Along The Seam, Season 2
Micaela Blei
INTRO:
Hey Everyone. This is Rachael Cerrotti and welcome back to Along The Seam. This is the first episode of the second season and I’m so excited to kick it off with Micaela Blei. Micaela is a heartfelt and hilarious storyteller who happens to live just down the street from me here in Maine.
A quick housekeeping note though, for those of you who joined me for the first season, you may have noticed that there has been a name change for this podcast. The Memory Generation has become Along The Seam. There is also a newsletter now and you can find a link to that right on our website and in the show notes.
But, back to our guest - Micaela Blei. Micaela has been teaching, studying and performing true, personal storytelling worldwide since 2012. She is a two-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and former founding Director of Education at The Moth. She is a senior story editor and writer for the podcast network Wondery. And, currently she’s the visiting professor of Storytelling at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies here in Portland, Maine.
In this conversation, Micaela shares how she accidentally found herself on stage at The Moth and basically redirected her professional path as a result. We talk about mining our own lives for stories and how sharing the small moments in life can lead to the deepest connections. And also, because it's me and I love family history, we talk about her vivacious grandmother who she fondly referred to as “a dish” and a real flirt. Micaela and I recorded this conversation on January 5, 2024 on Zoom.
CONVERSATION
Rachael: Micaela, thanks for spending some time with me today. It’s so nice to see you.
Micaela: Yeah. It's nice to see you. It's an honor to be here.
Rachael: So, off the bat, you're a fellow Mainer. We literally live like a stone's throw from one another.
Micaela: I mean, depending on how good someone's arm was, they could actually probably throw a stone between your house and my house. We live a total of two blocks away from each other.
Rachael: Yeah, I think like a very well practiced high school baseball player.
Micaela: [laughter] Varsity. A varsity high school baseball player.
Rachael: Definitely. dDefinitely. They need some training. Some training.
Micaela: Yeah.
Rachael: But also like me, you did not grow up here. And Maine is very much one of those places that kind of categorizes people on if you're here or you're from somewhere else. People of mixed opinions whether it's good or bad. I can be swayed either way. But I put down roots here a little over three years ago and you came a bit more recently than that.
Micaela: Yep. I've been here for two years and change.
Rachael: So we're going to work backwards in your personal history a bit. So let's go like right before Maine. What brought you here? And what was your life like before you ended up in this wonderful, wonderful state?
Micaela: So before I showed up with a moving truck, I had only been here once for a weekend in 2017. So I didn't even see the apartment I was renting before I arrived with all of my stuff. That wasn't by choice. Something came up that I couldn't come and visit, but I said, I'll take the leap anyway. So I was living for - the year before I got her - I was living in a barn. Like an apartment inside of an 18th century barn in upstate New York at the base of a mountain. It was very romantic. People with children are very jealous when I tell them about this year. For me, it was quite isolated and lonely in a lot of ways. But when people with, like, a lot of family responsibility hear about it, they all react the same way, which is that must have been incredible. Which, to be fair, there was a lot about it that was very, very beautiful and very wonderful. But, yeah, I was living in upstate New York - in Kingston, New York, for about a year. And before that I had lived in New York City for 20 years. Same block in New York for 17 of those years in Brooklyn.
Rachael: 20 years. This is like a major change for you.
Micaela: Yeah.
Rachael: Right now.
Micaela: Yeah. No, I lived my entire adult life in New York City. And then in June of 2020, I moved to this barn and then a year later, I was in Portland.
Rachael: You like it?
Micaela: Yeah, I love it. I think that I have actually to work through a little bit of regret that I didn't do this sooner. I think that I was ready to leave New York sooner than I left it. But leaving New York, there is a fair amount of escape velocity that you need to get out of New York, especially if you're a lifelong New Yorker, as I was, or like, adult lifelong New Yorker as I was. It takes a lot to leave. And so I was thinking about it and ready for it for a few years before I actually left. And I kind of wish I had come here a little sooner. I really love this pace. I really love the people here. It just makes a lot more sense for me.
Rachael: I agree, I feel like both I came right on time and also had been thinking about it for so long.
Micaela: Totally.
Rachael: And so before you moved here, and now that you live here, you've had a very immersive career as a storyteller. So that's where we're going to spend most of our time today and we're going to jump around different parts of your own personal storytelling, as well as all the teaching and studying and performing that you've done.
Micaela: Yeah
Rachael: So to, like, give a brief little rundown: you've twice won the Moth Grand Slam, which I think is very, very cool.
Micaela: Thank You
Rachael: You worked with The Moth as a founding director of education, which I also find fascinating and we're going to get to that a little bit later in the conversation. But before that, I would love to hear about how you came into performing live storytelling and maybe just share with folks what that means. I'm familiar with The Moth. I'm sure many people who listen to podcasts do, but also a lot of people don't. So just school us on what is live true storytelling.
