This episode features Jude Hagene, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Jude Hagene on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/spring-2021-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in April 2021, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
This episode features Jude Hagene, a student in Campfire’s Advanced Storytelling class. You can learn more about Jude Hagene on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/spring-2021-advanced-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Advanced Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it.
This episode was originally performed in April 2021, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live via Zoom.
Oh, hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I'll be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home. Today, we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it. In this episode, I have something special for you because we have stories to share from the capstone event of our recent Advanced Storytelling class, featuring Carlo, Melinda and Jude. Now the Advanced Storytelling class follows Campfire's philosophy on storytelling and public speaking, which states you focus on the message first, story always. It's always structured in a story format, and you include conversation with your audience throughout. So we kicked off this class with writing our bios using the narrative arc, which is a nice way to refresh ourselves on story structures. And then we stepped into some guided free write and reflection, learned about conversational speaking and stage presence, and then finally got peer feedback and rehearsed our story. From that point, we are ready to go, which brings us to this Campfire at Home episode you are listening to right now. This episode will highlight one of our four student storytellers. You can catch the other storytellers by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts. Without further ado, please welcome Jude to the Campfire.
Jude Hagene:Thank you all for coming to Campfire tonight. We're living in dangerous times. This pandemic, it's changed the way that we make decisions. Decisions that used to be easy now require a risk assessment, like getting my haircut. I used to be in and out of Great Clips in 15 minutes, but now do I really want to sit there with a stranger so close? So do I chop on it myself as I've been doing not very successfully? Or do I let it grow out, like I think you might be doing? Or do I mask up, go to Great Clips, and cross my fingers? That six month dental appointment used to be a no brainer. Do I really want my mouth hanging open in front of a stranger for prolonged length of time? Maybe if I promise myself that I really will floss morning and night, it'll be all right. And I'll cross my fingers. What about that older relative? Grandma, she wants a hug. She really wants a hug. She doesn't care where you've been or what you've done. She wants a hug. I don't want to be the person that kills grandma. Do you hold your breath, cross your fingers, and hug her anyway? I don't know. What do you do? So one day last fall, height of the pandemic, I was getting ready for my daily walk, and so I did my daily risk assessment. I thought to myself,"Hmm, I'm going for a walk outside by myself to a park, through a residential business type area. If I see any strangers, I will not talk to them. I mean, stranger danger." Remember that old program? When my kids were small and going through it, I hated that program. Now I live by it. Strangers are dangerous. I won't stop. I'll just speed on past. So I left my mask at home. It was one of those glorious fall days in St. Louis. The sky was that incredible blue. The, the air was just invigorating and the trees were in all their glory. I had this silly, goofy smile on my face the whole time I was walking. I even waved at a couple of those strangers. So I'm heading back home and I round the bank by the ATM. And for some reason, I, well, I saw this woman and she, she must've done her risk assessment and decided that going to an ATM by herself was no big deal because she too did not have a mask. Her hair was pulled back and she was dressed a lot like me. And I thought she must be younger. And she had this beautiful, beautiful brown skin. And we were waving at each other and saying something about how beautiful the weather was and something made me stop. Now, I was still on the sidewalk. I was a good 10 feet away. She was in the parking lot. So it was safe, but I, I still don't know why I stopped. So we went from talking about the weather. And again, I don't know how we got to this, but we started talking about the movie"Soul." It's a Disney movie. Have you seen it? Well, if you haven't, you need to, because the animation is just terrific. It's about this soul who does not want to get into a body and come to Earth. I don't know. Maybe it heard about the pandemic. I don't know, but it's not having it. It is not coming to Earth. And it's also about this man, who's a musician, and he's very focused on his future and his goals as a musician. And he's very fearful that he's not going to be able to do what he's planning on doing. And he lives his life so