This episode features Lizzie Warner, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Lizzie Warner on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/summer-2019-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 27 students told stories about “labels.”.
This episode was originally performed in August 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Lizzie Warner, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Lizzie Warner on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/summer-2019-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 27 students told stories about “labels.”.
This episode was originally performed in August 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
[ Intro music]
Speaker 3:Hello again, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I will be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every month, we gather around the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it from the everyday voices that live around us. Campfire at Home is how we bring that live storytelling experience to you wherever you are. In this episode, I have something special for you because we have stories to share from the Capstone event of our Season 9 Intro to Storytelling class. These stories come from students who signed up for a class through Campfire to learn about public speaking and storytelling, and in that first class, the students come in nervous, excited and looking around, not quite knowing who each other are yet, but then they slowly get to know one another as they collectively reflect on their lives through story. They started to see the output of their training and the power and liberation of owning and sharing their narrative. And even when it got scary or their nerves crept up, they kept choosing to take on the challenge. And then there they were onstage in the lights, delivering some truly delightful and some truly heavy stories in their natural voices. This series of podcasts includes the five Intro to Storytelling students, Amy, Paige, Jenna, Lizzie, and Melinda telling a story on the topic of labels. And when the event ended, beyond the hugs and smiles each storyteller got from those that had come to support them, Molly, who was their instructor that Season, and myself got to say a heartfelt congratulations to five people with newfound skills in storytelling, confidence in their voice when speaking publicly and an understanding of the power of story. Let's head to the campfire to listen to Lizzie's story on labels.
Speaker 5:Okay. Lately, I've been spending a lot of time and money on my vagina. So when I was in kindergarten, I was outside playing on the monkey bars by myself and I slipped and I fell and I landed horseback style onto this metal bar. Yes. And I started crying out of shock and pain, and I ran inside to find my mom. She looked in my shorts and she saw blood. And so we went to the hospital where we learned that I had torn my vaginal wall and would need stitches to repair it. I was five years old at the time, and I barely knew what a vagina was at this point. In my house, we had cutesy nicknames for certain body parts, so a vagina was a moosie, and all I knew was that I had hurt my moosie. I don't remember much from the hospital I was put under for the procedure. I remember waking up and they gave me one of those clear plastic cartons of apple juice with a bendy straw. And I laid in bed and sipped it while my mom talked to the doctor. So we went home, and I really didn't think much about this accident. Over the years, there were clues that something was wrong. Tampons were always really uncomfortable for me, so I wear pads instead. And when I went to the gynecologist for my well woman visits, she had to pull out the extra small speculum, which I didn't know existed, um, because the regular one hurt too bad. But the biggest clue that something was wrong came when I was in my early twenties and I started exploring my sexuality and I quickly learned that sex was painful for me. And I'm not talking about full penetration here. I mean a finger goes in and it causes that kind of sharp hot pain that makes your whole body lock up in response to it. And I was confused by this because I was with people that I was interested in and felt desire for, and I hit this wall over and over again. And our bodies are programmed to avoid pain, right? When a kid burns their hand on the stove, they don't have to do it more than once before they learn not to touch that hot stove. We carry around that sense memory, and I had sense memory of pain with sex. So what started happening is I would be intimate with somebody and in these moments my body would start anticipating that pain and it would tell me that if we keep going on this path, that pain is coming. So it'd take any desire that I had and just shut it down, and I'd weasel out of these situation. And I'm sure it was confusing for the people I was with and I'm sure I seemed like something of a tease at times, but nobody was more confused than me. I felt betrayed by my body, like it wouldn't let me do this thing that I wanted to do and I didn't know why. Outside of this pattern, I actually feel really lucky when I think about my dating experiences because I spent time with some wonderful people, but I never told one of them that I was having pain. As women, we're taught a lot of odd things about our sexuality and one is that if you