right in front of me again. But the stories of triumph, the stories of overcoming that I heard from my fellow cohort members, it gave me a sense of truth and a spirit of authenticity.

And then it finally hit me. It finally hit me. I was reminded of why we were all together in that room, why each and every one of us sat in the seat that day. The truth was that this was a program for foster youth in higher education. Each and every one of us was working to defy the odds, to join a 3% of foster youth to graduate from college. Each and every one of us, as former foster youth, was working to overcome generational burdens, many of us generational traumas, from four to five generations maybe, that we didn’t choose, we didn’t want to accept, but it was put on us to overcome.

And it’s safe to say that after that activity, my conversations for the rest of the week were less casual and more authentic. So the girl with the tattoos and I, we went for a walk that evening around campus. We ended our night in the lawn of our dormitory, watching the moon peek above the buildings on campus. While laying in the grass, we started to share what led us to this point in life.

What had us join this program, and even telling stories of some of our traumatic experiences. As she began to share, I remember noticing which note card was hers. She looked down in the grass with her eyes filled with tears. And she began to share with me that both her mother and her grandmother were victims of suicide.

I grabbed her hand to affirm how she felt in that moment. Then I begin to share my story. That there were two generations of drug abuse on my mom’s side of the family, and three generations of domestic violence on my dad’s side of the family. And these, everyone, these are the examples of the invisible burdens that many of us are carrying around.

While you may not have gone through what I’ve experienced or gone through what she’s experienced, each and every one of us, each and every one of us have things in our past, a family history, and many of us have traumas that we are working to overcome. These are what I would like to call inherited traumas.

Inherited traumas being generational traumas that are normalized by the previous generation, maybe your parents, maybe your grandparents. Generational traumas normalized by the previous generation and passed down to you, maybe as a part of your identity, maybe even a part of a cultural standard, but ultimately normalized in your lifetime and passed down to you.

Now, four years from that moment of laying in the grass and the greatest year of all of our lives, it’s 2020, right? Hopefully not reminiscing about it, don’t think about it, it’s okay, it’s all right, I won’t take you back. But four years from that moment, I was blessed to have the girl that I met during the orientation week become my wife.

And while marriage has been amazing, it’s been such a blessing, we had to be intentional about our past, that our past doesn’t influence our future in a relationship that we have today. But the question I have for you all, the question I want you to think about as you leave here today, is how long will we allow inherited trauma to impact who we are today?

How long will we allow inherited trauma to impact the relationship that we form? And how long will we allow inherited trauma to impact the future of our families? Now, before we were married, while we were still dating, we took an exam called the ACES Assessment. By show of fans, how many of you have heard of the ACES Assessment? How many of you have taken the ACES Assessment? Quite a few people.

ACES stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. It’s one of the greatest predictors of our future outcomes. It assesses child abuse and childhood experiences as a public health problem. Based on your social and economic status, of where you work, live, play, and learn, some of us may have experienced more ACEs, or traumatic experiences than others. The ACEs Assessment is on a scale of one to ten. With one being the least amount of traumatic experiences, and ten being the most amount of traumatic experiences.

While we knew we had some things in our past we needed to work out and deal with, we were completely unaware of the score we would receive. And for me, while I took the ACES exam, I remember going question after question, marking a yes, and then another yes, and then another yes. And then, as heartbreaking as it was, we received our score. I had a score of a nine, and my wife had a score of a ten. The two highest scores you can receive on the exam. I guess for me on the bright side, this is one of the exams in my life where I did have a high score, so I was pretty happy about that. I’m like, hey, let’s celebrate that, you know?

But honestly, what’s the story behind the numbers? You see, two-thirds of participants have at least one or more ACE on the assessment. While one in five participants score at least a three or higher on the assessment. But let’s take it a step further. Taking it a step further, we have the different categories of ACEs. These categories of ACEs consist of abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. These are the categories in which the assessment is based off of.

But let’s take it a step further. A step further than the numbers, and a step further than the categories themselves. I would like to highlight the iceberg. We see the tip of the iceberg is what we would like to show to the outside world; our actions, our behaviors, and for me for a long time, my accomplishments. The things we would like to highlight or showcase to the outside world.

