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.

Marc Moss: We are currently looking for storytellers for the next Tell Us Something storytelling event. The theme is “Going Home”. This event is a collaboration with Missoula Pride and we will favor folx in the LBGTQ+ community as we listen to story pitches. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 406-203-4683. You have 3 minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the Deaf community are welcome to pitch by emailing [email protected].

The pitch deadline is May 4th. I look forward to hearing from you.

Another important date is on the horizon, too. Missoula Gives & Bitterroot Gives, is an initiative of the Missoula Community Foundation, is a 26-hour celebration of the Missoula and Ravalli communities. It connects generous Missoulians and Bitterrooters with the causes they care about. Causes like Tell Us Something. It is a day to celebrate and support the role nonprofits and donors (like you) play in making our Missoula & Ravalli communities great. Mark your calendars for May 2nd and 3rd and tell your friends about this opportunity to support Tell Us Something during Missoula Gives. May 2nd and 3rd.

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 Marc Moss, your host and Executive Director of Tell Us Something! We acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional lands of the Salish, Pend Oreille, and Kalispel peoples, who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.

As spring unfolds its vibrant colors and rejuvenates the earth, we recognize the interconnectedness of all life, and the importance of honoring Indigenous knowledge and practices.

In this season of renewal, let us commit to fostering a deeper understanding of Indigenous culture and history. Take time to learn about the traditional ecological knowledge of the original inhabitants of this land, and incorporate sustainable practices into our daily lives.

Together, let us strive to be mindful stewards of the land, fostering harmony and respect for all beings who call this place home.

A tangible way that we can do this is to practice leave no trace principles when we are outside recreating. Pick up our dogs’ waste when we are out hiking — don’t “get it on the way back” from your hike, get it when it happens, and carry it with you. Pick up trash where you see it, observe wildlife from a distance and avoid feeding them. By practicing some of these leave no trace principles, we can be stewards of the land that we claim to love so much.

We take this moment to honor the land and its Native people, and the stories that they share with us.

Sometimes adventure is chosen, sometimes it’s thrust upon you. In this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, we delve into the journeys of four remarkable people:

A mother and daughter in Belize work together to navigate the challenges of entering the country with an expired passport, a determined diver confronts the depths of the ocean swimming against sudden swells and learns some harrowing news the next day when she returns to the water. An artist wrestles with self-doubt and the meaning of success. And a woman on a wilderness adventure faces a grizzly bear encounter, wolves and swarming bees on her ordeal to get out and help with a family emergency.

Traci Sylte: He opens the door and said, you’ll need to go to the U. S. Embassy right away. And talk to the consulate.

Ren Parker: I fight like hell to get up. Everything starts going really fast. I’m breathing air out as fast as I can, and I’m moving and swimming as hard as I can to get to the surface.  When divers dive, they need to decompress as they go to the surface.

Mark Matthews: And I  admitted for the first time that I’d given up the thing I loved. I’m Because I thought I was a failure, because I couldn’t make a living from it.

Kat Werner: I enter Pain Cave. Which is really just  alright, like, suck it up. Full on autopilot,  and I just, you know, one paddle stroke and one step at a time  trying to make it out of there. 

Marc Moss: Four storytellers share their true personal story on the theme “Close to the Edge”. Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on March 26, 2024 at The George and Jane Dennison Theatre.

Remember this: Tell Us Something stories sometimes have adult themes. Storytellers sometimes use adult language.

Our first storyteller is Traci Sylte. An expired passport throws mother-daughter vacation into chaos! Listen to their dramatic encounter with immigration and how they turned a mishap into an unforgettable experience. We call her story “The Trip of a Lifetime”. Thanks for listening.

Traci Sylte: Descending from 30, 000 feet comes the following across the loudspeaker. Good afternoon. This is your main flight attendant speaking. Soon we will be coming through the aisles to pick up any unwanted items.

Please also have your, your custom form and your declarations formed, picked, filled out because we will be picking those up as well. Thank you for flying with us. We will be landing in Belize City in approximately 30 minutes. Beside me sat my daughter Becca, and it was just the two of us. She was 14 at [00:01:00] the time, and that was five years ago.

Old enough to begin filling out the customs form herself. And so I gave her her own form and she started filling it out. I began filling out the declaration form, making sure we had no, no unwanted fruits, no unwanted plant parts. Certainly nothing over 10, 000 in cash that we were bringing in. And then I started looking down at Becca and she was hesitating.

And, um, she’s sitting right here to the side of me and I’m, she’s, like, not filling out her form. And I look down and I said, Sweets, what’s wrong? And she says, Mom, my passport has expired. Yeah, right? And I say, that’s not true. Uh, let me see it. I look down, and sure enough, it had expired four months prior.

Four months prior, thirty minutes before we were to land in Belize City. Yeah. [00:02:00] And so I thought for a moment about like this, and I looked down at her, and I said, Okay, Becca, I need you to follow my lead. Can you do that, sweets? Just follow my lead. And she goes, Yeah, Mama, I can, I can do that. So we land, the customs line is long, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, because it was long enough for me to think about all the different things I could do to get us through this.

And it came down to one thing. I needed to be an actress, and I needed to be Meryl Streep. And I, oh, no, Jodie Foster. Jodie Foster is really hot right now, don’t you think? Yeah, Jodie Foster. So I had to be my best Jodie Foster. And so we are, we are coming up, and here’s the, up to the time where the, you see the official.

