Libby Andrew

Libby is wearing a dress by A.L.C. and Veronica Beard shoes. Portrait: Caroline White

FASHION INSIDER LIBBY ANDREW KNOWS THAT SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY TO TELL OUR STORIES IS TO FIRST TRY ON AN IMAGE. USING FASHION AS A PAINTBRUSH, HER NEW CAMP SHOWS KIDS HOW TO TRY ON DIFFERENT HATS AND THEN TELL THE STORY THEY WANT THE WORLD TO HEAR.

Libby is wearing a dress  by A.L.C. and Veronica Beard shoes. Portraits by Caroline White.

It seems the word of the year is “discomfort.” The word has come up in every single article and every single conversation I’ve had in this edition. For example, Marci and I just spoke on a podcast about how we know our craft but neither of us has ever been a business owner. It’s new territory. Someone told us “that’s good because if you’re uncomfortable, you’ll find help to get comfortable. That’s how we get ahead.”

It’s true, it’s true. You know Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, who started Gilt Groupe, wrote a book and one of her big themes of the book is creating a team. And I resisted that for a long time. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want other people’s expertise, but it was more this idea that I’ve got to do it all myself, and If I don’t know how to do something I can learn how to do it. I was beating that drum for a really long time and then I thought, well, if I can feed out just a little bit, here and there, it would be helpful. It was more than just getting the work done, it was also about allowing a collaboration to happen. Feeding off of other people and their ideas and stories is so helpful and it actually pushed me much further than I would have thought. The creative side which is wonderful and what I love to do and what I’m comfortable with. And then there’s this whole business side that I’ve also learned to love, but you’ve got to have both.

That “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” feeling is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m okay being a jack if I can find a master of the things that I can’t conquer.

It’s funny you say that my dad used that phrase all the time. It’s kind of like a cautionary tale. You want to be like a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but I think it’s necessary to be able to understand and operate on a lot of different levels when you’re running a business.

This almost seems like the theme you’re teaching the campers—to dip your toes into a little bit of everything, and then learn how to put it all together. Is that what you were going for with the campers?

I’m so glad you said that. Because it kind of goes to the origin story of why I came up with this camp in the first place. When I was growing up my parents were pretty strict, and I came from a very artistic family. It was just always second nature for everybody, so I took it for granted. We were always talking about art. Someone is always playing instruments and everybody could draw—you weren’t special if you could draw because everybody could. My mother and I liked to look through fashion magazines together and critique color, art, style, expression, everything. It was fun. Once I got into my middle school and teenage years, I was veering away from my mom a little bit, but I still loved the fashion world because it was a world of imagination and storytelling. It allowed me to pretend that I could become whatever I wanted to be. I did that through fashion. “I dress like this, I can act like this and I can visit Paris, and I can be a pilot or an astronaut.”

That’s where the idea for the camp came from, with this feeling of “allow yourself to imagine, and then tell your story with that imagination.” I think fashion is one of the best ways to do that. Since I had the experience, I could actually teach them how to create and tell their own story.

What are the basic principles that you’re teaching? Are you starting out pouring over pictures like you did with your mom?

The very first thing that they get to do, so they can see if this is something they actually want to do, is this course where they build their own fashion magazine. The first thing to happen to you is copy an advertisement. It can be a physical magazine or could be online, but I want them to look for the ones that seem to be the most outrageous to them. So they can start thinking about the fact that these impressionable images are very abstract; they don’t always make sense. Sometimes they’re based in reality, sometimes not. So what I’m getting them to do is think: If I copy this advertisement where someone is using a shoe as a telephone, what does that mean? How does that feel? This exercise allows them to break out of their regular way of thinking and encourages them to tell a story—whatever that is. I’m trying to get them, during the course, to discover a sense of self purpose and gain confidence telling their own story.

There’s been a lot in our culture lately about creating strong women leaders. How do you do that? Where does that come from? I really believe there’s a lot of healing that needs to be done, because of the pandemic, and even just in the nature of our country right now, we’re in a very pivotal cultural time, and I think sometimes the kids get lost in that. How do we get them to find their courage and come back from that?

It’s a very good point, and to add to that, sometimes kids get lost because we, as parents, put them in these bubbles because we don’t want them out in this big world where there is war and conflict. But when we do that and they are ready to leave the home, they’re a little more naïve, and maybe they don’t get to see Paris or do any travel and they avoid. I think what you’re doing, besides leadership training and inspiring imagination, is incredible. You’re using a tool—the fashion world and make-believe—which seems almost counterintuitive. But somehow it works.

“Part of this business for me is to put the fun back in fashion. For too long it’s been used as an intimidation factor and I don’t think it needs to be. It never was for me. It was more a way towards self-expression. ”

What I’m doing here in this camp is really about having your own style, developing your own style. And reminding you that you can switch it up. It doesn’t have to be the same thing all the time. And you don’t have to have the fanciest, most luxury item to make a statement. I’m hoping to break apart these ideas about fashion being the haves and have-nots. I’m trying to give an invitation and build a community where girls, wherever they are from—Montana, Australia, Chile—can realize they have something in common. It’s about sharing their ideas with regard to art and regard to fashion instead of feeling like I’ve got to have “this” and I have to dress this way.

It sounds like you’re re-creating a little bit of what you and your mom did when you went through magazines page by page. I’m curious. How did you go from sitting with your mom to Anna Wintour’s office?

It’s funny because I get asked this question a lot. I majored in philosophy at Wheaton College, in ethics, and I did a lot of theater. I was actually planning to go to law school because I have a very big justice component in my life. Justice and creativity. How do you marry those two? But anyway, I had friends who had gone to law school and didn’t like it, so I thought I should try something else and then get back to that later.

I moved to Manhattan one week after I graduated college, and I worked for Guess Clothing Company, doing their special events. It was so fun. We went to Macy’s Herald Square, Kate Moss was one of the models once, I got to pick the music and the themes. It was super fun. But I learned a big lesson there. They hired a new president and cut the special events department. At the time I was devastated because I felt like I had put in blood, sweat, and tears at that company. But in hindsight, it was great because I stayed in Manhattan.

I love that city. I loved the cultural diversity and just that pulse there that makes you feel like you can come and do anything you want. But I stayed and became a temp at Anna Wintour’s office. She had let go of a couple of different assistants and I was working for the public relations director, who thought I should interview with Anna Wintour. I was a little bit nervous, but I love meeting people and I thought, why not? If I’m going to get offered the interview, I’ve got to go. So I sat down with her and we actually got along very well. We just clicked. You know why? She is fascinating. Her office is fascinating. The photographs she has, the flowers, the whole thing. I remember feeling like, regardless of what happens here, this is going to be an incredible experience. I could answer all her questions about fashion because, without knowing it, I had it memorized. So that’s how I ended up there. It was really not about connections, it was just good timing. What’s that saying about opportunity meeting hard work?

So now you’re absorbed in the world of fashion and you’re picking up all sorts of knowledge about the industry, about running a publication, about the components that go into this.

Yes! You know, the thing I want to say about that is the best thing about being her assistant is that it was more of an apprenticeship because as reserved as she is, she brings you into every area of her life. You go to her house, you read all the copy that comes across the desk. One year we put Hillary Clinton on the cover. And Oprah Winfrey. So I was dealing with Hillary Clinton’s office and the White House and all of Anna Wintour’s friends, Oscar de la Renta, Karl Lagerfeld.

All these different people you’re speaking to all the time. She wants to be able to leave that office and go off to the fashion shows a couple times a year and not worry at all that her office is being run well. And so, her assistants do that for her. So yeah, so that’s kind of what it was like to be in that office.

It sounds like you were in the middle of the best social studies class!

It was like that.

I never would have thought that fashion could open up my world to politics, to philosophy, to social activism—because you just named all those things in every person that you spoke of.

Yes! Henry Kissinger would even call the office, you’d be surprised. You think This is just a fashion magazine. But this magazine brings together so many different industries. You’ve got the journalists, and the journalists are some of the best in the world—Joan Didion and Dodie Kazanjian—and they’ve all got their whole world of people. As far as designers go, I mean, it’s walking, living art and they dress those people with their clothes. You’re telling a story. Think about that. If a woman wants to feel powerful? Some people probably wouldn’t care how they look, but some people care about what they’re wearing and how they present themselves.

How does this philosophy work into what you’re teaching your campers?

I think it’s a matter of helping them develop this idea that every person has a story to tell, and every person’s story is important. Each girl that comes into my camp will believe that they are important. I want them to get that feeling from taking this course. You have a story to tell, you have original ideas. It doesn’t matter how old you are, let’s help develop that confidence in being able to tell your story.

Something that I am going to be very cognizant of is focusing on the positive aspects of each person’s story. When we get together in our weekly Zoom, or if we communicate at all, one of the rules to be very strict about is positive feedback only. Because you’re going to see what does work, and automatically girls are going to say look at all of the things that don’t work, and that’s too easy—it’s too easy for those girls to worry about that. So I want to start digging into what does work. What did I share that people thought was cool? How can I start to make my mindset one of forward thinking? It doesn’t mean don’t tell your story. Yes, share your story, but try to get there with positive love.

And empathy and solidarity. That this is a tool to open up the world to you if you let it. That sounds like what you experienced in Manhattan. You found a way to open the world up to you with a nontraditional tool like fashion and publishing.

Absolutely, absolutely. One of my favorite quotes from Eckhart Tolle is “You create more of what you focus on.” That’s one of my mainstay principles. Every time I feel myself getting negative or fearful or have some anxiety, I replay that in my mind. How can I think positive thoughts instead of negative ones? How can I take a different path that puts me in a good direction? For me, looking at fashion, because it’s colorful and vibrant and imaginative, is one way to do that.

I am interested in knowing more about your philosophy studies because I think that really everything you do is very thoughtful and inspired. First, how did you get to kids who might think the only thing about fashion is what they see on Instagram?

Thank you for saying that about philosophy. What a fantastic question because I don’t know if I would’ve thought to say this unless you asked me: I believe there are human universalities. You might look at Facebook and phones and all the power of technology in your hand and believe it gets a lot of people into trouble—I understand it causes a lot of competition and self judgment and all these things—but if I dig down a little bit deeper, I also think that it’s a way to relate to each other. There’s this curiosity factor. So my belief is, with this camp and with the technology that we have—because I don’t think it’s going anywhere—I would like to have kids use their technology and not have it use them. Because every time you get on your phone, every time you look at something on the computer, you make a choice. I would like to empower them to know how to make choices. How to decide what they’re going to do with their time. How much time they want to stand looking at something and learning from their phone. How much time they want to just let off some steam and look at TikTok. And then how much time they want to put all of it away and go do something. When you do fashion, it’s very physical because it’s a garment and it forces you to use your hands. To lay something out, try something on your body, look in the mirror. Shop with your friends, share ideas. So, it’s not so much that there’s evil in fashion or evil in a phone, it’s how you are using them.

Back to your question of the philosophy, I think those philosophies come from my feeling that all people everywhere, it’s why this Ukrainian war is so painful to watch and look at because on a universal level moms know what it’s like to have children, what it’s like to protect her children, what it’s like to make sure that they’re eating properly, and they’re over there in Ukraine stuck in a situation where all that is out the window.

And, you know, it’s just horrific obviously. And so my feeling is, yes, it’s interesting.

“How do I come from the fashion industry and yet talk about all these things? It’s because life is very rich and complicated and it involves all these different aspects from what we wear, to what we watch, to how we use technology.”

Wow, that was a mouthful!

It was so well said! My daughter and I were talking about when I was a kid, or as she calls it “the olden days” …

Right. The ’90s.

Right! Ha! To your point, I don’t want to blame technology, but we were using our imagination a lot differently then. We tried things out, we sought people out. But now—and my point in this is to tie technology and fashion together—we can learn about how jewelry in one culture was used to show stature, and how tattoos and makeup represent wealth and power in another. Beauty, women, fashion—all are so different in other parts of the world, and this new technology can teach me about different cultures in a way we couldn’t “in the olden days.”

That’s a brilliant point. In fact, part of my website I’m developing, is interviewing designers from all over the world. And not just big designers we all know, but there are women across the world doing incredible things and helping communities. They make this beautiful fabric in Africa and then it is sold to manufacturers who then make it into clothes. And it provides income to those communities in Africa that need it.

These designers have gone there and discovered the most beautiful fabrics in the world. And people here find something unique and different and special and something with a story. So it’s bringing those women in Africa together with women here. There’s a way for us to come together, and that’s the benefit of technology.

