The This is the map, radio, our from pierrefonds, I'm catherine burn you want anything about. Storytelling is you're, almost always talking about the past either. The past just happened. A few minutes ago Sometimes some will be telling the story about a harrowing life or death incident and there's a building. the spoiler alert, since the fact that their here to tell the story means that they survived the stories in this episode are all told by people have been forced to confront the past or in the case of our first story, confront our country's past the story. Concerns and Eighteen sixty three assassination of civil rights activist medvirk avars. It was told way back in two thousand eight in your city, where we partner, The public radio station, w n Y c jerry Mitchell

was a bit of a modern day. Adventure and research. They haven't tell a story for us here- is jerry, live at the mine, I'm standing on the front porch facing byron dealer back with the notorious plans who killed meg revers. He wasn't caught doing that, but he was caught trying the plant a ticking time bomb outside a jewish leaders home in new orleans. You see my stories or the ones they got the case reopened against him as well as other clansmen, but he hadn't figured that out- or at least I thought so. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time. She begged me not to go visit him.

It's a trap I have to go. I dont want to raise the children by myself. I have to go if you go I'll, never forgive you here and I have to go back with made me answer all these questions before you. Never let me come to his house Where'd you go up. What are your parents names? Where do they live? Where do you live? Where do you go to church? Are you white? Fortunately, my conservative, christian southern upbringing, man I passed with flying colours so well.

I mean at his house and walked me into the living room and for six hours. He spewed one racist remark after another, after the interview ended, he walked me out into the darkness. Walked me out to my car, then blocked my way stood For me and said, if you rat positive things about white caucasian christians, god will bless you. If Iraq negative things about white caucasian christians, god will punish you. If, god is not punish you directly, several individuals will do it for him As soon as he got out of the way I was Car and down the hill madison,

into the world of racist killers began when I saw the movie mississippi burning with a couple of F b. I agents who investigated that case, which involve three civil rights workers who were killed in sixty four mississippi, two of them from here in new york city. But the thing that is always stuck Emma crawl is for someone to get away with it. I am especially murder and that's what happened in these cases and what may these cases so great as to the facts? Not just at these clansmen got away with murder, but the fact that everybody knew these clansmen got away with murder. That's what upset me. I talked back with not too long after that and he had figured it out by this point that I've done the stories. So I talked to him on the telephone and he said live to be hundred and twenty. I don't know how much longer you got you're ready,

less driver. You may have a wreck or some other may molest. You do. You know somebody, you do that, and I said: do you frightened me and I remember, checking enter my car for a while, and the thing I realized was he could kill me, but I also hated bullies, probably because of all the times I get there I beat me on the playground and I wasn't going to be intimidated by byron de la beckwith, so I persisted he was arrested. Hauled into the courtroom and then one day in the courtroom, he spotted me yelled at me, You see that border when he died.

She's going to africa. I turned to my friend and said: you know: I've always wanted to go to africa. On february fifth, ninety ninety four, a jury convicted byron d we're back with the murder of medgar evers

and when the word guilty rang out the sound cascaded down the hall, the cries of joy until it reached an open failure of white and black sea and the just explode in applause. I just felt chills down my spine because I realized what it seems so impossible really was possible. There were dozens, more cases that could be prosecuted as in this one. A couple of days later, the sheriff calls me. It tells me that when they took back with us, if he kept saying two words, I'm like what two words like jerry Mitchell is like. He would tell me you know. Well, you know you might not want to go home the same way every night, and you know that kind of

disturb me a little bed in, but I never told my wife about that, because she was already worried. I was going to be killed at our family harmed. She want me to write other investigative stories, but one one day The family of vernon damer asked me to come and meet with them in harrisburg, mississippi and the widow vernon damer, with tears in her eyes, asked me to help her fine justice in her husband's case. So here I weighed my own families interest and heard her story. I couldn't say no, you may have never heard averted damer, but she should have. He was an african american farmer who spent his whole life fighting for the rights of all to be able to vote. The clan didn't like that. They attacked him in this

family, one frigid, nine january, tenth, nineteen sixty six, they through fire bonds into the house, the firing there. Guns into the house. He woke, grabbed a shotgun ran to the front of the house to defend his family, so his family could escape safely out of back window. Unfortunately, the flames of the fire seared his lungs, and he died later that day. A few weeks later in the mail came his voter registration card. He had thought his whole life to the right of all americans to vote, but had never been able to cast a ballot himself.