And I give the passports to her, and she looks at mine, asks me the questions, and then she hands it back, stamps it, and hands it back to me, and then she looks at Becca’s. And she looks at me and she says, Ma’am, her passport [00:03:00] is expired, did you know this? And I said, that can’t be. And, and I said, that’s just not possible.

And she says, it’s expired. And I said, that can’t be. Can I see it? So she hands it back to me, and I immediately start sobbing. And if, if, and I’m not an actress, but let me, and you guys probably like me watch movies, how do they do that? Let me say it’s possible you can, you can cry, you can cry. So I’m crying and I’m saying this is not true.

It can’t be, but it is. I don’t know how this has happened. Her dad just gave me the passport last night. We’re divorced. They went to, I didn’t think he’d laugh at that, that part, but yes. Okay. Yes. But yeah, we’re divorced. There’s, there’s clunky things, right? He, he handed me the passport last night. I’m telling the woman this.

And. They just went to Costa Rica last year. Passports don’t, they need to be renewed every ten years, right? And she’s not old enough. And she goes, ma’am, ma’am, [00:04:00] ma’am, calm down, calm down. Passport, and I’m crying, um, Passports need to be renewed for children under 18 years old every 5 years. And I said I didn’t know that.

And then she looks at me really sternly. And then she looks at Becca. And the interrogation begins. Who is this? This is my mama. What are you doing in Belize? We are in spring break. Where’s your dad? Why is your passport expired? Bang, bang, bang, bang. She asked Becca all these questions and Becca did not look up at me.

She just very calmly addressed this woman and after her interrogation the woman signals for another assistant to come and he comes and asks us the same exact freaking questions. Same thing, same response and I’m, I’m still trying to cry although the tears are starting to go away and Same thing, and Terry gets back, uh, and then he makes a phone call, [00:05:00] and he says, come with me.

And so we follow him down this long corridor, and then it turns, and I’m thinking all this time about spy movies and corrupt governments, and And cartels, drug cartels, and, and how vulnerable we are to these people at this time. And then we get to this door, and the door says, Director of Immigrations. And the door opens, he knocks, and the door opens, and this gentleman, let’s call him Raul, um, Raul, um, opens the door, and then he gestures for us to come in.

and sit down at these two chairs that were by his desk, and then he sits behind his desk and he looks at me, and I’m looking at him and I can see on the wall behind him, literally, no joke, there’s a picture of Jesus, and then on top of his file cabinets there are praying hands and I thought, I hope this works in my credit, or to my benefit, but drug cartels and corrupt governments, they’re religious too, so how is this going to work out?

So, he starts interrogating me the same questions, and I answer all of [00:06:00] those, and I’m not crying at this point. And at the end of these questions, I add. I said, I know it seems really stupid. Her dad and I were reasonably smart people, we just made a mistake. And I can tell you this also. Look at all of the consent forms, look at, we’ve got everything in line, and I can tell you that on the customs form it says, it asks you for the date of issue.

Thank you. Not the date of expiration. I never looked at the date of expiration. Neither did her dad. So then he turns from me to Becca. And he starts interrogating her, literally, with all the same questions. Who is this? And, and, and, then it comes, they think that I’m trying to smuggle my daughter in. It’s like, I just want to go out on the island and be with the sun and the sand.

And, and, I look at her and I think. She’s, she’s not looking at me, and she’s answering his questions with such poise and such grace, and it’s like, wow. She’s doing better than I am. And when she’s done with her interrogation, he looks back at [00:07:00] me, and his eyes had changed. At that point, I thought, Or maybe I knew that I was looking into the eyes of a father or perhaps a grandfather.

He literally, he turned and he went to a stack of papers on his desk. Oh, I forgot to tell you, at this point he was on the corner of his desk and he was looking over his eyeglasses like this at me. But he turned and he grabbed this, this, this piece of paper. And he literally ripped, I’m not joking, he ripped off a quarter of that piece of paper and he said, and then he put some of Becca’s passport information on it, he signed it and then he stamped it.

He said, this is your 14 day visitor pass to Belize, don’t lose it.

Yeah, he opens the door and said, you’ll need to go to the U. S. Embassy right away. And talk to the consulate, and don’t lose that piece of paper. So, I [00:08:00] also have to say that in my defense, I had this trip choreographed to the hour. I had two days on the mainland before we went out on the five day island excursion, two days afterwards, and I had to cancel all of that.

All of the mainland excursions that we were going to go on. And in that time, we got the passport application renewal, we got passport pictures, which is not easy to find all this stuff in Belize City in a third world country. It took a little bit of time and it was great for Becca and I, we really got to experience Belize City trying to find these things.

We called, we called her father, um, and got the, um, the, her birth certificate. FedExed overnight, we got, we got out on the island, we had a lovely time out on the island, did a lot of things, Becca snorkeled, and then she learned to dive out there. And while we were in the dive shop, the host of the dive shop said to us, I’ve never heard of such a story.

I can’t believe you’re here. And he said, you are likely going to have trouble getting back into the country.

[00:09:00] And he said, and just know that you can demand with the U. S. Embassy a 24 hour emergency passport. Just remember that. So, fast forward, I don’t have time to tell you all the things about the U. S. Embassy, that would take another ten minutes or more, um, but it was about as daunting. There were long lines, there were glass doors that I swear were three to four inches thick, um, There was, at one point, we heard a gentleman yell and say, if somebody doesn’t do something, somebody’s gonna get shot.

