"What does the body know?" featuring Jessica Gazzola

This episode features Jessica Gazzola, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Jess provides her answer to the Season 15 question, "What does the body know?" 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 Jessica Gazzola on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/jessica-gazzola/.

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 October 2024, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at Work & Leisure.

Please be advised, some adult language is used during this episode and there are adult themes.

Transcript

Steven Harowitz (0:13):

Hello Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz and I will be your host for this episode of the Campfire Storytelling Podcast, recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. This podcast shares stories about life and how we live it, as told at our live storytelling events. In this episode, we hear from our Season 15 Fellow, Jessica Gazzola. 

Something to know about this episode is that the stories we hear from our Campfire Fellows can be pretty different from some of our other storytellers. Our Fellows program is interactive, it’s long form storytelling, and that’s pretty different than other storytelling podcasts, that the story’s maybe are a bit shorter. These episodes are a deep dive into somebody’s life and are really best listened to when you want to sink into a story. 

So let’s head to the Campfire to listen to Jessica’s stories as she answers the season question: “What does the body know?"

Jessica Gazzola (1:18):

Hi, everyone. My name is Jessica Gazzola, but my friends, they call me Jess. So you all can call me Jess. I am, like, so thrilled that I am on the campfire stage finally. I love everything about campfire. This space that we create to explore stories, to illuminate wisdom, to connect people. You all, t his is my heart. Those of you who know me. Yes, this is my heart. This is my vibe. 

Jessica Gazzola (1:54):

And it just tickles me that you all would join me in this kind of space tonight on a school night. So, thank you so much for being here. I also absolutely adore this season question. It's good because I helped write it. That makes sense. But honestly, about 20 years ago this question probably would have confounded me.

Jessica Gazzola (2:22):

Like 20 years ago, I'd been like, what do you mean? What does anybody know? Like, it knows when it's hungry. It knows when it has to pee. But like, what does a body know? And I've become this person where this question just like, lives in my bones now. Where this is like the question I ask myself every day.

Jessica Gazzola (2:41):

But I just want to acknowledge that we're all coming at this question from really different spaces. Right? We have all have really different relationships with our bodies. So let's just get real basic. And by a show of hands, who here has a body? 

Audience Member (3:04):

Not by choice. 

Jessica Gazzola (3:06):

Oh, Not by choice. Oh, is a statement. Wow. We do not have any floating heads here.

Jessica Gazzola (3:14):

We already have so much in common. This is like a great relief. Yes, we all are embodied human beings. And how funny it is to be an embodied human being carrying around these meat sacks our entire lives, doing very silly things like dressing them up and trying to make them smell better, and then going out into the world pretending like we don't all look real weird when we poop.

Jessica Gazzola (3:46):

And we bring these bodies into these kinds of spaces and we sit them on really hard, uncomfortable chairs, like good students ready to think about what the body knows. It’s just precious. Y'all are adorable. But there is always so much going on underneath the surface, right? Our body is always giving us information and so I'm just going to invite that.

You know, maybe we just take a minute and like, actually feel our bodies in space. Yes. Lizzy is moving. She's a yoga instructor. She knows. Yeah. Like, maybe just see if you can identify one feeling. It could be something like, maybe you're noticing a little tension in your jaw or in your shoulders. You know, your body is maybe giving you some information about what kind of day you had.

Jessica Gazzola (4:45):

Right? Or maybe, like me, you have some butterflies in your stomach. Or maybe you had a really good drinky drink and you're feeling real chill and your body's, you know, giving you some information about how safe or how vulnerable you feel in this moment. Maybe you're sitting next to somebody really cute and you're feeling those little like zaps, like little electric shocks and super distracting.

Jessica Gazzola (5:10):

You can't think about anything except what it would be like to touch that person. Yeah. Some of you know what I'm talking about. So lots of information coming at us all the time. And what I notice is that my brain tries to sort that information, and a surprising amount of that information gets sorted into this is distracting. This is inconvenient.

