selfdiscovery

From the raw vulnerability of overcoming homelessness and addiction to the heartwarming journey of self-discovery and acceptance, these stories will leave you inspired and deeply connected. Hear tales of resilience, heartbreak, and triumph as individuals share their most intimate experiences. Whether you're seeking inspiration, empathy, or simply a captivating listen, these stories will stay with you long after the final word. This episode of the podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at The Glacier Ice Rink and Pavilion in Missoula, MT on June 11, 2024, as part of the Missoula Pride celebration. 8 storytellers shared their true personal stories on the theme “Going Home”.

Transcript : "Going Home" - Part 2

00;00;10;01 – 00;00;35;00
Marc Moss
Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme. Live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Have you ever felt that tug towards a place, a memory, or maybe even a person? That feeling of going home, that feeling of going home isn’t just about a physical location.

It’s about belonging and connection. It’s about finding that piece of yourself that’s been missing. On this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. We explore all the different ways we come home to ourselves and the world around us. We’ll hear stories of journeys, of second chances, of rediscovering what truly matters. So buckle up and get comfy. Join us as we embark on these heartfelt adventures.

This episode of the podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the Glacier Ice Rink and Pavilion on June 11th, 2024, as part of the Missoula Pride celebration. Eight storytellers shared their true personal stories on the theme Going Home.

00;01;19;02 – 00;01;30;05
Michelle Reilly
It was like looking through the most beautiful kaleidoscope I had ever looked through all these vibrant colors and shapes and patterns of fractals and wonder.

00;01;30;05 – 00;01;48;03
Adel Ben Bacha
As she answers the phone, she softly says hello. And then silence. That silence felt like forever. But she breaks that silence with a delicate sob.

00;01;48;03 – 00;01;59;15
Zeke Cork
I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family, so I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years.

00;01;59;15 – 00;02;06;01
Ashley Brittner Wells
The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool, so I went.

00;02;06;01 – 00;02;37;00
Marc Moss
That’s coming up. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is Never Again. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call (406) 203-4683. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. The pitch deadline is August 9th. I look forward to hearing from you. We’re also looking for volunteers to help with the event.

If you love Tell Us Something and you love helping out, visit. Tell us something. Morgan. Volunteer to learn more and to sign up.

We were gathered at the Missoula County Fairgrounds in the heart of Montana amidst the vibrant energy of early June. As we remembered that we took a moment to acknowledge the traditional stewards of this land. We stand on the ancestral homelands of the Salish and Kalispell, people who for countless generations have nurtured and cared for this place. The place of the small bull trout.

Their deep connection to this land is woven into the very fabric of this valley. We honor their resilience, their knowledge of the natural world, and their enduring presence here. Acknowledgment alone is not enough. Let’s also commit to taking action ways that you can do this if you live in Missoula, or to learn more about the native tribes who still inhabit this land.

You can visit the Salish Kootenay College or the Missoula Children’s Museum to deepen your understanding of the Salish and Kalispell cultures. You can visit the Missoula Art Museum, where the exhibit We Stand with you. Contemporary artists. Honor the families of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous relative crisis runs through September 7th, 2024. You can support cultural events hosted by local tribes and explore opportunities to volunteer with their initiatives.

We can always be looking for opportunities to incorporate indigenous knowledge and practices into our everyday lives, whether it’s sustainable land management or traditional food systems. We can commit to moving beyond mere words and work towards building a more respectful and inclusive future. Honoring the legacy of the Salish and the Kalispell people on whose land we stand.

Remember this. Tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language.

We ate. Tell us something. Recognize the privilege inherent in our platform and while we love sharing a variety of voices, it’s important to amplify marginalized voices. That’s why during the event on June 11th, I stepped back and passed the mic to our friends from Missoula Pride. Devin Carpenter, who shared his story at last year’s event, and Kiara Rivera from the center, performed the honors of seeing the evening’s event.

On the podcast, you’ll hear them giving the bios for the storytellers.

Michelle Riley finds herself homeless in 10th grade in a challenge that begins a lifetime of challenges after earning a PhD. Despite her alcohol use disorder, she struggles to overcome addiction and finds unexpected hope. In an online ad, sensitive listeners, please note that Michelle’s story contains mentions of suicidal thoughts, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves.

Michelle calls her story heroic measures. Thanks for listening.

00;05;41;05 – 00;06;29;18
Michelle Reilly

I found myself homeless for the first time when I was in 10th grade. My sisters and I came home from school and our father’s truck was parked there. But our father was never home this time of day. So we walked inside. Hello. Hello. No answer. We walked up the stairs and the door to my parent’s bedroom was cracked, so we pushed it open and my father was there, kneeling at the foot of his bed with all of his guns, a row of guns laid out neatly on his bed.

My mom was gone. She left. See, I grew up in a small town in rural Appalachia, and my parents were young parents. My mother had three daughters by the time she was 21. So I guess by 35, she didn’t want to be a mother anymore. And home became not so homey anymore. I started sleeping at friends houses or sleeping in my car.

Sometimes I didn’t sleep at all because by 11th grade I was working 3 or 4 jobs. I’d rotate between two afterschool jobs, and then I’d go to work third shift at a diner. And diners in Appalachia weren’t the most wholesome place for a 16 year old girl to be. So I dealt with far too many sexual propositions from older men.

There. I’d get off at 6 or 7. I’d go to school, shower in the locker room, and then I’d sleep either in homeroom or in my car. And I don’t remember thinking about these things. It was like I was just on autopilot doing them. After high school, I started undergrad with the same unwavering autopilot and schedule. I was working 5 or 6 jobs and taking 18 to 21 credits a semester.

And I was introduced to the underground rave scene in Pittsburgh and started experimenting with party drugs. I was also drinking a lot during this time and sleeping even less. I’d started drinking at a young age after my mom left, and I was given a fake ID, but I lived in a small town, so I’d frequently run into friends of my father’s at dive bars, but they knew his mental state after my mom left, so either they never told him or if they did, he was too depressed to say anything to me.

After undergrad, I moved to Reno and started living out of my car again. And then at 27, I applied to grad school and earned a master’s of science from Johns Hopkins University. And then I was offered a research position. So I moved to Flagstaff and earned my PhD and four years.

Underneath the accomplishments and overcome struggles. I was completely empty and numb, still completely out of touch with any emotions and just doing doing all the things that I know needed to get done. Doing all the things I needed to do without feeling anything. And during this time, I was still drinking a lot like a fifth whiskey a night was not uncommon.

I was still over performing at work, exceeding expectations and producing high quality products. But my behavior was erratic and my emotions were frequently uncontrolled outbursts of sobbing or rage. And I felt that uncontrollable spiraling. It’s like I was in a dark box and there wasn’t a top or bottom, and there wasn’t a way out of this box because the box was everything.

It’s like those car compactors at scrap yards. The force and pressure needed to smash a car into this tiny package of metal. That force and pressure is what it felt like all around me, all of the time in this torque box. And I couldn’t climb out of this box because the darkness was everything.

It was so isolating and I felt so alone. I became completely dysregulated and at times suicidal and really lost hope.

One day I was scrolling through Instagram and I felt an emotion, a glimmer of hope, a tiny seed deep down that I barely felt safe acknowledging. I filled out an online form for a clinical trial titled Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder with Co-occurring Alcohol Use Disorder.

Fast forward several long months of getting physicals, providing psychological examinations, getting bloodwork and providing a detailed drinking history. And I was told I was accepted into this trial. I started meeting twice a week with my guides, a licensed social worker and a psychologist. And there wasn’t a single meeting that I didn’t cry at, just endless tears streaming down my face.

But hopelessness was still. I felt.

On September 18th, I walked into the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Behavioral Research for my last Credos interview, and I was asked a series of questions on a scale of 0 to 10, how important is it for you to change your drinking right now? Ten? On a scale of 0 to 10, how confident are you that you can change your drinking right now?

At this point in my life, I felt like I had drank more days. I’d been alive than not drank, so my confidence was pretty low. I think I gave the question a 3 or 4. More evaluations and discussions and meditating. And then I was handed a wooden chalice and I put on a blood pressure monitor. I shades and headphones and I waited.

And if you’re familiar with psychedelics, the dose I was given was a high dose. It’s what they call a heroic dose.

The music began to entice and overwhelm me, and I was being pulled by curiosity into a world completely unfamiliar to me. Although I had a fair share of experience with party drugs, I had no experience with psychedelics.

I began to see so many fantastical things and found myself invited deeper and deeper into my internal psyche. So many interesting patterns and curiosities and a feeling of weightlessness.