But as we use the technology, we also don’t want to lose the wonder of the everyday fun of going outside our house and playing. Or lose the basic connection with other people, and I think that’s the biggest fear right now. We all know that instinctively there’s so much value in meeting each other face-to-face as opposed to via technology.

You and I often go down rabbit holes which is my favorite thing about our conversations!

I hope so!

The idea that these girls are going to be meeting each other through your camp, from all over the world, and learning about the different corners of the world. It’s going to change a lot of the stories that they’ve heard.

Actually, I had written a book a while back and was shocked when this girl from Pakistan got in touch with me to ask about the next book. It made me look at the demographics from the book sales and I found someone in Libya and someone in Japan and someone from Canada, and it’s exciting to me because that’s part of the thing that made me think of this camp. I realize the camp is a way for people to understand how similar they are. Yes, we can have a lot of differences, but the human nature part of it is that we all want to get dressed and develop a sense of purpose, and fashion is part of that, and there are a lot of people who are interested in fashion and telling their stories. And there are a lot of people who can relate to each other even though they’re from across the world.

These girls are going to be learning new things about what happens outside of their own homes. Now maybe when they go out in the world and they see conflict like they do in the Ukraine, they might be more empathetic.

I think part of the human condition is to pre-judge other people. To safeguard your expectations of what’s going to happen, right? But what’s wonderful is connecting on some basic level and then discovering there’s a lot more similarities than you would’ve imagined, just being people in the world having a human experience. I’m hoping that will also be part of their experience in the camp. If nothing else, it will start to infuse the types of discussions we have, and it will start to make them wonder if it is valuable to have any pre-judgments? You never really know someone’s story until you talk to them.

I think of the icons, both real and in fiction that use fashion to influence. Jackie O, you know, what a wonderful woman, what an advocate and philanthropist. The one thing that everybody knows about Jackie is what she wore.

I had her book standing right over there. Yeah, she was a fashion icon.

Yes! And Princess Diana. Talk about an advocate! We all know her life’s work, but if you don’t you still know how she wore her hair and what dress she wore. So many of us are attracted to their look but then are influenced by what they cared about. I guess you’ve got to use the tools that you have to attract the attention to the causes, the stories that you want to tell.

You know who I’ve been noticing lately, right there front and center, Jen Psaki and Nancy Pelosi. I wonder how much thought they put into their wardrobe and if they’re purposely wearing certain colors on certain days. I think we’d be in denial to think that we’re not attracted to some people, that we’re not interested in them because of what they’re wearing. Sometimes we really are. How many people tuned in to watch Harry and Megan get married? They want to see what she’s wearing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that! I think it’s fine—yeah, yeah I think it’s fun. And it says if I want to present in a certain way, do I want to wear something clean? Or I don’t want to present that way. Maybe here I want to present in a way that’s more subtle, or makes people keep their distance, or whatever it is, but allow yourself to discover it. Try on each thing because if you don’t try different things, you can never find what is comfortable for you.

I think that is the life philosophy here! I mean, look at you. You tried on the author outfit. You’ve tried on the major media giant that is Vogue magazine outfit. You tried major label clothing retailer outfit…

I went to Imagine Entertainment and worked for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Yeah, I did. I had to try a lot of different things before I settled on “entrepreneur.”

I’m still gonna be discovering and I think giving myself permission to shift when it’s not right and giving myself permission to make mistakes. Why is it such a big deal to change? You’re eventually going to find a fit. I have to tell you, one of the best things about the job I’m currently doing is, when I’m working—and I have four kids, so I have only a little bit of time that I can devote to this—but when I’m working and I find that flow, I absolutely love my work. That’s what keeps me coming back. That feeling, that moment when I absolutely love all the different aspects of this work.

You’re showing that fashion can be about expressing your story. It’s just another paintbrush.

Yes, it’s another paintbrush. And to start the camp off, I’m encouraging them to use the clothes from their own closet. They can collaborate or they can do it all completely on their own. I want them to use all their own clothes, and I want them to pretend the clothes in their closet are the clothes from the season. I give them examples of times when that can easily be true—from some of the top designers—when they had a year of doing T-shirt and jeans, for example.

You have to be yourself. Sometimes it takes courage to be yourself. And you could be confident being yourself, but you have to be able to exercise those emotional muscles. Sometimes you don’t get a lot of opportunities to do that.

Visit www.fashioncampers.com and follow the campers on Instagram @fashioncampers.

Nicole Gambino

NICOLE GAMBINO IS AN EXECUTIVE FUNCTION COACH BASED ON BOSTON’S SOUTH SHORE. HER CLIENTS ARE SCHOOL-AGED FROM ELEMENTARY THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL AND SOME ADULTS. WE SPOKE WITH NICOLE ABOUT HOW A MISUNDERSTOOD MIDDLE SCHOOL EXPERIENCE MADE HER INTO A STUDENT ADVOCATE AS AN ADULT. WE START OUR CONVERSATION HERE:

Do you remember the first family that hired you?

When I was living in Boston. It was a family that was on my caseload when I was a consultant for Arlington public school district. (Before the Peace Corps and Landmark School.)

Peace Corps? That’s fantastic!

From 2000 to 2003.

Where did you go?

Jordan. That was my first experience ever teaching in a classroom. It was an  all girls, government village school. I loved it. I fell in love with it.

What were you teaching?

English as a second language.

How old were your students?

My students were middle school age.

What was it like in Jordan compared to the States?

No comparison. About 36 to 38 students in a class at one time. (For 2 1/2 years we stayed in the same village.)

Do you keep in touch with the students?

I did for a long time. I have one girlfriend that I still keep in touch with.

Do you ever feel like you want to go back there?

Yes! But I know, (due to the culture) what an undertaking that would be. I wouldn’t want to leave out any of the families I was connected to during my service. In Arabian culture, a visitor doesn’t just stop by to say “hello.”  It’s an event that can last a very long time. And can feel very draining.

Was there a minimum requirement of years to serve?

The completion of service certification is two years.

Is that when it began—when you fell in love with teaching? Do you think you would become a teacher if it weren’t for Jordan?

Yes! Everyone has their own story, and I struggled as a student. When I was 5, I was diagnosed with specific learning disabilities, mainly in the area of numerical reasoning and spatial relations. I was considered a special education student beginning in elementary school. I really can’t remember a time when  I didn’t struggle during class or at home trying to finish homework. It was pretty agognozing. I didn’t enjoy being a student because I wasn’t having success. The bar was set so low.

Who set the bar low?

The culture, the environment. I just stopped trying. I fell apart in middle school, seventh grade. My report card consisted of Ds and Fs, not because I couldn’t be successful, but because I became conditioned to believe that I couldn’t. As a result, I didn’t try.

During my freshman year in high school there was a change. I was in a history class, a low level class—all of my classes were low level—and I decided to study for a particular assessment. I really can’t recall why, I just decided to get organized on the floor of my family room, since that room was the most expansive surface area. I pulled worksheets and flashcards, and figured there was nothing to lose. I ended up getting an A+ on that test.

Wow!

It was a “wow,” but I didn’t pat myself on the back because it was a low-level class. I thought I could keep doing this, but this is still low-level. I guess that wasn’t enough to sustain gratification.

Then, during my sophomore year, my English teacher shared that he was going to recommend, after the first term, that I advance to the next class level. He didn’t feel that I was being challenged. He [said he] felt the behavioral challenges in the classroom were having a negative effect, and that I was capable of more. So, he put me in an English Composition class. It was extremely challenging.

I hate to say this, because he ended up being my favorite teacher, but the teacher at the time was considered the least favorite among my peers. He was strict, very stoic and I was certain that I was going to fail. The anxiety I felt during this transitional period was intense. The possibility of disappointing my previous English teacher was overwhelming since he advocated for me to advance.

You said that you were just used to not feeling successful and that the turning point was one of your teachers. But it sounded like your turning point was when you decided to try.

I think it’s both. I put forth some effort when I was a freshman and the resulting A+ so that gave me a glimmer of hope but the doubt was still there. Am I capable? Can I really do this?

In this composition class our first assignment was to watch the movie “Glory” with Matthew Broderick. We had to write a sensory detailed composition as if we were Matthew Broderick’s character writing home to our mother.

What an amazing assignment.

The night before, I was in my room, on the floor, in tears because I was certain that I was going to see another F on the paper. Again, at that age Bridget, I wasn’t thinking “well if I just try.” For years, I was conditioned to believe I wasn’t capable. Almost all of my academic experiences supported that. Eventually I started the paper and didn’t stop. It just flowed. It felt very natural. I cried the whole time, but I wrote it. And then I never proved it. I think I was afraid it was going to sound horrible. So, I just said ”This is the best I can do’’ and I handed it in.

A few days later, our writing teacher announced that he chose the two best papers to read aloud to the class. All of a sudden, he was reading my paper. Because I never proofread it, I didn’t realize, until maybe midway through. It really did sound incredible—I will never forget that moment because it changed the trajectory. I went to him afterward and I said “I can’t believe you chose mine. I don’t understand why.” He said “Well, I don’t really know what to tell you, it was one of the best. There were two A’s and yours was one of them.

That was it. I knew I was capable and I wanted more opportunities to demonstrate it. I just cliimbed, climbed, climbed because I was placed in an environment where I wanted to try. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to. The impetus was there.

How did it feel to find out that the validation you got came from yourself?

It was everything. That experience shifted my entire mindset. I definitely think success was all the more sweet knowing the two teachers involved were the most disliked due to their stoic demeanor and challenging nature Certainly not the hand-holding type!

You graduated from high school with good grades and it was then that you decided that you were going to do the same thing for other kids that these two teachers did for you?

No, there was a kind of pause during my early 20s. The draw was there, but I wasn’t ready to embrace it. I just wasn’t ready, but my program/process has always been in my back pocket. It’s always been there because it’s part of my own internal mapping system.

So there’s no cookie-cutter approach to executive functions?

No. But I use a blueprint. I defined it as a “Guard Rail” process. Each student begins with a guardrail slightly modified but from the same grid, so to speak.

What are those guard rails?

It’s a systematic homework management plan which evolves with the student. It incorporates six key components introduced in sequential progression. Self-regulatory strategies, and maintaining a healthy perspective on self-care is also infused.

You had me at self-regulatory. I’m 47 and have no self-regulation.

This is the most challenging. Student’s can feel emotionally triggered when moving through an exploratory process. There’s a lot of initial discomfort. Academic self-reflection can be very painful. Students are coming to terms with some of their most significant challenges and all of the feelings that go along with that. Validation is essential. Maybe feelings aren’t always facts, but they need to be acknowledged as an emotional queuing system.

Acknowledge the feeling, reflect on the overall goal, and identify options that can make the task more tolerable and easier to cope with. Do I have a stress reliever inoculation? Maybe I need my noise canceling headphones? Do I need to get a coffee? Do I need to take a walk or go for a run? Do I need a piece of gum? Do I need to be mobile somewhere other than my designated work-space for right now? It is an acknowledgement and deployment of individualized strategies and self-care choices that support what is in the best interest of an individual student.

Self-regulation and daily self-management require a lot of discipline and practice. It is a  journey, but it’s also a gift that a parent gives their child, the opportunity to self-explore.

These tools are going to be helpful when they become adults. And a lot of students don’t get these tools. I never had these tools.

Me either.

We come from a generation of students who are told “sit still at your desk. Don’t fidget. Keep your eyes forward.” There’s no acknowledgement of being a kid.

It’s interesting you say that because typically, with parents I open the conversation with a focus on feelings. One of the reasons for the struggle is that students don’t feel validated. For the majority of students, homework doesn’t feel good. We expect our children to put a significant amount of effort into a task that the majority of them dread. There’s a gap here. What I tell my students is “We’re going to make this more tolerable. Together we are going to create a personalized plan so that when you are on your own, with less support, you will have coping mechanisms and tools to self manage independently.”

So they participate in creating their own curriculum with you?

That’s the best part of it.

How long have you been doing this on your own as an executive function coach?

Since 2008.

That means the students you had when you first started are long since graduated, even from college. How does the validation from your students as a teacher compare to the validation you got when you were a student?

I know that most of my students are doing really well. They believe they are capable because each one discovered what their potential for success looks like.  I just want to keep going and continue growing. I’m always thinking of what’s next, I need to get to the next challenge!

You had to be challenged. You discovered that yourself, you found it in yourself. So when you get a student with a lot of [special] needs like that and you recognize immediately This kid needs to be challenged do you see yourself in them?

