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< Back Robert's Story Robert talks to Honor about his experiences living in a commune and how it saved him from serving in the Vietnam war. He explains how his faith and trust in a higher power guided him to conquer this fear, and continues to support him to this day. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:00 Previous Next

< Back Luke's Story Luke shares a story about his uncle Peter who is a Carthuegen Monk in Slovenia. He talks about his personal relationship with Peter and how Peter inspires him in his own life. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:43 I’m discussing my uncle Peter who is a Carthuegen Monk in Slovenia, which is a very small country just on the northern tip of Italy, and he’s been there for probably about 30 years and he will be almost 70 now he's in his mid to late 60s. To give a little background I guess on the setting it’s a very beautiful place Slovenia and especially where he is. One of my uncles once said that Slovenia is Europe’s best kept secret. It’s got rolling hills, and lots of vineyards. It’s a very picturesque place. Speaking on my personal relationship with him, I’ve met him three times, but the last two are pretty impactful on me I would say. He’s a very interesting character and someone I do think I admire a great deal. I met him when I was 10. I went with my father and I don’t remember a lot from that trip because that was 12 years ago at this point, but I do know that after that trip took place we started writing to each other, and we kept a correspondence consistently for the last 12 years. Peter’s a really great guy, a very joyful guy. I think it’s interesting because his characteristics or his personality goes against what a lot of people would consider a Monk to have. He’s very energetic. He’s very joyful. He’s talkative. Perhaps some of that has to do with the fact that he seeing family and he doesn’t get a chance to do that very often, but it did surprise me meeting him last year, because there is so much energy and passion and just brightness about him that I wouldn’t necessarily had pictured a monk having. Most of the time we stayed in the guest house, and just shared meals together and shared stories, but we did on one day go out. We left the monastery, and we, went into one of the popular towns, sat by a river, which it seemed almost like a beach club. There were restaurants and canoes you could rent and things like that. So we did that, we had a great time, and then went and got food at McDonalds. He was really happy I think to get a taste of America in a long time. There are stories, he’s told us stories about being rebellious even as a monk and what he’s, I guess expected to do. You are not supposed to leave the monastery. They have a weekly walk that they take together, but beyond that, they are only supposed to leave to go to doctor’s appointments to dentist appointments or something that’s really mandatory that they have to leave the cloister for. But, he tends to break away a little more if he can. I don’t think what he does I could do. It’s a very specific vocation and it's a vocation that requires a lot of dedication. His entire being is in it. And he’s on another continent from the rest of his family and he’s been there for decades. And when my grandparents, both of his parents passed away he wasn’t able to come to their funerals. And when he passes away he will be buried in an unmarked grave within the monastery. So his belief and how strong his belief is, and what he gets from God is something that I’ve never seen from anyone else. But I can tell that it gives him a lot of strength, and I can tell that he is really called to do it. I guess you know there is a relation in this story, quite clearly to God and you know, what role that plays in everyone’s lives that's met him and what role that plays in his life. And I don’t know, it's interesting because I am 22 at this point, I haven’t necessarily found my way or found an answer in my own mind as to whether I believe in a higher being and what that might be, what religion might be “right”, and all of these different answers. But his devotion is very inspirational to me, and I find I pull a lot from it. I don’t know how to encapsulate my relationship with him and what he means, but I will say that I love him and I find him inspirational in a lot of senses. I’m excited to see him again at some point, hopefully in the near future. I’d like to go alone maybe the next time, I think that would be interesting and beneficial Previous Next