It was like looking through the most beautiful kaleidoscope I had ever looked through, all these vibrant colors and shapes and patterns of fractals and wonder.

The texture of the music became the vibrant colors, and I could feel all these colors and patterns in a very intense way. The kaleidoscope became five dimensional and the universe became five dimensional. And I was a part of that.

I could feel so much depth and breadth and heights, but also time both forward and backwards and resonance. And every cell in my body was suddenly alive and vibrating with the resonance of these mutating colors and the kaleidoscope. My body became warm and endless without boundary, and I felt so much openness, like an untethered ring. Like the layers just being pulled off of me.

All that crushing heaviness. That only thing that I had felt for so long was being pulled out of me and lifted off of me and replaced with this beautiful radiance. And this warm, golden light was being poured into me and filling me and spilling out around me into this beautiful reflective pool. At some point, I don’t know the timeline, but I felt as though I was being embraced by the universe, and I felt a presence.

And I felt this presence tell me or show me that I was not alone, that I was being held, always held, and that I was loved. And I saw darkness from my past in a new light. But I felt safe there, and I felt as though I was not alone. But I was being guided through this darkness and fear was replaced with curiosity.

I explored unending time and a continuum of life, and I felt more at home than I had ever felt in my entire life. The details of the experience are inexplicable, as often is said about life changing psychedelic experiences. It was ineffable. I had one other treatment three months after my first, and I have not had the urge to numb reality through drinking since my first session.

I still carry with me that peace and comfort I felt during my first session, and I’m learning a new sense of self filled with generosity and acceptance. And I’m so grateful that I found my way home to my self-worth.

00;16;36;03 – 00;16;52;04
Devin Carpenter
Michelle Reilly is a wilderness specialist and wildlife ecologist who has lived in Missoula for 8 years. She is a wildcrafter, avid backpacker, and devoted mother. If she isn’t deep in the mountains or paddling the rivers, you can find her in her yard tending her gourmet mushroom gardens. She also runs a Missoula Ladies’ Dinner Club and enjoys entertaining in her backyard. Sensitive listeners, please note that Michelle’s story contains mentions of suicidal thoughts and the her father contemplating suicide, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves. Alright, please welcome Michelle Reilly.

00;16;52;10 – 00;17;06;17
Marc Moss
Up next Adele Ben Boccia shares a vivid tale of family nostalgia and a life changing phone call that redefines the meaning of home. Adele calls her story plus 206. Thanks for listening.

00;17;06;17 – 00;17;35;07
Adel Ben Bacha
Hello, everyone. Before I tell you my story, I would like for all of you to close your eyes, at least for one part, because I want this to be a shared experience. So my story takes us back. Eight years ago in France, in the little city of my family and I are all gathered for a Thursday dinner, as my mom loves to make them.

Everyone understands what she has prepared for dinner. It’s everyone’s favorite meal, a delicious couscous that looks like perfection. So she’s in the kitchen. We are all in the living room. We are a big family of eight people, and I’m the youngest in the living room. You can hear the loud voices, some jokes being thrown at people, and very loud and heavy arguments.

So she’s in the kitchen. The dish is getting ready, and as she brings the plate in the living room, everyone just stops. They’re astonished by this red vivid color. This color comes from the spices she puts in it. The tomato sauce, the harissa. Very spicy that day. By the way. And everyone dies in. Everyone stops. And the room is filled with the sound of clinking spoons.

And so I try a very timid. Bon appétit that can be heard. Have you ever felt that ignored. If not, that hurts a lot. So everyone dives in and eats peacefully. The noise is getting louder as it was before, but suddenly the phone rings. My mum rushes through the phone to the phone and I see her eyes widening, and as they get bigger, we all see this number.

This number was longer than usual on the phone and we could all see the country code. And I remember vividly the numbers two, one, six. Answering that phone took her instantaneously back to her childhood until she was 17. As she answers the phone, she softly says hello. And then silence. That silence felt like forever. But she breaks that silence where they delicate sob.

Me and my siblings look at each other and we understand what happened. And something very bad happened. After a sleepless night, my mom boards us on the first plane. She finds to Tunisia the place where she was born. As the plane lands, her head is still up in the clouds. She walks through the airport and all she sees is just lifeless figures walking around the airport.

She goes out of the airport. And then she hops into the first taxi, and she is starting to get prepared to her two hour drive to take her to her hometown, a small village now become a city called Dubai. As she is on her way, she looks through the window and she notices that a lot of things have changed.

The palm trees are higher, the buildings too, and the traffic is heavier, making the journey even longer. She finally gets there, knocks at the door and suddenly the memories in her head start rushing as well as if it was a race. Each memory wanted to be the one, the one to be remembered. The first thing she would tell her sister.

But eventually none of them won. The door opens and my mom sees her sister. Red eyes still filled with water, without a word. She is welcomed with a heartfelt hug and welcoming eyes filled with filled with sympathy. Without saying anything, she follows her sister in a very dark room, and you can tell that the room was very dark, because the only light you could see was the swaying of the curtains through the rare breeze.

And then she enters and she sees the lifeless body on a mattress. As she sees it. She can’t help it but rush to the body. She holds her and hugs her tightly and kisses her repeatedly. On me. On me. Meaning mom in Arabic. I’m here now. You’re safe. After saying that, the only thing we could see is a tear that has been shed on my grandmother’s cheek.

One of her siblings goes to the body and closes the eyes, and you may now open yours. The reason why I chose this story is because, like my mom and the youngest of the family of eight, and I’ve always felt that it was hard to find my voice and to step up for my ideas. Because when you’re young and you have a lot of big brothers that would tell you what to think because you’re too young, you don’t know anything.

You’re naive. But now, thinking back, I think that this story shaped me in a way because I didn’t want to feel the regret and guilt that my mother felt of not being there enough for her own mom. So when I was about 18, I already knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and I’ve always made a promise to myself.

I said that whenever I get my first job as a teacher, I will buy a house and make sure that my mom is safe with my dad and that they left the small apartment we have been living all our life. So that’s what I did and I thought that would help them. But as I was growing older, I was getting, harder and harder on my siblings.

As I was repeating the process, I had been I had been living before, and now I’m thinking back, and I was hard on them because my mom wishes they called her more and visit more because she was expressing her own grief as if life could stop at any moment. So I get into a lot of arguments with my siblings, telling them that they should call mom more often because you never know what can happen.

But now I understand why I felt that. And most of all, why I shouldn’t feel like that. Because today we’re here to talk about home. And my vision of home changed. My siblings didn’t call my parents that often because they now have a family husband, wife, children. So this is now their home. But it doesn’t mean that they love my mom any less.

So what I do today to avoid that happening again is calling my mom anytime I can. And being here now. Far away from home. Only for a month. Still, I make sure that I call my mom every day because I have understood something very important. We tend to think of home as a building, something that has been built, something that protects you from the outside.

A geographical space. But I have now understood that a home is actually not a geographical place. It could be a spiritual place. So now when I call her, I always make sure that even if we don’t have much to say every day, that I get to hear every detail of her day. This way, when it’s my time to go home, I don’t feel like she felt the buildings getting higher and the trees higher to thank you.

00;25;44;02 – 00;25;54;09
Kera Rivera
Adel Ben Bacha is a 29 year-old French English teacher in Dijon, France. You must have heard of the mustard! He teaches in highschool, university and for masters’ programs, among other activities . He loves meeting new people, traveling and discovering new cultures, going out with friends and family.

00;25;54;09 – 00;26;01;02
Marc Moss
We’ll be right back after this short break. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast.

00;26;01;02 – 00;26;12;14
Zeke Cork
I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family, so I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years.

00;26;12;14 – 00;26;18;28
Ashley Brittner Wells
The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool, so I went.

00;26;18;28 – 00;26;22;10
Marc Moss
That’s after the break. Stay tuned.

Thank you to our story sponsor, the Good Food Store, helping us to pay our storytellers. Learn more at Good Food store.com. Thanks to Golden Yolk Griddle, who also showed up as a story sponsor. Learn more about them at Golden Yolk griddle.com. Thank you to our accessibility sponsor, Parkside Credit Union, allowing us to hire American Sign Language interpreters at this event.

In order to be a more inclusive experience, learn about them at Parkside fcu.com. Thanks to our artist sponsor Bernice’s Bakery, who paid our poster artist. I learned about them and their delicious baked goods at Bernice’s Bakery mty.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula Events, Dot net, the Art attic, The Trail Less Traveled, and Missoula Broadcasting Company including the family of ESPN radio.

