Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tell Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Something. The next tell us something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is, welcome the Wild Side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at Tell us something. Dot org this week on the podcast.

Hammy: That was the first thought I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department. I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. I get dressed. For some reason, I decided to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white.

Katie Van Dorn: And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was pod to say [00:01:00] the least, and a doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was

Marc Moss: four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Lost and found.

Karna Sundby: When I found his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. I look over and there’s a copy of the kinmen.

Kara Adolphson: The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over. And I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s what I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person on June 30th, 2025 at Ogren Park at Allegiance Field in Missoula, Montana.

Closing out Pride Month. On this episode of the podcast, we’re trying out something a little [00:02:00] different. Tell us something. Board member Beth Ann Osteen generously offered to bring in a professional sound engineer to better capture the feeling of a live event. We’re going to try to keep the essence of the live evening by using the storyteller introductions as I introduce the storytellers the night of the event.

As usual, I’ll give a little teaser of the story before the storyteller shares their story. We’d love to hear from you what you think. Shoot me an email and let me know how you like the new format. You can email me at info at tell us something. Dot org. Love it. Hate it. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Huge thanks. Goes out to the Greater Montana Foundation who encourages communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans. We are so grateful to the Greater Montana Foundation for their support to make the June event possible. Tell us something acknowledges that this land where Ogre Park, [00:03:00] uh, ogre Park now stands, is the ancestral territory of the Salish and Kalispell peoples who have stewarded it for generations.

Summertime is traditionally the primetime for indigenous peoples to gather various berries and roots that are in season while the bitterroot are already harvested. Now is the time for processing and storing any remaining bitterroot that have been gathered. Another staple canvas bulbs are being dug and prepared for storage huckleberry’s service.

Berries and choke cherries are ripening and being harvested for immediate consumption and for drying to preserve in winter. We take this moment to honor its land and the native people in the stories that they share with us to honor them, you can support the ongoing efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kni tribes by learning about their cultural initiatives.

And advocating for indigenous rights, more information can be found@kskt.org.[00:04:00]

In our first story, hammy shares his tale about family faith, and finding yourself what starts as a journey of self-discovery after a life altering decision. Takes an unexpected turn leading to a hilarious and surprising public health crisis on the very first day of a new job. Sometimes life’s most challenging moments can also be the most liberating.

Hammy calls his story, Ham’s First Day at the Health Department. Thanks for listening.

Hammy: Hello everyone. My name’s Hammy, and before I begin, I need to tell everyone that I just grew up loving my family. I, me, my mom, my brother, my sister, my dad. We were all so very close. Um, also, I never really heard my parents fighting at all, which was pretty cool. They would always fight about religion, though.

You see, my [00:05:00] dad was Roman Catholic and my mom’s a Jehovah’s Witness. And, uh, their son had a secret. Um, so I always knew that I had to, I always knew that one day I was gonna make this decision. And I, I tried, I prayed, I, I did the baptism, I did the conversion therapy. And when I was 27 years old, I finally realized I couldn’t do it anymore.

So I, uh, kind of, kind of came out. I, I started downloading the dating apps. I started dating. And I met this boy. There’s this beautiful man in Indiana and I decided to, to get married. Someone go, woo Indiana. Yeah. Um, don’t hear that often. So, uh, he, he just completely swept me up. And I, I came out and, uh, sure enough, my church gave me that phone call and they excommunicated me and my mom, my brother, my sister, my cousins, my friends, everyone.

Dead. That’s it. They just, I believe the church said they handed me over to [00:06:00] Satan. And I’m like, that is a little dramatic. I’m the gay one. Easy there, Satan. Um, but anyways, we were married for five years. We had a good relationship and till one day he decided that he didn’t wanna be married anymore. And so I thought, well, I, I left my family to marry you and, and you change your mind and, and that’s okay.

But what am I gonna do? I knew I wasn’t staying in, in, in Indiana, so, um, I, I wanted to go home. Everything in my body told me I gotta go home. I have to go home. And I knew that if I went home, I would get sucked into the church again. And I knew I would just end up killing myself. ’cause I would just, I would be conflicted.

So I decided to do one of those, you know, eat, pray, love things and just go find myself. But I really don’t like Europe, so I just came to Montana instead. So I got, I got a job at Yellowstone and in Big Sky and I did all those kind of things of working seasonal [00:07:00] jobs. And I finally decided what I wanted to do more than anything was.

Work in public health. I was in a first responder and then in occupational health and now I was in public health, so I got accepted back into a public health program online and I got a job at the Gallatin County Health Department. And so my very first day, right, well, let me actually back up just a minute.

After I, um, came off the mountain, uh, the girl was in heat. Let me tell you. I was divorced. I was in a new city. It was, I was feeling good about myself. You know, the grinder notifications were rolling in. So, uh, I had a lot of fun that first weekend. Now that morning, on my first day at the health department, I woke up and I went to go take a piss and I thought, shit, it started burning.

I said, this can’t be good. Maybe I’m just dehydrated. So I hop in the shower and I look down and this discharge is coming out. Well, you know what? We don’t need to get too [00:08:00] graphic, but I think I knew exactly what it was. That was the first thought. Shit, I have gonorrhea. The second immediate thought was the place I need to go to treat this gonorrhea is my first day at the health department.

I thought, oh my God, this is gonna suck. So I go to the I I, I get dressed. For some reason, I decide to put on white underwear. To this day, I don’t understand why I chose white, but I loaded up on underwear and I headed into work. And I thought, I don’t know what I’m gonna tell them. I don’t know if I’m gonna just keep it kind of quiet.

Um, but then they’re all gonna know they’re gonna do the contact tracing. So I met the health officer and she says, hello James. Welcome my, my real name’s James. She says, hello James, welcome. And I said, hello, and I have gonorrhea and I’m gonna have to talk to someone. And she says, okay, um, let’s get your boss, who’s the communicable disease manager.

Uh, and I’m like, of course, that makes total sense. So I tell her. I’m like, Hey. And then I kind of do it like at, by [00:09:00] that point I kind of go on like this one man show where I’m just telling everybody they got the first two out. So like epidemiologist, you knew front desk reception. I was letting her know, I just had to own that story.

So they, they arranged the, they, they do the, the follow up and contact tracing at the health department, but they do actually the testing, uh, at a different party. So I go down. Hey, I go get tested, um, and the doctor comes in, I’m like, I have gonorrhea. And she’s like, okay. So I pulled down my pants and then I look down and she looks down and we both notice a bump.

Now this was August, 2022. If anyone in public health knows what was happening around August 20, yes, there it is. Monkey px, m MPOs. She looks, I look, she says, I’ll be right back. Come leaves the room. She comes back in looking like monsters ink. It was head to toe, PPE, the mask, the shield, the gloves. The runway category was PPE, and she crushed it.

So she’s coming in and [00:10:00] so she like takes, you know, and, and. She, she, she starts slicing it. And I’ve only been in, yes, exactly. Oh, because I’ve only been in one public health class my first semester and three days at the health department. And inside I knew, I’m pretty sure it’s a swab, but I’m not gonna tell you like, Hey, by the way, doctor, I’m new to public health.

This is what to do. So she cuts it and as she cuts it, there’s like gonorrhea dripping out of my penis. It is a whole Hello. Yes. Um, there is a whole, it’s, it’s a whole production. So now I gotta call my boss on my way home and be like, Hey, um, they think it might be Empo and I have to quarantine. So Do you guys have like a remote or a computer?

Yeah, like a pickup. They were very great. The, the health department, I’ll tell you when, when they say you have, these, were all strangers and you have to rely on, on the, the compassion and kindness of strangers. They were all absolutely amazing. And, uh, they just re reaffirmed my life. And, uh, the people [00:11:00] in Butte, that queer people were being taken care of because there was no stigma.

There was no judgment. They were just right to the facts. Um, so. I get a phone call a couple days later. It’s, it’s negative. Um, for em, PX, gonorrhea, we all knew. Yes, that was, we, we had that one coming. So we get there and she’s, um. So I go back, I go back in and they say, okay, you gotta do your follow-up test.

Or I do my follow-up test and uh, they call me back. They say everything’s negative. We just wanted you to come back in one last time for a shot of penicillin. I thought, okay, that’s fine. Gimme a shot of pen penicillin. I wait a couple weeks. I go on another date. Now I have to go to Butte for this date. I go to Butte.