Jessica Gazzola (5:37):

And our brain does a really interesting, helpful thing. And it's just like, no, there's something more important going on. I'm listening to Jess right now. And so it pushes it down. Totally normal. We all do that. There's some, you know, information that comes at us. We're like, ooh, I kind of like that feeling. But out of context. Out of context.

Jessica Gazzola (5:56):

Save it for later. You know, and then we have that body information. It's like, oh yeah, maybe, maybe I should go see a doctor about that one. But, you know, degrees of body information. And it's that interplay between body and mind that got me really curious and led me to decide to tell you the story today of a period in my life when I started to shift from seeing my body as a problem that needed to be solved, as something that needed to be controlled to a really intelligent, wild ecosystem.

Jessica Gazzola (6:41):

It was a moment in my life when it felt like everything was on fire, and my brain could not figure out how to get through. But my body, my body somehow knew a way through. Before I get to that period of my life, I want you to know a little bit about my people. I come from a long line of hearty Polish women with really great tolerances for pain.

Jessica Gazzola (7:15):

My mom, that was my mom. My mom, and that was me too, on the day I was born, 42 years ago. Isn’t she pretty? My mom, Judi Kosciusko Gazzola, was one of those hearty Polish women. She was broad shouldered, intensely creative, always moving. But she was also really practical. And she taught my sister Justine and me from a really young age.

Jessica Gazzola (7:45):

This real basic body technique to calm us down because she taught us, you know, this hard fact that whether you're a human but really, if you're a woman in this world, you're going to experience some pain, and it's better to know how to cope with it early. So this technique she taught us was simply slowing down our breath.

Jessica Gazzola (8:10):

And I have vivid memories of looking into her face and matching her breath while I was getting shots at the pediatrician so I could distract from that unpleasantness. It was a great technique whenever we hurt ourselves, whenever we skinned our knees. And later, as I got older, I used this breath before I had a big test or before I had to go out and perform.

Jessica Gazzola (8:38):

And I would just inhale, gather my wits about me and kill it. Because that is what a hearty Polish woman does. So this breath, it's been a thing that has been with me my whole life. And I decided I wanted to make it part of tonight's Campfire too. So there will be moments when you'll see that I paused to take a breath.

Jessica Gazzola (9:07):

It is for me. I sometimes need to pause and take a beat and catch up with myself and check in with my body. But I thought it would be a gift to all of us if we just breathe together every now and then. So you're invited into that breath to check in with yourself, to take a beat, to take a breath, to ask what is your body feeling right now?

Jessica Gazzola (9:37):

I know it's just breathing, but we're going to practice. We're just going to breathe three times together. So let's together inhale through our nose. And we're going to exhale like we're fogging a window.

Jessica Gazzola (9:56):

Good. Let's do that again together. Inhale.

Jessica Gazzola (10:03):

If you need to make a noise. Feels good. Do that, one more time. Option to close your lips if you'd like. And exhale. Inhale.

Jessica Gazzola (10:22):

Thank you for breathing with me. I'm ready now to tell you the story of 26 year old Jess. This was not just any day in 26 year old Jess’ life. It happened to be election day 2008. Barack Obama was just hours away from being named the first black president of the United States. If you were looking at 26 year old Jess, there are a few things you would notice.

Jessica Gazzola (10:55):

You would notice that she is pregnant and not just a little bit pregnant, like 38 out of 40 weeks pregnant. This was me at 34 weeks. I was 38 weeks at the time, so I was a month passed this day. Very roundly pregnant. You would also notice that I am eating ice cream, not in this picture, but on that day, because Ben and Jerry's runs a special on election day that if you come in with your eye voted sticker, you get a free cup of ice cream.

Jessica Gazzola (11:30):

And very pregnant Jessica is not missing out on a free cup of ice cream. So those are the things you would notice if you were looking at me. What you might not notice or know is that I love being pregnant. My friends know this. I talk about it all the time. There's a lot of reasons why I love being pregnant.