The trail 133, Jack FM and Missoula. Source for modern hits you 104.5. Thanks to our in-kind sponsors. Float. Missoula. Learn more at float msl.com and choice of tile. Learn about Joyce at Joyce of tile.com. Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Denison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683.

Tickets are available right now at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter. In order to be informed about all of our events. Welcome back. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss.

In our next story, Zeke Cork returns to Missoula after many failed escapes to face his demons, find love and embrace his true self. Sensitive listeners, please note that Zeke’s story contains a mention of a suicide attempt, which may be distressing for some listeners. Please take care of yourselves. Zeke calls his story. Ezekiel cried. Thanks for listening.

00;28;25;09 – 00;28;39;09
Zeke Cork
Speaking. Got a short king? Yeah, sure. King on the premises? Yeah.

Thank you, Devon. And thank you, everybody, for coming.

After trying to be someone else anywhere else, I came back to Missoula. This town owns me. No matter how many times I try to run from here, it would find me and call me back and was never kicking or screaming that I’d return. It was more like tail tucked between my legs, begging for forgiveness with a promise to be better.

See, I grew up here. My handprints are in concrete. My footprints cast in the local trails. My tire tracks on the gravel roads. I went to Paxson and Roosevelt, then Hellgate High School. All my first year here. My first communion. My first kiss. My first awkward mechanics was sex. My first love, and my first heartbreak. I left my first boyfriend, who I wanted to be more than I desired, for a girl who had dumped me in the pig barn right here at the county fair.

So surrounded by the smells of shit and cotton candy. I stumbled through the sounds of the midway games and the blinking lights, where I ran into friends who tell me it was going to be okay. And then I made a girl underneath the Ferris wheel who I watched devour of candied apple with a passion I could only envy.

And I swear, she rolled her eyes at me, seeing the pathetic loser I was instead of the swaggering, give a shit start, I tried to present. Now my parents, they were educators, active members of the Democratic Party in Saint Anthony’s parish, and they pushed me to become anything that I could imagine, at least until their marriage failed. When I was a teenager.

And trust me, it needed to end. But I lost my way. I didn’t know who to be without them showing me. I think maybe later, when we’re adults ourselves, we figure out that our parents were just people trying to find their own way. But I followed my father to Portland. I blamed my aimlessness on him, and I wanted him to fix it.

I was a disaster. My once perfect father was consumed with finding his own last year, and he was really nothing more than Peter Pan chasing after his shadow. So I came back to Missoula, trying to find the promise that others had seen in me. I enrolled at the university. I was pretty focused for a while until I fell in love with that girl I’d met underneath the Ferris wheel, so I’d follow her to Chicago and then Seattle.

But she’d become this plank for me to cling onto, and an ocean of confusion and grief. That was a lot to expect of someone who was just trying to make it to shore themselves. So I packed up my books and my records, and I drove back to Missoula again. But there’s something that happens for me every time I enter this valley from any direction.

When it opens up and the neighborhoods pop into view, and whatever season it’s in presents itself in all its glory, like the royal robes of fall lilacs in the spring, the ice choked rivers in the winter, and the brown hills of late summer. And I just let out this long breath I’ve been holding. And I know, I know that I’m home.

But I can never sustain that comfort. I could only see my reflections in shards, slivers of broken glass. I couldn’t name the ways I was fractured. I only knew that I was. So I took up drinking as a hobby. And there was lots of what Beyoncé calls those red cup kisses when I’d meet a girl, and then another, and then another, hoping they’d be the one that would fix me.

But they were just crooked. Rusty nails tried to hold it together themselves, and we all kind of wanted the same thing, but the weight of it was too much for anyone to hold. And one night I had a dream about the prophet Ezekiel, the one in the desert who commands the bones to rise up out of the sand.

The one in that old song. That old gospel song. Ezekiel cried. Them bones, them bones, the ankle bone connected to the knee bone. Yeah. That guy. I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family. So I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years, and I’d say, what is it?

Why does this haunt me? And then one late night in August, after one month of sobriety, I wandered out to the shed that belonged to the woman I was seeing at the time. And I took her shotgun with me, and I tore that place apart looking for shells. All I found was an empty box. But still I put the barrel of that thing in my mouth and I squeeze the trigger, hoping there was one in the chamber.

Well, I’m here today because there wasn’t. But the next morning I checked myself into rehab. Next month I’ll be 34 years sober.

But back then, I had to just try to make it through each day. So I stayed to myself, went to work, read, listen to music, played video games, and watched a lot of movies. But then I’d made a girl and she was cautious but intrigued. And I wasn’t a good catch. But she was beautiful, smart and strong. So we took it slow, and eventually I’d convince her to run away with me, and we moved to Seattle.

We came back to Missoula, and then we’d move to Texas, California and Alaska. Every time things got rough, we’d move. All we needed was a change of scenery. We even got married, and that meant something. Maybe that would be the thing that would save us. Where we strong enough to move back home, settle down in our family and friends again.

We’ve had so. But it was actually the opposite. It was the safest place to just let it end. See, the skeletons live here, and we’d return to the place where they’d dwell. And I still despise that broken person in the mirror. And I’d been asking someone else to love them without hesitation. Without question. Unconditionally. What a huge ask.

So, for the first time in a very long time, I was on my own and I stood on the top of Mount Sentinel, staring down at my hometown, listening to Josh Reynolds homecoming, humming along in the crisp column air. And I let the pastoral rolling. It was there that I understood what the dream she had left her countless times as a lost girl, someone’s daughter, sister, a wife, only to return to become something akin to the prodigal son.

And it probably would have been a lot easier for me to become myself in a place where no one knew my story. But instead, I asked people who had known me most of their lives to call me by a new name and address me as the man I’d always been, but repeatedly denied. And what I got in return was my family and friends wrapping their arms around me and saying, yes, this makes sense.

My ex-wife gave me my first testosterone shot and she’s my closest friend. Then I’d meet someone new. Yeah, I know, here we go again. But we’d both sworn off relationships. But that crackle and hum like power lines was pretty hard to resist. So she chose to move across the world and give me and my town a try. She liked us.

We got married in a ghost town not too far from here, and we’re trying something different. We’re helping each other unpack the baggage instead of helping and making each other lugging around. So far, so good. And I’m no longer a stranger in a strange land. I finally live in a body that I’m not at war with. And the mirror.

The mirror is now a full reflection of someone I recognize. Someone I know. I look at my perfect haircut from Compass Barbershop, who has been with me through the whole thing.

And I’ll run a razor down my neckline. And I’ll watch my shoulders broaden and my hips narrow. And I see my parents, both of them looking back at me. My mother, who’s 84, is still alive and well, and my father has passed, but both of them staring back at their son, proud of the man he’s becoming. And I have a tattoo on my chest, a line I borrowed from Florence Welch that says, I’ll show you what it means to be spared.

I landed in a safe space. Nestled between these foothills and held by this community. The place where Ezekiel Zeke rose out of a desert of despair and became home. And for me, this is what it means to be home.

00;38;37;04 – 00;38;43;13
Devin Carpenter
He lives in Missoula with his wife and two rescue mutts. He loves tacos and trucker hats.

00;38;43;13 – 00;39;05;10
Marc Moss
Wrapping up this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. Ashley Britton or Wells is a self-described tomboy in the 1980s who finds courage in the Montana Lady Griz games. It took years to find her own place in the sands and be the inspiration for girls who are like she was then. Ashley calls her story made in Montana. Thanks for listening.

00;39;05;10 – 00;39;52;13
Ashley Brittner Wells
I’m sitting on the burnt orange carpet of my bedroom for new kids on the block, blasting from a tape deck in the background. Staring back at me from my bookshelves. Kristy’s great idea. Every Garth Brooks cassette tape known to humankind. And the eyes of 1 million porcelain dolls. I’m staring at my 1993 1994 Montana Lady Griz basketball team poster.

The shit is iconic. 15 players pose in their high school leather jackets on the University of Montana campus in front of their lockers. T’s blond perms, proofs of curly bangs scrunched at the front one with a feather in her hair. The team is historic. The tag line is made in Montana because that year all the players were from our states, and I would stare at it because it was a signal to me and my friends what Montana girls like us could grow up to be.

One day. I’m all Montana, too. I was born in the mid 80s and raised in East Missoula. And did I mention that I loved the Lady Grizz? I went to all their games. I went to their summer camps in the summer, and I tried to figure out which player I wanted to be. Their home turf, Delbert Arenas, nestled up against the base of Mount Sentinel on the University of Montana campus.