Micaela: Yeah. So, storytelling performance was certainly not invented by The Moth, right. That's been happening for the whole of human history. But this idea of sort of nightlife, short form personal storytelling was popularized and made very sort of prevalent by The moth and similar organizations like The Moth. And what they do is they have open mic nights. They have a couple of different ways that they do storytelling shows, but they have open mic competitions that are modeled a little bit on poetry slams, but they're story slams, and people have five minutes to tell a true personal story, and they get scored by judges. Ten winners of ten of those slams go on to a Grand Slam so that they go head to head. And these happen in cities all over the world actually now. They started in New York. And There's also main stages, which are curated shows that they cast from all kinds of people. And, you know, sometimes those are celebrities, sometimes those are writers. And those are longer and they tour with those shows. And so there's a couple different ways. And then what happens is a lot of people have listened to The Moth on the radio or on the podcast, and all of the stories that are on the radio and podcast were originally recorded in a live show of the kind that I just described. So I first went to a live storytelling show in 2011. I had been a third grade teacher for almost a decade, and then I left to go to grad school to get my doctorate in education. And going to grad school meant I could finally stay up late on a weeknight. Because when you teach third grade, you have to go to bed at like 9:30 because you're going to get up because you have to be at school at 7:30 a.m. So I could finally stay up kind of late, which was very exciting for me. And my friend took me to a storytelling show on a weeknight and I'd never been to one. I hadn't really even heard of The Moth at that point. I think I'd heard of it once or twice. And she was going to put her name in the hat for this. It was one of the open mics. She was going to put her name in the hat. She wanted me to support her and put my name in the hat. I was not ready with a story, but I saw this huge crowd coming to this show. I mean, especially in New York, the lines are around the block. It's 250 people packed into a venue. And I figured, what are the chances I'm going to get my name pulled? I knew there were ten people that get out. So I put my name in just to support her. And what I didn't realize is that all 250 of those people don't actually put their name in the hat to tell a story. It's as few as ten to get ten people out of the hat. So I got called first. I got on stage before I had ever seen or heard a Moth story, and I had kind of an idea of what I wanted to tell, but it was very much like as though someone at a cocktail party had said, Micaela, tell that story, right? Like that's as much preparation as I had. It was both terrifying, but it was also this really strange – oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This makes so much sense to me. And there was something about the fact that they were going to ring a bell at five minutes. I knew I wasn't going to talk too much. There was something about having been a teacher for that long, so I was really used to teaching to the bell. So I know how to sort of time myself. And also just really used to talking to people who are all sitting and looking at me without feeling like I'm doing a monologue. And,it just felt very connected and very authentic to me, honestly. And it wasn't a very good story, but I got like a couple of laughs and people talked to me afterwards, and it was really exhilarating. And I kind of got hooked after that. And I started going to these nights a lot. And there was a little community at that time of people who all sort of went all the time and got to be really good friends with people and eventually started teaching with The Moth and then ultimately designed their education program with my friend Kathryn. So that was sort of my trajectory from never having done it to sort of running the education show, I think, by a year and a half later.
Rachael: Very quick.
Micaela: It’s pretty quick. It was pretty quick. I’ve really figured out pretty quickly that this made a lot of sense to me. And I had such a background in education. I mean, I changed my research topic, for my PhD to be about storytelling. I got really, really, both enamored and also in a healthy way, critical of the ways that storytelling is everywhere and how that creates community and connection and all these pieces. And so I changed my research topic for my dissertation. And so I ended up getting my PhD in education, but focused on personal narrative performance on storytelling.
Rachael: I remember the first time that we met, somebody had introduced us, I think, around a bonfire over the summer. And when you told me the topic of your dissertation, I remember just staring at you being like, I just really want to be your friend. Anybody who’s – [laughter] - anybody's going to spend that much time on that. I just want to nerd out with on a very casual basis regularly.
Micaela: I appreciate that.
Rachael: And I think that healthy criticism that comes from studying it is very, very important.
Micaela: Yeah. I was in school for it. I was doing my research and writing my dissertation at the same time that I was full time running the program at The Moth. That was a lot of work. And I really – I would not be able to do that at this point. I sort of look back at baby Blei and I - I have a lot of feelings for her and what she thought she had to do. But doing those both at the same time really informed each other in a really great way, I think. Because I was able to be critical of it in my research and in my reading and in the interviews, in the work that I was doing. So that I was bringing a healthy skepticism to the work that I was doing in the org. And then I was bringing a really practical experience of it to my research. So I wasn't just reading about it. I was seeing what happens when a 16-year-old is trying to figure out what story to tell. Or what happens when a teacher tries to get her students to tell their traumatic stories, and why that's maybe not a good way to frame it. I was on the ground doing this stuff in conversation with people at the same time that I was thinking about the theory. And I think it made both practices richer.
Rachael: So, let's dig into that - to the idea of true storytelling. It's something that we're all doing every day, you know, in every conversation we have, usually with each other. And so when we start to dig into that stuff, right, we go back in time. We think about the experiences we've had. Our senses play a really important part in that storytelling. Like, what did things smell like? What did we see? What clothes we were wearing. What textures we remember. And then when you start curating those experiences, you add this narrative structure and I've heard you talk about this as, like, mining your own story. And I'm wondering if you could expand on this because you've taught so many students from young third graders through adult education spaces. I'm wondering what you've experienced from a practical space of people mining their own stories. What do people struggle with in this process? And how do people succeed in doing that in a healthy, safe and also a community driven way as well.