I really try not to personalize. Each student in this program feels challenged to academically experience the best version of themselves once their appropriate strategies are identified. That is the expectation across the board. I know when to pull tighter and when I have to loosen it up. I adapt to the environment based on the individual need.

Do you see yourself like your teachers from high school?

Yes and no. I mean, my personality can be somewhat intense, especially in a work environment. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if some of the kids said I came across as scary when we first started working together. The expectations are quickly understood. This is a no-nonsense, nurturing program. That’s how sustainable results take root; no tinkering around! With a one-on-one dynamic, though, there are tons of open pockets for candid, fun moments. None of which I ever experienced with my high school teachers.

When you get a call from a parent to get your services are they desperate or are they being proactive?

There is a mix. This past year a lot of families felt desperate. Virtual [learning] was a tremendous struggle for a lot of students. Typically they speak to their primary care physician about what’s going on and then their physician, therapist or a neuropsychologist provides the referral. It’s validating, the need continues to be there.

It’s validating—there’s that word again—that they see your skill as something that their patients need. If you were back in 1986, say, would you look around your classroom and say that kid needs me, that kid needs me, that kid ... is this a new thing?

No. I don’t think executive functioning is new at all. I think the increasing curiosity is somewhat new though. There is certainly a spotlight there. The irony for me is the amount of ambiguity there appears to be when discussing the subject of EF with parents and medical professionals. For a client or individual to benefit from EF services—yielding results that are sustainable and morph into life skills—coaching services require minimal gray areas. The majority of students will eventually individualize their initial guardrail imprint so their daily process has flexibility. For students who struggle significantly with ADD and ADHD the rigidity, without any ambiguity, of a predictable and repeatable turn key process is essential for sustainable imprinting.

But you don’t like to love it by looking back, which is what makes you so good! Advocates like you don’t like to list their accomplishments.

I’m thinking about an episode from “Shark Tank” right now. A scientist was pitching his product to the panel of judges and he said “I get that you are excited about this product and its monetary value, but I just love the work.” That’s where I’m coming from. Being part of the transformation that occurs in a student when they begin experiencing success is tremendously gratifying. I feel honored to be a part of that.

It’s funny—again—I have my guard rails, I have my process, but I also am a blank slate. I try to enter every new home thinking I’m going to learn. I learn from my students. I never assume that I know everything because they’re the ones that teach me that I don’t.

Do you vet?

There is an application process for the purpose of ensuring that the service and student/family dynamic is in alignment. As a “results-based” business I pride myself on the integrity of sustainability. I have to make sure that we’re a good match. Ultimately program value is measured by the level of efficiency and productivity that occurs outside of a students’ coaching session. The purpose is creating sustainable imprinting for life-long self-reliance.

I think that there’s gonna be a lot of parents reading this going, I know the right questions to ask if I have to make this call. I know the right conversation to have and I know the right cues. What are the biggest hurdles you ever have to jump through?

My older students require more time. Their work habits are ingrained, and much harder to  break. Time, validation, patience, and commitment!

Nicole Gambino is Language-Based Learning Disability Specialist offering broad qualifications in phonological skill building, phonemic awareness, listening and reading comprehension, testing support, note-taking and study strategies, and writing organization for various academic levels and learning styles at-risk, struggling and special needs populations. www.nicolegambino.com

Ilana + Briana

Ilana Pavlotsky (center, standing), with Daniel Pavlotsky (left), and Briana Tautiva

FOR ILLANA PAVLOTSKY AND BRIANA TAUTIVA, THIS WAR IN UKRAINE IS A PERSONAL NIGHTMARE. BEING A BYSTANDER IS NOT AN OPTION. DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT IS IN THEIR BLOOD AND THEIR FAMILY HISTORY.

Our conversation starts here:

I want to get right into talking about what you’re doing for the Ukraine, but let’s talk about your ties, your history.

Illana: My mom grew up in a village right outside of Kyiv. We call it a little Anatevka, if you could imagine. After she was born, she and my grandmother moved to the city of Kyiv, where my grandfather was from on my mom’s side. My mom lived in Kyiv until she was 27. She studied and became a nurse at 18 years old.

A bit more backstory, they immigrated in 1988. They were supposed to leave in 1979. It was a long process—you had to renounce your citizenship as a Soviet. You had to become ex communist, you basically had to leave all your ties and you were “crossed out” from their society in order to be able to provide documentation to even leave the country, leave the Soviet Union. You have to leave your job, leave university. That all takes time. And in that time, the border shut down.

From 1978 to 1989 the border shut and they got stuck there. Right after my mom got out of high school, my grandmother—who was already a nurse, very well respected in Kyiv—she told my mom, “You have to go back to university. You have to get your degree and get to go work. We can’t go anywhere.” And at that point they were already considered ex communists, so it was very—I don’t even know what word to use. My mom keeps saying it was “very embarrassing” to have to go back. People didn’t want to accept her because in addition to being Jewish, which was like having an “X” on her, she’s now an ex-Communist as well.

But she did it, she went to school. She was a nurse when Chernobyl happened. She would tell you the story much better than I. She saw the scariest things. And we’ve spoken a bit about the propaganda behind Chernobyl. My mother found out about [the nuclear plant] from her family members who were being sponsored in America, in New Jersey at the time. They called Mom and asked if everything was okay. My mom was like “What are you guys talking about? It’s American propaganda! There’s nothing going on, everything is fine.” Meanwhile, she’s treating these firefighters not knowing why they were coming to the hospital covered in burns.

That’s her experience. I mean, there’s tons of stories that I could tell you. But they immigrated from Kyiv and the immigration process was a very long process. They had to travel through Austria and, theoretically, you had to leave the Soviet Union and tell them that you’re “going to Israel.” That was the only way out, to say that. And once you left the border, then you have no documentation, you’re a free person. At that point once you hit Austria on the train, you’re either really going to Israel or you now have “changed your mind” and you’re going to America. Through that process from Austria was a huge immigration if you look at the history of the ex-Soviet immigration process, it was from Austria to Italy. And in Italy there were large communities of Soviet refugees that would stay there for 6 to 9 months. My mom was there for about 8 months and was supported by organizations like Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) while they were waiting for the documents to come to the States. And of course you had to be sponsored, have some sort of family relationship here. So she came with her mother, her father, and her little sister when she was 27. They came to Boston. And that’s where she met my father, who had come here when he was 21.

He grew up in a small village right outside of Odessa. Where he is from often makes me question my identity [laughing] because I’m Ukrainian/Romanian, Ukrainian/Moldovian. Listen, depending on the year you’re looking at a map, that’s where I’m from! [laughing] My grandfather was born in the same hospital my father was born in. When my grandfather was born, it was Romania. When my father was born, it was Moldavia. It is now Ukraine, so what am I?! The point is, borders move around all the time but we’re all brothers and sisters. He immigrated when he was 21 in 1979 again through Austria to Italy. Same whole process 10 years later,
same thing.

There was a large, black market in Italy which is where everybody had to sell whatever goods they had. There is a joke in our family that the only word in Italian my dad knows is “condom.” What are you bringing with you to trade on the black market? Caviar, of course, Russian vodka, and condoms. That was the thing! He tells me stories about hiding in dumpsters from the police in Italy. It’s insane the things that they went through to survive. He came to Providence, Rhode Island in 1979 and then to Boston where he met my mom.

1991 Ukraine became independent. When was the last time that you visited Ukraine before the war?

Before this war? We were actually back there in 2019, that was my third time being there. I have older brothers, Daniel and Eddie. We surprised our parents in Ukraine. The 2 of them were there on a trip while I was in Israel—I was on a birth right trip as a staff leader—but my brothers from Boston and me from Israel met and surprised my father in Odessa. This was his city, the city that he grew up in. It’s where my grandmother was from. My grandmother’s brother was the head engineer for the port of Odessa. Odessa is on the Black Sea. He constructed that port, so Odessa is our home. It’s everything that we know. So, we surprised in him 2019. But I was also there in 2014 when Crimea broke out. I was on one of the last flights in February when everything started there.

That was my first kind of go-around. It helped a lot with what we did this time because I had the experience of getting shipments to Ukraine and what the process was. So I was a sophomore in high school then, and came home and said, “We have to do something, the stores are empty, there’s nothing.” I was in Dnepropetrovsk which is a pretty well-to-do city. They didn’t get hurt at all, they’re still doing fine in this war as well. But supermarkets were just completely empty, there was nothing to eat. So when I got back, I sent 16 boxes of aid and raised the funds to ship it and that was my mini drive.

Your mother left as a Jewish woman and ex-Soviet in 1989. It’s a very different Ukraine now. What were their reactions when they visited in 2019.

A lot of people refer to it as “The Ukraine” because that’s what it was when it was part of the Soviet Union. Now it’s Ukraine. It’s a country, not associated with them any longer. The first time we went back I think my parents were actually more shocked then we were. What they had remembered—their apartment, their schools—were different in their minds. When they went back, they saw that the little shed they lived in and the rundown school was the same one they went to, nothing had changed. They saw [as adults] what they grew up in. I mean, the Soviet Union is not the Soviet Union anymore, but nothing has changed.

Does Ukraine recognize dual citizenship?

Yeah. I mean, it’s tough because in Russian if you say “Ukrainian,” that word signifies Russian Orthodox religion. So it’s very weird for me when I say I’m Ukrainian, I am a Ukrainian Jew. Growing up, my parents passports said their nationality was Jewish. Ukrainians were Orthodox. So it’s hard for them to want to have the citizenship of Ukraine when, as Jews, they were not treated well. It’s still their home country and they’re going to fight for it but it’s kind of a sticky situation.

So here you are, getting phone calls from Ukraine, from your friends and they told you they’re not sure what’s going on?

A couple of weeks before the war started, we were talking about it all the time. Like, “something is brewing” but we all kept saying “there can’t be a war. There couldn’t be a war.” But the tanks were lining up. So we would call our friends to find out what’s going on, and they were all like, “Everything’s fine! You guys are just making this up.”

B: Yeah, they said it’s all “over-played in the media,” and “don’t listen to the media,” “We’re not buying it, we’re okay.”

I: When the bombing started… it’s all a blur for me.

B: It was the first few days I remember watching both you and Daniel glued to your phones.

I: My brother and I were just zombies the first couple of days.

I can’t even imagine. Were you having flashbacks of 2014?

I: I am not having flashbacks, I am seeing my biggest fear in life. Everything that my grandparents survived and my parents survived—it’s too much. I can’t even sleep at night if I watch “Schindler’s List.” I can’t because I would always have a fear that this is going to happen again. It’s been a fear my whole life. And I’m watching this happening in front of me

B: I remember watching both of you glued to your phones every single second, looking at updates. The first week was helplessness. It was “Can we do anything?” We’re watching it happen before our eyes. We’re watching history repeat itself. There was a march in that first week and [that event] was the first time we felt like we were doing something. Roza came as well. We all walked miles, but afterward, we sat there like, “OK, that was something, but it wasn’t enough. It’s not enough just to speak up or march. It didn’t bring about any actual change.”

So, we decided to do what Ilana did back in 2014. Ilana started reaching out to DHL to figure out how we can navigate a shipment. Daniel started posting a GoFundMe with an initial goal of $2,500. We started small and kind of taking on what we could. It blew up much faster than we anticipated. We woke up the next morning with $10,000 in that GoFundMe. Within, I would say, 24 hours, we were on Channel 5 News and people were coming by every 20 minutes. People would pull up [to Roza’s house] in cars and unload their cars with stuff. I think I started bawling just in disbelief that people cared this much and wanted to help. We thought, if people are going to help us, then we’re going to continue to do everything that we can. And that’s how it all started. My business mind started going and we became a nonprofit; we started getting organized.

You turned a small ask into a huge act of humanitarianism. The way I look at it is like this: the younger me organized the marches and demanded change. Once I got a bit older, I started to get more organized and called for change in policies, laws, and learning the way the world really works. Now I’m even older and now maybe my brand of activism becomes more philanthropic and, well, “here’s
my donation.”

I: Also very helpful! I mean, everybody plays a role. You’re absolutely right. For example, when Briana and I started posting [on social media] we also saw the people in our community trying to do the same thing and the reason I’m saying trying is because I would see the way that they’re approaching it, and I’m like “This is great but do you have a process? How will you ship this? Do you have a contact [in Ukraine]? Do you have the funds to ship this because that one box is gonna cost you $400.”