Our games I would run one hand along the brown, snaking metal railing that surrounds the court, balancing a piping hot personal pan pizza, on the other hand, slide my butt along the tanned plastic bleacher seating and get ready to be pumped at the opening chords of Pop Up the Jam. I would scream, and the players ran out to raucous applause from a full house decked out in copper and gold.

The games were the coolest thing you could do in town, and it was like my posters had come to life. The players were like my celebrities Shannon Cates, Skylar Cisco, Malia Kapp. The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool. So I went. I have always been trying to figure out who I am in a world that doesn’t totally feel like I belong in it.

I was bigger and louder than the other kids. I tried to do all the things the boys did. I struggled to fit in pretty much anywhere you put me. I was what we referred to in the 90s as a tomboy. I didn’t know which new kid on the block I had a crush on, but I knew that I had a crush on their rat tail haircuts.

So I got one of those with my mom in tow. The hair stylist twisted my thick blond ponytail into a giant hair tie at the base of my neck and cut the whole thing off. Save the rat tail, my mom cried. She still has that ponytail tucked away in a Ziploc bag in her floral hope chest. I sometimes think it’s the last remnant of the daughter that she thought she was getting, but who?

I quickly put a stop to it. My friends and I loved my rat tail, and at the games we would strut around the arena checking people out, looking to be checked out. the crowds back then and to this day are made up of everyday Missoula fans just like us. Families retire trees. Then there was the student section.

I thought the student section were so cool. They were in college, for example. They had they were sunglasses inside. They knew all the chants and cheers. T fans, lady Griz T fans. But there was this one couple that always stood out to me. One had hair short like mine and wore hoodies and baseball caps. The other had a tease perm, poofs of curly bangs and jeans, just like the players on my beloved poster.

But they weren’t just any other couple. They were queer. I would see them, and I would watch them as much as I would watch the games. I had never seen a couple like them in Missoula or anywhere else. I would climb to the highest corner of the arena and my second hand Nike’s, and I would watch them, and I would see them put their arms around each other’s shoulders, whisper in each other’s ears, cheer for the same players.

I cheered for. And I didn’t really know what I was seeing, but it felt really safe. It felt warm. It felt like coming home. It must have taken so much bravery for them to show up to those games 30 years ago to and be totally themselves. I don’t know what it was like to be queer in the early 90s in Missoula, except that I do, because I was I just didn’t know it yet.

Back then, it felt like people kept out of each other’s business in ways they just don’t anymore. And seeing this couple was really meaningful to me, because it made me feel like maybe someday who I was going to be wasn’t one of the players on the court. It was one of the people in the stands. When I was 24, I moved to Portland, Oregon and quickly realized why a couple like that would make me feel like I’d found myself.

You probably figured it out before I did. It wasn’t difficult to be a lesbian in Portland, Oregon. It didn’t feel like taking a chance, holding hands in public with Mal, who would become my wife. Once we went hiking up the Columbia River Gorge, and on the way home, we pulled over to stop and look at the river and as we got out of the car, I planted one on Mal’s face.

And in that moment, I noticed a man in iridescent sunglasses staring at us. Standing outside of his pickup truck. It was just the three of us out there and my breath caught in my throat. But then he gave me a smile and a wave and a thumbs up. And I thought maybe it was going to be okay, and maybe I could be queer anywhere, even in Missoula, Montana.

Shortly thereafter, we moved home. You can imagine how excited I was to take Mel to a Lady Grizz game. My mom was just as excited and bought us matching University of Montana hoodies just for the occasion. We loaded our arms up with personal pan pizzas, big bags of popcorn, fountain Diet Cokes as big as we could find, and took the back arena hallways to our seats.

Nowadays, those hallways are lined with posters from all of my beloved teams from the early 90s, and I showed them all the 9394 poster and told her about the team and the dirty ball contest at summer camp, where whoever had the dirtiest ball would win a prize. At the end of Lady Griz camp. So I would dribble the ball for hours in my driveway and practice layups and try to do whatever I could to prove how committed I was to the players.

I also told her about the couple, who, you know, I’ve always wondered who they were, where they ended up. All of these images came rushing back to me as I watched the current team on Robin solving court. A few months ago we attended the senior night game and the house was packed. There were families and the student section and packs of ten year old girls walking around the arena and matching sweatshirts shox a bright pink lipstick across their faces.

Seeing and being seen, listening to whatever it is I listen to now, it is. And this time I hesitated for my arm around my shoulders.

The Montana that I grew up in, and frankly, moved back to just a few short years ago has been replaced by a moral panic. Folks aren’t exactly keeping themselves out of our communities business anymore, but we must remain being seen. When you are true to yourself, you give others permission to be true to themselves, to.

It was our turn to demonstrate a little bit of bravery. Owing so much to that couple that I will never get to thank.

So I did, everybody. I put my arms around my shoulders.

Because she is my love. And those arena seats are my home where we get to be exactly who we are and who I always have been.

00;49;56;11 – 00;50;04;18
Kera Rivera
She is best known as Mel’s wife. she is a lifelong women’s sports fan.

00;50;06;26 – 00;50;20;03
Marc Moss
Thanks for listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. This episode was recorded live in person as part of the opening events at Missoula Pride on June 11th, 2024 at the Glacier Ice Rink Pavilion.

Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Dennison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683. Tickets are available currently at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter.

In order to be informed about events and all things storytelling. Stream past episodes, learn more about upcoming events, and get tickets at Tell Us something.org.

 

Three generations of women journey to Austria, navigating ancestral discovery amidst a bacon debacle at the airport. A trans woman's relationship with her father and a profound connection to Montana, from landscape allure to mental health battles, culminates in a return fueled by pride and obligation. A convent-bound journey unfolds into a life of challenges and love lost, leading back to Missoula for a new beginning. and, from love's illusions to self-discovery, a quest reveals true fulfillment in embracing a queer identity in Missoula, where home resides within.

Transcript : "Going Home" Part 1

00;00;10;01 – 00;00;35;00
Marc Moss
Welcome to the Tell Us Something podcast. Tell Us Something is a nonprofit that helps people share their true personal stories around a theme. Live in person and without notes. I’m Mark Moss, your host and executive director of Tell Us Something. Have you ever felt that tug towards a place, a memory, or maybe even a person? That feeling of going home, that feeling of going home isn’t just about a physical location.

It’s about belonging and connection. It’s about finding that piece of yourself that’s been missing. On this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast. We explore all the different ways we come home to ourselves and the world around us. We’ll hear stories of journeys, of second chances, of rediscovering what truly matters. So buckle up and get comfy. Join us as we embark on these heartfelt adventures.

This episode of the podcast was recorded in front of a live audience at the Glacier Ice Rink and Pavilion on June 11th, 2024, as part of the Missoula Pride celebration. Eight storytellers shared their true personal stories on the theme Going Home.

00;01;19;02 – 00;01;33;03
Kiki Hubbard
A few days later, my mom called me to share a story. She said she had just been on the phone with my grandmother, and that she was terribly upset because apparently her cousin had called to ask how my father had enjoyed the bacon.

00;01;33;03 – 00;01;46;20
Adria Jwort
So you’re going to North Dakota after that. But where are you stopping at Salt Lake City? As soon as you get there, call me. Just, you know, he kept saying, call me, let me know you’re at. And I knew it was because of that club shooting.

00;01;46;20 – 00;02;10;29
Teri Wing
For seven years with Sarah, I was in hiding and actually I had my kids in hiding to, Initially, she was very patient with it all, but eventually she decided that she was living, my life in hiding with me and not her life, because she had actually come out when she was in her 20s.

00;02;10;29 – 00;02;26;13
Chloe Williams
So I loved Women on Hawthorn and in Portland for eight years. Yeah, there was drama, there were tears, there was joy, there was heartbreak. And I really sort of saw the first glimpse of my real self during that time.

00;02;26;13 – 00;02;57;12
Marc Moss
That’s coming up. We are currently looking for storytellers for the next tell us something storytelling event. The theme is Never Again. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call (406) 203-4683. You have three minutes to leave your pitch. The pitch deadline is August 9th. I look forward to hearing from you. We’re also looking for volunteers to help with the event.

If you love Tell Us Something and you love helping out, visit. Tell us something. Morgan. Volunteer to learn more and to sign up.

We were gathered at the Missoula County Fairgrounds in the heart of Montana amidst the vibrant energy of early June. As we remembered that we took a moment to acknowledge the traditional stewards of this land. We stand on the ancestral homelands of the Salish and Kalispell, people who for countless generations have nurtured and cared for this place. The place of the small bull trout.