< Back Bert's Story Bert speaks about her life journey and how not everything went as she planned. She talks about her adventures with her husband and kids and how she found her way to her career as a Speech Language Pathologist and how that career changed her view on life. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:33 It seems to me that lots of people have kind of a plan in their life of what they would like to do, and they set about doing it. I never had such a plan. I was kind of a vague wanderer among libraries and was really interested in English literature and English history and studied for a bit in England for a little while and I didn’t have a glamour of what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed like it would be good to be useful, but I didn’t have much other plan than that. I got married shortly after college and we had a child and then because I had been an only child pretty much in my life, I thought we don’t want this child to be all alone we should have another one pretty soon. And it turned out that that one turned out to be twins. And suddenly wooo, I had three babies, they were less than two years of age, and I was supposed to figure out what to do with them and I had to stop wandering around wondering what book I was gonna read next. So, it was a pretty hectic and transformative time for me. I had to think of myself as a very different person, responsible for these three little babies and then three wild little boys and I started to sort of become somewhat more assertive I think. I had never been before. After being at home for quite some time with them I thought I really gotta get out of here a little bit and I saw a notice that Children’s Hospital School for Kids with Hearing Loss was looking for some volunteers and I thought well I could probably do that. And I arranged for a baysitter and went down and helped out mainly in an art class with kids with severe hearing losses and they were very interesting. But the director of the program kept saying you gotta go to graduate school. And so after a year of so of prompting I did start a graduate program in speech language at Catholic University. A friend from graduate school who was a little bit ahead of me called and said Bert I’m working at this great school you’ve gotta come and work here with me. It’s a school for preschool children, very young children, with a variety of pretty serious physical and neurological problems and they need another therapist. Okay, here I am. It turned out to be wonderful. The schools had a wonderful transdisciplinary approach so that instead of passing kids around from therapist to therapist or teacher to teacher or whatever, we were in teams. The parents, teachers, physical therapists, the occupational therapist, speech language therapist, we were in a team and we all had to understand what everybody else’s goals were for this child so that anytime you interacted with them whether you were changing a diaper or you were helping somebody have lunch, or you were playing together all of those goals had to be integrated. It was an incredible learning experience and it taught me way more than any course ever could ever have taught me. I never imagined so many interesting, challenging situations just kept unfolding one after another and with the enormous good fortune of always having very good people to work with, not a lot of money but a lot of really good, strong coworkers. I feel very fortunate in my unplanned, kind of wandering way. Previous Next

< Back Hannah's Story Hannah talks about the risk that she took in studying abroad in Amsterdam and her experience amercing herself in the culture by herself and how it impacted her future career path. 00:00 / 02:07 Would you tell me about a time that you took a risk? A time I took a risk was going abroad last semester, my fall semester, senior year to Amsterdam. And I know it's like cliche like, oh yeah, you like go abroad, whatever. But I really wanted my abroad experience to be as natural as possible. I didn't want to go to an American school in a foreign country. I didn't want to go to a school where I knew I was going to be surrounded by other American college students. I really wanted to just like go abroad and experience like culture shock like head on. So I decided to go to fret university type in Amsterdam, like by myself. I didn't know, I didn't know it was. So when I got there, I literally like booked my flight a week before and just got on a plane and shipped myself off to Amsterdam knowing no one. And yeah, that was the time I really did take a risk. And what did you learn about yourself? Did learn that taking a risk is not only can I do it and I'm very capable um but like it just gave me that confidence that I can take risks in the future. And that taking risks actually is a good thing. And I have so many positive outcomes from doing it and I really have made some of my best friends um throughout the world just doing that experience. And so post grad, I'm a senior. So I'm graduating next at the end of the semester in like a month, which is terrifying. But I, I decided to take a job in South Korea, um, teaching English, which I never, I never would have done, had I not taken that risk to go to Amsterdam because it's like a similar situation where I don't know a soul there. I don't know a soul in Seoul. Um, but I, I don't know anyone there. I'm just going by myself to a country that's thousands of miles away, um, with a 13 hour time zone, like, and I'm ok with it and I'm excited for it and I'm, I'm not crying because of stress this time, but I'm really excited. Previous Next