I first time, I think it’s really fun. Here I go. Have a nice beautiful morning with Clayton. His name was a wonderful man. We’re just having some coffee and he says, you know, we like to get lunch. He. I said, yeah, I just want to let you know I’m allergic to seafood. And he says, okay, well we’re in Butte, so relax.

Um, and [00:12:00] then, uh, I said, are you allergic to anything? He said, it’s just penicillin. And I said, okay, well, we can’t have sex after lunch because I might give you penicillin. Uh, I had gonorrhea. And they had, it wasn’t, but then thought it was monkeypox, but it wasn’t that, but it was gonorrhea actually. So if I can transmit it, I’m not, I’m only in my, like, third week of public health right now, so I don’t really know how all of this works.

Um, he said, I just want, I just wanna buy you lunch. So, uh, good guy. So that, that’s, that’s thinking about that now, you know, getting lost. Getting found was I, was I lost when I came out here? I think a little bit, and I think we’re always a little bit lost, right? Because that’s so, it makes life kind of exciting.

And, um, have I been found? Well, I found a really good therapist. Um, thank God for her. Uh, uh, I, uh, found a community. A [00:13:00] family. My partner Clayton, he stayed with me by the way. Uh, great guy by the way. Doug is here. Oh. Um, by the way, every interaction since then is always that of me being like, I have a wild story.

And him being like, sure. So it’s like the perfect relationship. Uh, and, uh, I, I found a great community in, in Butte. Uh, it’s such a wonderful town. Thank you to Missoula. Butte. It’s able to hang a pride flag. We got that passed. So thank you guys. Thank you Missoula for that. Um, but. In, in conclusion of this story, I, I try to talk openly about this.

I don’t want us to feel like we ever have to hold in that shame, that darkness. ’cause I know what that darkness does when we bring that darkness to the light in front of strangers. Um, just sharing our stories, we’re able to own that, right? So thank you guys so much for having me here. I appreciate it and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of this time.

Thanks, Marc.[00:14:00]

Marc Moss: Hammy is thrilled to be sharing his story tonight. He works in occupational safety, health and risk management. He is the founder and creative director of Queer Butte Arts and Culture, a new group celebrating local, queer art, queer culture, and local queer history. Last year he was named one of Southwest Montana’s 20 under 40, and this year he was honored as the young professional of the year by the Butte Local Development Corporation.

He is a homosexual and he lives in Butte with his partner Clayton. Also, a homosexual

ham is passionate about harm reduction, ending stigma, and walking on his hands. Above all, hammy believes that storytelling can save lives. In our next story, Katie Van Dorn recounts a childhood marked by an unexpected physical challenge to a life defined by adventure and a [00:15:00] relentless pursuit of wellness.

Katie’s journey is filled with extraordinary feats, unexpected setbacks, and profound self-discovery. Katie calls her story, the cracks are how the light gets in. Thanks for listening.

Katie Van Dorn: Wow. The only time I hold a mic like this is when I am in a room all by myself. So now I’ve gotta see all these faces. Anyway, um, well, good evening everybody. Have you ever heard the joke about the lost dog with three legs blind in his left eye, missing an ear and no tail? Well that dog answers to the name of Lucky and my, my brother used to call him.

Say that I was that dog named Lucky. And, and the reason for that is, is it began at birth. I was born with a dislocated hip and I was a [00:16:00] cesarean baby. So either the doctor pulled too hard or they, um, or somehow they didn’t check my hip at birth. So around. Age two, my parents finally discovered that I had a dislocated hip when I fell and couldn’t get up.

And, um, so I was braced, just, uh, just tucked in and kept in a brace. And I would be standing in the yard in the patio just spreading, go like this with my brother and sister running all around me. And a little tiny dog named Clyde would just knock me over flat on my back. And, uh. And so anyway, I, um, that actually did wondrous for me.

It, it sent me on my way. And I, because I grew up in Lala as Mark said, I, um, I was able to swim and, and surf body surf, and. Hike and run and all that. My childhood wasn’t affected, but at high school I started to have a lot of hip pain again, and so [00:17:00] I went to the orthopedic surgeon and he said, well, you need a pelvic osteotomy.

In other words, a total restructuring of my right hip, and basically it just rotates your. Acetabulum your socket straight down instead of down and out. And that actually six weeks, um, in a body cast, then seven months on crutches. And the body cast was like, my parents had to have a baby all over again.

They had to come give me the bed pan and water and food and everything. And I, um, I was not a happy baby. Um, and so anyway, I, uh. I got through that and it was like, I felt like the lucky dog. It was pretty miraculous. I was able to run, I was, I started school at the University of California Davis and I was able to run a half marathon and I just really got into running and I also got into swimming.

Um, I used to swim in the ocean, but I started swimming in a pool with a master’s program and the coach [00:18:00] there asked me if I wanted to do a race from. Lanai to Maui in Hawaii, swimming across the channel. And so I did that and it was a pretty neat experience with huge swells. And some of the, some of the swimmers were seasick ’cause the boat had to go as slow as the swimmer.

But I did it and it just fueled my love of adventure and my desire for more. And soon thereafter, I was invited to cook at a guest ranch in the cell way, bitter wilderness. And that was my introduction to Montana. And so I went back and cooked for five summers. I loved it. I would run along the river’s edge and jump into big pools.

And so for five years, I alternated summers in the cell way and winters cooking at a guest or at a restaurant at the top of Aspen or snow mass. Mountain and then I decided, okay, I gotta, I need a real job. So I went back to school in exercise physiology and learned about how, how exercise and nutrition [00:19:00] and all sorts of things factor into.

Staying healthy. And uh, but then soon after I graduated for my, got my master’s, once again, my hip was bothering me. So now I was facing surgery number three, and this was from the femoral side instead of the pelvic side. And I probably should have figured it out, but I didn’t. And I walk, came outta surgery with my right leg, an inch and a half shorter than my left, and I was.

POed to say the least. And, um, the, the, you know, doctor said, well, that’s the way it has to be. So it just was so, I just learned to use poles for hiking and I put lifts in on, in and outside of my shoe and I got a lot of body work. And my name used to be Katie Bodywork, van Dorn. And to this day I live by that principal, but I met my husband around that time and he also loved hug.

Hiking Ray, he’s up there [00:20:00] and, um, so we did a lot of adventures that involved hiking, trapper Peak, Lolo Peak, et cetera. And he, if I got sore, he would give me a piggyback and just bounce my, my hips around until I was. Good to go again. And, uh, so anyway, that, uh, went on. And then around 2001, when I was 45 years old, I decided to have a hip replacement.

And to tell you the truth, that was a very lucky experience because to this day, I still have that hip and it works wonderfully. I might have a. Funky gate, but it still works. And, um, and so because of that good surgery, we decided to do this ski trip from Finland, in Finland, from Russia to Sweden. And we skied about 40, uh, about 40 to 50 miles a day for seven days.

And that, again, was, was quite an adventure. And what I realized with both swimming and [00:21:00] skiing is that they’re very rhythmical. And so if you just put a piece of music like Taco Bell’s cannon in your head, you can just. Get into the flow. And so, um, so we, I did a lot of skiing and then I, um, because of this funky gait, I found myself needing knees, two of them in 2014.

And so I went back and I had, um, knee surgery. And again, that was so fortunate. It just flowed. So well, and, um, I had, I still to this day have the knees and the hip, and they both do really well. But what happened a few years later was that I started to have foot pain, left foot pain, and I, um, and I consulted doctors after trying ibuprofen and tons of steroid shots.

I kept pushing myself, pushing myself, and finally the doctor [00:22:00] said, you know what? You’ve, you’ve your foot. Uh, talus bone, which is your landing pad, has collapsed and your only option is amputation. Cut that off. And I said, I’m gonna cut my head off before I cut any foot off. And I, um, I meant it. And, um, so I.

Um, and this was the first time that there wasn’t a solution. There was always solutions to all these things. This is the first time when I thought, okay, you’ve got to figure this one out for yourself. And um, Henry David Throw once said that, not until we are lost. Can we begin to find ourselves? So I sought out, um, a lot of alternative medicine.

I got stem cells and prolotherapy and platelet rich plate plasma, and I, I sought it all out to try to help the foot. At least structurally. And then my mom passed, happened to pass away in the middle of all this. So I had time to [00:23:00] just go inward and think about, okay, what, what have I done wrong here? Maybe I’ve been, um.