Their deep connection to this land is woven into the very fabric of this valley. We honor their resilience, their knowledge of the natural world, and their enduring presence here. Acknowledgment alone is not enough. Let’s also commit to taking action ways that you can do this if you live in Missoula, or to learn more about the native tribes who still inhabit this land.

You can visit the Salish Kootenay College or the Missoula Children’s Museum to deepen your understanding of the Salish and Kalispell cultures. You can visit the Missoula Art Museum, where the exhibit We Stand with you. Contemporary artists. Honor the families of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous relative crisis runs through September 7th, 2024. You can support cultural events hosted by local tribes and explore opportunities to volunteer with their initiatives.

We can always be looking for opportunities to incorporate indigenous knowledge and practices into our everyday lives, whether it’s sustainable land management or traditional food systems. We can commit to moving beyond mere words and work towards building a more respectful and inclusive future. Honoring the legacy of the Salish and the Kalispell people on whose land we stand.

Remember this. Tell us something. Stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language.

We ate. Tell us something. Recognize the privilege inherent in our platform and while we love sharing a variety of voices, it’s important to amplify marginalized voices. That’s why during the event on June 11th, I stepped back and passed the mic to our friends from Missoula Pride. Devin Carpenter, who shared his story at last year’s event, and Kiara Rivera from the center, performed the honors of seeing the evening’s event.

On the podcast, you’ll hear them giving the bios for the storytellers.

In her first story, Kiki Hubbard, her mother and her grandmother are on a plane returning back to the United States from former Yugoslavia. After a trip tracing their ancestry, the grandmother, a strong immigrant who fled war and violence, is frustrated because customs won’t let her bring bacon into the United States. Kiki calls her story what bacon? Thanks for listening.

00;05;57;15 – 00;06;16;18
Kiki Hubbard

I’m on an airplane home from Europe with my mother and grandmother. To my left is my grandma Francesca, who went by Frances, but whom my family affectionately called Momo. I know she’s next to me because I can sense her signature fidgeting.

Mama was a constant warrior. It was as if anxiety propelled her through life, which kept her busy, I suppose, because she was always knitting, gardening, cooking, doing. And she moved at a rapid pace regardless of what she was up to. For example, if you saw her doing her laps at the mall, you would quickly conclude that she was either racing someone or racing away from someone.

This is a woman who never became a U.S. citizen, despite being in the United States for over 50 years as an immigrant.

Because she was terrified of failing the exam. She was ashamed of making mistakes and having people learn about them. And I suppose at a deeper level, she was afraid of being told that she couldn’t stay in this country. Now standing no more than five feet tall, Momo was also one of the strongest people I have ever known. She chopped firewood with an ax well into her 80s. She would flip burning logs in the fireplace with her bare hands. After emigrating here, she chopped off half of her pointer finger while working in a bakery in Milwaukee. She simply wrapped her hand in a towel and kept working. It wasn’t until her supervisor caught wind of the situation that she was taken to the emergency room.

Now, sitting next to me, to my right on the airplane is my mom. My mom was born and raised in Austria when she emigrated here with her parents. She was forced to grow up faster than most nine-year-olds because she picked up the English language quicker than they did. She read the mail, scheduled appointments, and had to navigate the complex systems that came with living in a new country.

And while Austria is where my mom was born, my grandmother used to call former Yugoslavia her home, where she and my grandfather farmed and lived in community with a number of other ethnic Germans whose ancestors had emigrated to Yugoslavia and other countries along the Danube River more than 250 years before. In fact, the impetus for our trip to Austria, from which we were returning to on that airplane, was a research grant that I was awarded as a college undergraduate. I was provided some funding to travel to Austria to interview relatives I had never met before about my cultural heritage, and in particular, how my grandma landed in Austria in 1944 as a war refugee.

My grandmother survived a genocide event that rarely makes it into history books. She fought following the fall of Hitler at the end of World War Two. The communist leader in Yugoslavia, Tito, initiated a massive gradation of anyone with German ancestry. So even though my grandparents had never set foot in Germany, they had German roots, and all ethnic Germans were stripped of their citizenship and property rights and told they had to leave the country. Those who didn’t heed the warning were either faced with torture, death, or slave labor camps. My grandparents were among the lucky, if you can call them that, because they were given three days to leave their land. They packed up their prized possessions in a covered wagon, said goodbye to their farm, their livestock, their vineyard, their friends, and joined a procession of other ethnic Germans headed toward Austria. They were told the trip would take two weeks. In fact, it took a full month, and they survived off the kindness of strangers and off of a single smoked pig that they prepared before leaving Newcastle.

When they arrived in Austria, they had high hopes that they would be able to return to Yugoslavia. But when they started to hear from the survivors there, they learned that there was no home to return to. Their land had been given away to members of the army. This dispossession of land would haunt my grandfather in particular for decades. I remember him as a despondent man whose mind was very far away. But although the army could take away their land, they could not take away their traditions. Some of my fondest memories with my grandfather are sitting next to a bonfire next to a lake in northern Wisconsin, cooking bacon over an open flame. I’m not talking about your typical Sunday morning bacon. I’m talking 4 to 5 a.m. slabs of bacon that you can only find at a butcher shop. My siblings and I would search the forest floor for the best sticks to whittle into skewers for the bacon. My grandpa taught us how to pepper and salt the bacon and cut slits into the slabs and slowly cook it over the flames.

As the bacon sizzled and the grease started to drip, he taught us to catch those grease drippings and slices of white bread that had copious amounts of paprika sprinkled on them. Roasting bacon over an open fire only happened once or twice a year. But I can still taste the charred pork and the greasy, spongy bread.

As the airplane begins to make its descent into Chicago, my grandmother leans over me to ask my mom a question in a mix of German and Italian. “What?” My mom asked. My grandma then proceeded to explain to my mom that her cousin had gone to the butcher shop in Austria and found the choicest cut of bacon to send home with my grandma as a gift from my father.

Now, what prompted this disclosure were repeated announcements by flight attendants, explaining that because of a foot and mouth disease outbreak, certain products weren’t being allowed into the United States, including meat. Now, mind you, my grandmother already had one item confiscated at the airport in Europe. They took a dagger-sized letter opener out of her purse before I was going through security. This, too, was a gift from my father.

And though she could not wrap her head around, after all, it had only been three short months since the World Trade Center had been attacked, and travel security was clearly different. At some point, I should say, my mother must have conflated foot and mouth disease with mad cow disease because I’m sitting in between them, hearing my grandma argue why she should be able to keep the bacon, asking why are the cows mad? And her cows were never mad because she treated them well. And after all, this pork is from the pig, so why should it matter? It shouldn’t be confiscated. I’m in between them, picking up bits and pieces of this conversation. One, because I only understand so much German, and two, because I was somewhat delirious. I had developed a 103 fever on the ten-hour flight home from Europe. I was terribly sick and desperate to get off this plane.

As we were boarding, it became clearer and clearer that my grandma did not want to give up this bacon. My mom was sensing this, and without any warning, she shoved her hand into my grandma’s purse, located the white butcher paper-wrapped meat, and hid it behind the women’s bathroom. I remember thinking to myself, I guess we’re not going to turn this over to the authorities. My grandma and I were at her heels, but by the time we got to the bathroom, the meat was already in the trash can. My mom pushed it way down deep into this large trash can in the women’s bathroom.

My grandma is still protesting. “Does this I know, Zonda, this is a son.” We turned around and headed toward the baggage claim area. I let my mom and grandma look for our luggage. I was feeling sicker by the minute and told them I was just going to sit next to the wall and rest. I hadn’t even gotten settled next to the wall when I saw my grandmother race past me, clutching her purse. I’m a little bit worried about her, so I start to stand up, and I see her run past me again, clutching her purse. This time I notice that there are three beagles at her heels, and they’re tethered to three men in uniform. I started following my grandmother, and I see that she’s located my mom, and she throws her purse into my mom’s face and keeps walking. And I shouldn’t say she was running so much as speed walking. It was as if all of the laps at the mall had prepared her for this very moment. The three beagles stopped at my mom’s feet, sat down, and just looked up at her. She’s holding the purse, humiliated.

I walk over to my mom to help support her in these conversations. She’s been interrogated by these three men in uniform. I was struck that the men were with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and they had guns. I was also struck that they had beagles as opposed to, say, German Shepherds or Labradors. It turns out the USDA detector dogs are known as the Beagle Brigade, and the Beagle Brigade’s job is to find the bacon.