< Back Katherine's Story Katherine talks about her family heritage and values and how that impacted her views on the world. She discusses how her upbringing and playing music with her siblings brings them closer together. Katherine also details how the values that she was raised with are still instilled in her and are instilled in her children as well. 00:00 / 04:28 My family of origin story comes from both my parents who told me the stories of how they grew up and their parents and grandparents. For my parents, their families were very important. Both of them came from English backgrounds and they were farmers. They raised cattle, they kept the sense of animals and planting even when we no longer lived on a farm, but it is important. That is part of my family theme and values is to be really connected to the land and animals. When we were growing up our values always had to do with good health, lots of exercise, and taking care of your pets before you took care of yourself. Who needed your support and help before you were doing your own thing? Values really had to do with honoring family and being totally transparent and honest about what was going on with you, being a good communicator that was kind of a core family value, and doing your best. I have 4 siblings, all about 2 years apart. It was very organized, our lives were very very organized, I guess you have to when you have a big family like that – my parents were both teachers so they expected us to have a certain routine to get up and make our beds, practice and do homework, we all had to keep track of what we were responsible for. We all played instruments, we all had to practice, my mom would start the egg timer for about an hour before we went to school, we had to practice our instruments. As we grew up and we left home, and we went to college and got jobs and got married and had our own children the relationship with all of them at the time have change over time. In that period, it was really important for our kids to know each other so that now as they are adults and they have families, they have cousins that they feel quite connected to which is kind of wonderful, we do a lot of sharing of our lives together. We all go to the same island in Maine in the summer, so 3 of my siblings built and also my family too we built our own little houses there, kind of near the log cabin so that more of us could be there at the same time. It’s a wonderful place for family gatherings and lunch picnics on the rocks, swimming in the quarries and biking around the island, lots of fun things we do together. I take my violin and my younger brother plays the cello, brings his cello, my sister is a singer, but she also plays the keyboard too. It's really fun to play together, we often say wouldn’t our mother be delighted because she's the one who made us practice, its paid off for her because we are still doing it. The basic values that I learned from them I think are still there, are still the core values, but we do keep connected, that’s important. We now passing on the cabin in Maine, the log cabin to our own children so that means the cousins will have to figure out how to work together to keep the boats in good shape and keep the cabins clean and enjoy that place with their children, with our grandchildren. It's kind of a multigenerational process in Maine and that’s where I keep connected to my sibling's. It has been fun as we met and talked to explore family a little but because that to me is the most important set of relationships certainly that I have and I think that most people have, my kids probably pass on the same values to their children too Things that they learned as they were growing up, they keep connected through each other, keeping connected and learning through each other is just really really important no matter what the ups and downs of one's life might be. Previous Next

< Back Jesse's Story Jesse talks with Lauren about being wrongfully accused and sent to prison. He shares the lessons he learned during that difficult time. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 04:41 “The toughest thing I went through was, when I was in college, I had a little run in with the law over a marijuana issue. When the whole thing started I was 18 years old. I was in college out in Western Pennsylvania. That particular town was under very, very right winged conservative area. They were down on drugs. I was accused of selling $15 worth of marijuana. And went to trial. It really should never even gone to trial. I mean they had no real evidence. There were four people in the room at the time it was supposed to have happened and three of them said it didn't happen, and one of them said it did. And they decided to believe that one person. I was the only one. I was pretty sure it was because I was Jewish and there a very strong anti-Semitic taint to the whole thing. So I was convicted. The judge said, as far as he’s concerned, selling drugs is as bad as murder. So he gave me the maximum sentence, even though it was my first offense. He gave me 3 years in prison. I didn’t take it seriously, I really didn’t think I was gonna go to prison. It just seemed so outrageous. My lawyer was taking an appeal then I got a call one day from my father and he said, the appeal fell through and you have to go to prison. So, I freaked out, I was 21 years old at the time. Really didn’t know what to expect. My first week there was very very scary. It was overcrowded, so they didn’t have room for me in the part of the prison where they first introduce people. So I was put in solitary confinement for a week, which was really not a lot of fun. I thought my life was over at that point. Prison is like hell. It’s like everybody’s there, it's full of anger and aggression, but I found some friends there, actually. There were several people there, that were there for drug related offenses, you know, marijuana. And we weren’t criminals, you know, we were just kids who got caught up in a system. Because I had friends, I was able to make it through. Could’ve gotten out in one year, but it didn't seem like that was gonna happen. They wanted me to repent and say that what I had done was wrong. I was adamant that I thought the drug laws were wrong. I didn't really repent and they took that as a mark against me. So I didn’t know how long I’d be in there. It was a hard thing. One of the things that got me through was, I had a girlfriend before I ended up there. She wrote me almost everyday. She would write me a letter like almost everyday, at least 5 or 6 times a week. And that really helped me make it through, getting those letters everyday, really lifted my spirits. It turned out that my father was really not very good. I went to prison because of him. He told me he had taken the appeals, but didn’t. He told the lawyer not to take the appeals. And that’s why I ended up going to prison, my own father. And I didn't find that out until later. My mother hired a lawyer from the national organization for the reform of marijuan laws and he told me, he says, “they never took the appeals, you had grounds for appeals but they never took it.” He applied for what's called, commutation, which is reeducation of sentence. My mother went to court and testified for me. One day I was about 8 months into my sentence and they called me up and said, “do you have a job for when you get out of prison?” I said, “what are you talking about? I’m not getting out for another 2 and half years.”And they said, “No, right here it says you’re getting out next month.” I said, “what?!” And sure enough the commutation had gone through and nobody had told me. I was released from prison after about 7 or 8 months. So I was really, really, happy about that. I was so excited. That day I got out I was so happy. I felt so good. It was like, okay, I made it through that. If I can make it through that, I can make it through anything. So I felt really confident, really good, and really proud of myself that I had made it through and I hadn’t turned bitter, and I hadn’t gotten worse. You know, like, I got out and went right back to school, got my degree and went on to graduate school. In some ways, prison helped me, I mean I would not recommend it to anybody, it wasn’t worth it, but it did help me. It did help me focus my life. I guess the main lesson I learned was that no matter how bad it gets, there is a way forward and there's a way out. Nothing bad lasts forever. I still feel that freedom I felt on the day I got let out, the strength I felt. I can still tap into that today. As bad as things get, they eventually end. Bad things don’t last forever and there’s a way through. That’s what I learned.” Previous Next