Not a nice person because I lost my SOLE, but I felt like I needed my SOUL saved, and so I tried to do a lot of meditation and studying neuroscience and y. Um, how meditation can help that. And I studied energy medicine and I studied restorative yoga. And I, I just went, just went deep for three years. I just kind of hid out and all my friends up there were with me when, you know, I, Ray would put on his, his ski closer, his running shoes, and go to, to go out and exercise and I would start crying and I just would always be in tears.

And finally after a lot of work and it internally and a lot of outside work, little by little my foot started to be a little less blue [00:24:00] and so did I, and less swollen. And gradually I was able to do more and more. First I could walk without the brace. I had a A FO brace on my foot, and then I could. Walk a little bit longer and then I could double pull cross country skiing.

And finally, in 2022, I hiked to jump top a jumbo for the first time and I just wept. And um. With joy and gratitude. And ever since then I’ve really thought, okay, you’ve gotta be grateful for this body. ’cause you know, it’s, it’s pieced together. Lots of, lots of replaced parts, and so you’ve gotta take good care of it and honor it.

And when it doesn’t wanna do something, let go. Just let it go. And so. I wanna summarize my story, my lost and found story with a, a little verse from one of my favorite Museum, museum [00:25:00] musicians, Leonard Cohen. And the song is called Anthem. He says, ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Katie Van Dorn

is originally from Lala, California. Katie studied exercise physiology at the University of Montana. She is passionate about the outdoors and is a compassionate real estate agent who has been caring for home buyers and sellers alike in Missoula for over 20 years. Katie loves hiking, cross country skiing, swimming, gardening, and cooking.

You may have heard her freeform show on Montana Public Radio, where she is a rotating host and producer of Thursday freeform coming up after the break.

Karna Sundby: When I found [00:26:00] his body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answered the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up.

Kara Adolphson: I look over and there’s a copy of the caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet. I’m gonna read that, so I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo.

Marc Moss: That’s next on the Tell Us Something podcast.

Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net and Missoula Broadcasting Company. Learn more about Missoula Broadcasting Company and listen [00:27:00] online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com.

Thanks to our in-kind sponsors, float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile.

Joyce Gibbs: Hi, it’s Joyce from Joyce of Tile. If you need tile work done, give me a shout. I specialize in custom tile installations. Learn more and see some examples of my work@joyceoftile.com.

Marc Moss: Alright, let’s get back to the stories.

You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Marc Moss, opening up the second half of this episode of the Tell Us Something Podcast. Karna Sundby goes on a blind date in Seattle, which leads to a whirlwind, romance and a life that feels like a dream when an unimaginable tragedy strikes. One woman’s world shatters, forcing her to confront the deepest of despair, follow her incredible journey through loss, unexpected healing, and the profound discovery of purpose amidst the pain.

Know that Karna’s story speaks frankly [00:28:00] about suicide. Karna calls her story, finding the gift. Thanks for listening.

Karna Sundby: Hello everybody. Can you hear me?

Come with me to Seattle. It’s after work and I’m on an escalator, headed up to a restaurant, and I’m feeling anxious and wondering why am I doing this? I get to the top and sitting on a couch is a very handsome man. Eyeing the escalator, he stands up, flashes me. A big smile, has perfect teeth, and maybe this blind date isn’t such a bad idea.

After all, we sit in the bar for hours telling stories about our families, our sales careers, his love of sailing, my passion for skydiving and all of our bizarre blind dates. Later, we would [00:29:00] agree that it seemed like a reunion. Like we already knew each other, maybe from some other time. His name was Ed, and his gentle spirit won my heart.

We spent almost every weekend on his sailboat, which was so relaxing and so exhilarating when you’re keeled over and the spinnaker’s out, slicing through the the swales, and then there’s nothing so tranquil as being lulled to sleep. By waves slapping against the hull of a gently rocking boat. Eventually we moved into a guest house, I mean a, a house on the Puget Sound, and it was summer in Seattle.

We were so happy. Life was so good. As I got to know him over the next couple years, I felt we had the happiest relationship of anybody that I knew. He was more quiet with other people than he was with me, and so I started [00:30:00] thinking of him as the strong, silent type. We were both in sales and I realized that he never should have been.

There was just too much pressure, too many quotas, too many, too much selling, and so I wish that he had had some different kind of career. We never had an argument. I never saw him upset or. Depressed until one November night. And then when I asked him what was wrong, he said it was his job. And I said, well, ed, you can find a different job, but I’d never seen him despondent like this.

And I didn’t know how to support him. So I just thought, well, I’ll just let it be. Let him watch Monday Night football and we’ll talk about this more tomorrow. But for us, there would be no, tomorrow I was 42 years old. Living a charmed life with the man of my dreams. Those dreams died the next day when I came home from work and found him dead.

[00:31:00] He had chosen to end his life. When I found his dead body, I just started screaming and screaming and ran into the house, grabbed the phone, and started dialing my parents in Illinois. When I realized I can’t just keep screaming when they answer the phone and I can’t stop, I hung up. Yeah, just then my neighbor shouted.

I called 9 1 1 and whoosh. All of my freaking out parts just came rushing back together and I thought, help us on the way. Maybe he’s not dead, maybe they can save him. The firetruck came very quickly and got him out of the, the car. We’re trying to resuscitate him on the driveway. It was so unbelievable. I ran into the house to get a pillow for his head.

I remember standing against this post just praying out loud. I swear I could hear the sound of my life shattering on the concrete. When I realized he was gone. I now know [00:32:00] that he’d been fired from that job for not making his sales skull. And later I would find a box of mail that he didn’t want me to see.

Debts a recent bill from the IRS with six years of unpaid taxes. The strong, silent type with secrets that I would never find answers for the next year was hell, full of dark emotions, sorrow to pray, despair, hopelessness, and I needed community to heal. So I went to visit some dear girlfriends in the LA area and happened to be there when the Northridge earthquake happened.

We were talking until late into the night when suddenly the earth just started quaking. The walls were shuttering, shirking violently back and forth, and it was dark as a tomb, and there was this dead silence except for my friends shouting, are you okay? Are you okay? They were [00:33:00] diving for door jambs and hiding under fufu furniture.

I was laying on the ground spread eagle in front of a plate glass window that went from the floor to the ceiling, hoping that it would shatter and kill me. And I’d made an instant decision that if it broke and didn’t kill me, I’d take a shard of glass and slip my juggler vein and no one would know that I had done it.

That’s how much I didn’t wanna be here. I wished that I could die, but I knew the pain of suicide. There was just this constant ache. This. Empty, endless hole that nothing could fill. And there were the nightmares that first year. It was a supportive family, friends, grief counseling and a spiritual connection that got me through the tough times.

I wanted to be free of the bad dreams. So I went to a professional. That first session was pretty scary because she wanted to take me back into the garage. The source [00:34:00] of the, the sight of the. Bad dreams where I would wake up in a cold, sweaty panic, sometimes screaming. But what she said made sense that I had, I was reliving it because that’s the way my brain had recorded it and that we needed to rewire my brain.

So she taught me how to disassociate in a healthy way from the event so that I could observe it instead of live it. After two sessions, I never had a nightmare again. After a few more sessions, I was blown away at how much better I was feeling no longer merely surviving. I was thriving. The modality was called NLP, which stands for Neural Linguistic Programming, and I decided I wanna help people heal from their trauma.

So I went to school, became a master practitioner of neural linguistic programming. [00:35:00] And when I first started working with clients, it was the most fulfilling thing I ever experienced in my life. It was such a gift, and there were other gifts that came from this tragedy, the gift of compassion. When I felt such deep pain, it led me to such deep compassion for human suffering.

I don’t know if I could have become someone who cares so much what people go through if I hadn’t gone through so much myself. That was such a gift, and another gift that I received was learning how to forgive. If I hadn’t been able to forgive the people that I wanted to blame, I think I’d still be haunted by this tragedy stuck forever in the past.

Maybe even using it as an excuse for why I couldn’t be happy or successful in life. But I like what Nelson Mandela says about forgiveness. To stay [00:36:00] in a state of non forgiveness is like me drinking poison, expecting the other guy to die. I didn’t wanna drink the poison, so I became someone who can forgive easily, and that is a great gift.

Another gift that I received was I learned how to feel all my feelings, no matter how dark they were, without being afraid of feeling them. I learned the truth of grieving, which is this, to heal you must feel. When I, when Ed first died, I never thought I’d be happy again, and I sure never thought I’d fall in love, but maybe it’s because I was willing to so deeply feel that I was able to truly heal my broken heart and create new dreams.