But what’s underneath the tip of the iceberg? What’s underneath the tip of the iceberg, a lot of times is our traumas, our ACEs, our family histories, and maybe for you it’s something that many of us, that we’ve written down in a note cart that people would know about us, and something we have yet to deal with. And if we haven’t dealt with what’s underneath the tip of the iceberg, if we haven’t dealt with that yet, and it goes unaddressed, and it goes unresolved, it can easily become a part of our inherited trauma.

And then it doesn’t just become an inheritance just to you, it becomes an inheritance also for your children as well. And speaking of children, my wife and I wanted to wait at least four to five years before having children once we were married. But 2022 came rolling around, and one day she told me that her body starts to feel a bit different, and many of you know exactly what that means. So we decided to take a pregnancy test, and we saw two red lines. Two red lines that changed our life forever.

After a few Google searches, not knowing exactly what that meant, shocked, confused, we took five more pregnancy tests. We had to be sure. But August 2022 came, and we had our baby girl. And while being a parent has been such an eye-opener, has been incredible, has been amazing, I still have this sense of fear in my heart that, what if my generational trauma, what if my inherited trauma, the things that have been normalized for me as a child -the abuse, the neglect, the household dysfunction – what if what’s been normalized to me, becomes normal to her? What if my inherited trauma becomes an inheritance to her?

You see, all of our children are looking at us to lead them, to guide them, and to create the example for them, and looking at us to create their normal. But what happens when generational trauma becomes our normal? You see, when generational trauma becomes normalized, it turns into violence ripping apart families and communities. When generational trauma becomes normalized, it turns into substance abuse tearing apart entire family’s neighborhoods. And when generational trauma is normalized, it leaves nine-year-old boys like me, joining nearly half a million kids, a part of the foster care system in America.

So what do we do? How do we redefine the normal? How do we redefine the normal for ourselves, for families, and communities, and those around us? You see, if you were to draw a circle of 0.6 mile radius around a child’s home, you will be able to predict their future outcomes. Based on your environment, their education, neighborhood, and most importantly, parental influence. Yes, I believe that parental influence is the game changer. Of how we love, lead, and guide the next generation can make a world of difference.

In fact, studies showed that kids who grew up in a two-parent household are 40% more likely to graduate from college. And that’s just one aspect of parental influence. But all of us in this room, we play different roles. Some of you may currently be parents. Others may be parents down the line. And many of us know someone who’s raising a child.

So what are some simple but impactful things that we can do to make a world of difference for the society around us? Number one, the number one thing I believe we can do, is have a vision for our relationship, a vision for our relationship that consists of challenging one another to be a better version of ourselves.

Maybe it looks like you taking the ACES Assessment before you join together in a relationship. Maybe that looks like you going home, digging through your drawers, finding a note card, and writing something down that you’ve been through that people wouldn’t know by looking at you. And asking yourself, have you dealt with what’s on that note card?

The number two thing I would say, the number two thing we can do to redefine a normal is invest in the future of our children. Invest in the future of our children. While financial investment is amazing, it’s important, it’s incredible, I love it. But even more important, and even more impactful is investing in our children. What it looks like, is making sure that they can grow up and be loving and caring parents themselves, making sure that they become loving and caring parents themselves. But also being aware that we need to raise our children, knowing that how we treat them today, would be the same way they treat others when they become an adult.

And last but not least, easily most importantly, as a wise and amazing man once said, is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. While many of us play different roles, not all of us will be parents, but we can be amazing tutors, we can be incredible mentors, and we can all be loving neighbors. And as stated by Josh Ship, “Every child is one caring adult away from being a success story.”

So how can you be that caring adult? How can you redefine a normal? You must become intentional with the relationships that you form. You must invest in the future of our children. And simply, what you can do, is be one caring adult. Not only just working to help someone beat the odds, but change the odds for families and communities for generations and generations to come.

Thank you.

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Journey Jamison on The Moth Mainstage at the BAM Harvey Theater

February 21, 2021/in Family, Humanity, Life Lessons, Society, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

In this story, as told by Journey Jamison, we are taken into a scene that few of have ever experienced, especially at the age of 15. But in a broader sense, I’ve heard many personal stories about how people reacted during an emergency, and you may have such a story to tell. The details that Journey provides bring audience members into her experience as the scene plays out.

