The Campfire Storytelling Podcast

"How do we move beyond the labels people give us?" featuring Delores Martin

August 06, 2019 Campfire Season 25
The Campfire Storytelling Podcast
"How do we move beyond the labels people give us?" featuring Delores Martin
Show Notes Transcript

This episode features Delores Martin, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Delores Martin provides her answer to the Season 25 question, "How do we move beyond the labels people give us?". A Fellow’s Campfire can best be described as TED without the data, The Moth but interactive, and a sermon but without the religion. You can learn more about Delores Martin on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/delores-martin/.

 The Campfire Fellows go through rigorous training and coaching provided by Campfire Faculty so they can share their wisdom through story for you. Our Fellows are the people next to you at stoplights or walking by on the street. These Fellows apply or are nominated by people like you, who know interesting and introspective people with some wisdom to share. The Fellows go through a unique process with our team to discover a wealth of wisdom inside themselves and then are trained on how to share the origin stories of their wisdom. 

This episode was originally performed in June 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.


Steven Harowitz:   0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, Executive Director of Campfire, and you are listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the live experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners into life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home, I want to share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond our live show. We offer classes and workshops on public speaking, story construction and group facilitation to answer the big questions in your life or at work. If you or your organization are interested, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that is explored by our Campfire Fellows together with our audience. Let's go to the Stage at KDHX to listen to Delores' answer to this Season's question, how do we move beyond the labels people give us?

Delores Martin:   1:08
Every time I try to put into words my response to our Season question, how do you move beyond labels you've been given, I get a little choked up. Honestly, uh, my heart beats a little faster. My breath gets a little heavier. You see, I've been hurt by labels. I've been angered by them, and I've been shaped by them. Labels can influence the flow of your life, impact who you become and cast a shadow on how you see yourself. But what I've learned, what I hold onto is that I have the power to move beyond labels that people give me and be confidently, beautifully, and genuinely Delores. Now I have to say that some labels I have been given have been positive, even encouraging and nurturing. For example, I have a business associate turned friend who introduces me as "joy in motion." Yeah, I like the sound of that too. It paints the picture of someone you want to be around, and it definitely speaks to the experience that I want people to have when they're in my company. Now, on the flip side of that, I've been labeled brash, which means self-assertive in a rude, loud, overbearing way. All right, so my initial response to that label is I am not brash. I am honest. I speak my mind and you never have to wonder where you stand with me. At the same time, though, as I think about taking the steps to move beyond that label, I have to ask a question. What is that person's experience with me? So my formula per se for moving beyond labels is ,is first to do that, to ask myself truthfully, how? What is that person's experience with me? And secondly, I ask, is it in line with who? The label that I'm given? Is it in line with who I want to be in the world, the person that I want to reflect? And at that point, I make a decision to either dismiss the label, to embrace the label, to learn from it or make a change. So that's a lot to have going on in your head, You know, um, and it can be overwhelming, and the temptation with being overwhelmed is to veg out, watch a movie, play a video game. For me, I go shopping in order not to deal with it. But there are a couple of constructive things that I do to unclutter my brain, sort through my emotions. I pull out my trusty dry erase board, and I take all of that stuff that's going on inside of me and I map my emotions and my thoughts on that board. There's something about putting it in black and white, red and white or blue and white, whatever the color. That making it visual, that gives me clarity. The other thing that I do is I journal. I've been journaling now for more than half my life. I almost gave you a number, but Imma let you wonder how long that is. On the pages of my many notebooks, you will read of my dreams, my goals, my struggles, my strategies, my failures, my victories. They tell the story of my journey emotionally, mentally and spiritually in discovering, designing, and delighting in being true to who I want to be in the world. All right. How many people in here journal? Do I have any? I got some friends. Awesome. Also. So what we're going to do, though? All of you guys are going to be journalists because we're going to make a journal entry together. All right, so in your packet is a little card. And on this card, on this card, we're going to make a journal entry. The journal entry is going to be labels that people have given me. All right, so we're going to get 60 seconds to do this. And this is positive labels and the not so positive labels. Just brainstorm and make a list, and I'm going to do it too.