if the man who ordered that killing was a man. But then I miss sam bowers, the head of the white knights of the ku klux klan in mississippi the most violent klan organization in america. If you saw bauer's, you what a kind grandfather and a seersucker suit- and I had people tell me this tude are like a jerry. Why did you bother these old guys and, I said, look thing you're forgetting is these are just these are young killers who just happened to get old. You see the white knights of the ku klux klan response for at least ten killings in mississippi. and bowers, ordered every single one of them. While I was investigating case, I got a phone call from a plans and he said: did you think we're going to let you go unscathed? We know where are you

Leave. We ve got pictures of you and your family. I've got a lot of death threats and doing what I do, but this one really frightened me because he stretton my family, I wife became extremely upset about it. I tried my best teller look all right. I promised this is gonna be and I'm not doing any more after this. This is it the guy who's. The main witness against bowers back in the sixties was a guy named Billy Roy pitts below rapids was involved in the killing, had dropped. His gun got caught What pleaded guilty to murder and sentenced to life in prison I'd been told. The reason there wasn't a record of that was because he went into the federal witness protection program, but in my research I found out the federal witness. Protection program didn't even exist at the time, so guess what he had never served a day.

this life sentence someone to talk to him, but no one seemed to know where he was and is a sound like an advertisement for an internet site, but I got on switchboard dot, com and typed, his name in a pot billy roy pit, his address in Denham springs Louisiana and his telephone number, so I called them first. Twenty minutes of the conversation went like this. how'd? You find me how'd, you find me how'd, you find on the internet, the internet are gonna listed telephone number are likely to take it up with them. So as a result of my story, mississippi authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. He didn't like that. In fact, ran and while he was on the run, he sent me an audio cassette tape in the mail. When I got it, not put it in plain it, and this is how it began: jerry

just started. Let you know you ruined my life, but I promise I'll talk to anybody. I talked to use a here's, this tape per se, he's the tell me all about his involvement, killing vernon dehmer's involved in all this other clan violence shortly after that, a turn of self in this led to the arrest of sam bowers and his trial. In august, one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight one plans. Man actually got up and said that the clan was a benevolent organization passing out fruit baskets to the needy of christmas. Under cross examination. He admitted that He had never actually passed out. Any fruit baskets himself, bowers represent by lawyer for the clan back in the sixties, represented all these guys and one of the perks

being a lawyer for the clan back in those days was well free membership, so one he's cross examining billy repeats about this planning took place prior to the actual rate. and he's like MR pants, who all was at that planning, meaning and pits is like see I was there, sam bowers was their will. You were there and bowers is lawyers. Like objection, your honor of covered lot of trials in my life. But that's the only travel ever covered were a witness employed

Is the defense lawyer in the case on on august, twenty first nineteen? Ninety eight sam bowers was convicted and sent to prison just one cell down from byron de la beckwith back home. I promised my wife. I would stop, but I couldn't stop my heart. Wouldn't let me I couldn't let these clansmen get away with murder, so I started secretly kind of working on these cases continue to work on these cases and sure enough she caught.

I mean I was worried. She'd just be furious with me and she told me she was always going to worry about me. She would never stop worrying about me, but that she understood these cases were more important than her fears. She gave me her blessing. I felt so so relieved this life burden have been lifted from my soul. Twenty one more men followed sand hours to prison. After this a miracle affair. There was one and the fbi today is investigating dozens, more killings, the run punishments in the civil rights here, not long after sand. Ours was convicted, Billy Roy pits testified in his hearing and when he got done testifying, he walked to the back the core.

We're in and ran into the dame or family. There was a widow, mrs dame or several of the dame are children and Billy Roy pitts apologised to mrs dame or for what he had done and asked for her forgiveness. And she forgave him and she began to cry and the damer children over there began to cry. He began to cry. I began to cry and is now what redemptions all about trying to make things right

even when they're gone so terribly wrong in the past. May god bless you in your own journey of redemption. Thanks guys, the that was very much of jerry's investigative reporting for klansmen and a serial killer, kind bars he's a macarthur fellowship recipient, the author of the book race against time, and founder of the mississippi centre for investigative report in all of the convicted clansmen spoke about, have died in prison. it. Coming up a one, and makes a man who reminded her of her own families, complicated past. That's when them- renew our continues the the

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This is the moth radio. Our from here acts. I'm catherine burns in this show we're talking about those moments in life when we're suddenly confronted by our past, we met our next storyteller at the show we produced at the studying, majestic theatre in texas, Corey partnered with the san Antonio book festival, and they show sponsored by lifetime tv fears. Rain of brandy live at them off What's that their san antonio airport on my way home to sacramento this, what city number twenty three of my latest book tour and I was fed up with airports and hotels.