But there’s also a larger story at play here, as Journey realizes how her training prepared her for that situation, and in turn, she was able to provide that same training to the victim’s family, thus bringing that wisdom full circle. Think about how story worthy experiences from your life contain such a circular narrative.

Transcript

When I was nine years old, my best friend died. We’d spent the entire day together at an amusement park and she’d been struggling to breathe. So when we got home her dad tried to get her as much help as she could, but it just wasn’t enough, and at three o’clock that morning, she died of an asthma attack.

It was always really hard for me to deal with because I’d helped her with her asthma before, and I just felt like I could have done something. So five years later, when my mother and I found ourselves at a grassroot gunshot wound first aid training, I was immediately intrigued. Now, some of you might be thinking, “Gunshot wound first aid, what?”

But I’m from Chicago, and the lack of resources in our communities makes that training so much more important. We don’t have any trauma centers on the South Side of Chicago where I’m from. So I knew the importance of this training and I paid attention. I sunk my teeth in, I got trained two months later, and I’ve been doing workshops all over the city. Yeah, I know how to apply an occlusive dressing with a credit card, but I was still just a regular teenager.

And so, the following summer, I was coming home from my very first day. I come home, I turn on the TV, I crank up the AC, just like any other day, and then I hear it. Back to back gunshots that sounded like they were right next to me, just back to back, to back. And I just thought to myself, “Is this real? Is this serious?”

You hear all the time about gun violence in Chicago, but I’d never come face to face with it like that before. So I jump in gear. I know that I have this training that I can help people, but I know that the first step to being a first aid responder is knowing that the scene is safe and prioritizing my own safety.

So I glanced out the window, and I’m staring almost like I can see through the window, and I’m like, “What is going on?” I’m seeing people who are kind of running away from a gas station and towards my apartment complex. And I knew I had the tools to help. And I never imagined going outside and putting myself in danger to help anybody.

But it turns out that I didn’t have to, because seconds later, my back door flies open, and a young man, 19 years old, comes in holding his neck. It’s bleeding. And he’s just saying over and over again, “I’ve been shot, can you help me, can you help me?” And without hesitation I just said, “Yes.”

And from that moment, it was autopilot. I lay him down on the floor. I’m asking him questions about who he is. I asked him first, “Can I call 911 for you?” ‘Cause we emphasize that a lot in our first aid trainings. That you had to ask for consent for people because they’re their own person, bodily autonomy.

So I asked him, he says, “Yes.” I get on the phone with the operator. They’re giving me a bit of a hard time, but I put my feelings aside and prioritize the safety of the wounded. They say they’re sending a person on the way. I say thank you. I go back to Peta. I’m asking him more questions about who he is, I want him to feel safe.

He tells me where he’s from – the same apartment complex that I’m from – Oakwood Shores. He tells me he wants to go to college, that he’s 19, that he’s confused. And then I kind of realize I’m taking this all in. I’m 15 years old. I’m home alone with a man who’s been shot in the neck, and I’m giving him first aid. I should probably call my mom.

So I take out my phone, and I guess you can call it a mother’s intuition, because as soon as I am about the press call, my phone rings. It’s my mom.

She’s like, “Hi Journey.”

I’m like, “Hi mom.”

She’s like, “What’s up?”

I’m like, “Mom, you are not going to believe this. There’s a man, he’s in my house, fire, gunshot wound. He’s on the floor, I’m giving him first aid.”

She’s like, “Are you serious?”

I’m like, “No mom, why would I lie about this?”

She’s like, “Okay, okay, okay.”

And I can hear the car unlocking, and the car starting up, and I’m like, “Okay, she’s on her way, good.”

So for a second there, it’s just me and Peta, and I’m trying to examine exactly what is happening. He has two wounds. An entrance wound and an exit wound. The bullet went through his neck and up through his jaw. So I’m trying to apply pressure on both sides to get his blood to clot so the bleeding can slow down.

