Stories of New Beginnings: A playlist of stories from Storytellers Project, Week 7

Even when you need to #StayAtHome, we know you want to feel connected to your community. And creating empathy and understanding is vital in times of uncertainty. 

So the Storytellers Project has put together a playlist of true, personal stories shared by your neighbors from across the country. These stories are uplifting. They showcase perseverance, family bonds, life-changing decisions, love and new beginnings as we connect over our most deeply held values. Look for it every Thursday.

Week 7 showcases new beginnings that offer a new path or new lease on life.

‘I couldn’t see it, so I couldn’t be it’

Bethany Grace Howe grows up in Colorado, living a typical boy's life in the mountains. As an adult, he has a great job, becomes a husband and becomes a father to a daughter. But in his 50s, he sees his reflection in Caitlyn Jenner's profile in Vanity Fair and decides to transition. He and his wife divorce. Now transitioned to female, Bethany’s still a great parent and very happy. Stories about transgender people who suffered body dysmorphia or otherwise lived hard lives don’t resonate with her because up until now she has had a regular happy life, just one that was not quite herself.

LISTEN TO WEEK 1: Uplifting Stories that restore our faith in humankind.

VIDEO: Watch Bethany Grace Howe as she shares her story on stage in Palm Springs, California.

A new mom learns caring is getting it right

When Carly Davis gets into the messy part of motherhood, she's seduced by mom blogs and how easy and tidy all their stories are, with desperation that turns into epiphanies. She vows to change, to stop yelling, pressuring and cajoling. But it's hard, and she is stuck in some old, hard habits. But she keeps trying, with mixed results -- she's gentler with herself and her kids -- but her epiphany is that she can just keep trying.

AUDIO: Listen to Carly tell her story in Phoenix, Arizona.

LISTEN TO WEEK 2: Stories about adventures that show us how strong we can be.

A blend of the perfect mix

When Jan Wichayanuparp was a youngster, she would visit her grandma in rural Taiwan and eat eels, steamed fish cheeks and chili-braised pork belly. But in her everyday life, with each new friend came new, weird flavors like PB&J and macaroni and cheese and Olive Garden pastas and Cheesecake Factory desserts. Today she blends Taiwanese flavors with traditional American flavors as part of her ice cream business, Sweet Republic.

AUDIO: Listen to Jan tell her story on stage in Phoenix, Arizona.

LISTEN TO WEEK 3: Stories that confirm family is everything.  

Family traditions can get new life

Two daughters of a meat-loving family introduce their parents to plant-based diets with "movie nights" featuring documentaries on veganism. After the second movie, and discussing them with her daughters, Lupita Hightower decides to give up meat as well. In the end, they proved you don't have to change family traditions just because some members of the family may change their way of eating.

AUDIO: Listen to Lupita's story.

We are all beautiful

One day, young Liz Warren peeks at a letter her revered grandmother had written with the words, "Liz will never be beautiful.." between that, and an avocado green bridesmaid dress the next year, Liz internalizes this message that she won't be beautiful. She promises herself that she will be smart, funny, and work hard to make up for what she has taken as a foregone conclusion. As her career takes off, she becomes so focused on work that she is taken aback to be called the "pretty one" in a meeting. Later she realizes the definition of beauty and who has a right to it, needs to change. 

AUDIO: Listen as Liz shares her story.

Making your own traditions

When Elizabeth Montgomery was a young girl, Christmas was a joyful time in her family's house. But as she got older, her family stopped celebrating Christmas. Elizabeth had to move out at 18 and slept in her car in a Publix parking lot. For years, she found community in chat rooms and then moved in with the Frasier family. They celebrated Christmas with elaborate decor. When Elizabeth moved to Phoenix, she kept the traditions alive, decorating a TV one year and her very own Christmas tree the next. She realizes that Christmas is about developing your own traditions as you get older.

AUDIO: Listen to Elizabeth as she shares her story on stage.

A note from our National Presenting Sponsor, Humana

Offering assistance and compassion to those in need

When Nan Justiniano, a Humana Neighborhood Center representative in Tampa, heard a local couple were in need during COVID-19, she walked down a new path – one that would take her away from her routine responsibilities and towards making a meaningful impact on people’s health.

Learning it would take at least seven days to send food via other methods, Nan realized she had less than an hour to get to Tampa Bay Harvest to pick up supplies. Arriving with just moments to spare and seeing only a case of bananas, Nan worried she might not be able to source enough food.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case. Hearing that Nan had come to get food for others, food bank staff graciously filled her trunk with canned goods, fresh fruit and frozen meat.

By not stopping when an obstacle blocked her path, Nan offered assistance and compassion at difficult time.

Food nurtures us, body and soul. Join us for a virtual Storytellers Project event benefiting Feeding America’s COVID-19 Relief Fund – available live on May 14 at 8 p.m. or on-demand after.  Celebrated chefs Rocco DiSpirito, Maneet Chauhan and others will share personal food stories.

Coming Next Week

Week 8 celebrates our connections to others and insights we gain from relationships.

• A man calls all the contacts in his phone on Christmas Day, and it's touching and sad and funny and mortifying, depending on who answers.
• Julie Makinen's mother develops dementia and it becomes clear to her by the present of jeagins sent to her every year on her birthday. She is both amused and comforted by the annual gift.
• Fresh out of college, Megan Finnerty is lonely when she moves to a new city and starts a new job, but after months and months loneliness, a stranger befriends her on assignment and changes her life. They're still friends 18 years later.
• A young woman lives four four years homeless on the streets of LA, until her parents bring her home and she starts treatment for chronic schizophrenia. She now manages her disease with drugs and therapy and lives a full life in Cincinnati.
• A young black girl grows up thinking she's beautiful until she's has to go to an all-white school system, where she's told her hair is too kinky, nose too wide, body too curvy. But one day she sees Maya Angelou on the street and reconnects with her own beauty.
• A coming-of-age-story told by a 30-something white woman about how her only friend during a transformational internship set her up for her current career, one she might not have without the influence of that young man, who died years later.
• A young man goes to Hollywood to make it, and has some charming moments of success, but it doesn't "happen," and he moves to Phoenix where he builds a life that has everything he thought he'd want in Hollywood.