I’ve been with my amazing husband, Kirk, now for 24 years. Actually, it’ll be [00:37:00] 24 years on July 7th, and I would need that my whole 10 minutes up here to tell you what a wonderful man he is. I’m gonna start crying. So communicative. So reliable. So passionate about life and handsome. With perfect teeth.

When I first met Kirk, I realized that for me, some of the grief work was only gonna be completed when I was in a relationship again, and he was willing to walk that path with me bringing us so close able to talk about everything. I created new dreams with him, like moving back to Missoula where I went to college.

Our life is so good and I’m so grateful that I didn’t die in that earthquake. That I live to find this joy and I love my work. I love to help people transform. And when I help somebody heal their trauma, their depression, their PTSD, you know, the [00:38:00] really deep stuff, it means the world to me. I feel like I’m doing the work that I’m meant to do.

Do I think about Ed very much? Not so much when there’s a, some, you know, anniversary. Yes. When I hear of another suicide, yes, but when I heard that the theme tonight was lost and found, I thought maybe I would like to tell my story. I lost so much. I lost the man I loved. I lost my hopes. I lost my dreams, and I found so much.

I found my passion. I found meaningful work. I found my life’s calling, and maybe I was destined to work with people to help them heal their trauma. And maybe I wouldn’t have found my destiny without this tragedy. So the whole experience has brought me to develop kind of a new core belief in life, which is that when the really tough times happen, maybe there’s a gift in there [00:39:00] somewhere.

And if we can just keep our eyes and our ears and our hearts open, maybe somehow will be guided to find a gift amidst the pain. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Karna Sundby’s journey of self-discovery has led her to explore various paths in life. From teaching meditation to a successful career in corporate sales, what has always driven her most is the desire to make a difference. Often the toughest times in life are the ones which break us open and forge within us a deep well of compassion.

Her story tonight is about one of those times when a terrible tragedy led to a precious gift. Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Kara [00:40:00] Adolphsen is a college freshman, grappling with a secret grief. Kara vows to herself that she will navigate her new life and grief silently. But on the anniversary of a profound loss, an unexpected invitation leads to an art exhibit, a surprising discovery and a breakthrough moment of joy and healing.

Kara calls her story finding humor after loss. Thanks for listening.

Kara Adolphson: Hello out there.

The first day of my freshman year in college was on the six month anniversary of my best friend’s death, and I had just come from this small Montana town where all of my day-to-day interactions had shifted from, Hey Kara, how’s it going? To, Hey Kara, how are you? [00:41:00] And I became so desperate to get away from that, that I moved as quickly and as early as I possibly could here to the University of Montana campus.

And as I arrived in the town that my friend and I had planned to move to together without her. I made a solemn vow to myself that I would tell no one that I was grieving, not only because I was so tired of these other sum interactions that I had been having, but also because at 18 I really didn’t have the words to explain what I was going through.

So it became my closest kept secret, and I told no one. I didn’t tell my professors. I didn’t tell my new bosses. I didn’t tell any new peers that I met. I didn’t even tell my [00:42:00] roommate that I lived in a proverbial shoebox with. It was truly a secret, but the thing about grief is that it tends to show up even when it’s uninvited, especially when it’s uninvited.

And my grief really showed up in my poor academic performance my freshman year. I had a hard time attending my classes, let alone doing anything to pass them. I practically flunked out my very first semester. I lost all of my academic scholarships, and while that was really difficult to hold. For anyone out there who has experienced grief, you can corroborate that.

One of the more difficult emotions to hold when you’re grieving is surprisingly joy. These two seemingly opposite emotions are hard to balance at [00:43:00] the same time, and it’s something that took me years of practice to master. But one thing during this year that really cracked open this joy for me was I, of course, met a boy and he really brought that glimmer back into my life.

I could tell that he could see through the facade that I was offering, and he was treating me like a normal person. And even so still, I couldn’t tell him about my grief. And as the year continued on and the seasons changed, and winter was preparing to give way into spring, there was this horrible date that was approaching, which was the one year anniversary of my friend’s death.

And I could tell pretty quickly that I wasn’t gonna be able to handle it very well. So I was [00:44:00] making plans of how I could kind of cancel the day and pretend that it. Didn’t even happen. And on the night before the one year anniversary, I was sitting in my dorm room predating calling out of work, canceling my classes, shocker, and just hiding away in my room.

And that’s when I heard a familiar ping on my laptop. A Facebook message because the year was 2013 and we still, Facebook messaged each other to communicate. And so I went over and it was a message from this boy and it said, Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? I thought, well, nothing. And he said, how would you feel about coming to one of my classes with me?

I thought, well, that’s really bizarre. Um, but what class? And he said, just show up. You’ll find out when you get there. So I agreed, [00:45:00] having no idea what I was agreeing to. The University of Montana offers over 300 different courses, including things like acrobatic trampoline class, so it really could have been anything.

But the next morning, instead of hiding away from the world as I had planned, I went out into it. And I went over to the social sciences building on campus, which is a kind of catchall building for a lot of classes to meet this boy. I went up to the third floor to a room that I knew was a lecture hall, hoping that I could walk in and blend in with the crowd.

But when I opened the door to that room, there was maybe 15 people in that room. There was no blending in, but I went in anyway and I sat down next to this boy and I said. Where am I? And he said, well, this is my art history class. I said, okay. [00:46:00] And right then the professor says, well, class, as you know, today is our big field trip day, so gather your belongings.

We’re leaving right now. Okay, so I get up with the rest of the class and we leave and we go all the way downstairs in the same building. There are student art exhibits on the first floor, and the class was to go around and just meander around the exhibits and make of them what you will. And this boy, he was beaming, so excited.

Because at some point over the last several months, I had told him that I love art, but what he doesn’t know that’s more salient to me on this day is that my friend, she really loved art. And so somehow on the one year anniversary. [00:47:00] I’m there at an art exhibit and as we go in, I’m pretty novice to the whole art exhibit scene.

So I’m breezing past the artist statements and I’m really taking like a vibes based approach to what’s in the room. And I walk into the very first exhibit. In The first display is this giant block of ice being melted by sound.

And I thought, oh no, I have no idea what this means, but I’m staring at this block of ice and this boy is staring at me staring at the block of ice. And I think you gotta say something brilliant. So I say something to the effect of, well, we’re all blocks of ice and. We’re all slowly melting. I’m having a rather existential day.

Mind you. [00:48:00] And he loves it and it encourages me to go authentically through the rest of the exhibit. So we go through serpentine all of the different art that’s on display until we enter the final room. Which is this magnificent display of all of these different hourglass shaped ceramic sculptures in all different shapes and sizes.

There’s one that’s four feet tall. There’s some on pedestals, like flower vases. There’s a hundred of them pinned up in a grid system, repeating over and over again, and I tell him how very. Warhol that is or something, and we spend a lot of time in this exhibit. We’re really enjoying it. And at the end, there’s this huge container of tiny versions of this sculpture that the viewers get to take home.

Perfect. We dig [00:49:00] through this container. We’re reaching to the bottom. We’re pulling them up to see how the glaze shines in the light. We’re rolling them in our palms to see the texture and the weight, and he finds one that he thinks speaks to him. I find one that speaks to me. We slip them in our pockets and we leave.

And as I made my way back to my dorm room, I was overcome with gratitude, how on a day that I had planned to disappear, I had been seen and really seen. And that night as I laid down in bed, I took my sculpture and I gave it a big kiss and I tucked it under my pillow, just warmed by the events from that day.

The next morning I even took it with me to the food Zoo for breakfast, and I went to the Food Zoo, the campus cafeteria, and I sat down with my cereal and my orange juice [00:50:00] and I look over and there’s a copy of the Caman. The campus newspaper sat right there and on. It is a photo of the art exhibit from the day before Kismet.

I’m gonna read that. So I drag it over and I unfold it so that the page drops down and that’s when I see underneath the photo in rather large writing. University butt plug exhibit is a huge success, and that’s when I realized that my sweet sculpture is in fact, yes. And I let out the biggest belly laugh that I had in a very long time, and it was during that time of tremendous loss for me that I found my sense of humor about life again.