B: “Do you know how you’re going to get through customs?” So, a lot of people trying to do little projects and it’s amazing, everybody wanted to help, but again, we didn’t accept a single donation until we had DHL lined up. We didn’t launch a GoFundMe until we knew exactly how the stuff was going to get there.

I: And that was where our experience came from— my shipment in 2014. I knew that this is something you just can’t go to FedEx and drop it off and it gets shipped. This is a long process. We reached out to DHL, for example, and it is phenomenal. They have been extremely supportive! We have an account rep who has me on speed dial. We’re talking back-and-forth all the time.

What are you feeling? Are you overwhelmed?

B: We were overwhelmed with the amount of supplies but that’s a good problem to have. I think my emotion, why I was crying, was just thinking [about our families]. Ilana’s family escaped persecution, my great grandmother also escaped the Russian Cossacks and Jewish persecution. So, looking back to so many times people did nothing, just sat there and they didn’t act. They were bystanders. Compared to now seeing regular people—not governments, not organizations, but just regular everyday people—come and drop off the clothes and want to help as much as they can.

People are calling us and reaching out over social media asking “Can I come help you pack? Can I come help you load boxes? What can I do?” I get messages every single day from people who just want to help and want to make a difference. This is what motivates us. You don’t have to be an organization or a multimillionaire to make an impact. You can just be an everyday person who wants to make a difference.

It’s a relief to hear that there was this outpouring of support. So, how much to today, the beginning of April, have you raised?

B: We are close to $65,000. We were on the news every day at the beginning, so we captured as much as we could at the beginning. Now we’re filing for 501(c)(3) status and we will then be able to go to businesses for support and that will help.

I know you’ve been asked, “How can people know that you’re legit?”

I: We honestly in a way, we appreciate it. And that’s what I want to say to you, that this organization is people, it’s not businesses. It’s people. We have people on our side and people on that side. It is not an organization. It is the person at the border, the person seeing the refugees come in, the person in Poland, a person in Romania.

One connection we have, in a long loop, somebody that I met on my birthright trip who does a lot of YouTube work on a channel called “Yes Theory,” they have a big following. I saw on a recent post that he was on a flight to Poland, so I messaged him, asked, “Do you need help?” and told him we’re looking to ship things over and do you have a place. He said, “Absolutely, here’s my contact, lets start working.” With that “Yes Theory” connection, they created a sub group called Team Ukraine Love. They’re based out of Warsaw. It is all volunteers just like us. They have used their social media following and have raised $650,000. They’re doing the same work as us, so we’re supporting them through different avenues. We’ve sent them direct packages and they have also bought things on the ground here in the US—things that haven’t been donated to them like tourniquets, chest seals, field stretchers. They utilize our DHL account to be able to ship things. So our turnaround rate is typically, send out on Tuesday, by Friday it’s on the ground in Poland or Romania. Shipping by sea is cheaper, absolutely, but that’s going to take six weeks. I hope in six weeks this war is done. So that’s not a fast enough turn around.

B: Especially now that we’re delivering chest seal wound kits and high-grade medical supplies. We’re going away from general donations. We’re now pivoting towards what’s needed right now and what they can’t get there. And it’s life saving stuff, so the faster we get it there, the faster we know it can be driven into Ukraine.

Where are you getting supplies?

I: Team Ukraine Love is sourcing it. They have our address as a contact for these shipments and donations. We put our labels on it with DHL, and it gets shipped through us. So we not only will be raising money and sending our own supplies, we’re also acting as liaisons.

I’ll give another example. Team Ukraine Love shared our post on social media and Briana called me and said, “We just connected with a girl on Instagram, and says she’s at the border in Poland and she desperately needs help from ‘Yes Theory.’” At that point “Yes Theory” had posted that they had procured 100 generators from Berlin and someone on the team brought those generators to Poland. This girl’s name is Lilia, and she is a volunteer at the Medyka, Poland border. This is one of the most popular borders from Poland and Lviv—you’ve heard Lviv is one of the cities that a lot of people are going to, people are walking or driving and it’s 20 miles between Poland and that side of Ukraine. There’s nothing. It’s literally just farmland there. They need everything.

B: This was a random girl who reached out on Instagram. I’m like, “Is she real? I don’t know her. I didn’t know anything about her. Her Instagram is private.” Well, we wound up on FaceTime that day and she’s literally on the verge of tears. She’s an everyday person, volunteering at the border at Medyka and she said “I’m watching kids die of hypothermia because they’re freezing. I can’t watch this, I’m desperate. I’m calling everyone for help. Can you help us?” Long story short, she connected with some of our medical teams from Boston that happened to be at the same border (Medyka) whom we sent supplies. We wanted to make sure she’s real, she took a selfie with them and showed us she’s with the people that we know—they happened to be there that day, which was just serendipitous for us.

I: A medical team of people that we know in Boston were at the same border in Poland and by chance posted a picture on Facebook. I said, “You’re in Medyka?” And she said,“I’m where?” I said, “That location, I see it on Facebook. You’re in Medyka.” She said, “ Yeah, I’m here there’s only one medical tent. They really need help here, it’s really bad.” I said to Bri, this is a legit place.

B: We now talk to her several times a week. She connected with the “Yes Theory” team, they brought her truckloads of supplies. She had a pass—you need a pass, a card to get in and out of Ukraine easily—so she was helping the “Yes Theory” team get in and out of Ukraine. They send selfies of them going under cover of night to bring supplies in, and we see our boxes being unloaded in the truck.

She texted and said, “One day I’m going to meet you and give you such a big hug.” I can’t… everyday people. We’re seeing people care and want to make a difference. We’re seeing her photos of our stuff get there. It’s just… We did that. We did something. We made a difference.

If this doesn’t tell you how small the world is now.

I: I’ve said since the beginning that social media was missing in World War II. That’s just one story. There is another girl that reached out to us on Instagram from South Boston. She’s Romanian. She’s an accountant and she messaged us. She said that she’s leaving for Romania and wanted to know if we have any connections to people where she can go volunteer. She had already had a connection to a monastery in Siret, Romania …  They are housing pregnant women and women with young children …  She came to our home and I stocked her up with 2 suitcases filled with new clothes for kids, babies, diapers, wipes, pads, tampons, baby formula, a bunch of things.

I talk to her about every other day. She calls me to translate. She speaks Romanian and I speak Russian. So what happens is she puts me on the phone, I speak to the refugee, I translate to English, she translates from English to Romanian. At the monastery, sister Andreana is a nurse there, I don’t even know her, but I know her name and I know that she doesn’t speak Russian.

So there’s been a couple times where they call me and a mom is telling me, in Russian, that her child is having stomach issues and I, from my medical background, know Russian medicine so sometimes I’m triaging them and explaining to them what they need to give the child.

For example, yesterday was a really hard situation. She (Emma) calls me and it was 4:30 p.m. our time which is probably 10:30 p.m. their time. She said that she got called to the train station for an elderly lady who was claiming that she wants to go back to Kyiv where she’s from. When Emma got there, she called me and I was talking to the grandmother. She told me, “Call me “babushka,” which is in Russian ‘grandma.’ I’m trying to explain to her that they were going to give her a place to stay for the night, and then they can help her in the morning.

Emma takes the phone and she starts texting me that a strange man just approached her, and is claiming that he’s going to help her (the babushka) and has a train ticket for her, but he needs her passport and Emma freaked out. She’s on the phone with me and I said put me back on the phone with the grandmother. I’ll talk to her; I already have a rapport with her she’ll listen to me.

Long story short, the grandmother went with Emma, she didn’t end up going with that guy. Emma kept me on the phone until they got back to the monastery because she said the guy started following her. I FaceTimed with the grandmother when they were back in the monastery and she was very confused. She was probably cold and hadn’t slept for a while. She said she had been in Romania for 40 days and she just wanted to go back to Kyiv. She said she was ready to die and just wanted to be buried with her husband. She said, “I’m done. I’m ready to go back.”

I convinced her to just sleep on it and that we would talk in the morning. In the morning, I woke up to a text from Emma saying that the grandmother decided that she was going to stay there and that she felt safe there.

This is what your day is like?

I: Briana is a full-time student; I’m a full-time nurse. Daniel is working full-time as well. We’re juggling this between all of that, yeah.

B: We definitely get overwhelmed. A couple of weeks ago the three of us said we need a break. We’re taking a Sunday off from shipping and boxing. We do get overwhelmed, but I don’t think of it—and I think Ilana would probably agree with me—I feel like it’s just what you’re supposed to do.

I think it would be harder to sit by and watch this happen and not do anything. I think it would be harder to sit by and watch it and be like how can the world just sit there and not do something? For me, whatever little pressure we have on us every day I find it insignificant relative to the things that they’re facing every day. They had to flee their home. They don’t know if they get to ever go home. We’re doing a few phone calls and dealing with shipping logistics and trying to run an organization. It’s nothing compared to what they’re dealing with, and so I think for me, it’s just the bare minimum that we as human beings should be doing to help other human beings in need. And I would hope, I would pray that, God forbid if I were ever in their shoes, that someone would repay that.

I: I think that she captured it all. Yes, this is the land that I come from, but at the end of the day, we’re humans. We as people owe it to innocent lives to help them in their time of need and I’ll repeat that for the rest of my life.

That right there is a really hard thing to teach, and I do think teaching by example is probably the only way.

I: I will say, a lot of what I carry is for when I have children, for them to know my story and our history, where they came from. I think that’s a big thing that’s missing in our society. There is so much rich history in the grandparents that established these areas, and I would say 99% of them were immigrants that came to this country with nothing and established the huge businesses that exist in these communities. But their grandchildren oftentimes don’t know their history.

I know struggles that my parents went through and my grandparents went through and what they survived. I’m obligated to make up for 2 generations worth of life. It is my duty to make up for everything that they sacrificed so that I’m not in Ukraine right now. So that I’m not living in an ex-Soviet society. So I’m not suffering with antisemitism. So that I can wear my name in Hebrew into a corporate event and not worry that someone’s going to target me. Because I couldn’t do that if I lived there.

B: I think what we’re doing is the bare minimum to lay our head down at night and not feel helpless.

Marci: You said something interesting about being a bystander. During high school I did the Walk of the Living. There is a walkway that goes from Birkenau to Auschwitz. When you were done in the labor camps and couldn’t work anymore, your last bit of energy in life was used to walk you to Auschwitz. There was an apartment building on the side of the road that had been there since before World War II and where people lived throughout the war …  people who lived in that apartment building [were] watching, they saw the smoke come out of the stacks, but never did anything.

I: It’s something that I can’t even explain, but it’s the same fear probably—and I’m not giving them any excuses—but that fear that a lot of civilians have in Russia right now. That “If I speak out, it’s me that’s going to have a bullet in my head.” That’s an awful, awful thing to have to live with. We watched it the first couple weeks. They put children into jail in Russia for speaking out and protesting. We have that freedom here in America to say whatever you want and know that you’re safe to say it.

B: What this has shown me is as much as there are people coming and dropping off supplies and helping, there are groups of people that don’t care if it doesn’t affect them. I have 10,000 followers on Instagram and I ask people to share what I posted, and I would say maybe 50 do. People look at my Instagram and look at my stories and don’t react, don’t engage, and don’t even so much as just hit the share button. That takes no effort, it takes no effort to do so little. There are people who stand by every day when injustice happens. Kids being bullied, women assaulted, it happens now in this war. But we have to focus on the positive, on the people who do, and work extra hard.

I: But at the end of the day, it’s people that are doing this work. It is people doing this. It’s the power of people and it’s insane to watch.

Lissa Curtis

Photo: Lissa Curtis

Editor’s Note: Lissa Curtis is the survivor of a sexual assault. While the assault is not discussed here, parts of this conversation may have a triggering effect to some readers. Please take care while reading.

Living Crue: Every story has a first and a last chapter. Your story hasn’t ended yet. And it does have a final chapter being written. But let’s start in a place where you’re comfortable talking generally about the experience you had 8 years ago.

Lissa: Yeah, I feel my heart racing right away.

[pausing for breath]

Unfortunately, I am one of many women who have a story of sexual assault and rape. I never thought it would be me, you know, I thought I was safe. I never thought I would experience such horrific abuse. But I did. But I did. So … sorry, yeah, sorry. [taking deep breaths]

I am struggling with what to say to you, knowing —Wow, I didn’t want…this is harder than what I thought all of a sudden. No. It’s OK. I am usually really quick with my words, but I am a bit nervous all of a sudden. I’m ok.

Can you ask me again?

