Story Donors

Listen to Joe’s Chapter 1 by Clicking Here.

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Listen to Jeff’s Chapter 1 by Clicking Here. Listen to Jeff’s Chapter 2 by Clicking Here. In the final chapter of the story Jeff has shared, we circle back around to family–starting one, working for it, and choosing it over everything else. Jump in the mosh pit where Jeff splits open his head and meets the woman who’ll become his wife. Bang your head to mom’s old records. Hop on the tour bus that carried him away from the family he just started. I wanted a family. That was something that was broken in me. I didn’t have a family life, so that was something that I wanted for myself. And I knew that if I wanted a family, I’d have to work. Jeff reflects on what he would teach his son and what makes a man and what gives him purpose. For him, family is the hardest work for the richest reward. What is family to you?  

Listen to Jeff’s Chapter 1 by Clicking Here. Storytelling always involves conflict, and a climax is only the high point if there are also lows. Sometimes, our lowest stories are the ones we never utter. Stories of vice and addiction are often filled as much with hope as tragedy. In Chapter 2 of Jeff’s story, he shares both the friends and faith that changed his life and the addictions that threatened to wreck it. Jeff remembers stirring orange juice and vodka with an old screwdriver and learning how to let 10-year-old troubles go. Problems seem to stack high when deals and money and drugs come easy. Meet Mr. Bryan in rehab, and find out who your friends are when the deals and money and drugs dry up. Sometimes the places we swear we’ll never go, the books we swear we’ll never read, the God we swear we’ll never believe in just show up anyway at the lowest point in our stories to make us go, make us read, make us believe that someone loves us anyway. Don’t tell me some book is going to change my life. Rock bottom is a real place, and the story of getting there isn’t as easy to tell as the tale of coming back.  What bravery it takes to remember when nostalgia isn’t sweet!

The stories from our families are the lessons that tell us who we are and how to live and love.  We are honored that Jeff shared his family stories of dysfunction, forgiveness, and fierce loyalty. Climb high the treetops, listeners, to escape the confusion. Lean in to Grandma’s voice that Jeff describes as home.  Swing hard and fast the Louisville slugger to defend your childhood.  Jeff’ remembers the brazen characters that fight with frying pans and fists.  Some of us find our mortal enemies at home, but sometimes we find our best friends there, too, the ones who will fight for us when everyone else is a threat. “She was just love.  You couldn’t walk in her presence and not feel love.” The painful lessons from our families sink in deep and keep teaching and surprising us for years and years.  What have you learned from the painful pages in your family’s story?

Listen to Nannette’s Chapter 1 by Clicking Here. Listen to Nannette’s Chapter 2 by Clicking Here. The final chapter in Nannette’s Story she donated. Enjoy!

Listen to Nannette’s Chapter 1 by Clicking Here. Heroes, husbands, and hard work.  The pivotal moments in our lives, the greatest regrets and achievements, are often hidden in unlikely relationships.  Nannette shares these small moments that shaped who she looked up to, who she loved, and how she lived.  From the moments the loud speaker at the grocery store announced news of Pearl Harbor, a little girl knows fear.  As a teen in fresh rebellion, she could not know the battles that she’d later face or where she’d turn for refuge. What do Shirley Temple and a family friend have in common?  They brought magic to a young Nannette who loved dolls and tap dancing.  Watch the fairy dust fade with the loss of childhood idols and outgrown dance shoes.  The men she loved and didn’t, the paths she ran down and passed by may seem less enchanted, but the reality of finding happiness wherever it hides is its own kind of magic. When did you realize that war can happen here at home?  Where have you dug your trenches and earned your medals?  Hearing Nannette’s story, I’m learning that even the grandest victories require sacrifices, losses we may not notice on the ground.

Nannette recently celebrated her 80th birthday.  In this episode, she shares the story of growing up in the 30s and 40s in Camden and Jefferson, Arkansas.  There are highlights: living in the family grocery store, learning to jitterbug, persuading Daddy to open a cafe, and the great big responsibility of delivering payroll checks to the bank when no one else could go.  She reflects on those things she thought were normal like having money to spend, candy bars to share, and a black nanny whom she spent more time with than Momma and Daddy sometimes. In her story, you’ll taste lard, rationed beer, and beans in the barrel.  You’ll hear the jukebox with Country and Western music.  You can feel the Greyhound bus woosh past on the way to the next town and watch Blacks and Whites come and go through separate doors.  The smell of potato chips might just bring back memories of her first lesson on race relations. “I expected it, but I grew up in a family where it  was a normal thing for the men to get drunk on the holidays.  I didn’t know anything different.  Every Fourth of July or Labor Day, we would have a big cookout. Uncle Allen would barbecue on an open pit–barbecue a hog and a goat.  And the women would cook everything else.” Whatever your father did for a living when you were growing up, I bet you can relate to Nannette’s sense that whatever her family did must be normal.  When did you realize that normal is a complicated word? **There is a word used in this story that can be considered very offensive to people. But, to keep the integrity of the story, we left it in unedited. Please be advised.