Thank you,[00:51:00]

Marc Moss: Kara Adolphson. Kara is a Montanan community member, therapist and storyteller who finds joy in the arts, the outdoors, and Bluebird days in Missoula. She believes in the power of vulnerability, humor, and shared experience to bring people together, a lover of language and listening. Kara is committed to fostering connection, whether it is in the counseling room on a trail or around the dinner table.

Coming up in the next episode of the Tell Us Something podcast.

Aunvada Being: I asked him if he wanted to open up and he jumped at it. He was thrilled and that was shocking to me and also terrifying. And I’m, I wish that maybe I had been a bit more terrified.

Jilnar Mansour: Here I am in a refugee camp in Palestine with four other Americans, and what we’re doing is we’re witnessing the let up of a curfew.[00:52:00]

Curfew is. Something that was happening then and is still happening now where people are not able to leave their home for hours or days at a time.

Steve Schmidt: I take position on the left side of the doorway. My partner fills in the position of the right side of the doorway, and we fill this space naturally. Our guns are drawn because we’re searching this residence.

And I yell, sir, on the sixth day, I, I got a phone call and there

Lauren Tobias: was three kids on the other line and they were calling from the Wolf Point Pizza Joint. I was like, hello? They were like, all they said was, we found your dog.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the June, 2025 live event that closed out Pride Month.

The theme was lost and found. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be sure to catch those incredible stories. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Blue Sky and visit Tell us something.org. To explore 14 years of our story archives [00:53:00] and let me know what you thought of the new format. You can email me at info@tellussomething.org to share your thoughts.

Live recording by the recording Studio in Missoula, Montana, podcast production by me, Marc Moss Remember that the next tell us something event is October 7th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org.

TUS01503-Podcast 01 2025 Hold My Beer

Marc Moss: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Tele Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss, founder and executive director of Tell Us something. The next Tele something event is October 7th, 2025. The theme is. Walk on the wild side. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets@tellussomething.org. This week on the podcast,

Jeremy Keene: Willie was one of those people, you just kind of into his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame.

Meco Correia: And I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon. And something catches my eye and my first thought is it’s a helicopter. And as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast.

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme.

Hold my beer,

Kali Neumeister: and we get an alert on our phones that says Severe storm warning. And [00:01:00] then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions. Knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Marc Moss: Their stories were recorded. Live in person in front of a sold out crowd on January 13th, 2025 at the George and Jane Denison Theater in Missoula, Montana.

I do have to apologize for the quality of the recording. The gain was set too high on the recording device and there was a lot of his and background noise. I did what I could to remove it and a lot of that is gone. In the process of removing most of the hiss, all of the applause and ambient noise went away.

The hiss is still noticeable in places. [00:02:00] These stories are great though, and it has been too long that they’ve been sitting dusty on my hard drive. So let’s get to it. TE us, something acknowledges that we are gathered on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Ponderer Salish and Kni peoples.

When te us something engages in land acknowledgements, we try to make them specific to the time of the year that the live event took place. Keeping that in mind, we know that traditionally storytelling is reserved for the winter months for many tribes. This was a practical choice given the fact that during the other seasons.

People were busy growing, gathering and hunting food when the stories on this episode were recorded. It was winter with long, dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, and that is when telling stories is used to entertain and to teach the children. Another reason for winter storytelling is that many traditional stories [00:03:00] contain animal characters.

To be respectful. People wait until the winter when animals hibernate or become less active so they cannot hear themselves being talked about. We take this moment to honor the land and its native people and the stories that they share with us

tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language. Please take care of yourselves. In our first story, Jeremy Keen and his buddies embark on a cross country road trip with a big gulp, super glued to the roof of the car, right along with Jeremy to experience the hilarious reactions and unexpected encounters Everywhere they went, Jeremy calls his story Big Gulp.

Thanks for listening.

Jeremy Keene: So you, y’all know what a big gulp is, right? It’s that 32 inch. A cup that you get at seven 11 comes with a lid and a straw. Your favorite soft drink have [00:04:00] seven 11 around here. But you know what I’m talking about. All the, every convenience store has one of these things. Well, the best thing we ever did was alluded to the top of my brother’s car.

It was my friend Willie’s id. He found this tube of super glue in the glove box. And he was like a little kid at Christmas. He’s all looking around and smiling, like, we gotta glue something.

So Willie was actually my brother’s friend. We were all going to school together in Boulder, Colorado, and uh, we’d hang out. Willie was one of those people, you’re just kind of drawn to his energy and his mischief, like moths to a flame and. One of our favorite things to do is to go on road trips. My brother had this 1973 Volvo station wagon he got from our parents.

Bright yellow had [00:05:00] the four speed manual and way too many miles. We packed that thing full of sleeping bags and potato chips and beer, some extra oil. So the back end sagged, like it wouldn’t make it around the block. We but it, but it did. And we went places. Went to Newport Beach and went to Mexico to the Grand Canyon and uh, Willie would always go along.

It wasn’t like he didn’t have to ask him or anything, he’d just show up. He’d have his long underwear and his cutoff shorts, and his pillow in one hand is toothbrush in the other.

Going on road trips with your buddies is a little bit different than road trips with your parents. This is the same car we used to take family road trips in, but when you go with your buddies, you see life through lens and Willie’s lens was like a carnival.

So the last road trip we ever did with Willie was we went to Mardi Gras [00:06:00] and we were around the backyard waiting for my brother to get outta class or something like that. And, um, fixing things on the car, which was basically Willie scraping the bugs off of. The windshield that the spatula

Tom Attard: found

Jeremy Keene: made, the cards fixed.

So that’s when he found the super glue and then he spotted the big gulp in the console between the seats. And, uh, I wasn’t, didn’t think it was a good idea. Glue up to my brother’s car because, you know, it’s a piece of shit. It’s his car. He’s gonna be pissed that we ruined the paint. But Willie thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever thought of, and he was determined.

He glued that thing right above the passenger side door where he might set it and get. Then I remember there’s this picture of Willie standing on the running board with his arm on the door and he is got his mouth on the straw thing, stayed on for 1500 miles.[00:07:00]

I’d be surprised. The lengths that people go to to tell you, you’ve left your big gulp on top of the car. They would run after us as we were pulling outta the gas station. There was this whole group of church kids in a van and it was like a slalom course driving through ’em as they tried to save the big gulp

where people would catch up to us on the freeway going 70 miles an hour and honk and point and. And we just smile, like had no idea what they were talking about.

Willie uh, Willie liked to do this thing. He called Newton’s. He put the, he put the car in neutral and put both feet on the floor and let it start rolling down the hill. So, if you remember, um, Newton’s law of motion is force equals mass times acceleration, where force is measured in Newton’s. And this is a 1973 Volvo station [00:08:00] wagon and acceleration is gravity, 19.8 meters per second going down the hill.

We’d all hang on and we’d watch the speedometer. 75 80, 85, 95. People trying to save the goal would give up. Fall behind.

Willie also used to love to get kicked outta things. He would get us kicked out of everything at at Mardi Gras. We waited in the rain to get into this restaurant for like an hour and by the time we got in there all hungry and wet and they put us at this little table in the middle of the whole restaurant and I could tell it wasn’t gonna work.

Willie’s, he can’t sit still. He is running. And talking to everybody, slapping people on the back, buying drinks, yelling at the waitress, and the, the manager finally comes over, guy named Michael. He is got Michael on his name tag and [00:09:00] he’s real polite, says, Hey, you know, we just, we just need your friend to come sit down and, you know, stop cussing so much.

So we call Willie over and Hey, Willie, come. And, and he, he just says. More money and he disappears out the door into the rain to get find an ATM machine. We don’t see him again for like 30 minutes, and we do, Michael’s got him by the arm and he says, look, your friend just has to sit down and stop swearing.

And Willie immediately says, shit, Michael, your pants are too fucking tight. You should relax more often.

Now I didn’t eating anything all day and I ordered this one of these Cajun burgers with all the fixings and puppies on the side, and I can see back in the open kitchen, they’re just about to bring our food out. I looked at Willie and I looked at my brother, [00:10:00] my friend Jeff,

and then my brother stands up and says, well, if he goes, we all go.

I took one last look at my burger. I knew that was gonna be a good burger. And then when I followed my friends out the door side, Willy’s standing on the sidewalk looking, sorry. He’s got bare feet cut off shorts. He’s wearing Hawaiian shirt that’s only got two buttons left. He’s got Mardi Gras beads down to his waist.