You had said that you never thought this could happen to you.

L: Yeah, I would say most women kind of just think that. They think that [they] wouldn’t go through something so horrific. That would just turn their life inside out into the point where I just felt like I had to start my life over from zero. Just crawl out of that dark hole and try to find some sliver of light to keep going. Yeah, I never thought it would be me. I never thought it would be me. My perpetrator was someone I trusted. Was someone very influential in my life and my career. You let your guard down when you trust someone, to some extent. I think we all do. And that’s their “in.” They see the guard is down and they take advantage of what is usually a person with a big heart and soul and with big passion. So I was definitely taken advantage of.

When you decided to crawl out and go toward the light, when was this on the timeline? When did that inner voice say OK, I’ve got to make this decision?

L: Pretty much really soon, very soon after my assault.  I knew I had to make a decision, knowing that I had to make it just for me personally, but I knew that if I didn’t speak up about what I had experienced, I would send more victims to this perpetrator when I knew that I could prevent this from happening to another person. So, that was my motivation and when you talk about seeing that sliver of light, all I had to do was picture specific people who I knew were influenced by this man, and I was willing to do anything. I was willing to sacrifice my career. I was willing to share my name and my face. I was willing to go through what ended up to be years of ongoing abuse and continues almost 8 years later.

All I had to do was flip the switch in my mind. Because I truly believe that, you know, I wasn’t the first victim of this person and I wasn’t going to be the last, unfortunately. All I could think was whoever was before me, if they had spoken out, if they had the guts, if they had the bravery to go public, to speak out, then I wouldn’t be in the situation. So, I had to turn it in my mind to think of the next man, the next woman, and do everything I could in my power to try to protect them from going through such horror.

Earlier when we spoke, you told me you made the decision, initially, not to talk about [the assault] after it happened. You didn’t want anyone to know.

L: That’s true. And I almost didn’t believe what had happened to me was real. To some extent, it felt like a dream and it’s a really common thing to experience when you’re in a traumatic state in your brain. You’re just trying to keep yourself alive. And so it didn’t almost feel real. Making it back to my home, yes, I just didn’t one hundred percent feel like it had happened.

B: But I knew the moment she walked through the door something awful happened.

What were your first thoughts when you looked at her and thought something was wrong?

B: It was immediately when she came in through the door—to look at her—it was like she was a shell of a person. Lissa is so full of life, so positive, and so loving and wonderful. She also wasn’t able to hug. So that was a huge red flag at the very beginning. We’re so close, our family, so close. To have her not want to get a hug when you first get home is just one hundred percent out of character for her. The crazy thing this is, this is going to sound funny, but I had a dream when she was away.

I was at a friend’s house in Virginia. This is just nuts. I had a dream in the middle of the night [on the] night she left. We both left the same day. I had a dream that she was in a white car and was in an accident. I saw her blood all over the car. I jolted awake. I didn’t know if she was alive or dead in this dream.  I don’t have dreams like that. I was just so shaken up. So I kept trying to get a hold of her. But she was with the perpetrator so she couldn’t really talk, and all she said was “I’m dealing with it” or something to that effect that was vague. So I watched her [performance] on the computer. Because I still needed to make sure she’s OK, that she’s on the stage. But it was from far away. I feel like if it was closer, I even would’ve known, as a mother. So, I let go. But the moment [she] walked in the door when she came home, I knew that something bad happened. I knew that that dream meant something, and I had wished—and I wish now—that we had flown halfway across the world to get her.

You don’t want to talk about it. You want to pretend it never happened. When was the moment you decided “OK I need to stand up now?”

L: I remember a lot of tears. A lot of shaking. A lot of night terrors. Honestly, I was in no state of any type of human decency. But I just had that gut instinct that this is what I had to do, no matter how much I was going to suffer or how much I was suffering even at the time.

And so what is step #1 after you make that decision?

L: One was going to the police to report him. Next to the ER. And it had been too long of a time for them to get a rape kit to possibly identify [him]. And soon after we learned that local law enforcement, this was out of their hands, and they couldn’t take it any further. Which was unfortunate. They were actually really wonderful in the moment. I am very grateful to those first officers we dealt with, but it was out of their hands, and it went to the FBI for investigation.

B: I did want to say the local police department was very good to us. We’re very thankful for them, and we went back a couple years later to thank the officer. Because he just knew. He said he was a dad and he had girls and he just knew. When we had the FBI come in, that was not the same feeling.

At one point did you say, “I need to do something more to help women like me.”

L: Yes. And oddly enough, your question is perfect because 8 years prior, really soon after the trauma, I had also kind of a crazy… I don’t know, vision or dream, whatever you will. I was on the couch and barely able to move. And I had this clear vision, a dream of building a safe place for survivors.

It was in quite immense detail, and I laughed. [laughing] I thought “This is my life right now, and I’m getting ready to pursue legal battles, and I’m suicidal and my PTSD is through the roof, and I’m being told I’m like a prisoner of war [with PTSD], and so … I just laughed. I laughed it off and I shoved it somewhere in my memory. Then about 4 1/2, 5 years post trauma, the first bug as it were that was just like bubbling up in my spirit was wanting to give back [especially to] all the local crisis centers that helped me. So I created the Be Brave Gala.

We’ve held it 3 times and raised over $60,000 for 3 different crisis centers. And it worked out and that was the first bug. And funny enough the therapist I was working with at the time told me not to do it. She was like, “You’re too fragile. Don’t do it.” I was like, “Well too bad I’m doing it!” and I will find another therapist. Thank you very much.

So talk about listening to your gut and intuition. I thought, “I don’t care how crazy it sounds. I just can’t shake this need off of me.” And that was the beginning of what led to opening my nonprofit. We started with the Be Brave Gala and gained quite a large following, especially because they’re giving back to the crisis center. We gained a large following because we brought in many types of different art, protection dogs, martial arts, singers, dancers. It was a very high-end event.

I just had to give back to these people. I mean, they sat with me for hours and hours, days sometimes. They would cry with me, they would hand me a box of tissues, they would hold my hand, you know, with permission, they would sit in court. There was nothing they didn’t do for me.

B: Yeah, they sat with us in courtrooms; they sat with us when the FBI was interrogating; they sat with the family, the rest of us.

L: I was the client of theirs that, for a handful of different therapists, was too much to handle.  I was too complex of a case [for lawyers] to tackle, given the international component, given all the complexities. They even helped me find a counselor who was not afraid of anything. You know, when I walked into that first counseling she said “There’s nothing you can’t tell me. I’m not afraid.”

So anyway, they’ve just helped me in so many ways. I could go on and on forever and then write a book on all the ways I’ve been helped immensely by this group of people.

At the time were you just doing what people said? Did you start formulating a plan and putting a team together?

B: [looking at Lissa] I’m curious what you’re going to say. Because [you] really were not “with it” then. We did the planning. I don’t know what you remember.

L: My mom’s right. The first 18 months and even 2 years was me relying on my mother, my father, and my husband for any type of care I needed … I couldn’t stomach any type of food besides a liquid form for a long time. They brought me to any and all therapy sessions. And of course, the legal and meetings and aspects…

B: So, we kind of lead all of it, not having much knowledge of what you do with this kind of trauma. I don’t think there’s any well-worn path, so you don’t really know which way to turn. So we called a friend who knew a lawyer, and [we went] to the local police and they have an advocate. And so, it just becomes this path that you’ve never been on and people don’t speak about. So that’s another reason why we’re advocates. I know I help parents of a lot of these trauma survivors to help them navigate.

They’ll ask us questions: “Which way to go, and what was this like, what was that like?” It was all trial and error. The therapist Lissa talked about, that one that was not a good fit—it was the crisis center at CCCNH that said, “If it’s not a right fit, you don’t go … you will find someone that is the right fit.”

There is a physical element to this trauma that no one talks about. Are you comfortable at all talking [more] about [that]?

L: Yeah, I could go on and on. Early on it felt like there was just a sex tape playing across my brain nonstop that I could not turn off. It was horrific. Horrific. I would just see the assault over and over again. I would lose my breath all the time and I couldn’t be touched. God forbid that anyone touch me without my permission, but I needed to see them. I couldn’t hug people, couldn’t touch anyone. Sleeping was brutal. Just getting night terrors. Pretty much every evening for the first few years was difficult. When it got dark out, my brain would go back and remember the trauma, and I would see specific things and moments and hear things in my head. I couldn’t, as much as I would will it away, I just couldn’t turn it off.

The loss of appetite. I feel like people don’t talk about the physical body, my body tightened up so much. I’m a professional ballerina. I’m very, very flexible with my training over the past few decades. But I couldn’t touch my toes. I was like oh my gosh “I can’t bend forward. I can’t go backwards.” My body was so tight. So, I needed a lot of bodywork just to get my body to actually relax. And that was really interesting to experience.

B: It was from being in that fetal position that she was stuck in for so long.

And Mom, you’re going through your own trauma. It’s a different trauma and how much were you fighting yourself, the desire to…

B: You’re going to make me cry.

L: It’s okay, you can cry.

B: It was hard. We were going on 3 hours asleep each night because we were all on suicide watch. So that was the first couple years. I had shingles twice. The stress on a close family is more intense, especially when you don’t understand the enemy. We didn’t really understand how much danger were we in? It’s a real part of the trauma. Like you said, very different from what Lissa went through, but we absolutely had our own trauma. We were walking parallel just differently.

L: Yeah, the secondary trauma is huge and I feel like that’s not talked about a lot. Yes, what I went through was horrific, but what my husband and my mother and my father and my siblings [went through]?  I mean, it’s also extremely horrific because it almost, from what my simple understanding is, can sometimes be worse for that secondary trauma victim because they don’t know everything that happened. I know everything that happened, you know, to the best of my memory. But for them there’s a lot of loose, floating questions. What really happened? How much danger are we in, are we up against? It’s horrible—not talked a lot about. But those key support people that are helping the survivor, I mean, you bet they’re going through it.

B: That is one thing that we have told other trauma survivors. [You] do need people in your life, even if it’s one person. But just somebody that can just really care about you. You don’t have to be a professional to really care about somebody and listen to their story.

How do you handle losing support, someone who was there from the beginning, but is no longer on this journey with you?

L: Great question. My tight inner circle, that has stayed the same. My family and a couple of other people that are just very tight and that we really trust, but beyond that? We’ve had several people walk away and not believe me.  Think I’m out, I don’t know, to make money and become famous for the girl being raped? I mean it’s wild. You see who your true friends are.

I am honestly very blessed that I did have an amazing support system. And the more I am an advocate, and the more I meet people and connect more people, and just [have relationships] with more survivors—I mean, gosh, most of them don’t have anyone else! They don’t have one person! It’s so sad. It’s so sad. It is a huge, huge blessing, a huge miracle when you have even just one person stand by you, and say, “Yes, I believe you. What do you need?” Even if it’s just being a friend.

B: It certainly felt like there were several people, but really, we had supporters coming out of the woodwork for us. When you have even just a few people walk away, the weight of it actually feels like a bigger loss than it really is.

I think it’s too much for a lot of people. That’s why you do need just a core. Whether it’s one, like Lissa said, or just a few. Because people’s stories—they’re just—they’re too much to carry. I think that’s part of it.

The inner voice that told you to get up and fight 8 years ago, and the one that told you it’s time for you to go make that vision happen. What was different?

L: I would say the first voice was more of desperation, of desperately wanting to save the next person. And the second voice? Was a little bit of fighting back. Was a little bit of taking my life back. One of my personal mantras was Be Brave. I got [that] tattooed on my arm as a reminder … I’m not gonna let this ruin my life. Even though I’m still walking through this difficult road.

You got up and went to your mom and said, “We’re going to open up this school.”

B: [laughing] Maybe Lissa should expand on that!

L: I did! I had a vision very early on post-trauma. My father-in-law, oddly enough, was in town when I had this vision. I just thought this doesn’t make any sense!

And what I saw was a brick building, and it had a big archway and it had “Safe Haven Ballet” written on it very clearly. And I saw 2 pairs of hands peeking through the clouds, and I thought it represented the hands of God, perhaps. And one had a hammer, and one had a pair of pointe shoes. And I heard the phrase ever so clearly: “You’re not done dancing.” At that point, I decided I was never going to do ballet again, because it was attached to so much trauma. And the hammer I heard: “You have things to build, you have things to do.”  I was like, “No! No!” That was my vision that I laughed off, but I never forgot it. It was so clear and totally out of the norm.

B: And the name.