And we are getting the full, full experience here, this 14 year old here listening to all of this. And I also have to tell you that I put my mama bear on, and I, I had to, and I asked for a supervisor and another supervisor, and I demanded that emergency passport, and we needed it. It was, it was daunting.

But I’m here to say that the, but, and we got a private, we had a private host that helped us getting back and forth between [00:10:00] the, the, um, the consulate or the American embassy in Belmopan, which is an hour and a half away from Belize City, and we had to go back and forth several times, but we got to go in caves and visit his family and experience things that we normally would never have experienced.

And we made it. To our boarding gate 30 minutes before departure. Now we got on the plane and then we fly back in and we’re getting back into Missoula. And a lot of you guys can probably attest to this. The smell and the clear, the clear, cool air of Missoula was just really welcoming. And on our drive home, we were talking and reminiscing about the trip.

And, and Becca said to me, she goes, mom, that was the best trip that we’d ever been on. And, and she said. I think it was probably the trip of a lifetime. And I said, well, it was for me. You’re only 14, but yes. [00:11:00] It was a trip of a lifetime. It was epic. And she said, Mom, I gotta tell you something. Can I tell you something and have you not get mad at me?

She’s like, oh, here we go. She has a way of diffusing me before she even says something. And she said, Mom, I knew that the passport was expired before we left.

Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Traci.

Traci Sylte is a civil engineer and hydrologist who has worked for the U.S. Forest Service for nearly 34 years, and is currently the watershed program manager for the Lolo National Forest. She has a passion to maintain healthy watersheds, valley bottoms, rivers, streams, and wetlands. Traci is the product of two very loving parents.Her father taught her to operate a chainsaw and her mother facilitated dresses and piano lessons for her. The love of her life is her daughter, Becca, who is currently in her first year at the University of Washington. Traci continues to grow deeper in love with Missoula each year, because if one wants to learn to weave a basket with pink polka dots on a Tuesday, there’s someone probably doing it here. When Traci is not working, she is grounded by spending time with beloved family and friends, all things water, fly fishing, hiking, playing hockey with amazing Missoula women, fireside guitar serenades, sunrises, sunsets, all things music, and leaving things better than she found them.

In our next story, Ren Parker embarks on what was supposed to be a relaxing dive off Catalina Island that takes a terrifying turn. After fighting for survival in a desperate ascent, Ren knows that she must get back into the water the next day, and is met with devastating news upon surfacing. Ren calls her story “Deep Blue”. Thanks for listening.

Ren Parker: I am anchored on a small boat on the backside of Catalina Islands.  I’m getting ready to do a salvage dive with the two Johns.  And we’re standing there and looking around. It’s a beautiful sunshiny day.  Um, and we peer down the thing about the back side of Catalina Island is it’s open ocean. And for those of you who haven’t experienced open ocean, there’s nothing to stop the energy from the ocean.

When you are on the shore and you see a wave,  That is stopping all this force, but in the open ocean, it’s just there.  But everything seemed good for the dive that day, and we were about to drop down and get a lobster trap for a friend who had lost it during the lobster season.  As I slip into the ocean and slowly start ascending, descending into the depths, I look around and orient myself. 

On the backside of the island, there’s a shelf that’s about 120 feet.  There are these pinnacles that are about 60 feet that rise up like needles.  It’s very beautiful. If you look out the shelf, it drops down. And often when we speak of the depth, we use the word miles instead of feet. That’s how deep it is there.

You can see shadows moving and you never know what they are.  And as I go down, it gets a little darker and I touch the bottom of the ocean floor. It’s Sandy there.  We have only a few minutes to tie off the flotation device to get our lobster trap up. And, uh, that’s because the deeper you dive, the less time you have on the floor.

So we get that going and we, we, uh, light it up and it starts going up and up and then suddenly the surge hits.  I’m thrown 30 feet back and forth. I’m dodging pinnacles. I’m trying not to get smashed with rocks. I’m completely absorbed in the moment of trying to right myself and find some sense of balance.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with surge.  It’s like an underwater  river, but it goes back and forth and it’s very hard to swim against it. And this one was extremely strong.  By the time I had my wits about me and I’m trying to move around, I realized I’ve been breathing much heavier than I normally would.

And I’m starting to run out of air.  So I look around, I see the Johns. We all make the sign. We need to get out of here. And we start ascending up.  But it’s been really hard to swim and I’m exhausted and I look and I still have quite a ways to go and I’m almost out of air.  I look five minutes, five. Five, four, three, two,  and it’s gone. 

I fight like hell to get up. Everything starts going really fast. I’m breathing air out as fast as I can, and I’m moving and swimming as hard as I can to get to the surface.  When divers dive, they need to decompress as they go to the surface.  Air expands and gases expand in your system as you start going up. 

And if you don’t have enough time to off gas it out of your system, the ones that are stored in your tissue and your lungs, then it can create bubbles in your bloodstream and in your arteries and affect your organs.  I knew all this because I had worked at the hyperbaric chamber. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it is a capsule that you go in when you get, um, decompression sickness from going up too fast or not fully getting the gases out of your system. 