Micaela: It's a great question. I think that my big soapbox - I have a couple of them that I sort of hop from soapbox to soapbox sometimes. But in terms of this, how do you mine your life for a story? A big job that I have when I first meet a group of storytellers or first time storytellers, or am working with any kind of a group that's figuring out what they want to tell or who they want to tell to, is undoing a lot of pretty damaging assumptions that we have about what is a story worth telling. And I think that media, specifically personal narrative media - reality TV and podcasts like The Moth - there is a beauty and a danger to seeing people's most sensational stories. Because we end up thinking that we have to earn the attention of someone else with our most sensational story. Either our best day or our worst day. That we owe it to people, that that's the rent we pay for their attention. And it's not true. It's not – that's not how human connection works. That's how entertainment works. But that's not how human connection works. And so one of the things that I hear most commonly from new storytellers is, well nothing's ever happened to me. Like, I don't know what I would tell about because nothing interesting has ever happened to me. Number one that's actually objectively not true. But number two, what you think is your most interesting thing is not necessarily the thing that's going to connect you to the people listening to you. It's not necessarily going to be the thing that creates that thread and that bond. And it's also not necessarily the story that you want to tell. I feel really strongly that telling a story should not just serve the audience, but the teller. That it should be a nourishing and interesting and reflective and illuminating experience for the person sharing the story that by telling our stories, we learn new things about ourselves. We construct. I think that we don't only discover our identities through story, but we construct our identities through story. That by telling ourselves stories, we are able to be braver and kinder and more connected. And so when we are thinking about what story do I want to tell? The first question is, well who am I talking to? What do I want to talk about? Like what sounds fun? And are there any open questions that I've been noodling on, that I'd like to sort of take that opportunity to remember and experience that can help me with that. And framing it that way and coming at it from who am I and what do I want to connect over, rather than what's the craziest thing that ever happened to you, can really shift what does it even mean to mine our life for stories? One of my friends who is an incredible story teller, Adam Wade, tells a story about waiting in line at the deli to order a sandwich. That is the action of the story. That is the entire story. And it is all his internal monologue and how he's handling his social anxiety about these ladies who are ordering in front of him and what's gonna, right? And we get to know him so, so well. And all he did was order a frickin sandwich.
Rachael: It's like a [laughter] it's – sorry to interrupt you
Micaela: No, go for it.
Rachael: to interrupt you. It sounds like a Seinfeld episode.
Micaela: Yeah, but Seinfeld was one of the most popular television shows in history, right? There's a time and a place for that. And there's a time and a place for, you know, clawing with your fingernails at the edge of the cliff. And I think that that can really reassure people. But under that for me is a value that I hold very dear, which is we don't owe anyone our trauma. We don't owe anyone the story that they assume of us. We get to choose it. And we want to know the person in front of us in all of their ways and that that in itself is exciting and interesting and worthwhile beyond holy shit, I can't believe that happened to you.
Rachael: It's very easy to get caught up in that cycle of the story I'm going to tell is the thing that's deepest and darkest because you almost think that that's going to create this increased or expedited form of intimacy.
Micaela: Right. The other danger of feeling responsible to share your trauma or feeling responsible to share your worst day or whatever, however you want to call it, or however you want to talk about it, is that you might not be ready to do so. And if you do that, you're doing a disservice to yourself and your own health, but also to the audience who then is left to process it for you. Like if you've ever heard a story that left you feeling exhausted and you don't know why, sometimes it's because they don't know what it means yet. They haven't figured it out. So your brain, your kind, empathetic human brain is doing all the processing and working as hard as you can. And then you're like, god, I need a nap. Like, why do I need a nap?
Rachael: One of the things that I'm really interested in, is how our own personal narratives change with time. So if we're talking about process versus unprocessed trauma, sometimes and this is my case, actually telling the story was part of my process of working through the trauma.
Micaela: Absolutely
Rachael: So some people were in the audience of that. And my big dramatic example is that I was widowed when I was 27. And I was doing a lot of personal storytelling about myself. But also I had started a documentary project about young widowhood and I had shared in articles and I shared on Instagram. And recently I've been doing this activity where I've been taking stock of my own archive. Where I've been going back into cell phone photos and into writings and when I go back to that place, which is now more than seven years ago, and in those early years of like, really deep grief, it's weird and kind of hard to read what I wrote, to see the pictures I took of myself and to see, like, what I shared publicly. And it's been just this really interesting tension inside of myself to be like, no, but this was like my deep, deep truth then. But it's not really a truth that I relate to now, which I find kind of exciting to examine, but on an emotional level is like pretty uncomfortable. So when we get to that mining space, I'm wondering like what your thoughts are on how we pick and choose which truth we're going for? Like Do I tell the truth as it felt seven years ago, or do I update it to where I'm at today and how to do that responsibly and truthfully.
Micaela: Oh. That's interesting. So just to make sure I understand what you're saying. If I'm telling a story about my grief seven years ago. Am I supposed to get into character as a 27-year-old and tell it as a current truth, as a 27-year-old, even though I'm 34?
Rachael: I think less as get into a character and more of – like when you go back and listen to some of the stories that you told in your early years of storytelling with The Moth. What is your feeling on how truthful they feel to you? Have you grown so much that they feel uncomfortable to watch? You're questioning why you felt that way, or do you still feel like it's authentic to you today? I can try to rephrase that more comfortably.
Micaela: No no no, it makes perfect sense to me. But I think that the premise of the question is the thing that I would challenge. Which is, the premise of the question is presuming that there is some objective way that that really felt or meant and how accurate at any moment is my reaction, right? And I would press on that and I would say how I told that story then was exactly how I felt and how I feel about it now is really different. And both of those things are true. And if I were to tell a story now about that, I would tell a different story. And if I were to tell a story about telling that story back then, I would acknowledge this is how I felt then. This is how I feel now. There's an amazing phrase that my friend Jason uses called emotional time stamping. You know how a library book gets a date stamp when you take it out like the thu-thunk of today's date and you can take out a library book and you can look at all the different dates that someone read that book. That's how I see our stories. That at any given point, we're taking out this experience and examining it, and this is the date that we're doing it. And this is the person who's looking at it, this person, right now. But I'm going to put it away. I'm going to take it back out in five years. I'm going to be reading it differently. This amazing thing happened to me. In college, my senior essay, my final thesis, was on Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. And Pale Fire is this very heady, super intellectual, very postmodern. - this was the 90s when I was in college - very postmodern book. It's a poem by an imaginary poet. And then a critic's notes, also fictional, notes on this poem, but it's like a murder mystery. It's really amazing, really fun. And I, when I was a senior in college, was like, this is incredible and in my thesis said - the poem is not the point. The point is the critic. The point is the reader, you know, all this kind of stuff. I got really, really into it. I covered my apartment in index cards. And 20 years later, I picked up my same copy of Pale Fire, which my parents had kept because that's how they are, and I reread it. I had not read this book in 20 years. The last time I read it, I was 21 years old. The poem is the point. This poem is this absolutely heartbreaking poem about loss, about this poet who has lost his son. It's incredible. I missed it completely. I read a different book at 41 than I was reading at 21, even though it was the same physical object in my hands. And I literally feel that way about stories. And I don't think that at 21, I was wrong. I think that that's the meaning that I made at 21. And I don't think that at 41, suddenly I figured out the truth. I think that's the meaning I was making at 41, thinking about loss. So we color our stories, our current selves, color our stories. And so to try to figure out what something really means would paralyze me because it would change constantly.