And. Protect America’s food. Supply. My mom sheepishly led the authorities to the bathroom, helped them locate the meat, and our mom and I sat down for what felt like two hours to fill out paperwork for this slab of bacon. Meanwhile, my grandma was nowhere in sight. We finally made it through customs, where we were reunited with my grandma and my dad, who was driving us home.

A few days later, my mom called me to share a story. She said she had just been on the phone with my grandmother and that she was terribly upset because apparently her cousin had called to ask how my father had enjoyed the bacon. She felt like she had to lie and was lamenting that she had to lie. She was yelling on the phone to my mother.

I never heard from under another sin. I asked my mom how she was doing. Where is Momo now? Is she at home? Oh no, honey, she replied. Your grandmother is at confession.

00;17;22;12 – 00;17;47;07
Devin Carpenter
remotely for the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an academic collaborator with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kiki lives in Missoula by way of Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., and is a national expert in policy issues that affect our nation’s seed supply. She is passionate about protecting family farms and community food systems from unfair and destructive corporate practices.

Next up is Adria Jwort, who as a trans woman, wrestles with Montana’s anti-LGBTQ climate and complex relationship with her dad. The club Q shooting prompts her to return home, prioritizing family despite ongoing struggles. We call her story from Vegas to Montana. A father’s call. Thanks for listening.

00;18;11;01 – 00;18;41;22
Adria Jwort
And that there was that one time I didn’t want to come back home to Montana. It was, It’s a place it felt like where colonization made me feel like an alien in my own land. but there’s also this saying that I keep coming back to. Including yesterday. Right. we. Actress from Billings. Right. I go to Helena, Missoula, Livingston, Yellowstone Park.

Whoever had taken this trip literally about probably a couple hundred times by now. But when you’re round the bend past Columbus, right before Big Timber, you could see the Crazy Mountains and the view, you know, just so frickin’ magnificent. I remember two weeks ago when I came up here, I just remember the sky was, like, just piercing blue.

I didn’t know how to describe. I’ve never seen the sky that color; it was just described as neon. That made the Crazy Mountains seem 3D. Now let’s get out a camera, pull over, and take a picture. It’s photographic. Can I appreciate the art of it? But for that time, I was just like, you know what? I’m just going to keep this one for my memory.

But going back to the time I didn’t want to come back to Montana. I had been in Las Vegas, writing fellowship, and while there, I just felt like I felt my art had my social tribe, whatever, fellow goth and everything. And I lived in the Arts district, and there was I just felt like safe. And I had just been through hell in Montana the last year.

I’d been through some lawsuit and or like, literally hosting rallies where my name was being projected on screens and everything, and I was getting all kinds of threats. I actually won a libel lawsuit because the guy couldn’t stop threatening me. And like, people were showing up to where they thought I worked and everything. Just calling me a pedophile groomer or whatever.

And they’re going to, you know, fire me, I guess. But anyways, so I won the lawsuit and I’m in Las Vegas, had a settlement, and I just kept driving by apartments, like, wanting to know how I could afford down payments and then maybe get a job here. And it’s all going through my head and everything. I didn’t, you know, but there’s also this pull back to here.

But at the same time, at the end of my fellowship, the club shooting happened. And I remember distinctly, because I had come back from the golf club, and I was just feeling like. So chill, like maybe. Yeah, this is the spot. This is it. I think I want to live here, and I open up my Twitter feed, start scrolling, and right away I see this comment.

It’s like, hey, has anyone seen my friend? They perform at the they perform at Club Q, has anyone seen them? And it was just like weird seeing these three texts. Has anyone seen them? Or they say part of the okay, they perform there? And I was just trying to figure it out. And it all came together that night that there was a mass shooting and, yeah.

And it was just so surreal watching all these stories come together. Just people just like looking for their family, their friends, their best friends, drag performers, lover of the gay club. Shut up. And that Monday there was an anti-drag queen bill introduced. I was like, oh, what good timing. And by that, I was like, yeah, fuck Montana, I ain’t coming back and I know it’s going to get worse.

And I was telling people this and they just thought I was crying wolf, whatever. But it’s like, okay, yeah, you guys can do your own stuff up there. I’m just going to stay here. But that night, my dad called and we’d always had a complex relationship with. By being trans, I mean, the call it complex. Another statement, he was like, comes what?

I cannot trans. I mean, he’s like, kind of in denial of it. I mean, I was just kind of going bathe and whatever. But one day he saw me in the newspaper. I’m also in the newspaper as an activist and was wearing a dress and everything. And then I guess that was basically out of the closet for him, and he just freaked out and everything.

This kid is on the front page of the local state section, as you know. It was a terrible picture. I remember that really. But it freaked out, like bad, like I’m by a stepmother. She texted me saying, I never seen your dad like this. He’s like the strut, his whatever I there is seen him like this often.

His head, you know, and he knows. But anyway, like, hurt really bad because I didn’t expect him to accept that he knows better. Like Evangelia. Cool. Christian, but a deacon of the church. But he’s like a legit good guy. I mean, we were growing up, we used to like take all these kids at this Royal Rangers. It was called those kind of a Boy Scout groups.

He’d take them to the mountains. They’re all underprivileged kids from the poor parts of Billings. And they were just like, you know, he’d take about ten of them in his Volkswagen van. And, you know, that was what he liked doing. He just liked being a good Christian guy, I guess. And, yeah, I just really looked up to him and that there’s like a he also, like, raised us, three of us boys growing up basically as a single father.

Lots of times because, my mom, she would also go on, and say drug benders and what time she left for about eight months. And after a few months, we just cruised around looking for her mother. We pulled out of some downtown Billings bar, and I just seen her pulling her out, and then, these other guys, like.

Hey, get your hands off of my dad. I never seen him get violent before. I really. Cox’s pissed back. And because those are her kids over there, we’re sitting in the back of a truck like the little cab of a Mazda. And then. And then they all just backed off, and then they said, you better go talk to your kids.

My mom came over and it was like, if whenever I want to try like a thousand actresses in a movie, I needed to come up with a scene to make me cry. That would be it. It was my mom saying, I guess this is our final goodbye. Except I didn’t cry. I just like, learned to stop crying right then because my little brother, a year younger than me, he put his head in my lap and just started bawling and I just had to be there and comfort him.

So. And his like little, had cried big tears and it was just so, I don’t know, I just kind of lost emotions for a while. And that’s always the thing that always comes back in heartbreak. But, so my dad, he dealt with a lot of that, and I went to a 40 Under 40 award once, and then they said, who’s your hero?

And I put my dad. That’s an I put it meant it. So for him to just like, just totally just freak out about my being trans was so, just made me very distraught. I think I really said that word, but, anyways, so but that Monday after Club Q shooting, he calls up and I started calling him back after a few months and we kind of restarted a relationship because we always called each other.

It was always like, I mean, we missed each other. So of course he was. He still loved me. He didn’t approve of my lifestyle, as they say, but as I kind of try to explain Gothic, his lifestyle being transitioned. But, you know, he’s old school evangelical. That’s his religious beliefs. And it’s like, come what you like to like, judge and like say, but you know, to him it was just his religious beliefs and I don’t excuse it.

But at the same time, it was just like. You know, he called that. Yeah. Two days after Club Q shooting and after I was decided not to come back. And he was very, very concerned. Like, hey, when are you coming back? I never heard that in his voice before. Okay. Are you okay there? You know. Okay. How are you getting back?

So you’re going to North Dakota after that, but where are you stopping at Salt Lake City? As soon as you get there, call me. Just, you know, he kept saying, call me, let me know where you’re at. And I know it was because of that club shooting, I knew it was because he knew that his kid could die just for being LGBTQ.

And that was in his head. I mean, he didn’t say that, but that I had never heard it in his voice before, and he already had a my little brother who’s a year younger, he’s been murdered and he knew he didn’t want to lose another son. But just our, yeah, son who became our self, so yeah, that was it.

Right? I mean, I was still churning in everything and I said, yeah, I maybe I better come back and get my stuff, you know? But I was still thinking of that. But then I saw this article in the paper, some guy had been shot like seven times. He’d survive, come because he’d been to Colorado.

Had just been there from North Carolina, I believe. All the details. But anyways, he wasn’t even LGBTQ. He just saw this club going on in. It’s hip and happening because as kids we are good at partying and it’s like, hey, cool. But at the end up getting shot seven times left the club made it to two blocks away to 7-Eleven.

They cut his shirt open and everything and everyone in there that 7-Eleven tried to keep him alive and all I could think was, I just want to call my dad. He’s fading in and out, he said. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. It’s like it’s call my dad. That’s my best friend right there. And before I die, I just.