Jessica Gazzola (11:57):

But one of them is that I love to eat food and you're like, okay, like, you can eat food any time. You don't have to be pregnant. But you don't understand. From the time I was 12 and my mom encouraged me to go on Weight Watchers with her I had been counting points and counting calories for those 14 years until that first pregnancy.

Jessica Gazzola (12:25):

I had been very concerned about how much space I was taking up. And something shifted for me that first time I got pregnant. It says a lot about our culture, maybe, but I finally felt productive enough that I was actually making a human being that I could take up a little bit more space. But in that I rediscovered my joy, my childhood joy of eating good food.

Jessica Gazzola (12:53):

This was the moment when I stopped altogether eating I Can't Believe It's Not Butter because,  people, you can believe it's not butter and started eating real butter. And I have never gone back since. Yes, that deserves a prize. Butter people. Sorry vegans, love you.

Jessica Gazzola (13:17):

So I'm wondering if there might be some foodies. The applause tells me there's some foodies in this audience. Okay, let's just have, like, a communal experience of pleasure and joy. Like, what do you love to eat? What just makes you moan and gives you comfort and joy? 

Audience Member (13:32):

Homemade borscht. 

Jessica Gazzola (13:34):

Homemade borscht. Girlfriend, alright. To each their own.

Audience Member (13:42):

Homemade chocolate cake. 

Jessica Gazzola (13:44):

Homemade chocolate cake. 

Audience Member (13:45):

Just finished it up today. 

Jessica Gazzola (13:46):

Oh, you finished it up today. Go you.

Audience Member (13:49):

Hot pockets.

Jessica Gazzola (13:52):

Hot pockets. Dude. Yes! Blast from the past. Love those things. 

Audience Member (13:55)

Indian food. 

Jessica Gazzola (13:56):

Indian food. Oh, comfort. Yes. Crab cakes, did I hear? Crab legs. I love that. That's our New Year's tradition. Sweet. Oh my gosh, I'm kind of salivating.

Jessica Gazzola (14:00):

It's good because my mouth was dry. It's like, oh that's really great. So let's just acknowledge, you know, in this moment to be in a body can sometimes be problematic, but it can also be so damn pleasurable, right? And to this day, eating really good food is one of my great pleasures. So there I am, 26 year old, just really enjoying the heck out of my ice cream wearing my mama for Obama shirt that I bought.

Jessica Gazzola (14:40):

Yeah, it was great. Mama for Obama shirt that I bought when I was only 15 weeks and now at 38 weeks, was stretched to capacity like Obama's face was like weirdly wide? And I could feel a breeze coming up my belly where it fit over my belly anymore. Yeah, y'all. I was feeling so hopeful. I felt like I was ready to mother the shit out of this next generation.

Jessica Gazzola (15:11):

Sure, like, I knew pain was coming, this giant being needed to come out of my body somehow. But I was confident that I had been equipped by my mother to handle this pain. She told me about how she had natural childbirth. I would have natural childbirth. I watched her parent, how she just did it all, and she would just pause for a moment and take her breath.

Jessica Gazzola (15:42):

Vacuum seal in all of the annoyance and the discomfort and the pain and the hunger of the moment. And just get on getting on and that was my legacy. I knew I could do that too. But in that moment, I wasn't particularly thinking about pain at all. And I wasn't thinking about my mom either until I got a phone call and it was my dad.

Jessica Gazzola (16:11):

My parents, they lived like five hours north in the Chicago area, and we're the kind of phone talking families where it's like, you check in, you're like, how you doing? Is everybody feeling okay? You taking your vitamins? Like, how's the weather? So it was a little surprising to me when I answered the phone and my dad started with, “Hey, Jess, I am really sorry that I have to make this phone call right now, especially given your delicate condition.”

Jessica Gazzola (16:42):

I wasn't feeling particularly delicate in that moment. “We got some news today. Your mom was diagnosed with cancer. It's pancreatic cancer. A really hard one to treat. It's already at stage four. So they're giving her maybe 5 or 6 months. I'm sorry to tell you this. I know you can't come, but we didn't want to worry you. But you felt like you had to know all you have to do is take care of yourself and that baby.