Rachael: I think where it gets a little tricky is when it all gets published.
Micaela: Yes
Rachael: and then lives on the internet in perpetuity.
Micaela: Absolutely. I feel very real fear about this right now because I am about to record a memoir. And -
Rachael: Which is very exciting.
Micaela: Which is very exciting and very terrifying for exactly this reason. And in fact, one of the really challenging things about this memoir was that it was a long development process. And I changed over the development process, like the book that I pitched was different than the book that I wrote. And as I was writing it, as time was passing, I was changing as a person. And so my story was changing. So, really internalizing the idea that a recording is a snapshot of you at that moment is very challenging to do. That is really hard.
Rachael: There is a part of me that really loves to see the trajectory.
Micael: Yeah
Rachael: There's the narrative arc.
Micaela: Absolutely
Rachael: It's beautiful to see like, oh, that's what I thought then. Look how much I've grown. It's some measurement for yourself. So I don't think it's a negative thing. I think it's a, maybe a little bit of an unnatural thing though. This generation we're living in now is like kind of the first to be time stamped like that publicly.
Micaela: Yeah, that's true. I don't know exactly where you land in terms of generation versus technology, but I am one of the last whose college experience was largely undocumented. Like we didn't have digital cameras.
Rachael: You’re so lucky.
Micaela: Well, I know. I agree. I'm 45, turning 46. I'm what they call an xenial. We were the generation that had just started to get email in college. High school was passing notes, calling someone's house to ask to talk to them and I think I am very of my generation that I romanticize this so badly. Like, I'm insufferable about it, but in a lot of ways, I think this is why. Because realizing that my memories and my journals are what there are of my childhood and my young adulthood, and that I'm in control of those is a really different feeling.
Rachael: Now that you've aged yourself for us.
Micaela: I have identified my allegiances.
Rachael: Let's go back in time a little bit more. And this is a question that's going to kind of ebb in time. So very, very good for what we just chatted about. When you and I first met, we very quickly realized that both of our grandmothers were Czech Holocaust survivors. And it just came to the surface very quickly.
Micaela: Yeah
Rachael: As it does when you meet another grandchild having that history in their family. I started doing a deep dive on all your stories in preparation for this conversation, which, by the way, I spent like a full afternoon just listening to your voice and puzzling. And it was like a very joyful time and I really, really enjoyed that.
Micaela: I love that.
Rachael: Yeah.
Micaela: Oh my God, I love that.
Rachael: So, I like listened to some stuff. And then I get to this story that you made about your grandmother and I just, like, wasn't really prepared for what I was going to hear. And I do think - I have a hard time admitting this out loud because I worked with my grandmother's story for now a decade and a half, and I've worked very deeply in the field of Holocaust education - I really don't like listening to Holocaust stories. Um, I have a really hard time with them. Either I find myself being a little bit too critical, or I just get exhausted. Like I –
Micaela: Yup
Rachael: I burned out really hard on them a couple years ago and just have not really recovered. So I tend to go into them thinking I know how I'm going to feel, which is not the right thing, but you know, that's what's happening inside my body when I start hearing them too much now. And I started listening to your story and it was so not what I expected in terms of my emotional response.
Micaela: Hmm
Rachael: And we just spoke about how stories hit you at different times in your life differently. When did you produce this story? How long ago?
Micaela: I think that must have been 5 or 6 years ago.
Rachael: And for a podcast called Family Ghosts
Micaela: Correct
Rachael: And it was about a 45 minute narrative piece.
Micaela: Yup
Rachael: And you talk about your grandmother who was just, like, incredibly,kind of vivacious, very put together woman who lived in LA and just always had her lipstick on with the right color and her hair done right and just sort of had this like, I want to say sex appeal. But I never met her. Would that be fair?
Micaela: How I would describe her is, she was a dish.
Rachael: Amazing. She was a dish.
Micaela: She was a real flirt.
Rachael: Wonderful.
Micaela: Yeah.
Rachael: And you tell her story and you bring me to that place. And then you talk a little bit about her experience during the war, which included – the word awful doesn't work. It's way worse that.
Micaela: Harrowing.
Rachael: You tell about her experience giving birth in Auschwitz, which is just like one of the more unbelievable stories that you hear of how any woman could hide a pregnancy under those conditions, carry it to term. And then you talk about her having this baby which didn't survive and how the baby didn't survive is kind of unknown. So that's lingering in the air for your whole family, generations on. And then you very gently, as a good educator does as a good storyteller, take us out of that trauma place and bring us back to the vivaciousness of your relationship with your grandmother. And you eventually get to the question about having kids yourself. And maybe that's why this story just hit me so hard. I'm in my mid 30s. I feel like every conversation I have with women of my age group, this is a big question because biology is demanding it of us. And so, one I just wanted to say thank you for the story because sometimes I've lost some of my emotion about working with my own grandmother’s story because it's just been so many retellings over so many years. And my grandmother also had this, like, fiery hotness to her that was like, just like crazy and fun. And this, like, very vivacious woman. But I've been so stuck in her story of survival for years that I touch on that vivaciousness as part of the story, but I sometimes don't feel it. And your story helped me feel it for myself and I really appreciated that. And so can you tell me about the process of making that. How it felt to hear it published and out there and shared with the world? How do you feel about it now, this many years later? Are those questions you were asking yourself back then about having a child. Does that still hit you in the same emotional place as it did then? So, thank you for the story. I really, really loved it. And choose your own adventure of an answer.