Selena speaks with Jonathan about what it’s like to be living with a family whose views are very different from your own during a global pandemic. Selena's Story Selena speaks with Jonathan about what it’s like to be living with a family whose views are very different from your own during a global pandemic. Scroll to listen Selena's Story 00:00 / 03:29

< Back Jonathan Dee's Story Jonathan shares his special connection with his family and how they have been a major influence in his life, from his brothers to his mom and dad. He touches upon his love for his parents supporting him through sports and making sure he was reaching his fullest potential growing up. With deep gratitude for his mother and everything she had overcome in her early life, he expresses the kind of person and a great appreciation of who she is. 00:00 / 03:44 0:00 I wanted to talk about hobbies and enjoyment because for me that's one of the things that really helped me connect to to my family. You know, my, my brothers and I were all into the the same things, you know, I feel like my younger brothers definitely look up to me a lot because I've very much compared to my older brother. I'm very much on a straight and narrow going through college, going through, you know, going to get a degree, get a job was never in trouble. But I just want them to, really. 0:29 You know, figure out what they want on a life instead of structure it around me. It diverged when it came to sports, but that was also a way that helped me connect my dad, He was always at track meets. There was something that felt really good about having, you know, your parent come and watch you when you're working your **** off for something that you care about. And I remember I was really into soccer after, like throughout middle school, and I really, really wanted to make my freshman year team. 0:59 And the trials were like a week. I thought I did really well. And then come to find out that, you know, I got cut and you know, in my mind I was already like giving up and I was like sour grapes, whatever, It's like not worth it anyway. But then those are the moments when my dad would come in and really give me those good Nuggets of advice and he was hit me with some Rocky Balboa type of doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how hard you get hits, you know, it's what you can get hit and. 1:27 Get up with and I took that into the sports and my high school education afterwards, You know, it made just those moments not only brought me closer to my dad, but also made me a more resilient person. My mom, she started her own business and she thought she was going to be a lawyer, so she was studying law. But then she got quite sick and had to get many surgeries when she was through going through college. 1:56 She found that the one thing that helped her was, you know, her diet and like what she was putting inside of her body. So she decided to become, you know, the the lead in her field of nutrition. She's she's the exact same way, you know, does, you know, she's a business owner does, does her own taxes. Everything she does is very, very much exact. When we were growing up, you know, she was very. 2:23 Made sure that we were on our stuff because she was on her stuff and one of the toughest women I know as well. And she adopted all four boys. And you know, not everybody can do that. It takes a special type of parents to be able to make that happen and she's such a champ about it. Always made sure that we felt like we could do whatever we wanted in life despite, you know, not coming from. 2:53 Your average background, you know, some of my siblings kind of did not appreciate the way that she went about this. But I I understand and I do, you know, she would send us to synagogue despite, you know, sometimes how we look may not match our environment. She would send us to all sports of sports camps, whatever. But the point was, you know, you can do whatever you want in life. And I'm, I've overcome many of things. I want you to be able to overcome things too. 3:23 And it was perhaps intentional, perhaps unintentional. But the lesson stuck. And you know, I appreciate her. Appreciate her greatly for that, but feel like that really boiled back down to who she was. You know who she is. Biggest supporter in my life. Seriously. But yeah, love my mother. Love my mother dearly. Previous Next