Delores Martin:   7:07
Okay, I'm gonna ask you to hold on to that, because we are going to refer back to it a little later this evening. My first experience with labels was with my family. Go figure, right? Everything starts at home. Uh, I am the oldest of four. My sister Joyce is just 15 months behind me or after me. Uh, and then Mom and Dad gave us a brother and a sister further on down the line a few years after that. But being that my sister and I were so close in age, my mom kind of treated us like we were twins. So we had matching dresses, matching shoes, matching hairdos, even matching dolls. It was crazy. Yeah, until we threw a big enough fit, and she was like, "Okay, I give up," and she stopped. But my parents would introduce us like this, "This is Delores. She's our oldest, and she's the smart one. This is Joyce. She's the pretty one. She's our glamour girl." Now, I don't in any way think that my parents intentionally gave us labels in order to hurt us. I I was pretty secure in, in uh, knowing that my parents loved us and gave us their best. But those labels did not go without impact or come and go without impact. Now, being the smart one was kind of cool growing up. My parents taught me a lot of grown up stuff, and I kind of fell into the role of the third parent to my siblings. My parents wouldn't even lease an apartment without me checking out the space and, uh, and the neighborhood, because if I liked it, the other kids would like it. One of my fondest memories, so we lived in this really nice apartment, had beautiful hardwood floors, high ceilings, the living room and dining room was this was a huge open space. The kitchen was in the middle of the apartment. Uh, our floor plan. Is that what you would say? Yeah. Ah, and on the opposite side of the kitchen, on the far end, it was a long hallway that led to the bedrooms and the bath and between the living room space and the kitchen space were these beautiful French doors. Now I don't remember a whole lot about the decor like, you know, paint on the wall or wallpaper. I just remember this orange swivel chair that sat in one corner of the living room, and us kids were not allowed to sit in that chair because, of course, we didn't sit. We swiveled, and it would make my mom so mad. That's crazy. Uh, this particular day we were home alone. My mom went to the store, which was really right around the corner from us and charged us to be good kids while she was gone for those few minutes, right? My brother and sister, Robert and Cynthia, those are the two youngest ones, were playing in one of the bedrooms, and you could hear the play go from play to squabble to licks being passed and all of a sudden Cynthia burst out of the bedroom. She's running down the hall and Robert is hot on her tail, and she's coming down the hall and she runs to the kitchen and she runs through the kitchen right to the French doors, and the doors are closed. She hits it and her arm goes through the glass. And when she pulls it back, the glass slashes her arm in the bend of her elbow. Blood gushes everywhere. She screaming, Robert screaming. It was crazy. Uh, so I calmed them down and I make a tourniquet for her arm. Uh, yeah. I still feel that little beam of pride because when Mom got home from E.R., she shared with me how impressed the triage people were with my first steps. Mom taught me first aid. Okay, so the smart one saves the day. Yay. As much as I embrace being the smart one, I also embraced the unspoken label of being the not pretty one. And this label shadowed me. My parents didn't speak it. My siblings didn't speak it. Even I did not speak it. But every time I passed a mirror, every time I sat in the gathering of our family and friends, every time I stepped into a room full of people, I saw and I felt not pretty Delores. See, when the smart one got introduced, people would respond with a smile and a nod. And when the pretty one got introduced, there would be oohs and ahhs and compliments that flowed like music. Yes, this did stir up some envy and sister rivalry, but that's a whole 'nother story. So now what I would like for you to do is take out your journal entry. Yeah, all right. And as you look at it, the label that you listed that kind of makes you uncomfortable or a little mad or a little sad, I want you to circle that one, and the one that makes you feel good, that you want to embrace, I want you circle that one. And also in your envelope, you have a name tag and construction paper. On the name tag, please put the 'feel good' label. Just write that out, and on the colored paper, write the not so feel good one.