And they put you back in pressure at depth so they can slowly bring you back up and you can off gas it the way you’re supposed to.  Um, I, this is in my mind, I break the surface  and there is foam and waves and I’m getting thrashed everywhere and I just keep dipping down and there’s no air in the, my vest and my BC.

So I just keep going under and I’m fighting to breathe and to get to the boat and somehow I do.  And I’m thinking about all these things and realize that I may be in some serious trouble.  But I wasn’t. I had done the emergency ascend apparently good enough that everything was okay. And, uh, I didn’t have to go into any sort of treatment.

And the next day, being a good cowgirl, I knew you gotta get back on that horse. And that’s how I was always raised. If something scares you, you go back and you try it again.  So I had decided I was going to go to the front side of the island where it was much calmer, where I had a lot more experience and just drop, drop down about 20 feet, just feel it and then drop back up and get the nervousness out of my system. 

So I walked from the back Harbor cat Harbor over to the front Carver. There’s a little isthmus there.  And as I’m walking there, I run into my friend, Linda.  There’s only about 40 of us that live on this part of the island year round. We’re all really tight. Linda was one of them. And was a good friend of mine.

She was witty and had this fierce sense of humor. She always had these beautiful long nails. Like, we were in the middle of nowhere and that girl looked fierce. Like, no matter what. And she would roll, she rolled the best joints with those long nails. She’d be like, oh, I got it. Just like, fabulous, you know.

I could never.  So I see her, and she’s looking fabulous, and she’s going, and she’s going to, um, get on her paddleboard, and we give, I give her a hug, I tell her what she’s doing, she’s all crazy girl, and I go.  So I get in my dinghy, and I motor out into this little lagoon,  drop the anchor, I have one of the johns in the boat to keep an eye out for me,  and I, I slowly go down into the water.

This area is about 25 feet, and it’s full of kelp, and it’s beautiful. And as you drop down, it’s the, the lighting becomes like a cathedral, or a redwood forest. It’s all dappled, it’s stunning.  And I get to the bottom, And the minute my feet touch the ground,  something is wrong.  I can feel it so deeply. It’s, it’s very upsetting.

So I immediately come back up and shake it off, you know, like I’m probably just still got the nerves.  And I come back and get back in the dinghy and we head to shore.  As I get to shore, I see the dock and.  I see my friend Lori running down it. She’s screaming and crying and she’s so upset. She keeps tripping and I had never seen anyone look like that before. 

So I quickly tied my boat up, walked up to her as fast as I could, and kind of caught her. And she was saying these things to me, but I, I didn’t understand what she was saying.  I kept repeating, what are you, what are you talking about? Finally, she said someone had died,  and I couldn’t understand the name, and finally she grabbed me, and she said, Rin, Linda has died. 

I had just seen her. 

Due to the  respect  I have for the,  for her life, I’m not going to go into details  of her passing, but one thing I will say, I worked in her ritual and I had to be a part of all of it.  So about 30 minutes later, everyone, all 40 of us were gathered  On the shoreline, in silence, nobody knew what to say, looking out at the ocean where we had lost our Linda. 

A woman started walking from the back. She was a local artist. She was slowly taking off her clothes to her bathing suit, and she had a handful of flowers. She started swimming out into the ocean and scattering them, and silently, we all started doing the same.  We got out there together.  And we all just swam in a circle  and spread flowers  and some people came from their boats and started pouring liquor into the water.

I’ve never heard silence like that before.  The next few weeks were a blur.  There was a lot of preparations and plans and trying to figure out this and contacting family and transportation.  I’ve always been the mother hen of everyone around me, and so I was just looking after, looking after, cooking for everyone, checking on everyone, but I had forgotten to check in with myself. 

And I got a call from my friend Chelsea. She had heard what happened,  and she said, Do you need to get out of that town? And I said, Yes. She said, Get on that ferry, and I did.  And she met me in Long Beach.  Got in her car and started driving up highway one up towards Big Sur. And slowly  I started my emotional decompression, which took a long time. 

And looking back, as I tell this story,  I realized that this was this moment, this critical moment in my life that took my trajectory and threw it into this chaotic space that I didn’t know was coming.  But when I look back, I see that that was the thing that brought me here. That was the thing that brought me  to many places within myself and in the planet. 

And I think that moments like that are only truly valued in retrospect.  And when I think back now to that time, what I remember  is how close we all were, how beautiful Linda was and how much we all love the sea. Thank you.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Ren.

Ren Parker is passionate about fostering a sense of community, and brings that enthusiasm to all of her endeavors. Ren grew up in Hawaii and lived on sailboats that she restored on the Pacific Ocean for seven years. She gave up her nomadic ways and moved back to Missoula to be close to family, and has been growing roots here ever since. Ren loves to dance and hike with her faithful dog, Poet, and spend time with her remarkable Missoula friends. She is a regular storyteller at the weekly storytelling event Word Dog, and hosts a weekly storytelling radio show on KFGM Community Radio where she is station manager. Her show is called Once Upon a Radio Wave.

Coming up after the break:

Mark Matthews: And I  admitted for the first time that I’d given up the thing I loved. I’m Because I thought I was a failure, because I couldn’t make a living from it.

Kat Werner: I enter Pain Cave. Which is really just  alright, like, suck it up. Full on autopilot,  and I just, you know, one paddle stroke and one step at a time  trying to make it out of there.