Jessica Gazzola (17:36):

I actually thought about if I should warn you all about that phone call. But that's how it felt to me in the moment. It was like a lightning bolt struck my life and suddenly everything was on fire.

Jessica Gazzola (18:01):

For the next two weeks, my body was just on fire with fear. And I learned later that the seed of our fear is our kidneys. And sure enough, I thought I had a kidney infection that whole time. I kept going to the doctor and every time the tests came back negative.

Jessica Gazzola (18:22):

I was breathing and it wasn't helping. I could barely stand on two legs. I would just crawl around our apartment on all fours, just letting my heavy belly hang. I felt like a caged animal. I was caged in Saint Louis, unable to get to Chicago. I was caged in this very pregnant body. And I determined that my problem is that I'm still pregnant, and that I needed to get this baby out of me.

Jessica Gazzola (19:03):

So I did all the things. I ate spicy food. I did a ton of squats. I had really awkward sex, and I ultimately found myself on an acupuncturist’s table. And my belly at that point was so big I couldn't see my feet anymore. And so I remember craning to look up over my belly and watching the acupuncturist put needles in my feet and ankles.

Jessica Gazzola (19:32):

My first time and very surreal, and I told him about my pain, and I told him about my mom, and he said to me, “You know, there's some pain you just have to go through.”

Jessica Gazzola (19:55):

I am pretty sure I smiled and nodded, but I was thinking, that's what I'm fucking trying to do.

Jessica Gazzola (20:07):

It was November 20th, one day after my due date when the labor pains finally started. And they were such a relief. Finally productive pain. You know, contractions, they lasted only a minute, and in the beginning of labor, they had a break in between them of like 7 or 10 minutes. Something like that. And I remember being like I got this.

Jessica Gazzola (20:38):

I would feel my middle tighten and pain shoot down my hips and legs, and I would breathe.

Jessica Gazzola (20:50):

And I would come out on the other side and I was like, bring it on. And maybe it was the taunting. Maybe it's just genetics. But my labor moved rather quickly. And just a few hours later, I found myself in the hospital with contractions just like a minute or two apart and you know, getting really intense, just like consuming all of my attention.

Jessica Gazzola (21:22):

And I got a hospital gown to change into, and I looked down and I noticed that something had shifted. I somehow left the house with my work ballet flats on over the top of my fuzzy pink slipper socks. Nothing on my bottom, a really old ratty nightgown, and my formal peacoat pulled over, but not able to zip.

Jessica Gazzola (21:56):

And I realized I did not care about anything. I did not give a fuck how I looked, how I sounded, if I was being polite, if I was being a ladylike. I had this experience in each of my four childbirth experiences. I arrived at a moment like this, and every time it was a little unsettling, but also so incredibly liberating.

Jessica Gazzola (22:40):

I didn't have to make any decisions. I didn't need to cater to anybody else's expectations. I didn't have to think or care about anyone else in the room. It was just me. I was going completely out of my mind and entirely into my body.

Jessica Gazzola (23:04):

They called the stage of labor. Laborland. And it's like this alternate plane. I couldn't even comprehend the people in the room, but I hired a doula. God bless doulas. There are people that hold space for you and coach you through those really hard times and labor, and this was coming up on a hard time. Her name was Kate.

Jessica Gazzola (23:26):

She was awesome, and I didn't hear or know anyone in the room, but I heard Kate in my ear saying to me, “breathe, Jess. Breathe. Don't hold your breath. Breathe.” And this part is rather hard for me to explain, but it feels very real to me. In that alternate plane, I didn't feel alone. Breathe, Jess. Breathe. It felt like my mom was there.

Jessica Gazzola (24:06):

Her mom was there. All the moms were there. Somehow the 300,000 other humans giving birth in that moment, we were breathing together. Breathe, Jess. Breathe.

Jessica Gazzola (24:24):

But my breath was changing. This is not a breath that could control or contain. This was a breath that was stoking the fire. Have you ever had embers and you were trying to stoke a fire? What is that breath like? 