Carol talks about her experience traveling to Europe her junior year of college after realizing that she needs to go out of her comfort zone. With support from her friend and her parents, this trip changes her perspective on the kind of person she wants to strive to be, for her career but mostly for herself. The European mindset is what influences her to do things that make herself feel whole like slowing down her day with journaling and yoga. This trip has inspired her to travel for nursing and even ignite the courage to solo trip alone someday. Carol's Story Carol talks about her experience traveling to Europe her junior year of college after realizing that she needs to go out of her comfort zone. With support from her friend and her parents, this trip changes her perspective on the kind of person she wants to strive to be, for her career but mostly for herself. The European mindset is what influences her to do things that make herself feel whole like slowing down her day with journaling and yoga. This trip has inspired her to travel for nursing and even ignite the courage to solo trip alone someday. Carol's Story 00:00 / 03:22 Interviewer: Can you tell me about an experience that influenced your life a lot that you felt that you learned something? Carol: I went a trip abroad last year during the spring and before going on a trip abroad I never thought I could do anything like that just because I'm a homebody, I like my own friends and family. And it was a fall semester of my junior year. I realized that I really needed to go out of my comfort zone in order to grow just because I've been so used to being surrounded by my friends and not really branching out. So I decided mid fall to go and before that I was absolutely not going anywhere. I was just going to stay at UMass Amherst and something came over me. One of my friends said to me, you will never be this young and be able to travel the world again and I decided that I really should be able to do that and if I have the opportunity to I would be stupid not to take it. I got on my flight to Barcelona, it was January 11th, and I was so nervous. I remember the week before that, I was crying to my mom and dad. They just kept saying, you are going to have the time of your life. When you come back, you are gonna be a changed person. And I was just like, oh my God, they're not being serious. Like, I'm not gonna be a changed person. But they were right. I was with my two friends, which I know it's not really out of my comfort zone, but it's the best I could get. And we went to 11 different countries and we just traveled the world together and experienced all these different cultures, new friends, and the lifestyle there is quite different than here. It's really relaxed and laid back. There was a saying that I read that people here work to live, but in Europe, people live to work. I think that is so true. When I was there, people were on the street at 12pm, people would be out drinking coffee, enjoying their time with their friends and family. And here, you never really see anybody drinking coffee. They're mostly running to work, getting coffee for work or running back to work. And I really realized that I need to enjoy my life and I don't need to constantly be working, constantly be doing something that leads to work. I need to enjoy it. And these experiences are really what shaped me to who I am. Work won't shape me to who I am. Only the experiences do. So when I came back from abroad, I really decided to live my life and look at my life in a different perspective. I decided to do new things every day that I enjoyed. I tried to put more time for myself into my day-to-day life. And before that, I was just working, constantly doing homework, constantly doing something that will help my future. Even now, I still obviously do that, but now I do more things for myself. Like I meditate each morning. I go to yoga, I journal. And I realized that definitely helped me a lot to become a happier person, just because I saved more time for myself. And I also have gotten more out of my comfort zone. Like now I wanna do a trip alone. I also am going to travel nursing. So I would love to travel alone and work in a different hospital all by myself. I think exposing myself to a different culture and exposing myself to a different country all alone has definitely helped me get out of my comfort zone and try new things. Previous Next