Marc Moss: An artist’s life takes a dramatic turn on a snowy night and a woman stranded in Alaska, grizzly bears on one side, a father in crisis on the other.

Stay with us.

Thank you to the Good Food Store who, as the Story Sponsor, helped us pay our storytellers. Learn more about them at goodfoodstore.com. Thanks to Spark Arts who provided childcare for the performance. You can learn more about Spark at sparkartslearning.org. Thanks to our Stewardship sponsor, Blackfoot Communications, who helped us to give away free tickets to underserved populations. Learn more about Blackfoot, celebrating 70 years, at goblackfoot.com.

We are currently looking for storytellers for the next Tell Us Something storytelling event. The theme is “Going Home”. This event is a collaboration with Missoula Pride and we will favor folx in the LBGTQ+ community as we listen to story pitches. If you’d like to pitch your story for consideration, please call 406-203-4683. You have 3 minutes to leave your pitch. Our friends from the Deaf community are welcome to pitch by emailing [email protected]. Learn more and get your tickets for the June 11th event at tellussomething.org.

The pitch deadline is May 4th. I look forward to hearing from you.

Another important date is on the horizon, too. Missoula Gives & Bitterroot Gives, a 26-hour celebration of the Missoula and Ravalli communities. Mark your calendars for May 2nd and 3rd and tell your friends about this opportunity to support Tell Us Something during Missoula Gives. May 2nd and 3rd.

You are listening to the Tell Us Something podcast where people share their true stories around a theme live in person without notes. I’m Marc Moss. Storytellers in this episode shared their stories in front of a full house on March 26, 2024 at The George and Jane Dennison Theatre in Missoula Montana.

Our next storyteller is Mark Matthews. Mark’s life takes a dramatic turn on a snowy night. He’s a struggling sculptor with seemingly nowhere to go. Listen to Mark’s story of passion, resilience, and rediscovery of the thing that he loves. Mark calls history “Thanks for This Wonderful Gift”.

Mark Matthews:

Um, on January 1st,  1992, I abandoned a career in art.  About a decade earlier, when I was 30 years old,  I started sculpting full time after quitting a job in Boston and moving to a small coastal village in Maine where everything was wicked good. 

I started my career carving wood, and I loved it. The entire process I would walk through the forest looking for broken limbs from trees or I would salvage a log that was destined for the firewood pile.  I carved many images of dancers. Ballet dancers, uh, dressed in, uh, tights and leotards. Modern and flamenco dances with, um, flowing skirts.

Couples doing a contradance swing or, um, the Cajun two step.  I also did musicians playing fiddles, violins, accordions, and guitars.  Sometimes I would liberate a figure from a single piece of wood, and over time I started constructing  sculptures. For instance, I would carve one leg, the torso, and the head out of one piece of wood, attach the arms in different attitudes, and the other leg could be jutting out in any angle. 

I had a lot of luck showing my work in galleries, and in fact, the gallery owner said,  your work entices people to come in.  And sometimes I witnessed that  after delivering a new piece, I would hang around talking to the director,  and people would come in the gallery and go from sculpture to sculpture saying, look at this, look at this.

And then they’d come up to the owner and they’d say,  We want to buy that painting, it fits the decor of a living room.  And I realized early on that not many people know how to live with sculpture.  But I made enough money, uh, to keep out of the starving artist, uh, category.  And many a day at the end of,  many times at the end of the work day,  I would just say thank you for this wonderful gift. 

In 1989,  I moved from Maine to Montana.  And, at that time, Missoula was a soft landing place for artists, writers, dancers, musicians. There weren’t many jobs, but the rent was cheap. For instance, you could rent a room, uh, a studio apartment at the Wilma Building for 150 a month. 

And, when I started exploring the Rocky Mountain West and the Pacific Northwest, I got my work into galleries in Seattle, uh, Kalispell, Big Fork, Truchas, New Mexico, and Palm Desert, California.  And also, um, a lot of my work was, uh, rather large, from five feet, uh, and I had one ballerina that was on point with her hands overhead that was eight feet tall, but they were very thin. 

But I had to transport them in a, uh, cargo  trailer.  And I wanted to make things that I could just put in the back of my Ford Ranger pickup.  and deliver it to a gallery. So I enrolled in a one credit independent study in ceramics at the university.  In fact, many people enrolled in one credit independent studies in a lot of subjects at that time so that they could get the health insurance. 

Um,  Where was I?  Oh, so I took my portfolio to Beth Lowe and Tom Rapone, and they looked at it and said, Oh yeah, you can work here as much as you want, uh, use as much clay as you want, as long as you mix it yourself. And it was a beautiful community of people, welcoming, supportive people. Uh, Bill and Cheryl West were there from Idaho, working on their graduate, um, degrees.

Uh, Joe Batt, was also working on his graduate degrees. He was the, um, lead singer in stand up Stella and, um,  Glenn and Amy parks was frequent, uh, visitors to the studio as was Jeanette Rakowski. We used to work at the downtown bakery before it burned down. 

There was one thing wrong though. The galleries weren’t selling my work  by the fall of 1991.  I found myself sleeping. And the camper on the back of my Ford Ranger pickup truck is one of those campers with the fold up doors.  And I would park just off campus. It was illegal to park without a sticker. And get up early, shower in the men’s, the old men’s gym, and cook my meals on a camp stove in the ventilated kiln room. 