experience discomfort or pain with sex, you just need to relax, have an extra glass of wine, use some more lube, just take a deep breath. But none of those things worked for me. And over and over again I was so confused by this problem, and I internalized that message. And then I started feeling shame. I started feeling shame that I was having this problem and feeling shame that because of it, I got to 25, 26, 27 years old, and I was still a virgin. I was 26 years old when I learned what pelvic floor physical therapy was. But because of some other health issues, it wasn't a priority at that time. Um, it became one, two years later, I was 28, and I was dating someone and I looked on my phone one day and I pulled up Instagram and I clicked on someone's story that I don't even know in real life. And she was sitting in her car and she very plainly and directly talked about her experience with pelvic floor physical therapy. She talks about why she was going and how it was helping her and what the sessions were like. And she ended up by saying, I'm sharing this in case anyone out there needs to hear it today. I needed to hear it that day and I needed to make a phone call. So I called Nina. Nina is a physical therapist who I met a few years before, um, when I had a bad shoulder injury. She's a very direct person to put it politely. She gives you her opinion when you ask for it, when you don't ask for it, when you explicitly say,"Please don't tell me what you think about this." Doesn't matter. Um, and when we were working on my shoulder, usually that personality type I actually find to be really off putting. But the thing about Nina is that she was always right when she told me I could do something that I didn't think I was strong enough to do, I was. And when she told me that these certain exercises would help, they did. So I grew to trust her so much, and I knew I wanted to work with her with this issue. And I learned in that time working on my shoulder, her specialty was actually pelvic floor physical therapy. So she is qualified for this. I did it. Um, so our sessions together now, they look very different. Um, we go into a back room and she closes the door and at first we just talk and she asks for me for updates. Um, what stretches have I've been doing at home? Have I been noticing anything new? How are things going? And when we finished that, she stands up and she says,"Okay, undress from the waist down." And she walks out. And this is the part where you start to feel vulnerable. So you pull your pants and your underwear and you leave your socks on, if you have them, because it gives you some little sense of control.
Speaker 4:[ Laughter]
Speaker 5:Yeah, so you know. So you get on the bed and you cover up with that white scratchy sheet they give you and the fluorescent lights are shining so brightly above you and you lie on that bed and you just sort of wait. So she comes back in and she sits on the side of the bed and she pulls on her rubber gloves and she tears open her single use packet of lube and she applies it to her fingertips. She says"Cold and wet," and in she goes. I've learned in our time together that I have scar tissue in my vaginal wall from the stitches and tight angry muscles surrounding it because of the trauma to the area. So she massages that scar tissue and she manually stretches out my pelvic floor muscles to help them relax and move like they should. She's as direct as she ever was. Uh, every week she asked if my boyfriend and I have had intercourse and the word penetration is thrown around often in those 45 minutes. And it feels really, it felt really odd to use that language at first, but you get sort of used to it and that clinical setting and using those words. And what happened was I got so used to it in that room that I was able to eventually bring those words home with me and bring them to my relationship. And I finally had the language that I never had with those other people. She validated my pain and she helped me find my power to talk about it. My vagina and I are still getting acquainted. We, we are learning how to support each other. Um, thank you. It's been a long road getting to this point and I don't know how much longer it is, but now I do know that my moosie and I are in this thing together and that we are going to be okay. Thank you.
Speaker 4:[ Applause.]
Speaker 3:And that is a rap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Season 9 Intro to Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review on your podcast listening platform of choice. You probably hear it all the time, but it really does help others find our podcast and it supports our students. If you're in the St. Louis area, we'd love to have you come out to an event or take a class. You can visit cmpfr.com, that's C M P F r.com for all of the details. And for those of you that don't live in St. Louis who just want to know more about the work we do here at Campfire, you can also visit our website at cmpfr.com, that's C M P F r.com. As always a big thank you to the Campfire team, Mariah, Ethan, Gabriella, Molly and Jess, our photographer Sarah Wilson, our videographer and podcast producer, Jeff Allen and the home for our classes tech, TechArtista. Tonight's stories were recorded live at the Focal Point in Maplewood, Missouri. Thanks for listening to Campfire at Home. I've been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.