His curly hair is all wet, hanging in his face. I just looked at him. I said, Willie, man, where the fuck are your shoes? And then Michael comes back and tosses, Willie’s shoes out onto the sidewalk, and he sits down on the curb and kind of Dejectedly puts them and looks at us and says They were wet, explained everything.[00:11:00]

Then he got up and looked at the people still waiting in line to get in and said, y’all don’t eat there. Food sucks. If we’re going down to the corner where there’s a hot dog stand, they’ve got hurricanes now. Hurricanes are these rum and fruit drinks that they serve at Mardi Gras and they come in a big plastic cup with lid and a straw.

We probably should have glued one of those to the car. I don’t know. When we lost the big Gulp, when Mardi Gras was over, we drove to Pensacola so we could save Florida. Sat on the beach all day and filmed a Kung Fu movie. Willie and my brother fighting the waves as they came into shore.

Uh, and then, you know, when the sun went down, we got in the car and started driving home, and it was probably somewhere in the middle of the night, three in the morning I stopped take a piss, and standing there in the headlights, I saw the big gulp, was all it was [00:12:00] left was this ring of super glue.

A couple years after that, Willie was gone. My brother called me and said he’d crashed his hang glider into the side of, I’d never known anybody that died before, at least nobody my age. And for a long time I just kept thinking we’d find him again. Like all those times that Willie would get lost. You could be standing there talking to Willie one minute, and the next minute he’d be gone.

And then you wouldn’t see him again for like three hours and we’d go looking for him. ’cause you know what? If something happened, but we could never find him, and then he’d just turn up later at the hotel sleeping in front of the door. I,

I think some people just burn so bright. They’re only here for a flash, a shooting star or a bolt of lightning. And afterwards, you’re never quite [00:13:00] sure what you saw. That’s how it was with Willie. I think we all know somebody like that. If he’d lived, he’d be in his fifties today, have a hard time imagining what he’d be like.

I like remembering when he was 20. It reminds me that not everyone gets to stay here for very long, and it reminds me, I’m glad I’m still here. I’m glad I get to stay a little longer, and I know Willie’s not lost. He knows where he is. We just can’t find him. Right. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Jeremy. Jeremy Keene graduated from the University of Colorado in 1994 and landed a three month temp job in Missoula and never left.

He met his wife Heather, and they raised two talented daughters who are now flung far and wide in the world after a long career, engineering streets and highways, Jeremy became the city Public Works [00:14:00] director in 2019. When he is not sailing on Flathead Lake, you might find him riding mountain bikes in the hills around Missoula or playing beer league hockey at the Glacier Ice rink.

In our next story, Miko Correa is a former PACU nurse with a heightened awareness of horizons and the lingering echoes of trauma. Discover how a unique self-care practice involving Japanese rope art provides grounding and connection, setting the stage for an extraordinary encounter with the unknown. On a quiet Missoula Street, Miko calls her story eye on the sky.

Thanks for listening.

Meco Correia: From 1998 to 2000. I worked in a local hospital in the post anesthesia care unit, also known as the recovery room, and several times a month I had to carry a [00:15:00] pager and be on call. For those of you that are not from pre-cellphone error, that’s a way that somebody could get in touch with you.

And believe it or not, I was told I needed to explain that. Uh,

so, um, as the, my day off technically, but I was an on-call day off, and if my pager buzzed I well prior to my pager buzzing, I became very acutely aware of the horizon. Um, where the helicopters would be coming in and the helicopters usually meant that somebody had something really awful happen to them where they made a bad decision and now they were life fighting in.

So I became aware of watching [00:16:00] the horizon. Um. Not just when I was carrying a pager, but it became a heightened sense that I noticed things in the sky. And when I would feel, what I would feel is my heart would start racing, my stomach would clench, my hands would get sweaty, and it really helped me to tune into that sense of embodiment, like how things felt for me.

And this segues into, I am from those experiences of recognizing that people carry a lot, a lot of, a lot of traumas. In both my career I used the opportunity to, to connect and touch people, to help ground them. So that kind of segued into. I am a [00:17:00] whole creator in a community here in Missoula, built on helping people to ground an essential way to heal their collective traumas.

And so it’s a very supportive, very loving environment and it’s pretty powerful. So part of that is also finding different ways that help me to feel grounded and uh, one of those ways was. On the afternoon of October 13th, it was a Sunday in 2024, so three months ago, and I was spending an afternoon doing, um, a sari session.

ChAARI is the Japanese art of rope tying or rope bondage, and in a session, if I have ropes. Um, when they’re tied on me, they’re not tight, [00:18:00] but it allows a compression that releases an incredible amount of endorphins, so your natural opiates and that helps relieve and, uh, my autoimmune issues where I carry a lot of inflammatory side effect, but it also helps me really ground into a deep space of connection and.

Wholeness. So on that afternoon, after that, um, session, I was out running some errands and I had just, as I was out running the errands, I was listening to have Chorus Sing. It’s a, it’s a song, but it’s a mantra, a Hindu mantra called, oh. Potty m and all is [00:19:00] considered by the Hindus as the sound of the universe, universal sound, and in that sentence of M potty M, it’s a mantra to all in relief from suffering.

For each of us, it’s like a global prayer to help relieve our suffering. And it’s a beautiful, uh, choir that’s singing this. So my car is just reverberating with this gentle praise music, and I turn off of sixth Street onto a side street. And so I’m in the heart of Missoula and I look up on the horizon and something catches my eye and my first thought.

Is it’s a helicopter, which after all these years I’m still, I still have a bit of a [00:20:00] response to them, and as I look at it, I say, that’s going too fast. And it is literally in less than a blink of an eye, it traveled across that half of the valley and I stopped in the middle of the road. No, no cars. It’s a side street.

Not a lot of traffic. But I stop and I look at this, and in this microsecond observation, I say, what the hell? And there above me, it’s not a helicopter. It’s bigger than a helicopter, but smaller than an airplane. It’s kind of lowy. Metal. So it’s got its own radiance. There are no lights, no reflectors, no propellers, no [00:21:00] gen engines, no turbo boosters or thrusters.

There is no, uh, chem trail that cross the sky. It’s dusk. Um, I looked at my, my. A clock on my dashboard and it was 5:09 PM and I like super fast, took in these details that it’s silver. It had kind of a dry type shape front, and the body had what I would say would be wings, except they were tipped up and they were shaped like flattened, uh, triangles.

And on the one wing there was an arch of red with, or it was an arch, but had red symbols and it was like, like an arch. And then there was another arch below it that [00:22:00] had red symbols and they were just out of focus where I couldn’t make out what they were. But this spacecraft was just above the tree line.

And there was no seams, honest crap and no windows. And immediately I have this sense of incredible love, like grounded in love. I didn’t the sweaty hands, I didn’t like the clenched stomach. I didn’t have that visceral response. It was just the opposite. It was beautiful. And as I’m looking at this spacecrafts, I wanna say spaceship, I, I mean, I said all it’s, you know, I said in my head, no words in my head [00:23:00] because I had such an incredible sense of love.

If you are a UFO, you could totally take me. And by golly, that. That craft slid over to the left and turned slightly toward me, and I realized at that point we were communicating and I got a download that without words, there were no words. It was just this sense of knowing that my mission is to love myself abundantly.

Uh, and to let that spread out to others and to teach them about self-love and connection and let that ripple out through our planet. And I was recognizing that the sense and the feeling that I had from this experience was [00:24:00] equal to the sense that I had when I had the ropes. Very grounded, very loving, very reassuring.

And so I don’t know what you would do if you saw a UFO, but this is what I did. I said thank you, and then I drove away.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Miko Miko. Correa is a believer that a nourishing meal cooked and shared in love will advance soul healing on this planet. She’s a co-creator in a sensual healing touch community, a culinary artist, a watercolor dabbler, a gypsy gardener, and an RN that has touched many lives and bodies in this community for over 25 years coming up after the break.

Tom Attard: So I tell him, Tim, you are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at [00:25:00] God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

Kali Neumeister: And we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant, having contractions, knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital.

Marc Moss: Stay with us. Remember that The next tell us something event is October 7th. The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at, tell us something. DOT org. Thank you to our story sponsor who helped us pay our storytellers the Good Food Store for more than 50 years, the Good Food Store has been Missoula’s homegrown independent source for natural, organic, and locally sourced food.