But still, life was wonderful. I was making art.  And the weather was beautiful. No snow. Uh, no freezing temperatures all winter long.  Into the fall. In the early winter.  And, at the end of the day,  especially when I finish the piece, I would say thank you for this wonderful gift.  Oh, I forgot one little story.

Uh, Tom Rippon invited me to  sit on his sculpture class.  And, you know, I wanted to make these small things. And the first thing Tom said in class was, Everybody’s going to make something over six feet tall this semester.  I ended up making a statue of Hank Williams playing his guitar, seven foot tall, and a Lady Grizz basketball player holding a ball on her hip, and a couple of other pieces. 

So, um,  during winter break, my parents sent me a plane ticket to go visit them, and I got back to Missoula the afternoon of January 1st, 1992. Phew.  You deplaned on the tarmac at that,  at that time. And I walked out into warm sunshine, still no snow in the valley, and  thought, what should I do? For the rest of the afternoon.

Um, I didn’t feel like going to work at the studio. Uh, I usually camped up in, um, Deer Creek on the weekends and I didn’t feel like going up there. I thought I’ll go see a matinee movie.  So I went to the old triplex cinema at the end of Brooks, just before you head out to Lolo. And I chose to see dances with the wolves  about 20 minutes into the film. 

The screen went blank, the house lights came on, and an usher came down the aisle, and he said,  You may want to head home. There’s a wicked winter storm blowing up the Blackfoot. We’re going to get about two feet of snow and freezing temperatures.  I walked out into the lobby, and the wind was blowing so hard it was holding the exit doors open, and I could see the snow blowing parallel to the parking lot. 

Reached the Ford Ranger, got some winter clothes out of the back, and got in and instinctively drove to the ceramics studio, which shares the Quonset Hut with the Grizzly Pool,  intending to sleep there overnight.  I parked right in front of the door, even though I had no parking sticker.  Grabbed my sleeping bag out of the back. 

Reached for the door handle and for the first time in two years it was locked.  Got back into the Ford Ranger. Slowly drove off campus. Came to the intersection of Madison Street and there was a pickup truck.  Just sitting there in the middle of the intersection.  And I left the ranger idling and I went out and, to see what was going on.

And a woman rolled down her window and said, I can’t see anything. And the ice was encrusted on her front, front um, windshield. About a half an inch. So I took her scraper, uh, cleaned her window off. And as I’m doing that, I’m thinking, Hmm. How can I get this woman to take me home for the night? 

I couldn’t think of anything, so I handed the scraper back to her and she thanked me profusely  and drove off.  And I got back into the Ford Ranger and just sat there.  And when you’re homeless, you kind of lose contact with your friends.  And I’d heard of the Parvarello Center, but I didn’t know where it was.

And, and I didn’t feel right. My motto had always been, artists make art, they don’t wait on tables. So I had gotten myself into this situation.  And then I heard a voice. And it wasn’t inside my head. It was coming through my ears.  And it was the voice of Jeanette Rakowski. And she had said, If you ever get in trouble, you can stay at my place. 

So I made it over to her humble abode on the west side  and grabbed my sleeping bag and knocked on the front door and Jeannette came to the door, wrapped up in her bathrobe, opened the door and said, what the hell are you doing out there? Get in here.  She made me dinner. We chatted a while.  She went off to her bedroom to read and sleep.

And I spread my sleeping bag out on the sofa.  And for a while, I just stared at the ceiling.  And came to the conclusion that I can’t do this anymore. And I gave up. Heart. 

Twenty years later,  I’m working as an adjunct professor at, uh, Montana College of Technology when it was out by the, uh, county fairgrounds,  uh, teaching English comp and creative writing.  And I used to go over to the old Salvation Army store, which was also across the street from the fairgrounds.  And I’m going through the VHS  tapes, and I see Dances with the Wolves. 

I said, I’ve never saw the end of that film.  So I take it home and watch it.  Stopped it about half an hour in. And went downstairs to get a snack. And halfway down the stairs, I started weeping.  I’m like, what the hell is going on? The movie isn’t even sad.  And at that moment, all those memories of January 1st, 1992 came descending upon me. 

And I  admitted for the first time that I’d given up the thing I loved. I’m Because I thought I was a failure, because I couldn’t make a living from it.  And as abruptly as I gave up art, I decided I would take it up again.

Marc Moss: Thanks, Mark. Throughout his adult life Mark Matthews has worked as an artist, author, freelance journalist, wildland firefighter, and dance caller and instructor. He currently shows his sculpture and oil paintings at the Roosevelt Arts Center in Red Lodge, and at Manifestations Gallery in Eureka. Over the past dozen years he has visited scores of schools across the state of Montana, for Humanities Montana, teaching children of all ages how to contra and square dance. For more information about Mark’s art, and to hear an epilogue of Mark’s story, visit tellussomething.org.

In our final story, Kat Werner is stranded in Alaska, grizzly bears on one side, a father in crisis on the other.  In the face of fear, and with the help of her hiking crew, a community rallied and shared burdens. Kat calls her story “The Arctic Pain Cave” Sensitive listeners be aware that Kat’s story discusses someone who has suicidal ideations. Please take care of yourselves.  Thanks for listening.