A few seconds later, my mom comes. And you would think that she might be like, kind of hysterical, kind of crazy, but she’s not, because she’d been through the training too. And for a few moments, it’s calm. Peta is calming down, his blood is starting to clot, the bleeding is not so drastic, and it’s calm. And then somehow, some way, people start to flood into my house. Bystanders, I guess, who had seen what was going on.

And my mom, she does a great job at keeping Peta’s privacy. Keeping questions away from him so that he’s not getting more stressed out – shout out to my mom, she’s in the audience – and so we’re just kind of juggling this thing, me and my mom, we’re doing this together, I’m taking care of Peta’s body, she’s taking care of Peta’s surroundings, and then the police come.

And I feel like it’s not a secret that black and brown people are not trusting of law enforcement, quite frankly, it just makes us anxious. And my mom, she didn’t want that kind of energy in our house, she was trying to persuade them like, “There’s no crime scene here. Can you wait outside? It’s very crammed in our apartment.”

But eventually she gave up her battle when they threatened to arrest her. And so eight police officers crowd into our tiny apartment, just watching me apply pressure to this young man. And after the police come which, after the police come, after my mom gets there, the fire department finally gets there. Not the ambulance, but the fire department. So that just gives you a glimpse of what healthcare is like in Chicago. The ambulances don’t really come to our communities that fast.

So the fireman gets there and he’s coming in to check Peta’s vitals and I have my hands over his neck, and he says, “You need to take your hand away.” And I was so overwhelmed and I just had all these feelings of doubt and I just reluctantly pulled my hand away, and just as I thought would, he starts bleeding again.

And I’m just looking at the guy like And then another fire man comes in and he says, “Actually she needs to put her hand back there, you’re doing a good job. And I looked at him and I said, “Okay, I knew it.”

So I am continuing to apply pressure and keep my hand on his wound while they’re taking his vitals and preparing him to get in the ambulance. So then, a few, maybe five or six minutes later, the ambulance does come. They take him on a gurney. They take him away. And luckily my mom was able to get some information from his mentor who was there, so we could follow up with him later.

So my mom, she rushes all these people out of our house, and I go outside, and it’s so chaotic. The ambulance is there, the police is there, my neighborhood is there, the news station is there, and they’re kind of looking to me like this “Shero,” and I’m kind of very overwhelmed, and so instead of fielding questions, I took my story with me, and my experience with me, and I come back inside. I closed the door, I wash my hands, I grab my cell phone and my keys, and me and my mom get in the car. I zone out and I’m just replaying in my mind what just happened.

Then I snap out of my trance, and the car stops, and we’re at the beach. And I’m just like, “Oh my God, what is going on?” And she looks at me and she’s like, “Come on,” and I’m like, “Okay,” and we proceed to join a group of women on the sand doing yoga. And my mom just looks at me in her tree position, and she goes, “Self care.” And I was like, “Okay,” and I was just so grateful, that I had a mom who emphasized that a lot when I was growing up, and that I had the opportunity to really process what just happened in my life.

So, that happened, and then I resumed my life as a normal teenager. I go to camp. Conflict resolution camp, by the way. But I go to camp. I go to camp in Maine. And then I come back, and I’m in the car with my mom and she’s like, “Hey, I got in touch with Peta’s family, and, you know, he thinks you saved his life.”

And I never thought about it like that. For me, I was just in the right place, at the right time, with the right information, and I did the right thing. But to him, I saved his life. So that’s what it was.

So few days later, I see him. I visited him and I said, “Hey, look I know it was really cool that I was able to help you, but I was trained to do that, and I was equipped with the right tools, so how cool would it be if you were equipped with the same tools, and you can help your mom, or your brother.

And he’s like, “That sounds pretty interesting.”

And I’m like, “So do you want me to like, I can set up a training. I can set up a workshop. I’ll come to you.”

He’s like, “Aight, bet.”

So about two or three months later, we were able to train his whole entire family of about like 25 people ranging from three years old to 60 years old. And we trained his whole family in his apartment, and it was the most empowering thing for me.