L: And to have the name. I was like what is Safe Haven? What does it mean? My first thought was we had worked, as a family, with Haven, which is one of the crisis centers on the seacoast of New Hampshire. So, I immediately was like, oh!  It was, like, a whole waking up here, and it’s a safe place for survivors to come in and get help and get resources. So time went by…

B: Years.

L: Years, yes, years went by and I just sort of tucked that away and didn’t talk about it. And as I mentioned, I had that stirring in my soul to create the Be Brave Gala as a way to give back to the crisis centers that had helped me. But I was just ready for something more. And one of the biggest helps I had found, through many years of many different types of therapies and types of [methods] to bring my body back to neutral, was movement and breath. And so I had done, for a short time, a trauma sensitive yoga class. [It was] so gentle and I thought this is great! I got myself into karate years back, kind of in the middle of all this. I earned my black. I did and I got up the courage and I went back to the barre, and I started from scratch and worked my way up to be on a professional level again with ballet. But what I have found is the movement and breath component was helping me so much. I was in all the talk therapies and all those kinds of things, and I was loving not having to talk about my trauma. I was talking about it a lot and dealing in processing that part of my life. And so to connect the big picture, I just felt in my spirit that Safe Haven Ballet was meant to be a place where survivors could come for free, no charge, and take movement and body and art classes. So that’s how we kicked off.

We kicked off at a local dance school that I was teaching at. I offered free classes once a week throughout 2019.  That’s how Safe Haven Ballet began. Safe Haven started offering trauma sensitive ballet classes, and since then we have expanded to other art forms. We now offer trauma sensitive Pilates, trauma sensitive yoga. We do a paint night that’s very popular. We just did a cookie decorating class and we have some work on the horizon that’s coming. So that’s how we started.

How much of the mission of Safe Haven is re-authoring the story that you’re in? Making new meaning out of what happened?

L: So as much as I created Safe Haven for other survivors, it’s really for myself, too! I was the first to kick off these classes. Teaching and being in the front of the room—the classes are very small—my gosh, it brought me more healing than I ever could’ve maybe dreamt about. Because now I was flipping the script; I was changing my path. I was, you know, I was no longer the victim; I was a survivor; I was the thriver. “Let me show you what I’ve been through, in a sense. Let me show you what I’ve overcome. I’m going to show you what we can do to help you.”

B: I agree with her. I lead the paint night and I have found healing for myself as well. That’s second hand trauma. I am not an artist professionally…I tried to paint [the visions] she saw, to remind her that this is where it started. And for other people to know it started with a dream years ago.

L: That I laughed at!

B: And yet, here we are, in this space and it’s happening. We keep the classes really small, less than six, so that it’s quiet and brings healing. It’s helped us just as much as it helps others.

L:  And the other big part of why this is so special is [because] survivors often feel alone. They feel alone, plain and simple. So to come to a place and to actually kind of … I mean a lot of these participants have become friends with each other. They are friends. And there’s just that special bond of you’ve been through hell, you’ve been through hell, hey look at us go, look where we are now. Some of them are in the middle of legal battles like myself. Others are considering bringing forth legal cases, and some of them, their trauma happened decades ago. There’s a whole span, but so cool to see friends be made knowing you’ve gone through just hardship.

You just gave me several different identities for yourself: victim, survivor, thriver … ballet dancer, wife, daughter, sister, mom, advocate—how does it all go in the next part of your story?

L: I feel like I have given myself permission to wear a lot of hats! I love it, I love it. Just the ups and downs of even my journey, that I don’t feel like I am a great advocate. I definitely have my moments for sure, but I think a lot of what draws people, I would say, to Safe Haven, and maybe even to me specifically, is that I’m just very raw. Very real. I just have nothing to hide. I am very transparent about my struggles. I don’t pretend to have it all together—because nobody does. How does that fit going forward? I think it’s just adding to my strength. I’ve been through so much, and I love being a mom. I love being a wife. I love being a teacher. I love being a ballet dancer. I love taking the stage. And I feel like it’s just helping propel Safe Haven forward, organically.

Visit www.safehavenballet.org to see upcoming performances, fundraisers, and events.

Julie + Melissa

HOPE + HALE IS JULIE ARMSTRONG OF THE HOPE EXPERIENCE AND MELISSA SMITH OF HALE BONE BROTH. TOGETHER, THEY HOST WELLNESS RETREATS AND WORKSHOPS FOR WOMEN. RECENTLY, HOPE + HALE LAUNCHED RETREATS FOR YOUNG GIRLS. LIVING CRUE SPOKE WITH THE DUO ABOUT HOW ADVOCATING FOR YOUNG GIRLS CREATES STRONG WOMAN.

Living Crue: Tell us how you got started with this wonderful idea.

Julie: During the pandemic we realized we needed to do something for young girls. And I thought Why don’t we do this for kids? We put it out there and it stuck. So many people needed it. The response was huge. It was right around vacation and so we just put feelers out there and all the parents were like “my child needs this, my girl needs this!” It was a space filler at first, but then we realized kids need this just as much as women need this right now.

Melissa: I think, just like Hope and Hale, we know how we’re feeling, we can identify with them. Julie definitely identified some of her daughter’s struggles in that tween age, and then I noticed changes in my daughter. I wanted to be like “hey what if we created a space?” This definitely transitioned into something that isn’t about age but about a group of people getting together-–including children—and putting them together to hear each other’s experiences… for people to connect, feel stronger.

As this came to fruition, I cried more with the girls (they didn’t see me) than I probably do with the women because there’s pure honesty, you know? We as women know how to protect our hearts, use our words. These children use pure honesty, even in their shyness.

Women can identify what they’re feeling when there’s pressure in the world. Kids have a very limited vocabulary. Do you tailor your program for women, who can have these complex words to describe the feeling, to these girls who may not be able to yet?

J: I think the biggest thing is setting up the stage for them. And we introduce the tools to help. We brought up conversations around nervous situations or feelings of being left out, and that created confidence and safety for them to be able to speak up. We heard, “this is how this happened at school” and “these bullies can ask me and I have no one to play with.” So we created a safe place. We got them calm, we got them in a circle, and then they felt OK to open up. So, again, I think it’s setting the environment to feel safe, then creating the space for them to speak, and giving them the tools to go with it. The yoga, the meditation, the journaling, the coloring—everything that made them feel more comfortable and connected. I started with a dance and got them to shake it out. I brought it to a level of childlike fun.

M: And sharing with them. Letting them actually make this connection that very simply, whatever age you are, we’re all in this together. Even if we think we’re alone or if we aren’t like somebody else. With the women it’s usually setting an intention or sharing a word. For the kids it was a favorite color. We would identify some people who have the same colors and they’re alike, but if you’re not alike, that’s OK, too! We want to coach them through [these feelings] and show them “See? We all are here, though.”

With [the women’s retreats] we ask,“Hey, has anybody felt the way she just expressed?” And the hands go up and there is a feeling of connection, that you’re not alone. In both age groups it’s the same set up.

The 2 skill sets that you can use are tactical: the journaling and then looking for gratitude and trying to ease the anxiety. Knowing that it’s OK to feel that way, there’s no shame.

That’s a tough one in this world. It seems intuitive that you don’t want to teach shame to your kids but what are the things that we identify that create shame? Our bodies? The way we speak?

M: How are we liked? We feel that if maybe somebody doesn’t like us there’s something wrong with us? Absolutely false! I saw a quote the other day that said “We’re not everybody’s cup of tea. And that’s OK.” If the children think they didn’t get included in something, they’ll think, “What’s wrong with me? “

I think what’s different now from when we were children is the pandemic and social media. But there are so many common foundational pieces. Being liked and loved. Having the space and safety to feel like you can be you and not feeling like you need to show up as somebody else. The pressure of a parent, like “I want you to do sports,” or “ I want you to do this.” These children feel all of that. They see it out front. What is success? A good student? An athlete? Maybe it looks like dressing a certain way? The group we hang out with?

This pandemic has brought on a ton of isolation. I think that when you’re in your own head we tell ourselves, as adults, a really tough story. Children also have that same negative self-talk. [My daughter] wants to be a perfectionist. The worst thing is that she’s not gonna be good. She’s a kid, she is still learning. So when she is not good at something that reel in her mind says, “You’re not good, you stink at that, you can’t do that.” That is like a type of isolation. Covid brought that on deeply for some of these kids.

J: Yeah, you can see it when they were able to run outside on the beach at Alice’s house where we held the event. They were all wearing masks inside, but when they got outside they were, like, free and they just started running. Some came as groups, others didn’t know each other, but they just all came together and had that connection and that experience with each other that they needed. It was so noticeable.

But it’s so interesting, as an adult I’ve learned to embrace myself, but you are telling these kids to embrace themselves now.

M: I was a shit show of a childhood and I only knew what I knew. And I say to Julie all the time, “What if I had access to this?” My mom loved me dearly, it’s just I was a poor kid with not a lot of resources and had to be very resourceful. That’s the other part of the power. Even if it’s someone like me, just a hustler trying to figure out life or someone who’s got a lot happening behind closed doors that no one talks about. These children—we watch some of them walk in with such a guard. But they have the access now to hear it. And watching that space open up a little … she starts to come out and be goofy and be fun. She wasn’t letting her anxiety get the best of her. We do these affirmation water bottles and we talk about fueling the inside like you would with water. Because what would happen if you didn’t drink water? You’d be tired, dehydrated, you’d get sick. But what if you refueled your body and your mind with positive affirmations? If you’re not afraid of things and not worrying about things? Watching them pick the stickers and look at the words—it was like we were feeding him with a hose of positive affirmations.

And they could come from a chaotic background, a great background, an I-don’t-know background, but they all need the same thing. They all need to be reminded that they are good enough, that they are beautiful. We ask them, “What are you grateful for?” And being kids living in the moment, the majority say, “I’m so thankful for this camp.”

That again, insert the tears. I guess my point to that is, we don’t know what’s going on at home, but they all show up similarly. And I wish we had the access when we were kids. Would that have changed anything? I do think there is power behind what we’re given.

What would it have been like if I were able to look back at my childhood self and talk to her?

M: It’s that Soul Project Stories question that we as adults should always ask ourselves and that’s why this whole story is so powerful, too “What would you say to your 12 year-old self?” And here’s the crux: I will tell you that straight up I don’t think I would change a thing! Because all of the stuff I went through? I have become who I am and I’m just as proud of me, because I think back and think if I hadn’t gone through all of that, I wouldn’t be sitting here.

We might have a different past and access would be great, but what we can do now is the most important. So I do believe it’s all necessary. But what would I tell my 12-year-old self? It would be, “Just be confident. Just be you.” And if a camp can give you that, cool, but you know what I did have? Me.

J: We plant seeds in their head, and that’s the biggest thing for me. When I am thinking about how to do this, for both women and kids, it is about planting seeds that they can fall back on. For me it was drinking. My mom planted a seed a long time ago. Telling me there is alcoholism in the family and I need to be aware of this. I remember thinking [when I stopped drinking] I know what to do now. Having these events and teaching these coping mechanisms is what I wish I had at 12 years old.

That’s why we created this—so that they have the opportunity to maybe skip some pain. It helps a little. It won’t change everything, but it certainly will help.

I wonder how much of this would’ve been even possible when I was a kid. We’re in a world right now that encourages self-love. This word didn’t exist 40 years ago. The concept just didn’t exist.

M: Oh, my mom didn’t do anything for herself. She’s Italian and lived in a time, you know, when you just do, do, do for the husband and the kids and you are last.

J: And you don’t talk about things.

So I don’t know if it was possible? Maybe it was.

How do you teach that It’s OK to change your mind between age 7 and 17? How do you create ambassadors of this concept?

J: We just start working to your very question. We had 2 girls that came to both of our events, one was 10 and one was 9. And we just noticed how much it was helping and how they felt. We were talking about how we need an ambassador of some sort to come to other events. Someone who can be there to help tell the other girls, tell them, “I’ve done this before. You’re gonna be OK.” So we asked these 2 girls to do that for the next one.

M: They would raise their hand and tell all the girls what their best moment from the last [retreat] was. We don’t have to tell them what to say. They can identify what they feel. It was so awesome. It’s all about the feeling.

We should all identify by what we feel, right?