Jessica Gazzola (24:47):

And Kate would say, breathe but soften. Can you breathe and also soften your body?

Jessica Gazzola (24:59):

And that very last stage of labor is called the ring of fire. No joke. And I knew that I was getting closer and closer to that because it felt like my body was disintegrating. It felt like my limbs were coming apart, that I was coming to the edge of some place that I wasn't sure if I was coming back from.

Jessica Gazzola (25:20):

And it was in that place that something shifted unconsciously. My body just suddenly started to push, and this seemed like a really bad idea. Impossible, improbable that I could push this being through the fire. This is not going to work out well for anyone. And yet, with one giant push, the fire was extinguished with a great gush of water.

Jessica Gazzola (25:58):

And Finn Michael Rowley was born at 8:30 p.m. on November 20th, 8 pounds, 11oz, 21 inches long.

Jessica Gazzola (26:16):

Oh yeah.

Jessica Gazzola (26:20):

Firey business. Man, you feel so hollowed out. Finn was born at night. I didn't sleep a wink that night. My body was so full of adrenaline and I only held him. I remember all I did was hold him all night. And I thought, umm, now what? Who's going to tell me what to do now? You know, maybe you have that experience of being a first time parent.

Jessica Gazzola (26:57):

Maybe not. But have you ever been handed a small human and you were like, now what, the heck? I'm a parent of teenagers and I still am with them sometimes I'm thinking, what am I supposed to do with you? And so I asked the nurse, is it okay that I'm holding my baby? And she's like, yeah, it's good to hold your baby.

Jessica Gazzola (27:26):

And I was so relieved because putting him just four feet away in that bassinet just felt like way too much separation.

Jessica Gazzola (27:38):

And the dawn came up on my first day of being a mom, and it did not feel like anything I thought it would feel like.

Jessica Gazzola (27:52):

Because with that dawn came the realization that now that Finn was born, I needed to turn my attention to another fire. It was time to go see my mom. But there was a moment that morning when the waning November sun hit Finn's face just so perfectly. It was so peaceful and beautiful, and I want to put a pin here, because this seems to happen when I go back and I look at these periods in my life that felt like such desolation. There's always like this little moment of startling beauty.

Jessica Gazzola (28:46):

I don't know what that is. It's like a message or something. Life is going to go on.

Jessica Gazzola (28:57):

I have great compassion for this younger version of me that had to go from one very hollowing out experience to another. We were lucky though, and we were able to travel just a few days after Finn was born up to see my mom and, she was in treatment, but she was just like already a shell of herself, and I was able to snap one picture of her with her grandchild.

Jessica Gazzola (29:28):

My dad, I don't think he likes this picture very much. And I understand, like, it's a hard picture because it doesn't look like her. She's not smiling. But I became really obsessed with this picture. Something about the intensity in her eyes. It's like she couldn't pretend anymore that everything was going to be okay. There were things that she just didn't care so much about anymore.

Jessica Gazzola (30:08):

She was slowly moving out of her mind, getting ready to make her own transition. And, you know, I kind of recognized it.

Jessica Gazzola (30:24):

We returned back to Saint Louis. But it was only, a couple weeks later, it was mid-December, when we got the call that we needed to come home, that my mom was actively dying. We did not have five months. We had five weeks from the time she was diagnosed. We drove through a snowstorm. I was so grateful for my Wisconsin born husband to get us through the snow, and we had to stop a lot so I could nurse in truck stops.

Jessica Gazzola (30:58):

So we didn't arrive at the house until after dark. And we entered the house and it was really, really still, just too still. And we were brought into this room, this front room that had become my mom's hospice room.

Jessica Gazzola (31:20):

She was on a lot of morphine, and I don't think she was very aware of the people in the room at all anymore. But she was talking to someone. My dad told me that at one point she reported a child in rainbow suspenders, and it made me wonder, like, who was there to support her right in that moment of burning?

Jessica Gazzola (31:52):

Her body was so definitely on fire. I could see it in her breath. It was changing, oscillating between trying to control it and just softening into it.