And maybe some of you are saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry, this young girl had to go through that.” But it’s not something I feel embarrassed about or sad about. It was the most changing thing that I’ve ever been through. And it’s shown me the circle of change. You know, you go to school, and you learn about stories, and you learn about how there’s a plot, and that plot is like a hill, it starts the beginning, and then the rising action, and the climax, the falling action, and then the resolution.

But change, instead of it being a hill, it’s like a circle. And me training his family was this entire experience coming full circle, because I started at a training just like that one. And so maybe he could do something like I did, or I could do more things, but it was so empowering for me as a 15 year old girl to have that kind of experience.

So it changed my life for the better, and it showed me that I can change the world if I wanted to. And I guess it just kind of made me feel like I didn’t have to be afraid anymore of where I’m from and my community. I didn’t have to fear walking outside because I was empowered with the tools that I had. Sorry guys. And I thought about it, and I hear all the time, “Children are the future.”

And I’ll tell you guys, I’m a child, I’m a teenager, and it’s super intimidating. You know it’s like 400 years of slavery, an eternity of sexism, it’s intense, and you guys are like, and you guys are like, “It’s you, it’s you,” and I’m like, “Oh my God,” but this experience showed me that I don’t have to be the future, because I can be right now.

Thank you.

[Note: all comments are my opinions, not those of the speaker, or The Moth or anyone else on the planet. In my view, every story is unique, as is every interpretation of that story. The sole purpose of these posts is to inspire storytellers to become better storylisteners and to think about how their stories can become more impactful.]

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Peter Aguero on The Moth at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

February 14, 2021/in Family, Humor, Reflection, The Moth/by Mark Lovett

In this story, as told by Peter Aguero, we hear a tail about family, and strife, and redemption, all within the context of a difficult Christmas. Not a classic holiday story that is filled with good times and cheer, but one that involves the heart. And a connection to family. And love at its deepest level.

Many personal stories are told from a similar point of reflection. Remembering a time in the past when life was difficult and their path forward was unknown. And how tapping into love was central to that future path. Such stories can help folks who are currently living in tough circumstances, as well as remind any of us who have come out the other side to reflect on, and thus to appreciate, the love and support that we encountered along the way.

Transcript

(minor edits were made to improve readability)

This is a reading from the book of Peter chapter 19 verse 2. I was nineteen years old and I just finished my first semester at college. And I got home with my bag of laundry, and things weren’t looking too good for me and my mom.

I walked into the house, and she had told me over that semester to expect some changes when I got home, and it didn’t really hit me until I walked in the door and the first thing that I saw was that her upright piano that she had had since she was a kid was gone. She had sold it. And I walked through the foyer into the living room and there was just a broken couch, and a television on top of another television. One had a working picture, and the other had working sound.

And all the other furniture was gone. My dad had taken it four years ago when he had left, and for some reason the impressions from his lazy boy were still there as some kind of reminder of what a dick he is. I walked through the living room and through the dining room, and the beautiful dining room set that had been in her family for generations was gone. It was a dark mahogany set, really ornate, with these beautiful carved chairs and a glass breakfront, and a buffet table, and that was gone.

And I walked upstairs to put my stuff away, and her bedroom door was open, and the only thing left in the room was her bed. Her bedroom set was gone. There’s nothing more depressing than a bedroom with no furniture. You can see all the little dings and mistakes and tears in the wallpaper that are hidden by things.

Then I saw in my sister’s room. It was still a shrine to my sister after I moved in with my dad, with her Pepto-Bismol pink walls and her canopy bed, and her toy box. Like she liked she was gonna move back and become a little child again. But she wasn’t.

My bedroom was just the way it always was. Covered in posters, with broken particle board furniture and water bed, for some reason, with a broken heater, so you had to put quilts on top of it so you wouldn’t get arthritis. She couldn’t sell any of that anyway.

I had told my mother for years after the divorce to just sell the house. It was too big for the two of us after my sister left, and it was especially too big once I was gone, when I went to college. And the bills had to have been killing her. But her stubborn Polish pride kept her in the house.

I guess she wanted to show to the outside world that everything was okay, but on the inside it was just kind of decaying around her. But she wasn’t able to really deal with it in any kind of a real way. There was just selling things and and taking it day by day.