Micaela: Thank you. I really appreciate that and I'm glad that it, it got you that way. And I'm glad that it was unexpected in that way. And I share your your feelings about Holocaust narratives in general, and also wanting to honor every single individual – child or grandchild of a survivor who needs to talk about it. Or survivor who needs to talk about it like that is so real. And wanting every person to feel like they get to talk the way that they need to talk. And also that feeling of exhaustion is also very real. And there's a lot of like caretaking of ourselves that is required as story coaches and story listeners. I didn't expect to be part of that season of the podcast. I was the story editor for that show and we had a drop out. We had a contributor drop out. And I said, well I have a family ghost story if we want to work on mine. We had enough time and I was sort of ready to explore it, but I had not written that. I had not pitched it. And so it was really a process of discovery with the producers of Family Ghosts, who are amazing. Odelia Rubin, in particular, was an incredible producer. So that was, yeah, I was just about to turn 40, I think when I did that show. And so I also had a lot of very complicated feelings about having children, and in particular, the sort of mandate in my family to have children and the feeling that, like, you're just supposed to like, that's what you're supposed to do. And, it's a really interesting thing to bring up now, five years later. Especially in reference to this idea that stories change because we age. Our bodies change. Like, we are different. And you know, I froze my eggs when I was 37. I did that story in this like, oh my God, am I going to do this? What am I going to do? And then last year I was like, actually, I am finally ready to say I don't want to have children. I am great not having children. That is absolutely the choice that I'm choosing. It comes with all kinds of things, right? Like, that's fine. But I let go. I donated those eggs to science, which was a really intense and important thing to do for me. And so that story now has a completely different valence than it did then. And when it first came out. So for like the two years after it came out, I listened to myself telling that story. I listened to that specific episode several times, which I don't usually listen to myself telling stories I don't. I don't listen back unless I'm trying to, like, remember what I said so that I could tell it again on stage. Sometimes I'll do that, but I'm not someone who just, like, casually puts on my own voice in a podcast, right? And I found myself listening to that story a lot. And I wondered why and I reflected a lot on why I was doing it. It was a compulsion. It was really - it was not something I was consciously doing. I just would like, want to find my way to it. And I realized that it ended up shaping a lot of my feelings about the ways that we tell stories to ourselves, because that story at its heart was about me being okay with the way life had turned out. And so when I was in a moment when I wasn't okay with how life turned out, I needed to hear myself tell a story about how I'm okay about how life turned out, right. Or when I was missing my grandmother. I had worked so hard on telling it and bringing her back to life in this narrative. And I got to listen to her. I have audio of her in the story and things like that.
Rachael: You secretly recorded her, right?
Micaela: Yeah. I felt a real pull to document not only her, but my relationship with her. when I recorded her was very close to the end of her life, and was when I had started just going to visit her on my own. And we were sort of like two fun ladies, you know. And it meant so much to me, and in fact, I don't even know if I mentioned this in the show, I can't remember, but. So she died right before her 90th birthday. She died right before turning 90 and for her 90th birthday. The plan was to send her on a singles senior cruise. And -
Rachael: That’s amazing.
Micaela: Well, wait. The question was who's going to go with her? Everyone else had families. No one else could get away to do it. And I was like, that's me. I'm going with her on a senior singles cruise. And I was like, this is all I want in life is to go on a senior singles cruise with my 90 year old dish of a grandmother whose hair is still red, right? And that was something that we were really looking forward to together. And that plan was really taking shape when she died. And so I think that part of the recording was being really aware that she was at the end of her life, and that our relationship had shifted into this new thing that was very, very precious to me. And so I really wanted to like, hold it. Another thing I did that same trip was record a video tour of her entire house and narrated it and, like, showed every single point. Like, I went into her sort of dressing room. I showed every photograph that she had. I showed the piano like I showed everything, and that was like, I think three months before she died. And then we had to dismantle the house. So there were these documents that ended up feeling really precious to me. And that exact thing gets to me at one of the very central gifts of personal stories, which is that this is not just something you owe the audience, this is something you're doing for yourself. This is something that you yourself are letting yourself be changed by. And I think that was true for my Family Ghost story more than any of my other stories that I told
Rachael: Did you anticipate that being the case?
Micaela: I really didn't. I did not anticipate that at all.
Rachael: I'm going to make a connection here to bring us to the topic of storytelling in education. And I've heard you talk about it in your third grade classroom, how you used story to teach. But since then you've taught older ages, high school, college, adults how to teach their own story. And I'm curious the shift between using story in the classroom to teaching people how to tell their stories. Is there connective thread there for you?