Can you just give it? You know, that’s his only thought and but, you know, and I just felt that so much right there. And it’s like, now what system. Sometimes it’s like we. Yeah. That’s, basically it right there. That’s one of the things I said. I just can’t leave my family, I guess. So that’s why I’m back here.

So thank you very much.

00;28;37;06 – 00;28;45;12
Kera Riverra

Adria L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender/2 Spirit journalist based in Billings, Montana. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among other publications. She is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience.

Marc Moss
We’ll be right back after this short break. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast.

00;28;51;25 – 00;29;16;04
Teri Wing
For seven years with Sarah, I was in hiding and actually I had my kids in hiding to, Initially, she was very patient with it all, but eventually she decided that she was living, my life in hiding with me and not her life, because she had actually come out when she was in her 20s.

00;29;16;04 – 00;29;31;18
Chloe Williams
So I loved Women on Hawthorn and in Portland for eight years. Yeah, there was drama, there were tears, there was joy, there was heartbreak. And I really sort of saw the first glimpse of my real self during that time.

00;29;31;18 – 00;29;35;08
Marc Moss
That’s after the break. Stay tuned.

Thank you to our story sponsor, the Good Food Store, helping us to pay our storytellers. Learn more at Good Food store.com. Thanks to Golden Yolk Griddle, who also showed up as a story sponsor. Learn more about them at Golden Yolk griddle.com. Thank you to our accessibility sponsor, Parkside Credit Union, allowing us to hire American Sign Language interpreters at this event.

In order to be a more inclusive experience, learn about them at Parkside fcu.com. Thanks to our artist sponsor Bernice’s Bakery, who paid our poster artist. I learned about them and their delicious baked goods at Bernice’s Bakery mty.com. Thanks to our media sponsors, Missoula Events, Dot net, the Art attic, The Trail Less Traveled, and Missoula Broadcasting Company including the family of ESPN radio.

The trail 133, Jack FM and Missoula. Source for modern hits you 104.5. Thanks to our in-kind sponsors. Float. Missoula. Learn more at float msl.com and choice of tile. Learn about Joyce at Joyce of tile.com. Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Denison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683.

Tickets are available right now at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter. In order to be informed about all of our events. Welcome back. You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. I’m your host, Mark Moss.

In our next story. Teri Wing leaves Butte, Montana for convent life before leaving and finding love and family. Her journey home was a wild ride. Teri calls her story going home the long way around. Thanks for listening.

00;31;28;27 – 00;31;39;04
Teri Wing

Oh my God!

Okay, so I’m, 18 years old, and I’m sitting on a train that’s ready to leave Butte. This was before airplane travel was invented. And I’ve got three people that I graduated from high school with, and we’re kind of terrified. Excited, but terrified and worried about the choice we made. We are headed a thousand miles across the country to Kansas, where we are going to join a convent.

Now, before we left, my best friend hands me a box and she says, don’t open this until Rocker, which is like 20 miles away. So we get to Rocker and we open the box and there inside are about ten baby jars with various forms of booze from her dad’s cabinet, a jar of ice, a packet of sins and breath mints, and a pack of cigarettes.

And so, for about 300 miles after Rocker, we weren’t anxious anymore. It was really, really mellow. So I get to the convent, and there were so many things about it that were kind of weird to me. One of the things was the silence. I mean, I never really had tried it out, and so, but at first it was just an hour in the afternoon.

And so, at a certain time in the afternoon, we were to stay silent. I guess we were supposed to be praying, and then a bell would ring and we would drop to our knees and kiss the floor and just stay like that for a while, you know? So I was fine. Pretty much the silence was all day, except for one hour in the evening when we had what was called recreation, and we could talk to each other.

But the nuns had a real problem with something they called particular friendships. And these were kind of spooky. And so if you were observed during that recreation time on more than a couple of occasions talking to the same person, you were pulled aside and talked to about these particular friendships, and they were not approved of.

And they were very dangerous. I think what they’re really talking about is particularly lesbians.

During the second year that I was there, the superior called me into her office one afternoon to talk about my dad, and she told me that my dad was interviewed at a hospital and he’d had surgery for cancer. And just a short months later, my dad, who had been my rock, my safe harbor, my protector in a dysfunctional family, he was gone at the age of 54.

At the end of that summer, I got the news that I was assigned to go to Independence, Missouri, to a Catholic school to teach fourth grade. And I love that. I love little kids. And we were called a religious community. A religious community. But in fact, we were eight individuals living together under one roof, completely isolated from each other.

And it was really lonely. And so I talked to a friend of mine and she said, you know, I think you need to figure this out, so why don’t you go up to Topeka and talk to Doctor Hall, who’s the therapist? He might help you out. So I go up there and I’m with Doctor Hall for an hour, and he, every five minutes, he says, at the end of the hour, I’m impatient.

I say, tell me what you think. What do you think? So he leans across the desk and he says, well, sister, I think you need to give it another year before you decide what to do. So I thanked him and left, and I’m driving back to Independence, and I feel this rage building in my chest. And I think to myself, Doctor Hall, you fucking son of a bitch.

I have just told you that I’ve been unhappy for six years. And you say, give it another year. So when I got back to Independence, I called the mother house and said, I’m out of here. So they gave me back my $100 dowry that I gave them when I entered without interest. I’m out. And so I had enough to buy a nice dress to get a train ticket.

Still no airplanes. Still a train ticket back to Butte. And as the train is pulling out of Kansas City and I see the station disappearing through the windows, I thought, you know, I’ve really kind of come full circle because I’m sitting in the club car with a bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I’m thinking, well, hello, Independence.

You know, as soon as I get to Butte and to my parents’ house, as soon as I walked in the door, I knew this wasn’t home anymore because my dad wasn’t there. For years after he was gone, his clothes were still in the closet. His hunting and fishing gear was still there, and I think I had a reaction of some really serious delayed grief.

And so I knew it was not home. So after a little while, I left there and I went to Spokane to enroll at Gonzaga to finish my degree. And so I did that. And then after I graduated, I got a job. I thought maybe Spokane was a place to stay. But one of the biggest challenges I had was dating.

Because you remember the last time I dated I was dating high school boys, and now here I am, and I’ve got no one but two young men. Like, one had a beard, and they’re both interested in me. And I’m really thinking that they’ve got more on their mind than a particular friendship. And I’m still a virgin. And so I was not interested in that.

So I did what any mature, responsible 20-something would do. I backed up my Mustang convertible, my old car, put everything I owned in it, put the top down, and got the hell out of town. And I came to Missoula for the first time. I came here and I enrolled in a graduate program in education at the university.

And after that degree, I had some jobs in Missoula. I got married and had a 12-year marriage that ended up not working for either one of us, but I had two wonderful, sweet daughters, which was a real bonus. And then at the age of 40, to my surprise, I fell in love. And I’m talking I fell really, really in love with Sarah.

And Sarah was a beautiful woman, so, so sensuous. She had these beautiful blue eyes that I could just get lost in. And she was smart and funny. And at the time, though, I was the curriculum director for the Missoula School District, it was the 90s, pretty visible job. And I was really worried about how my living arrangement was going to impact my job.

I was also really concerned about my girls, who at that time were in middle school. And in the 90s, there weren’t that many kids who were open about having two moms or two dads. And so for seven years with Sarah, I was in hiding. And actually, I had my kids in hiding too. Initially, she was very patient with it all, but eventually she decided that she was living my life in hiding with me and not her life, because she had actually come out when she was in her 20s.

And so she moved out and left, and I was thoroughly heartbroken, filled with pain of loss, with regret, with guilt. And so I tried to stay numb as I could using alcohol. But, you know, that doesn’t work at all. And so I checked myself into an alcohol treatment program to get my head straight, to get my feet on the ground.

Okay. And it worked. And so a couple of years later, both of my kids graduated and left the nest. And so at that time, I just didn’t feel like I could stay in Missoula anymore. There was the pain was still too raw of losing Sarah. And so I left and had a couple of jobs that I would try to fit in.

I always felt like a visitor. So in 2014, I came back to Missoula and I bought a house and my daughters by that time were married. They have kids of their own. They’ve got three little boys who have you ever noticed how noisy boys are and they throw things? I mean, we have baseball games in my living room and I’m guarding my windows the whole time.

We’ve got fierce hockey games going on in my tiny kitchen, and for me it is just such a joyful noise. I love, I’ve connected with my former husband and his wife through all of these marriages, births, birthdays, celebrations, soccer games, and I find that I’m part of a really wonderful extended family now and then there are my friends and the people from back 20 years ago welcoming me back to Missoula.

