These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast feature stories finally brought to the stage. The episode you are about to hear was first recorded via Zoom during an online showcase. However, we can now bring you a live, in-person version, along with tweaks and updates to narratives you may have heard before.
This episode features Grace Luttrell Pettit, a past student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
You can learn more about Grace on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/advanced-storytelling-event-2/
This episode was originally performed in August 2022, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at the High Low in St. Louis, Missouri.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast feature stories finally brought to the stage. The episode you are about to hear was first recorded via Zoom during an online showcase. However, we can now bring you a live, in-person version, along with tweaks and updates to narratives you may have heard before.
This episode features Grace Luttrell Pettit, a past student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
You can learn more about Grace on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/advanced-storytelling-event-2/
This episode was originally performed in August 2022, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at the High Low in St. Louis, Missouri.
Steven Harowitz 00:12
Hello, Internet. It's been a little while. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I will be your host for this episode of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. In this episode, I have something extra special for you because we have stories to share from our return to in-person events. Our first event was the Welcome Back to the Campfire event and our second was a Campfire Showcase. Both events featured storytellers who told their stories virtually due to COVID, so we invited them back to tell their stories in front of a live audience. Now this episode will highlight one of those storytellers. You can catch all the other storytellers by subscribing to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, let's head to the Campfire to listen to Grace's story from our live and in-person Campfire Showcase event.
Grace Luttrell Pettit 01:15
This is the reality of COVID. Okay, hi. It had been a long day, sitting behind a desk, staring at a computer, going in and out of boardroom meetings. I welcomed the peace and quiet that sitting in my car at Kingshighway and Feiler, at that red light, brought me, with a QuikTrip on my right and the used car sales lot on my left. I was digging the used car sale lot party decorations that they always have up. That day, they had the silver streamers. And I was just watching and waiting for the green light. But within a matter of seconds, I heard this voice. And it said, “If you keep going the path that you're going in, you're going to die.” Light turned green. I kept going, driving down Kingshighway, made the left on my street Goethe, took the back alleyway to my house, parked, and I sat there because, at that time, everything was going pretty well professionally. Professionally, I had a job, corner window, view. I was going to make VP before 30. Like we were set. Personally, I was in a relationship with, like, I saw like my entire future with this person, which is overwhelming and kind of scary at times. And the more that I thought about this relationship, the more I started to understand what that voice was talking about, because recently when my partner Patrick and I would fight I felt myself regressing into childhood tendencies of screaming and cursing and stonewalling and just walking out when things got too much. And I couldn't communicate and I froze. So I got out of my car, walked in the back door, pulled out my laptop, and did something that I had been putting off for about four or five years. I hit submit on my 200-hour yoga teacher training application and sent all the good vibes out into the universe that I would at least get an interview. I was very specific with the training and organization that I wanted to work with because there are literally thousands of yoga teacher trainings that you could take, but this one I knew I had to be there. It was with Yoga Buzz, St. Louis based nonprofit organization and they they were focused on yoga as action, yoga as community, and, most importantly for me, a trauma informed practice. You may have heard the term before. Trauma informed, trauma aware, trauma sensitive. In a super duper quick nutshell, trauma, at its core, is focused on one thing and that's choice. And when choice is taken away from us, that can breed a lot of different things. A couple days later, I got the email for the interview. Um, what I wasn't expecting was that the interview was with the founder of nonprofit, which I was a super duper fan girl of Elle Potter. She had brought yoga into the St. Louis community like I had never seen before, accessible, in events like breweries and galleries and places where people would not associate yoga with, at least the movement aspect of yoga. So impostor syndrome, anxiety, all of these things started to stir within me. And I was like, “Maybe this is a really bad idea and I shouldn't do this anymore.” But a couple days later, I got to their house in Maplewood that they owned. I got there early. And I, I was ready. I was telling myself, “I can do this. I can do this. These are the people I'm supposed to be with. This is good. This is good.” I walked in those doors. I met Elle. We got to talking. It was going really well. It was going really well, until we started getting into the meat of things of why Yoga Buzz? Why trauma informed? What does that mean to you? You know, I shared things with her that, at that time, I only shared with my therapist, my partner Patrick, and a few very, very close friends. I have a sister who is seven years older than me. And since the day she was born, she's lived and experienced mental health, addiction, body dysmorphia. And those don't just live within one person, especially when you're part of a family unit. The best way that I can describe is, you know, the English ivy that grows on brick buildings and it looks really beautiful on brick buildings, because brick buildings aren't living organisms. If you apply that ivy on to trees or plants or anything else, that ivy, the ivy invades, it suffocates, and it kills everything that it touches. And that had been kind of my experience, my entire life. And I shared that with essentially a total stranger who I like didn't know at all. So walking out of that interview, I was like, “Nope, didn't get it.” I had just shared things that are like, way too vulnerable, way too honest. And at that time in my life to be vulnerable and honest was to be weak. And weak people don't get what they want. Strong people get what they want. So a couple of weeks passed. I didn't get a call. I didn't get a text message, didn't get an email. It was early June on a Saturday morning. I was camping with a couple of friends down in Steelville, Missouri along the Black River, and no one else was up yet. And randomly I had reception, so I was like, “Okay, I'm gonna check my email, one more time, one more time.” And there it was. There it was. But I got in. And from that moment that I got accepted into the cohort and met the community of people that I trained with for nine months, you start to do that really hard work of looking at yourself and looking at all of you. The light, the dark, and it was uncomfortable, and it was hard. It was really hard. It’s still hard. But it's so good. It's so good. You know, I could have kept going and essentially been the shell of the person that I was a couple of years ago. Instead, I took a moment with myself and listened. And from that moment of listening to myself, I got to marry my best friend. Peak of COVID, no one got sick. It was great. And from, from that, we have made and created this amazing human being who's going to turn one next month. Insane. Insanity. And all of the board meetings and emails, those are starting to subside, because I found I found my life partner. I found my partner in life in business, and we are just doing the damn thing of creating space in St. Louis and Maplewood for young people to come and move and connect and settle and a trauma informed space for kids. Like I never in a million years saw myself with kids or working with kids, and it's insane. I know, it's insane to hear voices. I get that. I get it's crazy. But I don't know what my life would be if I hadn't gone a little crazy and, and listened and sat and just been with myself knowing that that voice, that voice was my soul, and that was the first time in my adult life that I had settled enough to hear it. And like I'm still going to hear that voice again. So I appreciate you all listening, and thank you for your time.
Steven Harowitz 12:26
That is a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our return to in-person events by subscribing to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review. It helps others find our podcast, support our students, and to prove to the internet that we are legit and not a rando podcast out in the interwebs. We'd love to have you come out for an event or even take a class. You can visit cmpfr.com. That's cmpfr.com for all the details. Whether you live in St. Louis or nowhere nearby, there are ways to attend our events virtually. You can also find out more about that at cmpfr.com. That’s cmpfr.com. As always, a big thank you to the Campfire team, our Podcast Producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who attends these live events. Tonight’s stories were recorded live at the High Low, one of the wonderful venues that the Kranzberg Arts Foundation runs here in St. Louis, Missouri. Thank you for listening to The Campfire Storytelling Podcast. I've been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.