Jessica Gazzola (32:12):

The next morning, I was nursing Finn in an adjacent room and my dad poked his head in and he said, Jess, she's gone.

Jessica Gazzola (32:27):

I walked down the hallway. The snowstorm had stopped and there was a blanket of fresh white snow on the lawn, and the morning sun was reflecting off of that snow into this giant east facing window.

Jessica Gazzola (32:51):

And I walked into that room and it was like from a movie. The room was awash with golden light. And I approached my mom's body. And she was glowing. She was so beautiful.

Jessica Gazzola (33:19):

She was more still than I had ever seen her, but so peaceful. And here it is again. Before the grief and the anger could set in, I had this moment where I could just be happy that she didn't have to breathe through the pain anymore.

Jessica Gazzola (33:53):

Judith Mary Kosciusko Gazzola died on December 12th, 2008. She was 54 years old.

Jessica Gazzola (34:05):

If there's anything I can glean from these experiences side by side is that we enter this world through fire, and we leave this world to fire.

Jessica Gazzola (34:28):

In life, my mom's body was a little bit bigger than mine, but my postpartum body fit her clothes perfectly. And I ended up raiding her closet to find clothes for her funeral. And that prompted me to just bring as many clothes of hers as I could possibly manage back to Saint Louis with me. And for months I only wore my maternity clothes and my mom's clothes.

Jessica Gazzola (35:02):

It’s a little bit like putting on a mantle. It is like a mantle that I didn't feel ready for. I didn't want to do without her. I still felt so much like a child playing dress up, wondering who's going to take care of me now.

Jessica Gazzola (35:25):

I returned to Saint Louis and my life was just unrecognizable. It was like an alien terrain, like desolate. Like one of those landscapes you might drive through if you go out west and you've gone through a forest that's been burned.

Jessica Gazzola (35:49):

It reminds me of this law of physics that we all learned in grade school, that matter is neither created nor destroyed, but it never made sense to me, this was physics, when it came to fire. Like, how does this thing that is strong and solid go through fire and become ash? This thing that can blow away on the wind?

Jessica Gazzola (36:17):

How is that the same thing? How is that not destruction? And that's how I felt my body, my life. It felt like ash. I would just sit in the rocking chair, nursing Finn, hour after hour, day after day. All the softness seeming to get sucked out of me. I remember being afraid of the night like an anxiety would like come over me when the sun went down.

Jessica Gazzola (36:53):

Partly because I knew I wouldn't sleep very much, newborns, but also it was like this existential dread that somehow the dawn wouldn't come again. And man, I spent so much energy trying to contain all of the big feelings that were threatening to take me over. I felt like I could not get set on fire again. I was a mother now.

Jessica Gazzola (37:22):

There was not that much left of me. I could not burn right now. My child needs me. And so I really worked hard to become fireproof.

Jessica Gazzola (37:37):

Man, these places of being ash, they can feel so lonely and so isolating. But since that time, I've learned that being ash, this experience is incredibly universal. I mean, I would venture to guess all of us here can think of a time when life just felt kind of desolate. Maybe it's just for a day, or maybe it was for a longer.

Jessica Gazzola (38:11):

But I think these are significant moments in our life that I don't want to put a bell or a bow on. Like, these suck, but we all have them. You have a notebook, no a note, a piece of paper, index card, that's what it's called, and a pen in your folder. And we're just going to slow down here like catch up with ourselves.

Jessica Gazzola (38:40):

But. I'm just going to invite you to write words, sentences, phrases, draw a picture, whatever of a moment in your life when you felt like ash. No one's going to see this. No one's going to read it. You don't have to share it. This is just for you. But we're going to take two minutes and I'll keep time.

Jessica Gazzola (39:05):

And when you if you're done writing, you can look up at me just so that I know that you're done. But go ahead. Begin.

Jessica Gazzola (39:38):

I have great respect for this period of being ash. And during this process of preparing for this Campfire, I just wrote countless pages on what that meant and felt like for me. And as a way of closing this chapter for me of really intense remembering, this weekend I'm planning to have a campfire.