Delores Martin:   14:47
And I'm gonna ask you to hold on to those cause we're gonna refer back to them later on. I'm going to take the liberty of wearing my name tag. That's optional. You don't have to do that, but I'm gonna wear mine. Okay, so wearing the label of smart one, ah, had its benefits. Uh, I, you know,  I embraced this this label. I wanted to be the smart one. I, uh I was a good student. I got into trouble less. I listened to my parents more . Boring. That is, until I decided to rebel. You see, there was a different set of rules for me than for my siblings. They had more privilege. My sister Joyce was allowed to wear makeup before I was allowed to. She was allowed to wear nylons. You guys know what that is? Okay, before I was. She was also allowed to date at a younger age than I was allowed to. And I got to a place where I resented that. And as I say that I think resentment was, might be a little heavy of a word for for what I felt. But I was frustrated, a little angry, and totally confused about why we were treated differently. Now I didn't want to not be the smart one. I wanted to be the smart one, but I was grasping for the pretty one. I was reaching for it. That rebellion lead to disappointment, disappointment for my parents, disappointment in myself as my life moved in a direction that we had not expected or planned for. I got married right out of high school, said goodbye to my then husband as he was deployed to Vietnam, and found out I was with child. Now there are a few things that I regret about that period in my life. But there is something that was a joy then, and this still is a joy. And that's my daughter, Victoria. During the summer, I would sit on the porch,hold her in my lap, rocking and talking her to sleep, looking into that precious face. I wanted to give her the best of me. I didn't know a whole lot about being a parent. I had a lot to learn. But this I did know, that she would know that she was both smart and pretty. As I whispered those words to her, this question popped in my head. "How will she know? Delores, if you don't know that about yourself, how do you pour into someone something you don't believe, something you don't have?" Yeah. So began my journey of hushing that voice in my head and shedding the shadow in my mirror that said Delores is not the pretty one. So, well, I mentioned that I got married, you know, kind of young. And I'm sure it's not surprising to hear that that marriage did not last. So I've done the married thing, right? I didn't need to do that no more. Well, at least not for not for a while. I was good. Yeah. That is until I got swooned by Sam Martin. Yeah. Sam had these amazing hands, okay? He was really a great guy, personality, okay? But he had this really great hands. They were familiar with hard work. They could take apart the motor in my 68 GTO and put it back together again. They could hold a tiny baby ever so gently and could light a fire of passion when the occasion arose. Yeah, he had this Barry White baritone voice. Yep. After 35 plus years of being together would still makes me quiver. Yeah. Yep, I did. I embraced whole 'nother label, Sam's wife. Yeah. Now, Sam came from a really big family. His ah, dad was one of two boys with four sisters, and each of those sisters had five plus kids apiece. I lost count of the uncles and aunts and cousins and other relatives who only knew me as Sam's wife. As our social circles begin to merge, my friends knew him as Sam the Man, and his friends knew me as Sam's girl, Sam's lady, Sam's wife. Yeah, I liked it truth be told. But at the same time that I'm, you know, kind of enjoying this, I'm wondering if they really do see me, his family or his friends. It was easy for me to get wrapped up for lack of a better word in this role. I wanted to be good at it, just like I wanted to be good at being the smart one. Sam's wife, his partner for life, the mother of his children, his biker chick, his lady, his freak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to be good. The saving grace in all of that is that Sam saw me. You know, I was his wife, but I was also Delores. Um, I was his Delores. Frustrating. I love you, don't want to do life without you. You get on my last nerve, Delores. But for the past seven years, I've been moving away from the label of Sam's wife. Not because I'm mad at him, not because I feel the need to assert my identity independent of him. But I lost Sam to heart failure seven years ago. The steps for moving away from that label have been slow. It's been slow, been challenging. There are some things that are holding me. His family, that family has become my family. Our friends that still call me by those cute little nicknames he used to call me. Queen was one of them. Don't you like that? Um, and our son, our son, who not only has his dad's face, but he has his dad's voice. But none of those things are bad. Those are good things. They make me smile. I'm grateful for my trusty dry erase board, and I'm grateful for my journals. In the pages of my journals, I can talk to Sam. I can talk to God about how challenging this is. But in the process of moving, I've done some self discovery. Yay. It's opened up a joy and appreciation for for what was, for what is, and for what lies ahead. So my steps.  One, to ask the question, what is that person's experience with me? And is it true? Is it in line with who I want to be in the world? The label that I'm being given. And what action am I going to take? Am I going to embrace it, learn from it, make a change, or discard it? Okay, so you guys have enjoyed these "feel good" labels. Yeah. Yeah.  Brave. I like that. Uh, so I'm going to ask you to take your piece of colored paper, the "not feel good" label, All right. And we're going to tear that into little pieces, and I'm gonna ask you to hold on to it. All right? Oh, good, good. All right. So we're gonna make confetti. I love it. All right, so on the count of three, I want you to throw it up in the air, and let the chips fall where they may. Okay, Ready, one, two, three. It feels good, doesn't it? It feels good. So, yes, as I consider my response to the Season question, how do you move beyond labels people give you?, I realize that more than a few times I've had to shake off a label or two. And in doing so, I have discovered, designed, and delighted in becoming and being Delores.

Steven Harowitz:   26:32
And that's a wrap. I'd like to thank Delores for answering this Season's question, how do we move beyond the labels people give us? If you want to, you can see the answers to this Season's question, as written by audience members from each Campfire. Visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/campfirestl. A big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographers, videographers, and partners. If you wanna learn more about Campfire and the work we do, visit cmpfr.com, that's c m p f r dot com. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts. It really does help out. Until next time.