Kat Werner: Kat Werner

I am on the Koyukuk River in the Arctic Circle in Alaska.  I’m with my husband, Curtis, and my friends, Samson and Cody.  For the last four days, we hiked hauling 80 pound packs to get to our river put in.  And it’s our first day on the river,  and we’re about two miles down. And when I look ahead,  everything happens really fast. 

I see a giant grizzly bear covered in blood,  and it’s charging at Samson, who’s the first in line.  And before I know it, something catches my eye on the left, and I look over, and there’s a wolf.  And as I start screaming,  the grizzly bear must get confused because it backs, backs off, and it hauls a massive caribou caucus. 

up the shore,  which gives us a much needed break to get the hell out of there,  take a deep breather,  because that was a close call.  And it was one of seven grizzly bear encounters in a 24 hour period. 

It’s our third morning on the river, and it’s one of those beautiful, sunny camp mornings.  And it’s, you know, it’s, I vividly remember it because the sun is shining, everybody always says, oh, Alaska, there’s all these bugs and it’s raining, but it was just beautiful, and I’m in a tank top, I’m hanging out with my friends, we’re really not in a rush, because we’re in the Arctic, and we have 24 hour daylight.

So we’re just hanging out, we’re sharing stories, we’re drinking tea,  and eventually, we’re like, alright, we should probably get going, it’s like noon.  And so, as we start packing up our stuff, I’m thinking, oh, I should turn on my Garmin inReach. And check if I got any messages.  And so if you don’t know what a Garmin inReach is, it’s a communication device.

It’s a satellite communication device that allows you to send and receive messages and it has an SRS function, but you’re not able to make or take calls.  And so I turn on the inReach and it takes a couple minutes to connect to the satellite  and within quick succession, I get two messages.  The first one is from my mom. 

And it says, bitte ruf mich an,  please call me.  The second one is from my mother in law Michelle.  Cat has to call home. It’s an emergency.  And my stomach just drops.  And I wish I could tell you  that the story I’m sharing tonight is just a good old adventure story.  You know, it’s really challenging physically and mentally, but overall, it’s a really good time. 

And that’s not the story that I’m telling. 

And so, to give a little bit of context to those text messages,  I have to look back at that year, and my dad, back in Germany,  who was having a really challenging year.  Despite any prior mental health issues.  He, pretty suddenly, and within a really short period, developed a really deep and severe depression. 

And so the morning of the day before we were set to leave for Alaska,  I remember calling both of my parents  and they didn’t answer.  And I got this standard, you know, Apple text message that just says, we’ll call you right back. And I’m, I’m already like, that’s weird. Like something’s going on. What’s going on?

I don’t know.  And so,  when my mom FaceTimes me, a couple hours later,  my dad is sitting right next to her and, you know, he doesn’t look, he doesn’t look at me at all, and he’s just in a pile.  And my mom says, you know, we just spend  some time with a crisis therapist who assessed your dad for suicidal thoughts. 

And, right away in my mind I’m thinking,  I can’t go on this trip, like,  what am I going to do?  And my mom says, you know, it’s, it’s okay. We have the support that we need, and we have the services, and you should go on this trip. 

And I do. And Kurt tells Cody and Samson what’s going on, and they’re great.  And the next morning, like 5am, red eye flight out of Missoula, before we leave, last minute I grab my passports, my German and my American passport, just in case.  And so, we head out, we get to Fairbanks,  and I’m just in a really weird headspace going into this trip. 

I’m really, yeah, I’m really just struggling to stay present and, you know, engage with my friends and soak up the beauty that is the gates of the Arctic National Park, one of the most remote places in the world.  And I’m really just worried the whole time.  And then I get those text messages.  Your dad tried to end his life today  and he’s at the hospital. 

And I respond to my mom and I say, I can’t call you.  At a minimum, I’m five days out from calling you.  And that’s five days of  hard, hard, hard back breaking work, trying to make it back to Coldfoot, the last truck stop, about six hours away from Fairbanks.  And so I’m like, well, alright, what do I do? I can’t curl up here on this sandy shore.

I can’t call a heli evac. I have to keep moving.  And, at that point, I enter  what my husband refers to as the pain cave. Which is really just this, like, alright, like, suck it up. So like, just go inside, and And just full on autopilot,  and I just, you know, one paddle stroke and one step at a time  trying to make it out of there. 

And I don’t talk, and I don’t engage, I just function.  And we all come together that morning on the river, and we basically brainstorm. How can we get out of here as fast as possible?  And we put in a massive day on the Koyukuk that day.  We finish the next morning,  and we make it to our exit, the Rock Creek exit. 

And,  I wonder if anybody has ever planned a trip following a blog post?  Especially if that blog post said,  This is not recommended.  It’s actually strongly discouraged.  That was the Rock Creek exit.  And it started out with a hike, well, a hike up a flowing creek.  My left little toe was literally numb for six months after that trip because the water was so cold. 

And you know, eventually the canyon gets really narrow and we get forced up the bank, um, this left, shitty side hill slope, the thickest alder bushes you can imagine, um, we labeled it the schwagadoom because it was, it was such thick alder and it’s hot and it’s humid and, um, We are hauling these heavy packs, and really, any time you needed a break, all you had to do was just go, uh  huh. 

Because it was so thick, you couldn’t go anywhere.  There is miles of muskag, so we’re just sinking into the slimy, muddy water. There’s bugs, there’s bees nests on the ground.  At our best, we’re moving a quarter of a mile an hour.  It was a full on sufferfest. I’m in my pain cave.  We make it. We get to Coltsfoot. 