They let me know they still love me. For me, being with old friends feels like slipping my feet into a really well-worn pair of cozy slippers. That kind with that fuzzy stuff inside that feels so familiar and so comfortable. And so years ago, I had left Missoula with a broken heart. Since I’ve been back, I have found more love and community than I ever thought I could experience.

And I am so really, really glad that I’m home.

00;43;24;18 – 00;43;42;26
Devin Carpenter
the mother of two and a grandmother of three boys. Terry is a retired educator who loves dogs and other living things. She hasn’t yet climbed tall mountains, run a marathon, or jumped out of a plane, though she says she may put those on her bucket list.

00;43;42;26 – 00;44;02;13
Marc Moss
Our final storyteller. In this episode, Chloe Williams searches for happiness in love, places and self-expression before finally figuring out what love is and where to find it. Chloe calls her story the rusty screeching turn toward home. Thanks for listening.

00;44;02;13 – 00;44;10;13
Chloe Williams

The journey has been very long to find the answer. I looked for the answer in parents. I looked for the answer in love. And I’ve looked for the answer in places. For me, they were in none of those. The first place that I looked for the answer was in my mom, and she provided a roof over my head. In fact, many roofs, as you just heard. But holding on to her was like holding on to the tale of a burning comet that zigzagged through the world. She had mental illness, and it pingponged her off of men and off of spiritual practices, and then ricocheted her back to earth. And that answer hurt me and left me feeling dizzy and confused.

The next place that I looked for the answer was in the idea of love. And the idea of love was shaped in me by Disney movies. Magenta princesses with huge smiles, and that cheesy music that comes in with the happy endings. So by three years old, I would put myself to sleep every single night, laying my head exactly in the middle of my pillow and strategically placing my hair around my face in a ring, and then folding my hands over my stomach and waiting. Waiting for love to save me. So I loved fiercely, as fiercely as I could muster. The first boy that I loved was Jesse, and he was supposed to be the Prince Charming from one of those movies. In reality, he was just a tall, lanky guy that lived in a basement room, and every time I walked down the dark wood stairs to his room, I thought, maybe this is it.

But all I found in that room was that tinny soundtrack to the Street Fighter game, and then the stale smell of bong water. The next person that I loved was Kelly. The first girl that I loved. And she lived in a really unsafe home. It was dangerous for her there. So we camped out in coffee shops in the Haight-Ashbury, and I would lean in to hear the poetry that she would write to me over the bangs and clinks of the espresso shots being pulled, and that diesel drip smell of coffee that we could afford, and we would crawl into each other’s eyes for safety.

And then I got into college. I got into Mills College, and my mom was so excited. She was like, Chloe, it’s so great that you got into an all-women’s school because you won’t be distracted at all by. Little did she know that a month later I fell for a very cute butch girl, and that girl handed me a book that felt like the manual to who I was supposed to be. So I, oh, the book was “The Well of Loneliness.” And so I wore the makeup and had the long hair and wore the heels, and it really seemed to make her happy.

But the other women at Mills said things like “lesbian until graduation” and made me feel like a trespasser in this world that I really wanted to belong to. So when that cute butch girl took me on a road trip to Portland, Oregon for the first time, singing the soundtrack to “Rent” at the top of her lungs the whole way, I thought, maybe it’s a new city. That’s the answer. And so when I walked down Hawthorne Street in Portland, it felt like the green, beautiful trees that lined that street sort of just reached down and held me in an embrace and an embrace. And I loved it there. The energy was exactly what I was looking for. It was the hub of the queer community.

And I got a job right on Hawthorne Street, washing dishes at the Cup and Saucer Cafe. And I loved it. I washed those white plates, and the steam would rise up into my face. And I just got to watch all these beautiful women coming in and out of the cup. Spiky hair, cargo shorts, glinting eyes. And I remember a few shifts into my job there, I went home. I went to the backyard and shaved all my long blond hair off and looking into the mirror for the first time at myself with a shaved head. It felt like my skin just fit a little bit better. So I stayed on Hawthorne for a long time. In fact, one morning I remember working at the club. I was standing at the counter, waiting for customers to come in, and the cook, who I’d been eyeing for a few weeks, Amanda, came up to do some inventory, and she always wore this cute little train engineer hat off to the side.

And as she was standing next to me, I felt like my cells were vibrating and I wanted to connect. I wanted to reach out and say something, but I didn’t have the script. The script was old. It didn’t work anymore. So I looked around and tried for something and I tried reverse psychology and I said, “Not you again.” And that coy smile that she shot me in that moment, I was like, settled a little bit more into my body. So I loved women on Hawthorne and in Portland for eight years. And there was drama, there were tears, there was joy, there was heartbreak. And I really sort of saw the first glimpse of my real self during that time.

But something was missing and I did not know what it was. I got to a point, though, that I thought, well, maybe I’ll try the exact opposite. Maybe I need a dude’s dude. Maybe I need a hard-drinking, hard-fighting dude’s dude. And I found him. I found him in the Sandy Hut dive bar in Portland. And I walked in that night, and there was Crash sitting at the bar. Tattered motorcycle sweater, scarred knuckles. And I thought, he looks like he could keep me safe. But trying to make Crash my answer was kind of like trying to train a wild dog. I had to sort of ignore the frothing and the growling, to really get that horse training in, but I tried for another eight years to domesticate Crash, and with a ring on my finger and a baby in my arms and a house that we bought, I couldn’t ignore the scars that I got from that wildness.

And I followed that wildness all the way to Montana. Well, it turns out that parents are not the answer, at least not for me. And I’ve had to let my mom go for her to just kind of still be homeless and moving around and dealing with her mental illness without me on her coattails. Turns out love is not the answer. Not when it’s the kind of love that you have to sacrifice yourself for. And I had to let the wild dog go. Well, I wanted to let the wild dog go. And to be untamed and happy. And I love my half-wild son more every single day without losing myself. I actually took six years off of the idea of love, because I really had to, like, reframe the whole Disney version and create my own version of love.

And I get to do that today with an amazing woman who I can really be myself in front of. We get to witness each other settling into our skin more each day. It turns out that cities and places—San Francisco, Portland, Missoula—they are just cities with empty houses and empty streets. Unless you know how to make a home. Well, I choose to make my home in Missoula, and I choose to make it in my queer skin, which fits me so well. It turns out that the rusty, screeching, slow turn to myself was actually my home. I had to look away from all the people and the places and the things. And my answer? I am my home, and I’m going home to myself in front of you right now. And I will be going home to myself for the rest of my life. Thank you.

00;53;54;22 – 00;54;07;27
Kera Riverra
Chloe was born in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and raised in San Francisco. She spent some summers on a farm in Illinois. Eventually, she spent 17 years in Portland, Oregon, and ten years ago moved to Missoula.

Chloe has lived approximately 40 different addresses in her life, though she really has lost count. Storytelling was passed down from her mom in the many long car rides of her childhood, and that’s her favorite thing her mother gave her. Only in the last few years has she been called to try storytelling herself. And it feels like something her spirit needs to do.

00;54;29;23 – 00;54;43;00
Marc Moss
Thanks for listening to the Tell Us Something podcast. This episode was recorded live in person as part of the opening events at Missoula Pride on June 11th, 2024 at the Glacier Ice Rink Pavilion.

00;54;43;06 – 00;54;54;09
Michelle Reilly
It was like looking through the most beautiful kaleidoscope I had ever looked through all these vibrant colors and shapes and patterns of fractals and wonder.

00;54;54;09 – 00;55;12;09
Adel Ben Bacha
As she answers the phone, she softly says hello. And then silence. That silence felt like forever. But she breaks that silence with a delicate sob.

00;55;12;09 – 00;55;23;21
Zeke Cork
I didn’t know what it meant, but I couldn’t shake it. I thought maybe it was about my family, so I try to write about it, but there was always something missing. It stayed with me for years.

00;55;23;21 – 00;55;30;05
Ashley Brittner Wells
The coolest thing you could do in town was go to the games. And I desperately wanted to be cool, so I went.

00;55;31;05 – 00;55;58;02
Marc Moss
Tune in for those stories on the next Tell Us Something podcast. Please remember that our next event is September 18th at the George and Jane Dennison Theater. The theme is Never Again. You can pitch your story by calling (406) 203-4683. Tickets are available currently at Tell Us something.org. Please follow us on all the standard social media channels and subscribe to our newsletter.

In order to be informed about events and all things storytelling. Stream past episodes, learn more about upcoming events, and get tickets at Tell Us something.org.