Jessica Gazzola (40:03):

Not like this. Like an actual fire in my yard. And I plan to burn those pages. You can do whatever you feel is right with the page that you just wrote. You can take it home. Maybe it would feel right for you to burn it or reflect on it more later, but I'm just going to offer an invitation that if you would like to contribute your paper to my papers, that this weekend, I will burn them all together and for at least a little bit we’ll be ash together.

Jessica Gazzola (40:44):

Completely optional. If you would like that, you can fold up your paper. I will not read them. I will just be offering them to the fire and you can hold your folded paper up in the air, and our Campfire staff will collect them. Thank you.

Jessica Gazzola (41:03):

So the thing about being ash is it lasts as long as it lasts. There's no rushing it, hurrying it along. And it lasted for me through the winter and into the spring. And then a couple things shifted for me in the spring. And they were actually really, really practical things. Like Finn was finally old enough to eat solid foods, and so I could leave him for longer than an hour without feeling like he would starve.

Jessica Gazzola (41:43):

That was helpful. I had friends who helped take care of me, who made sure I ate and took showers and got some work in. And I just felt that I had reached some kind of capacity, some kind of threshold with all of these feelings, because they were starting to make me sick to keep them in. I would get stomach aches and headaches.

Jessica Gazzola (42:11):

And so on a sunny April day, I went to my very first grief counseling appointment with Beth, and I was so scared because I was sure that I was just willingly placing myself back into the flames. But what I got instead was incredible, torrential rain.

Jessica Gazzola (42:43):

A dam broke on that first session and I felt like I would never stop crying again. I went to go see Beth every week for a good long time, and there were sessions that I did not say a word. I just cried and she would say things to me like, your tears don't scare me. Your snot does not gross me out.

Jessica Gazzola (43:14):

You are doing exactly what you need to do. It's okay. Become a puddle. And those sessions, phew, they would wash me out. I would feel so exhausted. But over time, all of that rain slowly started to clear the air to, like, settle the dust. And I could look around and be like, oh, like there's space. 

Jessica Gazzola (43:49):

The ground slowly learned how to accept the water and not feel so washed out all the time. And there was a moment, I did not recognize it at the time, but I look back and I see it as a significant moment where it was a day I went into my closet and I took out every single piece of my mom's clothes, and I tried them all on.

Jessica Gazzola (44:15):

I would put a piece on and I would look in the mirror and I would cry because my body had changed a lot in the five months since I had given birth. And they didn't fit anymore. And I would cry and I would take it off, and I'd fold it up and put it in a bag to donate.

Jessica Gazzola (44:37):

And I did that with every single piece. And I see that now as this kind of ritual of honoring my mom and also letting her go a little. Of being able to say, okay, I think I'm ready now to begin to grow my own life, and maybe it's okay that it doesn't look like hers. Maybe it's okay that my mothering doesn't look like hers.

Jessica Gazzola (45:13):

Shortly thereafter, I went shopping so that I could get clothes for work, and I bought this piece that I really loved. It was a blazer and it was purple and pink tweed blazer. Like, I think it was kind of in fashion in the early 2000s, but I don't know. I'm not really a fashionist, but I love this thing. It was so colorful and I remember wearing it to work for the first time, and my coworker Frank saying, looke at you, coming back to color, coming back to life.

Jessica Gazzola (45:52):

It was a start. 16 years later, and I feel like I'm still figuring out how I'm coming back to life. Last month, on September 10th, that would have been my mom's 70th birthday and I just happened to be on retreat working on this Campfire. And on that day again, I felt this cycle of fire and breath and ash and water move through me.

Jessica Gazzola (46:32):

But it wasn't so scary. It's not so scary to me anymore. It's just a part of my ordinary cycle of grieving my mom. I don't think it's ever going to end. It just changes.