Micaela: Yes. But it's theoretical. The thread is theoretical. In the same way that when I teach teachers to have their students tell their personal stories, I ask teachers to tell their own story. I ask teachers to work on a story that they can tell to their class. And that is a prerequisite of teaching storytelling in the classroom. And the reason is that you're about to ask them to do this very vulnerable act. And it's really important to be able to empathize with what are the sticky parts? How am I reacting to the question? What is it about your life you want to share? Like it gives you really deep empathy and also helps you understand what point of views they might want to take. What they might not want to share. Like, all of those pieces, right? It gives you empathy for who you're about to ask for stories from. I do the same thing when I work with audio and film documentarians at the Salt Institute here. I teach twice a year and do a performance workshop with the grad cohort of the Salt Institute. And for the same reason they're going to be going out and asking people for their stories. Before they do that, they should tell their own. They should understand what it feels like to have to say something true about themselves to really understand that and empathize with it on a very deep level. Similarly, I think that giving students the chance to tell their own story creates for them an opportunity to think about point of view and to think about experience of other people. From a very deeply practical place. So if I've told my own story and I've grappled with what details am I going to use and how am I going to say this? And what are the ethical and boundary things to think about while I tell it, and what's fun? And how does it feel to get up in front of people? Then when I'm hearing other stories, when I'm seeing stories in media, or I'm hearing stories from history or whatever, I'm able to think about, how is this person telling their story? What are they choosing to say? What details did they choose? What point of view did they take? Because I had to do that too. And so I think there's something really powerful about having been a person producing story before taking in story. That's number one in terms of the connection that you're talking about of teaching through story versus telling stories ourselves. But the other piece of it is for me, a little more general in terms of the process of learning in a community, which is if there has been space for me to share a story about myself, and I got to choose what it was, I didn't have to, like, write to an assignment, I got to just choose what I wanted to share. Then I got to bring myself into this room in a different way than maybe I otherwise might have been able to. I'm not only a consumer of information in this room, I am a producer of meaning in this room in a really authentic way. Different than writing an essay and handing it to the teacher. Because my audience is my community. My audience is not just the person giving me a grade. And I think that there's something really powerful that happens in a learning community where everyone has gotten to choose something to share of themselves. And that creating a framework for that to happen safely and all of the high school or middle school or college dynamics that go with what we choose, like all of that stuff is very complicated and nuanced. But at its heart, I really do think that if I've gotten to have a voice of some kind that I got to choose in this space, I'm engaging with everything else a little bit differently.
Rachael: I have to wonder if younger kids have an easier time doing that, then people who are older because, right, the older we get, we become a little bit more aware of biases and preconceived notions and prejudices and more concerned with like, how people think about us and how we are positioned in a room. Have you seen there be a different engagement with personal storytelling from younger students to the high school, college and then up to adults? Or, do you find kind of the same struggles and successes happen all the way through?
Micaela: No, it's a give and take. as you become more sophisticated about narrative and about how you're going to come across, you also become more stressed out about narrative and how you're going to come across. So it's both. like I taught preschool for a year right out of college. And, those are some of the most unselfconscious and nonsensical stories I've ever heard. Right, like, they're amazing. They're amazing. You'd be like, we're going to talk about whales. And someone – their hand, would shoot up, and I'd be like, great, Jeremiah, what do you want to tell me about whales? And he'd be like, my dog throws up so much and you'd be like, that's literally not what we're talking about. But thank you. I appreciate it.
Rachael: There was a connection for him.
Micaela: And someone else would raise their hand and I'd be like, oh, good Hannah is going to bring us back to whales. And you'd be like, Hannah, go for it. And she'd be like, my mom lets me watch The Sopranos. And you’d be like that's, again, not even connected to what Jeremiah just said. Like, no one's conscious about the audience at all. They have something that they gravely need to express and they're going to express it. It's really fantastic. So like totally unselfconscious, not necessarily following the rules of narrative in the ways that, like we're talking about, like how do you express yourself, etc., How do you make – they're not making a whole bunch of meaning, I think I would say. They're really deeply expressing themselves, but they're not making a whole bunch of meaning. And then the older you're getting, the more sophisticated you're getting about, what do I want this story to say? What do I want it to say about me? What do I want to think about? How am I reflecting on what this did for my life? Like, you're starting to go, oh, this was the first time I had a trip with my dad by myself. That's important. And here's why, right? You're in, like, seventh grade, and you're figuring that out. And you're also deeply embarrassed by just being a human in front of your peers. So, like that comes with its own set of challenges. I think developmentally - at every single developmental step, a story means something different. And a story can do something different in the community. And then can be a challenge in a new way as well.
Rachael: I also love that that breaks down any idea that one generation or one age group has stories that are of more importance or more profound.
Micaela: Nooo
Rachael: Going back to the education thing, when I would bring the storytelling I was doing into the classroom, I think the reason I've been able to do this for so many years is because the questions I get asked and the connections that get made from younger people are super honest. They're really hard. A lot of the times, and they will expose where I'm not making connections well very, very quickly
Micaela: Totally
Rachael: And it keeps it fresh and me and it keeps the work and the storytelling more about questions than answers.
Micaela: Exactly. This really lucky thing happened for me probably starting about eight years ago. So my niece is now 14. But when she was really little, when she was in kindergarten already, she came home and was like, we're doing personal narrative in my school. And I said, tell your teacher that I work at The Moth. She'll know what that is. Probably. And that I'd be happy to come in and talk about personal narrative if she wants me to. Tell her I taught third grade too. And she was like, okay, I will. She was very excited to have something to say to her teacher. And I ended up being a guest speaker in her kindergarten class.