She was a nurse, she still is, and at the time she was working on the weekends doing 24 hour shifts at a dual diagnosis psychiatric drug unit, and during the week she took a job at a perfume counter in the mall to make some extra money. And she doesn’t like people telling her when to take a break, so that wasn’t gonna last long.

This was a strong big-headed pumpkin-headed Polock. She got home that day and she was happy to see me. Not as effusive as usual, but you know, she made dinner. She made a tomato casserole that she always made with canned tomatoes Wonder Bread and American cheese. Like yeah.

And we sat in the kitchen on the two chairs at the kitchen table, because the other chair I broke, and the other chair I also broke. And we ate our food, and we talked about College that semester being over, and she said, “Peter, we can’t really have much of a Christmas this year. There’s not gonna be any presents. I got your sister a little something because she doesn’t live here anymore, but we really can’t afford any presents.”

I said, “Are we gonna have a tree?”

She said, “We really can’t afford a tree. Decorations? I don’t have time to decorate.”

I’m, okay, you know, all right, okay.

So she said, “I got an idea. I thought this would be funny. Why don’t we, over the next two weeks, cut pictures out of catalogs and magazines of things that we would give to each other if we could.”

And we laughed about it, you know, and then we cried about it, and then we laughed about it again. Because if you don’t laugh about it you’re gonna eat a bullet.

So the next morning she went off to work, and I decided I was gonna throw myself into Christmas. And I decided I was gonna go get a tree, and I was gonna make this the best Christmas I possibly could.

So this is down in South Jersey, small town, and this is before Walmart and Home Depot and outlet stores are down there, so there was one Christmas tree farm, the Debolt Christmas Tree Farm. So I went over there figuring they’d give me a deal because I used to date their daughter, but turns out they didn’t give me a deal, because I used to date their daughter.

And a tree was like 60 bucks. Screw that. So I went back home and I got a hacksaw and I cut out a tree from my side yard. And it wasn’t even like a pine tree. It was some kind of stunted maple tree. And I brought it in the house, and I put it in the tree holder, and there it is in the stand.

And I went up in the attic. And I got the box of decorations and ornaments, and I hung about – there were about six branches – I put about 20 ornaments on each branch. And then I just took the tangled lights, and I just threw them on it, and it was beautiful.

It was really kind of nice. She came home, and she was, I guess, happy, and that was how that was. And I just started throwing myself into this project. I’ve given my mother everything I possibly could give her for Christmas.

You know, she always wanted a forest green Jaguar convertible. So I cut out one of those, and then Jacuzzi had a shower called the Jay Dream with about 20 nozzles, and a little dude that made sandwiches. And I cut out one of those, and gold and diamonds and jewelry, and a new vacuum cleaner, and everything she could ever possibly want in the world.

And I really kind of sunk myself into it. I’d go over hang out of my friends houses and take their mom’s Currier and Ives catalogs, and get all these catalogs and magazines, so I could give my mom the best Christmas ever. And I felt like I was in a kind of bizarro O’Henry novel, and one that he never should of written. And that just kind of consumed me over the next couple weeks. And I figured, this is sad, but this is beautiful, and we’re
going to connect over this, and it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be fine.

It was one night, in between coming home and Christmas, and the two of us were sitting watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, and one of the TV’s was on cable and the other was on broadcast, so the video was a little ahead of the audio because the audio was on broadcast, but you know, you just pretend you’re in Japan. It doesn’t matter. So we’re watching that, and my mom was so distracted, she was there, but she wasn’t there.

And you know my mother and I were like partners, when my parents marriage broke up. She still feels guilty to this day about maybe making me grow up sooner than I did as being the man of the house or whatever. We were friends, and roommates, and partners. It was me and her against the world. And she was the one I always loved coming home to, and the one that would let me get away with anything, and the one that would always be proud of me when I did something right, and would take a day off from work and drive to the zoo with me when I did something wrong.

And she was not there anymore. This house was crushing her. Just crushing her. And all because she couldn’t see the option of getting rid of it. And it was killing me man. That’s my road dog, that’s my mom, that’s my girl. And I lost her. She just wasn’t there anymore. And it was just killing me. Her eyes were just empty. She was in another world. And she was worried about things that she couldn’t figure out how to fix.