Jessica Gazzola (46:50):

Impossibly, Finn is going to be 16 next month, and that child and the three children who have come through my fire since then, they remind me constantly of the big changes, big emotions, chaos, wonder, awe, beauty constantly that remind me of the wonder of this life that we grow. And there's been a lot of burning in my life these last 16 years, and some by choice.

Jessica Gazzola (47:33):

I left a marriage. And out of the ashes of that came a beautiful blended family I would not trade for the world. I left a career to find a path that felt greener and more true to me.

Jessica Gazzola (47:51):

I think I'm learning that fire is not always the enemy. Now, when I feel it come on, will I try to control it? Hell yes. Every single time. That will always be my natural reaction. But does my body know a better way? It does. I'd like to invite the campfire staff up to come up and begin to hand out a little gift that I have for you to commemorate this evening, for you to take home.

Jessica Gazzola (48:26):

These are wood rounds that over the weekend, I burned with our season question. What does the body know?, wiith my new, very favorite crafting tool, a branding iron. Super badass. I already had one person borrow it. It's so cool.

Jessica Gazzola (48:52):

And as you receive these wood rounds, I just invite you to, like, hold them in your hands and feel the texture. Feel their weight. And, I don't know, I like to smell wood. Maybe you want to give it a little sniff. I think wood smells good, Steven thinks wood smells good.

Jessica Gazzola (49:17):

It's kind of incredible to think that the matter that made up the tree had to go through countless cycles of fire, of birth, and death over and over again until it could become this solid thing that's in our hands right now. Like how awesome, and how ordinary.

Jessica Gazzola (49:54):

There was one day, just a couple of years ago, when it was like one of those really special days. It was before the pandemic, and all of the children were occupied with other parents, and I had the whole day to myself. And I decided I was going to go hiking at Shaw Nature Reserve. And it was a beautiful early spring day. The colors were vibrant and the air was fresh.

Jessica Gazzola (50:23):

I hiked along this woodland path and there were these little woodland irises that were like clothed in purple, and they looked like little fairies. And I felt just that one with the nature spirits. I was just tasting the air. It just tasted good. I felt so alive. I felt so grateful for all of it. All of it. The pain and the pleasure.

Jessica Gazzola (50:52):

All of it so alive in my body. Do you know what that feels like? Have you ever had a moment where you felt so alive in your body?

Jessica Gazzola (51:08):

That life was just like, you felt connected, it was oozzing out of you? I see some nods, y'all. If you have a moment or you were feeling this with me, help me describe in a word or phrase what did that feel like in your body? Just shout it out.

Jessica Gazzola (51:31):

Weightless. Good word. No thought. Connection. Yes. Awe. Yes, Lizzie's doing it. We're going to breathe into these feelings.

Jessica Gazzola (51:54):

Because this is a really cool trick I learned. You don't have to use the breath just to stoke fire. You get to use the breath to stoke the good things. Awe, weightlessness, joy. Yes.

Jessica Gazzola (52:18):

I was walking and hiking in Shaw Nature Reserve and I went to this Lower Woodland trail. And the previous season it had undergone a controlled burn. And that is where I saw her.

Jessica Gazzola (52:38):

She was a tree that had been burned. You could see where the flames had licked up her trunk. She was completely hollowed out. I could stand inside of her and feel the char. But when I stepped back and I looked up at her crown it was full of fresh, lush green leaves. Y'all, she was burned and she's alive.

Jessica Gazzola (53:19):

Thank you.

Steven Harowitz (53:30):

That is a wrap. Make sure you’re notified when our next episodes hit the airwaves 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 and it really does support the storytellers. Hey, we’d love to have you come out to an event or take a class. Visit cmpfr.com for all the details. 

Steven Harowitz (53:59):

Our live events and these episodes are all ad and sponsor free. We can only do that because of the folks who take our public classes and the organizational clients we get to work with. If you or an organization that you work with are interested in learning storytelling, please reach out. Visit cmpfr.com for all the details. As always, a huge thank you to the Campfire team, everybody who attends our live events, and of course our storytellers. Thank you for listening to the Campfire Storytelling Podcast. I’ve been your host, Steven Harowitz. Until next time.