Rachael: Amazing
Micaela: She was so excited. She was like, she could not hold still. I was so excited to have Auntie Mookie in the room. That's what she calls me. And then a year later, she's in first grade and she comes home and she goes, guess what? We're doing personal narrative again. And I'm going to tell my teacher that you work at The Moth and that you can be a guest speaker. I was like, absolutely. This happened five years in a row. And she was in the same school. So I got to know these kids. I would be a guest speaker in personal narrative every single year and I would tell a different story and we would talk about a different thing. By the time she was in, I think fourth grade, the teacher was like, please tell them that small moments are meaningful. Help me get them to get to small moment stories. I did that. You know, and they would raise their hand and be like, tell us Lego Crimes. Because that's the one that Ramona tells us during recess or whatever. So I got to see how they engaged in a new way over the course of time. And then the other one that it reminds me of. You know, something happened for me where I had third graders and it was at a K-12 school. And so I had them in third grade, and then they go on to fourth grade and then middle school. And this third grade was the third grade that I had when my grandmother passed away. They were with me when I got the message that my grandmother died. And I ended up leaving that school and going on and doing these other things. And five years later, the social studies teachers of the eighth grade got in touch with me and said, you know, I heard you tell your grandmother's story of survival in the Holocaust, we're doing a unit on World War two and the Holocaust right now. Would you like to come in? These are your old third graders.
Rachael: Oh my gosh.
Micaela: And so I got to go. Five years later. They haven't seen me in years. And talk to my students who are now. What are they now? Thirteen. And tell them the things that I would never have been able to get to with them in third grade, or I wouldn't have felt comfortable talking to them about. And they were able to hold nuance and like, ask those really incredible, tough, incisive questions and think about the story in this way. It was very powerful. It was really exciting. And afterwards, this one girl, Charlotte, I will never forget. So they wrote me thank you notes afterwards. They were very excited that their third grade teacher was back and also were very attentive to the story, and Charlotte wrote me the way that you taught me to listen to stories in third grade made me ready to hear your story in eighth grade.
Rachael: Oh My Gosh.
Micaela: Forget about it. Forget about it. Waterworks. That idea too of this stuff builds on itself and to be given space to hear and tell stories over time just allows us to hear other people's stories.
Rachael: I have a couple more questions for you.
Micaela: Yeah. Of course.
Rachael: I would like to ask you for some advice. Um, I am no stranger to public speaking. So live storytelling - true live storytelling seems like a really wonderful, achievable, but still scary goal. Why am I so intimidated? And then what advice do you have? I know how to construct a story. I know how to write a story. I think – well, I won't say too much more because you're going to tell me why I'm intimidated, so I'm not going to tell you why
Micaela: I will
Rachael: I think I’m intimidated. –
Micaela: I will, I'm going to tell you why you're intimidated.
Rachael: Thank you.
Micaela: This is my guess. This is with the context that you are an experienced public speaker. You are an experienced maker of stories. This is what I think is happening here. Telling a personal story on stage differs from doing a monologue, making a speech, giving a presentation, teaching a class in that it approximates social interaction. We tell stories in life to people all the time. You would think that would make it easier, but the problem is the context of it. Now you are by yourself behind a microphone, and the person you are talking to, quote unquote, is a sea of faces. And so there's something very exposing about being supposed to be super comfortable at this thing that we like, do all the time, that it's supposed to feel really off the cuff and charming and meaningful, but also approachable. Like all of these things that we have honed our social personas to be, that suddenly it's all under a microscope. There's no realizing your story is going south and going well, but what about you, which is like, what you can do with the story is not going well in conversation, right? Or there's no going I mean, never mind. You can't do it because you're on stage and there's an expectation that you're going to finish this story. Right? That's my guess. My guess is that the lights feel too hot on you. Am I close? How do you react to my guess?
Rachael: I think there's some truth in that. And, you know, it's interesting because I'm thinking, well, I tell personal stories. I am somebody who's like, here's my trauma and I'm going to curate it so it does feel processed, right?
Micaela: Sure, sure.
Rachael: That's been the stories I've worked with. I think you're right in terms of the lights feel very hot because as I started as a photographer, oftentimes I have visuals. So I'm interacting with something.
Micaela: Exactly.
Rachael: So I think that you're spot on there. And then with speeches, I have a piece of paper in front of me so I know what I'm doing.
Micaela: Exactly.
Rachael: There's something about the memorizing and the condensed time where at the beginning you said for you as a teacher, knowing you had five minutes to the bell was safe for you. For me knowing that I have five minutes to the bell is like, very like, anxiety provoking.
Micaela: Yeah.
Rachael: I walked out of my s.a.t.s because that's how much I hate test taking. Like I failed my first driver's exam and I've never been in a car crash in my life. Like I am good at driving, but when somebody watches me I get –
Micaela: Totally.
Rachael: nervous. And so I think that when you said that my brain is going to maybe there's like a test-like element of can I memorize this and memorize it in an engaging way? And now I feel like I'm being tested.
Micaela: Exactly.
Rachael: Wow. Epiphanes.
Micaela: And that you're being and that you're being tested in a form that you're supposed to already know how to do. I think that if it was like a violin concerto, you'd be like, okay, I'm just going to practice this violin concerto until it's perfect, and then I will perform the Violin Concerto. But the fact that the audience is involved there's both uncertainty and a test element and the bell. Now the answer to that -
Rachael: Yeah. Please.
Micaela: Or the thing that I would say in response is, I am a big believer in concentric circles of trust. I use something in my workshops that I call progressive risk which is this idea that, like, we're not jumping into the pool, we're just like, walking in. That telling your story out loud to people who won't care if you blow past the bell. To people who you can say, ‘hold on, stop, let me start over.’ And making sure it's out loud. So that you're having the live experience of people in front of you and maybe even standing up and having them sit down. So that you know what that feels like, and then you're trimming or you're practicing or you're seeing what you need to do in as close to the real thing as possible, so that by the time you get up there, it feels less like a test and more like a culmination.
Rachael: Do you think that there's a real importance to having something moral at the end of it?
Micaela: No
Rachael: No.
Micaela: No.