J: The biggest thing with the children—and the women—is that everybody is feeling not alone anymore or not so different. This person feels the same way I do; you are you now because they are hearing other peoples experiences, and they know they’re not alone anymore. I think that’s the biggest thing—kids come from all different types of families, and some come feeling alone already. And even if it’s just for the day, because I’m sure they forget—we all forget—they feel better because they’ve experienced that feeling

M: It’s being exposed to things. It’s any sort of natural experience that you’re exposed to, even something that maybe was unexpected. You may not remember it, but know it’s possible. Internally, from even the youngest age, there’s a lot of talk about comparison. But when you’re in a group—this is definitely where Julie’s mastermind of this mission of Hope Experience comes through—when surrounded [by people], it is feeling that you’re not different, but somebody else is feeling the way you do. You don’t have to compare. Whether it’s I can’t read that well or I can’t play that sport that well or I don’t have a lot of friends, comparisons start at a young age. Especially with social media, status, and the identity piece. We don’t need to identify as anything other than what we feel. And that means it’s not stuck in writing from age 8 to 14. We can evolve.

You can experience bad things, too. We asked everybody, “have you ever felt scared or alone when you go into an event?” We got a lot of hands raised. “I’m going to new school.” “My parents got divorced.” “I’m starting a new grade.” What do you think you can do? “Well I hope I meet someone.” We noticed the majority of the girls in the group just want to be liked, to be loved, and to feel safe. Safe. Literally just safe in an environment. And the fear of the unknown—the “what ifs” But if we allow them not to worry about the “what ifs” and just experience it, look at the good that comes out of it.

J: If you could see what they look like coming in compared to what they look like at the end—just everything from their body language, to the way they speak, to how comfortable they are with each other. I mean, it’s that connection piece.

And coming off quarantine, they were all feeling isolated. It’s interesting to see how powerful that human connection is.

Is this specific to girls? Do boys need something different?

J: I have people email me saying their son needs this. And I’m not there yet. I feel like in time, now that I’m taking more courses, psychology courses, I feel like I’ll be able to learn more about that, but I’m comfortable with what we have now. They do need it, though.

Marci: So I have a thing: When did it become not OK to not be okay?

M: Honestly, this goes far back—and because I think it goes to maybe something you’ve experienced—we are trying to live by a standard set by society. Sometimes it’s fear of not being accepted and not being, you know, up to someone’s expectations. I think it’s… expectations. Whether they are external, like the societies we live in, or it’s internal, within our families. It’s that self-talk that we’re not good enough or it’s not OK because we don’t think it’s OK.

It’s not new. I do believe it’s been talked about more, to be not OK. I think things have been labeled, stigmatized. Therapy wasn’t really a cool thing, but getting therapy is amazing! Going to workshops to experience personal growth is amazing! But I am a late bloomer to that. I was always a curious learner and a hustler wanting more for my life. I love these experiences. But I would say late bloomers are common, because we don’t want that crack known. Because that would be a failure. You just have to grin and bear.

If you’re OK with not being OK, I think that’s where it begins.

Do the girls you’re working with feel that way? That it’s okay not be okay?

J: Definitely. I do think they are.

M: I think they’re more nervous. Embarrassed. Not being liked. Being made fun of.

Kids are finding out things—I feel like my own child knows much more than I ever did.

J: I hate to keep saying it, but it is a different world. I think that those fears are popping up. Even the children that you wouldn’t think have these fears, they are popping up for them, too.

What is happening? Bullying as a platform has been out there for years, but more so in recent years, right?

M: It’s louder now because the keyboard bully is out there. It’s more in your face.

J: I just feel like everything is more open now because of the social media platform. I follow a mom online who’s child committed suicide at a young age, and she posts about how she’s doing and what she’s doing. I just feel like everything is just out there. It’s just different.

Is it different? What has changed?

M: The world is different and it’s more intense because they have access to it faster and definitely more exposure. But I do think that comparisons have been there forever and are based on whatever we’re consuming, even if we’re consuming only what our parents tell us. But I think if you go back to the question of what do you do? You plant the seeds: “It’s OK to not be OK.” “Be confident in who you are.” “Be you and don’t be afraid.” It’s repetition. It’s repetitive support.

I can tell my daughter, until I’m blue in the face, how amazing she is. I think I’m doing an OK job as a parent. But she is struggling with her own thoughts. She told me that she’s really not connecting with people. She stays on the swings because “I’m too afraid to try to play nerd ball. I’m too afraid of going to ask someone to play because they’re gonna tell me they don’t want to.” When I ask why she thinks they’re going to say no, she says it’s because it happened once. She uses that thought to avoid rejection and just goes to the swings every day.

My husband said, “You have to be OK that you were the girl that would be in the middle of nerd ball with everybody around, but she’s a little bit more hesitant and nervous. You have to be OK with her figuring it out a little bit and just keep planting the seeds. The more you keep telling her to try this or that, she’s going to think she’s broken.” My husband told me that.

That is really powerful.

M: I am a little emotional. I’m dealing with that right now. I’m teaching positivity children’s workshops and my daughter cannot figure out how to feel less anxious at recess because of her own thoughts. What I can do is create the environment and give her the tools, the words.

J: I grew up in a house where everything was talked about. I was fortunate in that aspect. Therapy was there. My mom was a child of an alcoholic. She was going to meetings. She was on it and was an open book. So when mental health stuff came up with me, it was discussed. I see the importance of it, obviously. It saved my life, having that open communication. People make major changes in their lives just by attending one retreat or workshop. I think with kids it goes back to that seed being planted.

M: And the space being created to have that moment, that experience together. That’s the magic. We talk about “What’s the magic?” It’s feeling not alone and feeling the connection and having that experience together.

Visit www.hopeandhale.com for information on upcoming retreats and workshops.

Beth Lane

IT’S 2022 YET TWO-THIRDS OF MILENNIALS AREN’T FAMILIARIZED WITH THE HOLOCAUST.* THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE EVILS THAT OCCURRED TO 11 MILLION HUMANS. THAT MEANS THEY DON’T KNOW THE STORIES OF BRAVERY OF WHICH HUMANS ARE CAPABLE. LIKE THE STORY OF THE SCHMIDTS.

Let’s just jump right into it because I want to know how you discovered that there was this whole family that you hadn’t known about? And did you know this growing up about your mother?

I remember the moment that I learned that my mom was adopted. I was 6 years old. I don’t have any recollection really of when she told me she had survived the Holocaust, she never really used those words. She never used the word “survivor.” She’s never used the word “victim.” You know, any of the more traditional expectations you might have of how somebody would describe their childhood or their history—those words never came out of my mom’s mouth.

I think, at the time, it wasn’t so much a—and I can’t speak for her—a deflection, but more that she had moved on with her life. She had come to this country as an immigrant, as a refugee. Her mother had been murdered at Auschwitz. Her father was not able to get out of Germany. She came over with her 6 siblings and they were placed in foster homes all around the south side of Chicago. And they were separated—which is quite harrowing, considering that they had survived all of this together, only to come to America to then be separated. She was adopted by my grandparents, Joshua and Rosalynd Speigel and was given an extraordinary life, something that, like, you can’t even imagine coming from war-torn Europe, in Germany in particular, to [this] life. Her mother was a painter, artist, sculptor, a fabulous cook, an entertainer, former jazz singer, a milliner. And her father, my Grandpa Josh, was a neurosurgeon and became chief of neurosurgery at Michael Reese Hospital and then became the president of the Neurological Society of America.

Arthur and Paula Schmidt

So, you literally are going from poverty-stricken Germany to moving into my grandparents home. The education they provided her, the comfort, love—not that her parents didn’t love her—but it’s, you know, there’s love in terms of protection and hiding, and then there is love when you’re not hiding. And when you’re taking your kids to the park to fly kites and you’re giving them dogs to play with, and, you know, providing ballet lessons and things like that. So my mother had been brought up to move forward and my grandparents had always said to her, “if you ever want to know about your family, ask us.”

They were open with your mother throughout her life about the fact that she was adopted?

Oh yes. She always knew that she was adopted. She was adopted when she was 6. She was actually given the choice to be adopted as a 6 year-old. How do you even answer that question? You don’t even know what it is. And of course my mom’s older siblings had to go through the refugee sponsorship process with the Jewish Children’s Bureau of Chicago to then go through the process of contacting my mom’s biological father in Germany, getting his signature which legally permitted her to be adopted, because he had no way of getting out. And then you have to post it in a newspaper. So she always knew it, but my mother will tell you that she always felt a tremendous allegiance and loyalty to her adoptive parents, really the only parents that she ever knew. Just the sense of loyalty and obligation to always be grateful and never cause any ruffles. And I think that makes a lot of sense. When you grow up in a country where the government wants you dead, you learn to follow the fold and make no ruffles or alarmist sounds. So she never complained about it.

And in terms of when did I discover that she was a Holocaust survivor? I have a memory of going to Hebrew school; we had started learning about the Holocaust in third grade—so at that point, what am I, 8 or 9 years old? And for whatever reason, I remember knowing that my family was part of this conversation but I don’t know how. Clearly I must have learned it from my mother before Hebrew school, before that lesson plan was taught.

I would say the first time I really started to dabble with the creative process around her story was probably in my late 20s early 30s. I started to write about it. I started to try and write a one-person play to explore and examine my mom’s birth mother, Lina Banda, who was an extraordinary activist for somebody who basically came from the shtetl in Hungary and married a man who brought her to Germany. And, they still lived in relative poverty; they were always on welfare. She was the janitress of her building, that’s how they paid their rent. She was a person who darned socks, but then on the side, she would move people through Berlin. She would go to Cologne, pick people up, and bring them to Berlin to help them secure passports to get out of Germany. So, she was one of these silent, underground people that was doing things that were terribly illegal, not to mention, just being Jewish which was illegal. But it was remarkable. I wish I had more information to share about Lina, about that specific part of the story, but none of us have any documentation. We just have stories from my aunts and uncle.

When I wrote that play, I don’t know, it just didn’t really land—like, it was more therapeutic for me and not so much for the audience. So you put it in a drawer or whatever. And then I pulled it out again in 2015. I had enrolled at UCLA in the School of Theater, Film & Television to get my masters degree in Theater.

One of our first classes [I took] was to devise a piece of theater, to write a piece of theater, for the class. So I took that one-person play and actually made it into a broader play for, like, seven or 8 characters. And again, it felt very self-serving. It just didn’t feel like it had any traction. However, in the summer between my second and third year, my mom decided, after the death of my uncle Alfons—who had written this 40 page document to talk about the family’s history—she decided that she wanted to go back to Germany for the first time. I was like, “Wait, what? You’ve never wanted that!” So we all went. My dad, my sister, my mom, and me. My brother unfortunately, wasn’t able to join us on the trip. But we went to the town of Worin where she and her siblings had been hidden. We were hosted by the town historians. And they had a surprise for us. They invited the grandson of the farmers who hid mom and her siblings to come and meet us.

This was one of those watershed moments that any filmmaker would just kill for. And I literally looked to my left, looked to my right and said, “Where is the film crew? This is unbelievable!” This guy, this grandson, was my brother’s age. It really provided for me the reverse shot of the story. It was no longer the Weber family point of view, it was the Schmidt family point of view. The courage and bravery—which we knew that they had undertaken, but I think seeing an ancestor, meeting an ancestor, brought it home. It was just like this, you can’t even describe the sensation of the feeling. I mean, I know for myself that theoretically had it not been for the Schmidts I wouldn’t be alive today. My kids wouldn’t be alive had it not been for the Schmidts.

But also if the Schmidts had been caught, it’s very likely that they would’ve been killed. It just depends on which soldier caught them and how it went down. So it’s also very possible that this grandson might never have been born. So in that moment, I said, “I am going to make a movie about this.”

I had never felt that the story was mine to tell. I always felt it was my mother’s story to tell, and my aunts, and they just weren’t going to tell it, and I just respected people’s choices. But in that moment I said, “That’s it. This now is my story. I have to take ownership of this because these are remarkable people who need to be honored and celebrated.” And then, just with what’s going on in the world, it’s extraordinary to me that 3 weeks after we came back from that experience and meeting Arthur Schmidt III, Charlottesville [riot] happened. My mom and I talked a lot about that. Like “This is really kind of happening all over again.” That was 2017 and now we’re in 2022, and I am somebody who no longer says that
anti-Semitism is on the rise. It’s not on the rise, it’s here. It’s a fixture. It’s real and it’s dangerous. It’s probably always been here, just kind of hiding underneath the floorboards.