So on Christmas Eve I went with my buddy Brian. We got drunk on a jug of Livingston Cellars wine and went to midnight mass, because when you’re under 21 and Catholic, that’s where you go to see your friends, because you can’t get into the bars yet.

And it was great, mass was awesome. My mom didn’t go to midnight mass anymore, because four years before, when my dad left us, it was during midnight mass. What a dick. As the priest was walking up, he stood up and walked out in front of everyone that we knew. Everyone she grew up with. Everyone I grew up with. Everyone we went to school with, and went to church with, and hung out with.

They all saw our family crumbling in front of us on it so my mom doesn’t… my dad’s a dick… I mean, is he here tonight? No he’s not, cuz he’s a dick, such a dick. So my mom doesn’t go to midnight mass anymore.

I got home that night, and the next morning I woke up late, and I brought my little bundles of pictures tied up with scraps of ribbon, and I put them under the tree, and I waited for my mama come down. And I heard her stirring upstairs, and heard her come down, and making coffee. And she came downstairs in her big red Sally Jessy Raphael morning glasses.

And she came down with a cup of coffee and she looked at the the things I was offering her, and she just like oh oh oh oh oh wait a minute, and she went back upstairs, and she was up there for a couple of minutes. How long does it take to bring down some papers? I hope she’s okay. She have diarrhea? It’s Christmas, I don’t know, post-traumatic whatever.

But any way, she comes back down, and we start to exchange our gifts, and she’s opening up a car in a vacuum in the shower and gold and a brand new piano and a bedroom set and a beautiful picture of a dining room set that would be at home in the White House. I tried to give her everything that she had had to get rid of to keep this life together.

She wanted there, more than anything in the world, she wanted there to be some stability for her kids to have a place that was always going to be home. The home that we grew up in. And it was killing her. And I was trying to do anything I could that would maybe make that better.

So she’s just looking at these things, and just smiling and laughing, and then I started to open up mine. And there’s three of them, and there’s one, it’s a picture of some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and a picture of some Homer Simpson slippers, and a picture of a karaoke machine. All from the same Rite Aid catalog.

It was up in her bathroom, upstairs, because she completely forgot. This thing that I really thought it was a one sided thing, and she’s laughing about it now, over there, that’s hilarious, yeah wave. So she went upstairs to make breakfast in the kitchen and I sat there and it was just kind of, I don’t know, I don’t want to be too silly about it, was I got a needle piercing me in the heart, thank you Madison, it was it was just this life that we had, that was the two of us was, just gone.

She would have done anything for me, and she still was, but it just wasn’t working anymore. And she forgot this thing, because the house was killing her, money was killing her, and everything was killing her. There’s nothing I could do, just nothing.

So I went upstairs, and she didn’t make pancakes. My mom makes really good pancakes. She fries them up in bacon grease, and they’re all crispy around the edges, and she makes me one that’s as big as the frying pan and cuts it out to look like Pac-Man and puts it on my plate, ever since I was a little boy.

She’ll give me a second one if I wanted. But this day, there was no Pac-Man face. Just silver dollar pancakes. And they were all burnt. And we sat there eating these burnt pancakes, wondering what the hell was going on with our lives. Today, 14 years later, if you go to my mother’s house where she lives with her new husband, you can go down in the basement and you can see a million boxes.

And you walk past the Ark of the Covenant and you go over in the back. And if you were an archaeologist you could look at the strata of our lives and pick out which year these things happened. This is when Peter quit football, and this is when Michelle had epilepsy growing up, and this is when their dad was a dick. That’s all of them.

And then there’s one box, if you look at it, in Christmas in 1995, if you dig into it, you can see a little velvet bag with a bunch of small pictures cut out of catalogs and magazines. And right underneath of that was stuff that took place a couple months later.

I got my belated Christmas present. It was a picture that my mom sent me when I was away at school of her standing in front of the house with a for sale sign in front of it. And she decided to sell the house. And she moved into a small townhouse. And she took a little hit on her pride but I got my girl back.

Thank you.

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