< Back Caroline's Story Caroline talks about her experience with working at Camp Sunshine and how it has impacted her. She talks about her work with the kids there with Fanconi Anemia. She talks about how working with these kids has inspired her career path in the future. 00:00 / 02:45 One time in my life that has been really influential that definitely will stick with me my whole life has been volunteering at camp sunshine, and it's for children with life threatening illnesses. So the model of the camp is that every week is a different illness, so I always go for Fanconi Anemia or FA. So all the kids there have FA or they’re their siblings and then the parents go too. And during the week the parents go to information sessions and they learn about clinical trials and they go to support groups and talk to doctors and things like that. And then the children are just supposed to be regular kids, so for once in their life if they’re ill, it’s like, not a barrier for them. So, they get special equipment so they can still swim, we play board games like normal, we roast s’mores, we climb on the rock wall together, we play volleyball, we go out on the lake, and we kayak, and we paddleboard, and things like that. And I’ve done it three years. I did it in highschool, I used to go for a week every summer, and it was like the most life changing experience for me. Because my sister had done it in highschool so I knew that it would be fun, I just was really nervous. And I went to camp sunshine and I fell in love with the experience. The volunteers were so excited to be there and everybody had a shared goal of just wanting to help the kids have the best week of their summer. And then the kids are really inspiring because they’ve had such hardships and they’re so young, like I was working with 6 to 8 year olds and 9 and 12 year olds, and they’ve experienced way more than I ever have, because I’ve been very blessed with great health. And seeing their resilience was so inspiring and then also, such a learning opportunity because in those populations it’s really easy to be like, just to focus on someone’s strength but it’s really important to see them as, like, a full person and that, you know if you’re 6 years old then you have a chronic illness, you’re still 6 years old. So you still have to be treated like a kid and you have to play and you have to run around, and if you get scrapped it might be bigger deal than if a different kid gets scrapped, but we have to deal with that because you still should have a full childhood, so getting to help them with that experience and give their parents rest and time to find support, was really, really amazing. It definitely has influenced how I see my career path and the work that I want to do because I really wanna benefit that population in particular. Previous Next

Amy shares about moving from NYC to Philadelphia as a young girl. During this time, she learned some of the hard lessons about hatred and what it means to stand out. She also learned that some of her closets friends are the ones who have the most differences between them. Amy's Story Amy shares about moving from NYC to Philadelphia as a young girl. During this time, she learned some of the hard lessons about hatred and what it means to stand out. She also learned that some of her closets friends are the ones who have the most differences between them. Scroll to listen Amy's Story 00:00 / 03:46

< Back Mary's Story Mary Young describes, in an interview with Hellen Muma, the cast-off treasures she discovered as a kid—and how those experiences turned her into a life-long collector. She shares a lesson learned from Louis Armstrong’s white handkerchief and remembers a great-aunt who influenced her with the gift of a corrugated gift box. 00:00 / 02:19 So, I know you have a lot of collections, and you keep creating new ones. What are some examples and what made you become a collector? I remember really clearly we lived in a sorta like actually my father taught in a boys boarding school so we lived in a dorm and you would take ethe trash all the way down to the basement to put it in these bins and I was old enough to take the trash down I guess for my mother So i as taking the trash down I went down to the trash room and I saw all this stuff and there was an older couple who worked was on the faculty and they were downsizing and they had piles of stuff and I was immediately really interested in it that was my earliest memory of finding extraordinary things in the trash and I’ve never stopped ever since When I was going through my paternal grandmothers stuff Among all the other stuff I found was a box of buttons I mean some of them were really old some go back to the 19th century and some buttons from when my grandmother during world war 2 was a part of the red cross ambulance driver corps ya know outside of Boston she didn't drive ambulances really but for some reason these women trained for that there were just and there were buttons they came from all different types of people now just women but mostly women the family and ya know from generations of all different people and I think I was already collecting antique buttons and I kind of dumped everything together and I would come up with some buttons from my mother and I’d put those in there and to me it's like this ocean of family history particularly for me of women history and it just is like it all flowed together into this soup and i just love that ya know I have made some things with the buttons like I've decorated some pillows with them I was thinking of framing some maybe I'll do it maybe I won't It's such an immediate connection to generations of women and its different as if I just got something from a tag sale cause this actually had to do something with people in my family who knows what but that's one example of potentially thousands I can tell. Previous Next