But it is criminal activity and I’m so happy to say that Roberta Kaplan and her team, the legal experts, who are part of the platform of Integrity First for America, just won the first lawsuit against the perpetrators of Charlottesville. She is bankrupting them. It’s fantastic. The legal fees they’ve had to come up with and the damages that they now have to pay. I think it’s in the ballpark of like 25 million dollars, or something, and the only way to really try to address it is to cripple these people financially. The same thing happened with Sandy Hook, with Remington. They’re going in at the financial level. It’s the only way that we can really combat these small entities from being able to galvanize these large troops of people to come in and do this kind of terrible, horrible, vitriolic hate.

That’s how I came about this story. I was enrolled at UCLA. I came running back to campus after that experience and said, “I’m a theater student but you guys got to teach me how to make a movie! You have to teach me how to make a documentary! And on top of that my first film shoot is in March because Yad Vashem is honoring Arthur and Paula Schmidt in the Gardens of the Righteous and I have to be ready to roll!”

Was that the trip that you took that started honoring the Schmidt family?

No. No. In 2008, I think it was, my dad and his wife took my brother and sister, my mom, and all the grandchildren to Israel. We did the big family trip to Israel, and when we were at Yad Vashem, which is the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, my mother and I decided to look up her biological mothers’ name in the archives there. And we began the process really then to make the application. We learned about the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations, at that time we hadn’t really known about it. So my mom communicated with my uncle Alfons who created the dossier. He’s really the one who created the application, which is a very long and tedious process, to accumulate the proof that somebody should be honored in this garden. The Garden of the Righteous is specifically for gentiles who helped Jews during the Holocaust. The honor was finally bestowed in 2015.

Did the grandson know that his grandparents did this?

It was a surprise to him, that’s honestly what made me [do this]. I’m in this farmland meeting this guy, we’re blown away, and saying goodbye, and he told me a story. This story is personal to him, so I’m not going to share it here. But he told me this story that revealed him to be such an extraordinary pacifist. And I asked him, “How did you have the courage to be that kind of a pacifist? It takes a lot to actually be a pacifist.” Not a bystander, he wasn’t a
bystander, he was a pacifist. And I asked him, “Was it because of what your grandfather did that was taught in your family? Is that how you became such an extraordinarily courageous person?” He said he never knew the story about his grandfather. He [said] he’s quite sure his father never knew the story about his grandfather, and that the first time he ever learned even a shred of this, was when he got a letter in the mail from Yad Vashem.

There’s a fiction film in there! I think about that, like, can you imagine opening up a letter and learning this about your ancestors? I don’t know what the communication was between Yad Vashem and Herr Schmidt, but I think he was quite thrilled and elated, and he did join us in Jerusalem. He did receive the honor on behalf of his family. He is a very special person. It’s very important to him for people to understand that he is not the hero, but he’s accepting it posthumously for his grandfather. He’s very humble.

The Garden of the Righteous is a very special place, particularly for German citizens to be honored. There are over 27,000 names engraved on the granite walls. But Arthur and Paula Schmidt were the 600th German names. So of 27,000 people, 600 names is pretty small and I couldn’t help but wonder why there are so few German names on those walls? I have a couple ideas as to why, but I’m no expert.

What are your thoughts about that?

Well, I think there were a lot of bystanders. But secondly, I also think that a lot of people like the Schmidts, were killed if they were caught. I’d like to think that there are more people like the Schmidts.That’s my hope for humanity.

I also wonder if that’s why Herr Schmidt never knew this about his family? I wonder if his family was so scared that anyone would find out what they did, that there was some post-trauma that kept them silent for fear of their lives, even years after the war was over?

There’s no question. I think that if you talk to silent heroes’ families—I mean, let’s be real, there were more people who were bystanders than were silent heroes—there’s no question about that. To reveal that, even months after the war, let alone just a few years after the war, is a dangerous thing to admit. There’s just so much to unpack there. Who knows the reasons they took the story to their graves?

When I was filming in Worin, when I went back with my film crew a couple years later, there was a woman there who took me aside—she spoke no English, I speak no German—and she handed me a picture. I get the chills, I get goosebumps even just thinking about that moment again. She handed me this picture of the Schmidts. Our family has only ever had 2 photos of the Schmits over the years and now to have a third photo was amazing! And I asked my translator to please ask her, “Did she ever know the Schmidts?” She had met them. “Did they ever talk about the story?” No, they didn’t ever talk about the story. However, she said, “ My mother says that she seemed like the kind of person that would’ve done the humanitarian thing.” And clearly there were conversations, I think, once they found out what had happened. Who knows why people don’t share these things. I also think that true heroes don’t talk about their heroism.

We look at our firefighters, look at our front line workers, the people that are protecting and serving us today in Covid; they’re not running around saying, “I treated 50 patients today!” They’re doing their job. I like to believe that Arthur and Paula Schmidt were doing their job. They were being human. They were being people and treating other people the way that they would want to be treated. That’s our job as human beings: to be human.

We spent three days in Worin, and one of the days my mother had asked me to please install some plaques that read: This is the site where Arthur and Paula Schmidt hid seven Jewish siblings. We did that at the farm but then we also really felt we should be honoring the town, because people knew that these kids were being hidden. Worin is a teeny-weeny, itty-bitty postage stamp of a town that’s, like, a rural little dot you drive by and you missed it, right? But the people in that town knew [about the siblings] and nobody turned them in.

So we made other plaques that went in the little town center, where they have a museum that shows things from the wheat mill and different tractors. It’s a really charming museum. But [the plaque] just acknowledges not only Arthur and Paula Schmidt, but also the mayor—who was a member of the SS—he knew about the kids and he’d actually bring food to the kids, and he never turned them in. So it was our opportunity to really thank the town of Worin and to give the people of that town some ownership of the history of their town—that they were benevolent and humanitarian.

When you were doing your man-on-the-street question: “Would You Hide Me?” What were your discoveries?

It is a very interesting question and the question didn’t even begin that way. When I was talking with Arthur Schmidt III he was telling me the story, and I started thinking about bravery and courage. I said, “Is that something that is inherited, or can you learn it?” So initially that was my question. And the more I asked that question, the more I realized that was not the right question for a couple of different reasons. Number one, it kind of smelled of eugenics which is exactly what the Nazis were doing and saying: your bloodline is who you are and we don’t like your bloodlines. So, I felt that I needed to really reformulate the question and whether it’s inherited or learned doesn’t matter nearly as much as “what would you do?” just plain and simple. So the answers that came out; there’s a lot of deflection.

A lot of people would say “too heavy of a question, we’re not in the circumstance.” Someone said, “I know too much history, I can’t answer that question.” Or some would jump right in and say, “Of course! Absolutely!” I wish that I had, like, that CIA knowledge of how to tell if somebody’s really meaning it or not. [laughing]

Yeah, but honestly I think that the most honest answers were the people who answered, “I don’t know what I would do.” We would like to think that we would. I would like to think that I would. What are the circumstances? Is my child standing right next to me and I have to hide somebody else at the risk of my own child’s life? Am I alone and it’s easier to do it? Who knows? Who knows?

The question for me really came from me having panic attacks when my housekeeper here in Los Angeles wouldn’t show up to work on time. She thought I was mad at her for not showing up to work on time, but I was like, “No! I’m panicked that you got picked up by ICE! What if I have to hide you and your kids?! Can you just text me that you’re going to be late? That’s all I care about.”

What was her reaction to hear you say that?

You would have to know her to understand her response. She started to cry and she gave me a hug. It was very touching. There was an interesting kind of snowball effect. One day, she had been working for us for so long, that there was one day I was just trying to get over to the airport and I was rushing around and said to her, “I don’t want to drive to the airport, can you please just drive me to the airport?” She just looked at me and said,“No! I can’t drive you to the airport!” and I was, like, wow, oh my gosh. I was so embarrassed. I wasn’t thinking about her life. And how much security there is just driving to the airport that she could so easily get picked up just for driving, you know? I was really embarrassed … I just had completely taken that aspect of her life for granted. And that’s when I started to panic about ICE. There was a heavy—it’s less so now—there was a very heavily concentrated period of time in Los Angeles where it was pretty freaking scary!

What are your mom and your uncle saying when they see you asking people this question: “Would you hide me?”

I certainly asked my mom and it was amazing to me how quickly she answered the question, “would she hide somebody else at the risk of me?” and her answer was automatic: “No!”

So here’s somebody who was hidden, but at the risk of my life and my brothers and my sisters. She’s like, “No!”

So that’s a very human response. So I don’t think that Arthur and Paula Schmidt thought about it. It wasn’t like they were having coffee one morning saying, “Should we hide the Weber kids?” It’s something that you just kind of do.

I wouldn’t even be surprised, especially because back in the ’40s, you know, the man ruled the roost, right? Not that Paula Schmidt wasn’t a humanitarian, she certainly was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he just loaded those kids up on his truck and arrived in Worin with the seven kids and said to his wife, “We are hiding these children.” If that’s what happened it wouldn’t surprise me just given the times.

I wonder what she thinks about the times now?

There was a distinct point in time when she realized that she needed to reach out and make contact with her siblings. The after effects of war and trauma, everybody responds so differently, but many of my cousins will say to me about growing up: they were absolutely petrified of my uncle Alfons. To me he’s like the biggest teddy bear, but they were just petrified of him. And after the reunion, after he was reunited with my mom, 40 years later, [they said] he was changed, that he softened and that he became more accessible. So I obviously never knew him when he was living what my cousins described as a very rigid life. I only ever knew him as somebody who was very, very warm and accepting, and loving.

And so in many ways, losing my Uncle Alfons, there’s no question that it’s a big reason why my mom wanted to go back to Germany. And it’s a big reason why I felt like I must tell the story. He’s important to me and I want his memory to live on in this one wonderful light.

How important is it if you 2 didn’t carry the torch—if you didn’t tell the stories?

There’s a Jewish tenet l’dor v’dor “from generation to generation,” part of being Jewish is passing stories down from one generation to another. We do it through song, through chanting, through prayer. Other religions do it, too. But my experience as somebody who was raised in a Jewish family is the essence of storytelling. It’s no surprise to me that I’m an actor and that I am a storyteller. It just so happens right now that I am telling a story through the medium of film. But I think I have always loved being told stories, I love experiencing stories. There is something about being in the room with other people who are telling a story in real time that is so rewarding and makes you feel connected to other human beings.

I think it’s why documentaries are having a wonderful renaissance right now. It really just speaks volumes for how hungry we are for connection with other people’s experiences and other people’s lives. Certainly fiction film does that in so many ways, I mean, look at “Out of Africa,” I mean gosh the list goes on and on and on. There is something unique about documentary storytelling, and I think it’s the opportunity for us to connect with other people.

You know, for me, part of my contribution I hope to l’dor v’dor and passing on stories from one generation to the next is that the stories should give people the opportunity to practice the muscle of empathy and compassion. That’s a muscle that I think we don’t think enough about how to practice. We know how to practice piano skills. We know how to practice cooking. We know how to practice making a bed. There are lots of things that we know how to practice in life. We practice driving to get your driver’s license, or you teach your dog how to sit and stay and all that kind of stuff. How do you practice exercising compassion and empathy? I really do believe that it is something that we are taught and our elders model it for us. So I don’t think that is something that, well, there’s no doubt about it: if you don’t have role models that are modeling it for you then how can you practice it? And my hope is, if through the medium of film—which right now is the most accessible medium to most people, certainly in this country—even if it’s a podcast, someone talking about something that makes your heart open and expand, that’s a muscle. Love is a muscle—it’s something that we can work on. So that’s my goal with the film: that it gives people an opportunity to practice the muscles of compassion.

How do you think this film would’ve landed 20 years ago?

I think this year is the 25th anniversary of “Schindler’s List,” which was a massive, massive success when it came out, so we do want the stories. We do want to have opportunities to be reminded to do the right thing. And to know that there are a few humans before us that did do the right thing.

I mean, it’s why you know right now we’re looking around for an impact producer because we want to have somebody who will make sure that it gets into every corner possible, for exactly that reason. We want to engage communities in these conversations. We want to educate, we want to give people a chance to have conversations. It’s for people who don’t know about the Holocaust. For those who don’t think it happened. You know, let’s be willing to have these conversations with people so that we are not preaching to the choir.

I would like to say to somebody who wants to murder Jews today, “Can we have a conversation about it? Can you sit in your hatred with me? Can you actually sit in your hatred and have a conversation with me?”

View the trailer for “Would You Hide Me?” at bethlane.com.

*According to “U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey,” the first-ever 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge among Millennials and Gen Z. Visit www.claimscon.org to read the full report.