much in the future that he misses a lot of the magical moments that are right there in front of him, right there in the present. So we're talking about this movie and, then as women of a certain age do, we started to ask each other about our children. And so I told her I'm the proud mother of two grown ass men, 29 and 21. And usually I stopped there, but there was something about the tilt of this woman's head that made me wonder if she had noticed that there is a big gap between my two sons. And so I found myself telling her, I telling this stranger that in between I lost a baby. And I didn't even know whether my baby was a boy or a girl, but I decided to call her Grace. And even though this was a really long time ago, I like a lot of other women who have had miscarriages have some guilt about it. Maybe I should have stopped jogging sooner, or I shouldn't have taken that dance, that dance class. Oh, I know. I should not have painted that rocking chair. So this woman, the stranger, she says to me, she says,"Maybe, maybe your Grace is like the soul in the Disney movie. Maybe she didn't want to come to Earth. Maybe it was Grace's choice." This was an amazing thought. And it was so freeing. It was like this big chunk of guilt just floated away. So I asked this, this lovely woman. I ask her about her children. And she said that she was the proud mother of two grown ass men too. But then she said it used to be three, that her youngest had been murdered. Oh my God, what do you say to somebody about that? I don't know what I said. I hope, I really hope that what I said was somehow comforting or, or at least appropriate. This woman noticed my discomfort about her son being murdered. And she said to me, she said,"It's okay." And this slow smile spread across her face. And she said,"My son wasn't meant for this world, he's in a better place." And then she said, she said,"Maybe your Grace is in the place where babies are before they're born. And my son is in the place that our babies go too soon. And maybe somehow they can see each other and talk to each other and keep each other company." And again, this wonderful feeling of comfort came over me. And then we talked about how hard it is to be mothers of black sons and how often we stood waiting for them to come home with fear in our hearts, how we worried when they went out at night with their friends or to a protest or heck even to go to the store, but to leave the comfort of our homes, how frightening that was for us. And I told her, I said,"I gave my boys, the talk is best as a white lady can." And then that slow smile again. She kind of peeked up at me and she said,"May I have a hug?" I thought,"Oh my God, stranger danger. It's a pandemic. I can't hug her. We don't have, we don't have masks. What could happen?" All this fear just came up inside of me for what could happen in the future. And then this new thought zipped into my head in a split second, that I don't want to be like that man in the movie, the musician who was so afraid, so consumed by his fear of the future, that he missed those magical moments that were right there in front of him. So I crossed over into the parking lot. I crossed those 10 feet, and I hugged her for a long time. I might've crossed my fingers. I don't know, but I was glad I hugged her. And as I stepped back as from her I, I noticed her vehicle and on her bumper was a Trump sticker. And then as she waved me down the street, she said,"Have a blessed day." And I thought,"Wow, we are really different. We're different in politics and in religion and skin color." And then I thought,"No, no, we're not different in the important ways. We're very much the same, the same in our motherhood. The same in our fear, the same in our grief, the same in our humanity." And I thought, I thought how wonderful that I had stopped and spoken to a stranger and what a magical moment that was. And so I'm inviting you to try, try really hard, not to let the fear of this pandemic and the fear of strangers and the fear of our differences, keep you from enjoying those magical moments that can crop up and those ways that we can see that we're really so much more the same than we ever have been different. Please don't let fear or this pandemic steal your soul. Thank you for listening.
Steven Harowitz:That is a wrap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Advanced Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, classic podcasting, please leave a review. It really does help other folks find the podcast. And it feels nice because it supports the students. We would love to have you at an event or tell your story, take a class. You can visit cmpfr.com. That's C M P F R.com for all of the details. And while our home base is here in St. Louis, you can attend an event or take a class from pretty much about anywhere. So again, visit our website at cmpfr.com, C M P F R.com. As always, I can't get out of here without first giving a huge thank you to the Campfire team, our podcast producer Jeff Allen, and everyone who attends these live events. Now tonight stories were recorded live on Zoom from all over. Thanks for listening to Campfire at Home. I have been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.