Learn more@goodfoodstore.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula events.net Blue Dog Media and Missoula Broadcasting Company. [00:26:00] Learn more about them and listen online@missoulabroadcastingcompany.com. Thanks to our in kind sponsors Float Missoula. Learn more@floatmsla.com and Joyce of tile. Learn about Joyce and the work that she does@joyceoftile.com.

Alright, let’s get back to the stories. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m Mark Moss. Tom Attard shares his story about a raw and emotional Christmas Eve encounter at a Kalispell bar where a man’s heartbreak leads him to his little brother. A drywall delivering, street fighting functional alcoholic.

They’re intertwined lives, marked by a decade of distance and dangerous choices build to a powerful, desperate conversation about change. Crack a beer and listen along to Tom’s story that he calls a ride home from the rainbow. Thanks for listening.

Tom Attard: Where do you go when you get dumped on Christmas Eve?

You go to the [00:27:00] purveyors of peace, the home of the magical elixir of emotional amnesia. You, you go to the bar, but who are you gonna find at the bar on Christmas Eve? Well, I’ll tell ya. You are gonna find somebody who’s burnt every bridge, someone who’s taxed every relationship in their life, to the point of breaking, who has no one left, no relationships to speak of.

And so to the bar I went. So I’m walking up to Stockman’s Pool Hall in Kalispell, Montana. And I look across the parking lot and I see this big, burly guy’s got a bushy beard smoking a cigarette. He’s got a Santa hat on. I start getting closer. I look at that guy, looks familiar. [00:28:00] Lo and behold, it’s my little brother, Tim.

Oh, and what does Tim do when he sees me? I’ll tell ya. He grabs me. He picks me up. He puts me on his shoulder, parades me around the entire bar, introducing me to everyone who he knows by their first name. Every bartender, everyone, because my little brother lives at the bar. He is the most functional alcoholic I’ve ever met.

He can drink all night long. And get up at five 30 in the morning to deliver drywall. He would drive that boom truck. And Tim is the strongest person I’ve ever met. He can beat me arm wrestling on both sides while I’m using two hands. [00:29:00] His hands are so big around that I can’t even close mine around his when I go to shake his hand.

And he’s delivered drywall so much. One of his arms is longer than the other. This might not mean anything to you, but he can carry two sheets of five eights thick, 12 foot long sheet rock at once. He didn’t pull the tape. If you’ve picked up one sheet, you know that that’s impossible. So calling him my little brother was a misnomer.

He is taller than me. Six foot three, just super strong. Uh, but I didn’t have much of a relationship with my brother for about a decade. I only saw him twice a year at most Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that is because if you ever got a call from my little brother, it was from one of [00:30:00] two places. He either is gonna call you from jail.

Or from the hospital, and that’s because he was also the bravest person I’ve ever met. He never backed down from a fight. In fact, he’d fight four or five guys at once, which often lance you in the hospital. So at this moment in time, me and my little brother, our lives merged. We became two peas in a pod.

We were on the same life path. And, uh, yeah, I had a lot of my first experiences with my little brother. Um, I didn’t even know what last call was for until I met him the first time. He came down to Missoula to go out with me. We’d been out drinking and bar hopping and two in the morning at Charlie B’s. He would walk the [00:31:00] call, last call, he walks up to the bar.

He orders three beers and three shots, and he drank them in five minutes and he just was unstoppable and he was so fun. Um, yeah, we would just stay up all night playing guitar and hand drums until they called the cops on us. And then we would laugh at the cops ’cause we were like. It’s Friday night, Missoula.

What did you expect? Um, so I just couldn’t keep up with the guy. I gave it my best shot and for two years I tried to keep up, but after a couple years realized, man, I can’t keep doing this. And I tried to get my life together, you know, I tried to stop drinking, tried to stop doing. All the other stuff. Uh, but I was still [00:32:00] chasing this girl in Whitefish and, uh, she invited me to her house warming party on Valentine’s Day.

And I said, well, if, if I’m gonna come to your house, housewarming party on Valentine’s Day, I’m gonna break you up with your boyfriend. I’m just gonna ha kiss you in front of him. We’ll get in a fight. And then ta-da, I’ll be your boyfriend. So I, uh, went up to Whitefish with evil intentions and I get up there and I get to the party and everything’s going great, right?

According to plan. And I get a call about 10 or so that evening, pick up the phone, and who is it? It’s my little brother and he’s like, Hey, I called to tell you I love you. [00:33:00] And I’m like, Tim, uh, where are you man? He’s like, I’m at the Rainbow bar. And I was like, he’s obviously drunk out of his mind. So I was like, don’t go anywhere.

I’m gonna come and get you. And he started laughing. He says, you’re gonna drive all the way from Missoula, Montana to pick me up from the rainbow bar and give me a ride home. And I said, no. Nope. I actually happened to be in Whitefish, so I’m gonna come get ya. So I left the party and I got in my car and I was, I was pretty angry.

I was frustrated with this guy. And so as I’m driving, you know, I’m working up this whole lecture in my mind. I’m gonna give it to him, and I get to the [00:34:00] rainbow and I pick him up and we’re driving him back, driving him to his trailer, uh, to his fiance’s house. Now, Tim, uh, he. Was actually a recovering meth addict, and he’d been on and off meth.

Meth and oxycont back and forth. So to Tim, alcoholism was a recovery program. A lot of people recovering alcoholics will become chain smokers. Tim recovering meth addict, became an alcoholic. This was actually the best he’d ever been doing in his whole life. He had a house, he had a fiance. But we get back there and he’s his fiance and step kids are there and he walks into the trailer, he trips over this broken tv and she’s just like, Tom, you [00:35:00] gotta get him outta here.

I don’t want him around the kids. It’s like, okay, I understand. So I, we go out on the porch and I’m gonna let him have it. So I tell him, Jim. You are impossible to love. You are destroying yourself. Like, what is your problem? Do you hate yourself? Are you mad at God? Do you have some kind of bitterness or anger?

What is going on? And he looked at me and he said, you know. I made my peace with God. I don’t have a problem with anything. It’s the people. It too many people have hurt me too badly and I just can’t. I can’t stop. I can’t change, and [00:36:00] I wasn’t gonna let up. I was like, man, you can change. Anybody can change.

I’m trying to turn my life around. You can do it. Like, come with me. And he says, you know, I can’t change. I’ll never change. And the more he’d said that, just the more frustrated I got finally, just really in his face. And I’m like, that’s a, that’s not true. You can change. And he looks at me right in the face and he said, Tom, I’ll never change.

I’ve seen it. I’m gonna die. He said, I love you, goodbye. And I was even more, it’s impossible. You don’t know that you can change. You just gotta try. And [00:37:00] so I just, you know, he wasn’t listening. I said everything I had to say and I walked away and I got my car and I drove back to Missoula and I was deeply frustrated, but I was also, I was confused and I wanted to believe so badly that people change, that I could change, that Tim could change.

And four days later, six in the morning, my phone rang. And it is my mom. She was crying and I said, I know Tim’s dead. And she said, how? How do you know? He said, he told me. And that began [00:38:00] a decade of a journey of living my life. As a memorial for my little brother, Tim, to do all the things that he’ll never be able to do and to experience all the things he’ll never experience.

And I went, I got that phone call and I went to my fridge and I got my last beer, you know, went outside and I opened it up and poured it on the ground. And it’s not been an easy road, didn’t. Find sobriety right away. A week here, a month, six months, still going. But I realized along the way that

the strongest thing that I can do is to admit that people [00:39:00] hurt me and to feel my feelings. And the bravest thing that I can do is to choose to trust people and give them a chance. And so that’s what I do every day and I do it all for 10. Tim.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Tom. Tom Attard was born and raised in the great state of Montana and is a father, husband, general contractor, ultra runner, and lover of all things outdoors.

You can find him on most dark winter mornings, running a trail on any of the surrounding slopes in constant motion from birth. Tom rarely still skiing, rafting, fishing, hunting, running, and finding any excuse to get out there. Rounding out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Khali Neum Meister invites you to forget what the movie’s taught you about pregnancy.

This candid account reveals the [00:40:00] surprising realities of pregnancy from a challenging gestational diabetes diagnosis. To an unexpected labor during a severe storm. Follow one woman’s unforgettable journey to motherhood, proving that real life births are far more dramatic and unpredictable than anything you can see on a screen.

KLI calls her story a womb awakening. Thanks for listening.

Kali Neumeister: Pregnancy is not what you see in the movies. Oftentimes in the movies, they portray pregnancy as. A woman who runs out of some important meeting because she feels nauseous, she barely makes it to the bathroom to throw up. Then she looks at her calendar and calculates and says, maybe you should take pregnancy test.