Rachael: We don't need that.
Micaela: No.
Rachael: Why not?
Micaela: I don't think you need it. Well, why do you ask?
Rachael: Something about doing it on stage in that short, condensed, theatrical, but still kind of stoic way that makes me feel like the message has to be really clear. the particular has to get to the universal in a few in a few minutes versus like, you give a Ted talk there's a teaching element to it, right? Like you have information that you're providing an audience who might not be an expert. But everybody in an audience of a personal, live, true storytelling is an expert on the human experience in some way. So that need to relate or that need to provide the audience with something that isn't educational or informative or history.
Micaela: But I still don't know why you feel like you need a moral in The Moth story.
Rachael: Like there's a reason you're telling this story. You want to leave the stage making the audience feel something.
Micaela: You want to leave the audience feeling something? I would argue, and this is controversial, and I know a lot of people who disagree with me. I would argue that you don't want to dictate what they feel. Tell us what you got out of it. Tell us what you're thinking about. Tell us what meaning you have made. And don't dictate to me what meaning I should make from your story and the reason I say it is that, in my experience, the stories that allow me to make the connections make me lean forward in my chair. If someone is instructing me on what their story meant and telling me what I should think their story meant, I'm a little bit like, fuck you. Don't tell me what meaning I get from your story. You can tell me what meaning you get from your story. And so I'm actually quite allergic to morals or making it universal or doing that thing at the end. Because I think it's just a teeny tiny bit insulting to the empathy and intelligence of the humans in front of you.
Rachael: I have a teacher who refers to what you're describing this difference, as the difference between morals and moralizin. That like in a story, you can have morals. And those are great, right? Those help guide a lot of our values in the way we think about the world. And that's very different than being moralizing, which is what you're talking about, which is like -
Micaela: Yes
Rachael: don't make meaning for me.
Micaela: And I would argue that the idea of going from specific to universal or feeling the pressure to leave someone with something universal. To me, that sounds like it edges a little towards the moralizing versus, I would frame it slightly differently to really nailing what changed for you as a result of what happened in this experience? It can be a small change. It could be a big change, but if it was any kind of a change and you can really make meaning of that for yourself, then you're allowing people to go, wow, something similar happened to me. I wonder if I changed that way or wow, my mom was just using that exact same language. I think I need to ask her about that. Or wow, I've never heard anything like this, now I want to x y, z, right? Like it leaves it really open for people to connect it to their lives if you're being really honest and vulnerable about what this story meant for you versus saying, so this must be true of everyone, or this is something that everyone can relate to because. You found my other soap box. [laughter]
Rachael: Wonderful. I'm imagining, like, the game of Mario where I'm just, like, jumping from box to box. I feel like, ooh, how do we level this up? Um, there's a lot left to talk about that we're not going to cover.
Micaela: Totally.
Rachael: Like all your work in podcasts and coaching work. I've gotten to take one of your workshops and I thought it was wonderful and actually really, really difficult, particularly with what you're speaking about in terms of like, how have I changed? It seems like it should be simple, but I actually found that to be a really welcomed challenge. Very much a challenge.
Micaela: Awesome
Rachael: But we're not going to dig into that, so if folks want to learn more about that, they can hang out with a puzzle and your voice for a whole bunch of hours the way I did earlier this week.
Micaela: That's right.
Rachael: But as we wrap up this conversation. You have a line on your website that says, tell your story, change your life a little. And I think that's very true. I've certainly had that to be my experience. And so I'm curious for you at this moment in your lif, what are you mining from your past and present right now? What is it that you're moving through story-wise with your own personal life?
Micaela: What am I moving through story-wise in my own personal life? I think that aging is a really exciting and terrifying activity. I call it an activity because it's like, definitely something you do. And one of the things that I'm moving through a lot lately is - so I have a chronic illness. I've had it since I was 13, and it has been more and less present in my life at various points, but now that I am a full on middle aged lady and proud to be one, it's a really different experience of, like, what I ask of my body and what stories I tell about what I can do and what I can't do. And so one of the things that I'm really thinking so much about is around, how do I tell stories of my own abilities and accomplishments and achievements in a way that stays really centered on like disability justice and disability awareness. And how do I tell the stories of the times that my body has like, “worked for me” and the times that my body has “failed me?” Like even that framing I'm reexamining and I'm really examining bodies through time in a new way.
Rachael: Micaela, thank you so much for taking this time with me. I want to encourage anyone who's listening to go and YouTube your Moth performance. Is that what you would call it, a moth performance or story.
Micaela: Sure, my moth stories. You can actually find them on my website. There's a whole page with all of them.
Rachael: And I want to encourage people to find one very specific one, which is the story you tell about teaching the Oregon Trail.
Micaela Okay. Yeah.
Rachael: I'm not going to ask you to tell it here. I almost thought about asking you, but I just think you did it so well on stage.
Micaela: Thank You
Rachael: So everyone go find Micaela Blei – The Oregon Trail story. And enjoy. Just laugh a little bit.
Micaela: Oh, thank you.
Rachael: And I just - I’m so glad to know you. And I look forward to our next neighborhood walk.
Micaela: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been just such a delight. Thank you.
OUTRO
Thank you to Micaela for joining me today. You can find links to her website and storytelling on www.alongtheseam.com. While there, don’t forget to sign up for the Along The Seam newsletter which is my place of creative writing where I dig deeper into the stories and themes you hear on these episodes. You can also find a link to that in the show notes.
This season is supported with help from The Witness Institute and New America. A big thank you to both organizations.
Our editor is Lene Bech Sillesen and the music is from Blue Dot Sessions.
I’m Rachael Cerrotti. Thanks for joining the conversation.