I call my mom.  And I knew the whole time, really, that I’m, I need to go. I need to get home.  And so, you know, this whole time I’m just consumed with worry. Am I going to lose my dad?  And so after, you know, a pretty long, restless night, the next morning I flagged down the first person that walks.  Out of the Coltwood truck stop, and it happens to be a German dude, and I’m just like hey Can’t make mid name in each most of the house.

I have a problem that I’m yep. All right jump in the car I Get I get to Fairbanks There’s a six hour stretch from Coltwood to Fairbanks where you do not have cell phone reception I get to cell phone reception my phone blows Up hey, did you take the rental car keys with you by chance?  Yep, yeah, I did So I get to Fairbanks Leaving my crew stranded, but it is a trucker route, so thankfully, I’m just like, telling the German guy, hey can you pull over, I need to flag down this trucker, trucker takes the keys back up the road, that all worked out. 

I sleep at the Fairbanks airport, I get to Seattle, I fly to Frankfurt, I jump on a train, I get to my hometown of Nuremberg, my friend picks me up, I get to the hospital, I see my dad.  And the first thing he says, he’s just like, well.  What can I even say?  I just say. I don’t have to say anything.  I just give him a big hug and just,  Hey, I’m just so thankful I get to see you. 

And so when I look back at that experience in Alaska, but really that whole year,  it’s safe to say that that was the closest to the edge I’ve been in my life  physically and mentally and emotionally.  And here is what, over and over again, pulled me back from that edge.  It’s my oldest childhood friend back home who dropped everything  that weekend and that night to be with my mom and support her. 

And it’s my friend here in town who hand bedazzled these solar shields, if you know what they are. They’re these giant grandma sunglasses you can put on over regular glasses.  They’re styling.  Because I was so stressed out that I had a really bad eye infection,  and it’s my friend who left a care package with a note on my patio that said, this fucking sucks. 

I’m here for you.  And my therapist, who reminded me that there’s a lot of hardship and grief that can’t be solved,  but it can be shared.  And Curtis, who keeps planning these miserable epics,  despite everything.  And really, there’s a dozen more people and a dozen more acts of love and support.  And I think, for me, that’s really the beautiful thing about this story, that it’s my story,  and it’s my dad’s story.

And this community of people. that came together for me to rally around me.  That’s my community,  but it’s also my dad’s community.  And you know, his path,  um, wasn’t, wasn’t straightforward. It actually got a lot harder before he got to a better spot, but he is planning his next visit to Missoula this spring. 

Yup. 

He loves Missoula.  Ever since he first came here, he loves going to the break to read his German newspaper.  He loves taking his Harley with a German flag on the back to the locks a lot for a late breakfast.  He loves having a blue moon. I know there’s better beer, but he loves blue moon.  Having a blue moon on the patio with me. 

And so,  if you see him this year, wandering around,  Downtown Missoula, likely wearing some German shirt with like some German phrase or reference to the German national football team.  Please say hi, welcome him back, give him a high five, and tell him, Archie, you’re awesome. Thank you. 

Marc Moss: Thanks, Kat. Kat Werner was a German high school exchange student in South Dakota — some of you might remember her last Tell Us Something story about that experience and meeting her husband there.She has called Missoula home for almost 15 years. Kat is a licensed clinical social worker and faculty member at the University of Montana School of Social Work. Things that fill her soul are: any outdoor or wilderness activity, traveling the world, genuine human connection, cooking and eating good food, and creating and checking off a good to-do list.

Tune in next week to hear the concluding stories from the Close to the Edge live storytelling event 

Kathleen Kennedy: And I was simultaneously indignant  and sympathetic. 

But I also had this I was feeling like I would love for squatters to come there and, and light a fire and burn it down, like problem solved.

Susan Waters: And the voice said, do you want to stay or do you want to go?  And without even thinking about it, I said, if I still have work I need to do here, I want to stay.  And the voice said,  okay.

Annabelle Winnie: I do wonder if what we think of as traits for neurodivergence, if they’re really adaptations, there are ways that the body adapts. 

Behaviors adapt, and even the brain itself adapts to a world that often feels too, too bright, too loud. It’s just too much. 

Amanda Taylor: we were texting each other every day, morning to night. We called them play by plays, which I also loved cause it made me feel sporty.  I’m like, yeah, we’re sending play by plays.

Marc Moss: Listen for those stories at tellussomething.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Remember that the next Tell Us Something event is June 11th. You can learn about how to pitch your story and get tickets at tellussomething.org. 

Thanks to our media sponsors, missoulaevents.net, and The Trail Less Traveled, Missoula Broadcasting Company including the family of ESPN radio, The Trail 103.3, Jack FM, and Missoula’s source for modern hits, U104.5 

And thanks to our in-kind sponsors Float Missoula Joyce of Tile.

When you patronize these businesses, thank them for their support of live storytelling in Missoula.

Please remember that our next event, in partnership with Missoula Pride is on June11 at the Glacier Ice Rink at the Missoula County Fairgrounds. The theme is “Going Home ”. You can pitch your story by calling 406-203-4683, and we encourage our friends in the LBGTQ community to pitch a story.

Learn more about Tell Us Something including how to pitch a story and get tickets for the next event at tellussomething.org