Then you flash forward and you see her for her first ultrasound appointment. She gets excited and you see the bump, you know, gradually develop through the film, and at the end it’s this really dramatic, you know, moment. Either there’s a big [00:41:00] contraction and they say, oh my goodness, the baby’s coming. We gotta

Meco Correia: go.

Kali Neumeister: Or the water breaks at the most inopportune time with friends or at a restaurant. My experience with pregnancy was a little bit different after I found out I was pregnant, I, I go on my chart and I contact my doctor and say, Hey, I had a pre positive pregnancy test. And they say, congratulations, we’ll see you in a month.

Oh, okay. Well, what do I do in the meantime? Oh yeah, sorry. Here’s a pamphlet you can read. Okay, so take my prenatals. Don’t drink alcohol, avoid substances. What about the diet stuff? Okay, cool. So then you go to your first doctor’s appointment. That is my child right there. Spoiler alert.

So then you go to your first appointment, you get your ultrasound, they say everything looks good, you know, we’ll keep following up every month. And then you hit about [00:42:00] your 28 weeks of pregnancy and you go in for your glucose test, which I have a few pregnant people in my life, so I did know about this, but not from the movies for the record.

So you go in for your glucose test and you know you’re pretty healthy going into your pregnancy. So it’s a surprise when you fail the first test, right? Then you go through your second test and you’re not quite sure what the results will be. You have to fast and drink this awful sugary liquid. And then, you know, they tell you, all right, well you have gestational diabetes, which is something that was surprising to me.

I had to be on a pretty rigid diet and they test you, test your blood sugar four times a day, make sure the baby’s not getting too big, you have to go in for appointments, and that was challenging. I’ve never had a lot of exposure to the medical world besides just my regular exams. So. That was hard. You know, I had to worry a lot about her getting too big, her, her having complications, but things were okay.

They stabilized. So we’re going through this process of being on [00:43:00] this new diet and things are going okay. Well then July 24th, 2024 hits, and I’m about a week and a half out from my due date and I’m starting to get contractions through the week. And once again, it’s not something where you just rush off to the hospital at this point.

You have to wait. How long are the contractions lasting and how long is it between each contraction? So my husband and I aren’t at home. We’re just relaxing watching Netflix after a day of work, and we get an alert on our phones that says severe storm warning, and then the power goes out. I don’t know if you know where you were at on July 24th, 2024, but I was 38 weeks pregnant having contractions.

I’m knowing what to do with my evening ’cause I’m not quite ready to go to the hospital. So what do we decide to do instead? We don’t have our entertainment for the evening, so we decide to, um, you know, look through our list of things we have to get done, you [00:44:00] know, set up crib, check, set, you know, clear out the nursery.

Almost check. We had a, um, desk we wanted to, um, assemble, you know, before the baby arrived. So what do we do? We drag this, um. You know this box out, we pull out this desk and we have pieces all over our kitchen island. I put on my headlamp and my husband has his, his headlamp on. We’re lighting candles and we just gotta get this desk done before the baby gets here.

Right? It’s the only logical thing.

And so I hand him a wrench and I hand him, you want a bag of the tools?

Just gimme a sec. Okay. I’m good. What’s the next step? Because there’s no owner’s manual for what do you do when there’s a major storm event? But we have a manual to assemble the desk, so let’s do that. The contraction slowed down and my husband says, you know, the storm is over now. Um, you know, I kinda [00:45:00] wanna go check things out, see how things fared, see how our town is doing.

We had some branches fly across our yard. I later heard that my, um, sister and brother-in-law, they had their cottonwood ancestral tree pull up and drop right in front of their house. You know, we heard about, you know, trees coming down on top of roofs and cars and totaling them, you know, a hundred mile per hour winds on mount jumbo.

But we got through that, right? I didn’t have the baby. So then the next morning we both go onto our separate work days, and about midday, I noticed that I had some symptoms that I wasn’t really sure about. So I go to the bathroom and I pull down my underwear and I look down and there’s a little bit of fluid.

So I take a picture, shoot it off to my sister.

She has three kids. She has her md, so I thought she’d be the best person to talk to about this. There’s no water gushing, so I’m probably okay. Right. So at the [00:46:00] end of the day she says, you know what? You probably should just call lab and delivery just to be sure. So I go ahead and do that, and I say, you know, here are my symptoms.

I started having contractions, but they weren’t that intense yet. You know, this is what occurred today. And they said, okay, well, we can kind of see how things go. I said, oh, I forgot to mention, at her last appointment on Tuesday, just a few days ago, she was breech. And for those of you who don’t know about what that means, her head was straight up and her butt was straight down.

And we knew this. We knew that we should go to the hospital if, if things progressed and they said, you don’t have to rush, but we would recommend getting a bag together as quickly as possible and heading in. So I called my mom on the phone. I said, I don’t think we’re having the baby today, but we’re heading to the hospital.

I just wanted to let you know. So we do that. We get our bags packed and we say, you know, we’ll probably just check in with them. Go get takeout, head home, relax. I didn’t have any two intense tractions that day. So then we get to the hospital and [00:47:00] they do their little swab, and at that point we’re just relaxing and hanging out.

And, um, I get a test alert that says positive for amniotic fluid. And my doctor walks in and she says, we’re having a baby today. She explained to us that during major, um, bariatric pressure changes, something can happen called the preterm rupture of the membranes, which means your labor doesn’t progress very far, but your water can break.

And when we had driven up, the parking lot was full of labor and delivery cars. I wasn’t the only one. So we go back and they begin the process of going through the C-section and they numb me from the, the chest down. And my husband and I are behind this, this tarp. And for those of you who have been pregnant or have had a c-section of what that feels like, and they start to pull and, and tug.

And I feel this very bizarre pulling and tugging sensation. And I feel kind of dumb in this moment, but I’m like, have you started? [00:48:00] And she says, oh, we are well on our way. And she pulls our daughter out and she roars like a lion. And our doctor says, that’s a really good sign. She’s born the sign of the Leo.

She was born the year of the dragon, and she was born Amids. The greatest storm that I have ever been witness to, and I think back to Marian Zimmer, Bradley’s sci-fi novel Storm Queen. There’s this character who when she would feel great emotions, the storm would rage around her lightning bolts and wind.

And I’m saying, I think you are our storm queen. You brought this storm and you brought, um, as you went into this world. And I looked down at her with her bright, um, blue eyes, her stormy blue eyes, and her dark hair at that time. [00:49:00] And to this day, as you heard earlier, she still hollers, she still roars like that.

Lion and dragons are a big part of it too. The the Chinese sign of dragons is also very special to us. And I look down at her eye and I say, this is your new home. Now. You’re safe. If we can survive this, we can survive anything. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks Khali. KLI New Meister is 33 years old and was born and raised here in Missoula.

A counselor by Trade kli enjoys the quiet life of reading and storytelling and the adventures of skiing and scuba diving. Thanks for listening to the Tele Something podcast. Coming up on the next episode of the Tele Something podcast,

Mark Schoenfeld: I’ve been told I look like Matt Dame, and you’d have to imagine me skinnier.

With more hair on my head and less on my face. But I a [00:50:00] little bit.

Tess Sneeringer: So I turn back to Officer Becky who has a second question, which is, have you been drinking? And I say, no, ’cause I have not been drinking. And she walks closer than me and she smells me. And she goes, you’ve been drinking

Kelley Provost: my hand finds its way to my purse.

I do not let go of these hot five fingers that are my child’s. And, and I grab my phone and it does not ring a second time. My sister and my husband lock eyes with me. We know that this is the news that we’ve been waiting to hear since we left Missoula.

Jeff Ducklow: I looked to my left and a tower of ice, probably the size of two Wilma buildings stacked on top of each other, was slowly starting to lean away, and I just went, oh my God.

My heart was beating so fast. I couldn’t feel it. It was, I was just frozen in disbelief.

Marc Moss: Listen to the concluding stories from the Hold My Beard. Tell us something. Event from January, 2025. Subscribe to the podcast so you’ll be [00:51:00] sure to catch it on the next Tell us something podcast. Remember that. The next tell us something event is October 7th.

The theme is Walk on the Wild Side. You can pitch your story by calling 4 0 6 2 0 3 4 6 8 3. Learn more and get your tickets at Tell us something. Dot. Org.