I was tired and homesick, and I just wanted to be back with my children and my husband and celebrate halloween with them before having to head out again. To be honest, I hated the thought of having to get back on another airplane. so am making my way down the jet way, and I noticed this young, let no man. Unlike me, he doesn't seem frustrated by travelling, but rather scared and disorient. I notice that he has no luggage with him, not even a backpack he's where green stained genes and that white t shirt and he has no jacket but in his hand his clutching a white envelope and then hits me. I know exactly who this young man is. I say to him

not the in this my lap. He breaks into a smile, clearly relieved that I speak spanish. He says no, nothing. What manner. I have nothing and then without me asking he confirms what I suspected. He tells me, that he was released from an immigrant. sure, detention centre that morning it was the envelope that I learned at me to his situation, two years ago I took donations to migrants shelter in tijuana and they learn that, when released from detentions, migrants have nothing but the close on their backs and an envelope containing their paperwork He says to me: I've never been on an airplane before. How does this work? Where do I sit?

I tell him to follow me and I find us a seat together after I show him how to put on his seat belt. I learn that his name is ignored, that he's from what guatemala and that he's been at the airport for eight hours, with nothing to eat, and now I mean he devours the snacks. I offer him while we share our stories, which are mirror images of each other, He tells me about his wife and his one year old daughter. He had to leave them behind and what their mila when he headed north to try to find a way out of the poverty that instability and the corruption in his country. Luckily, he's found himself a lawyer whose helping him with this asylum case and in the meantime

He's been allowed to go, live with relatives in Sacramento, while he waits for his court date. What he wants more than anything in the world is to be allowed to stay and for his wife and his daughter to be able to join him here so that they can start a new life together in this country. I recognise that desire. It's the same desire. I once had For me, and my siblings and my parents to be reunited for my family to be put back together and be whole again, like act of my own father had to leave me behind when he headed north to look for work in lausanne, helpless. They were no jobs. In my home town, you, weiler and

state of get level, which is the second part. stayed in mexico and present its most violent. I grew up looking at a black and white photograph of my father hanging on the wall memory. I seem every detail of his face regime that his paper eyes could move and that he could see me wishing tat his paper. Why else would open and that he would tell me he missed me ass much ass. I missed him. I was nine years old. The first time I met my father, I stood in my grandmother's living room rooted to the floor or in shock staring at him. I've almost given

hope that I would ever see him again and now here he was in living color standing before me and his skin was a beautiful, dark brown, not a dull gray like him, his black and white photograph. My answer to me go say hello to your father, pushing me toward him, but he was sector a stranger to me and all I wanted to do- was run away. Still, I forced myself to go to him and I hugged him. He hug me back to, but briefly- and I realized that I was a stranger to him too-. my brother, my sister, and I asked him. So are you finally back to stay with us? We

Couldn't bear the thought of losing him again, but he said he couldn't stay. He said. What kind of alive could he give his children earning a measly five dollars a day said that someone like him a maintenance worker with a third grade education was too poor and uneducated to qualify for a visa. Asylum was also out of our reach mexican national us are rarely granted asylum and poverty, no matter how extreme is not an asylum category so because he couldn't come back to live with us and we could and travel.

Italy to go, live with him. There was only one path for him to take. He decided to hire a smuggler and take my older brother and sister back with him to LOS angeles. There were twelve and thirteen old enough to attempt that dangerous journey across the border. As for me, he said I was going to have to stay behind again until I got older, I begged my father not to leave me again. Please take me with you. I pleaded But he said you're too little chap I'll come back for you. I promise I shook my head and set, but last time you left, you were gone.

for almost eight years. Please puppy! Don't leave me again. I don't know how, but I manage to convince him to bring me along And so I found myself at the: u s border, risking my life all for a chance to finally have a father. The smuggler would shout orders for us and we obeyed walk, run crawl. Hide. My body was I mean from the heat of the unforgiving son and the white hut. Fear inside me at the thought of being caught and sent back.

father, was right. I was too little to make the crossing and I put everyone at risk of being caught. I couldn't make my feet run fast enough And so my father had to carry me on his back most of the way nor was there at the u s, border. Where I got my first piggy back right from my father, I clung to him ass. We re through the bushes branches, grasping at me ass. If trying to tear me away from him when we found that that migrants in the bushes, it seemed ass if he were sleeping but then I realized tat. It was the kind of sleep you don't wake up from, and so I clout to my father even more as we ran border patrol caught us twice by

then families were not being separated at the border like they are now saw after they took a sin, for interrogation. Put us all in the van and then drove us back to the one on their third attempt. My father decided to try at night under the cover of witness the border that night was pitch. Black we couldn't see where we were going, and so we had to hold hands so that we would and lose our way. A helicopter came by I and we ran into the bushes, to hide from its searchlight a beam of light. fell on my shoes and the courtyard there may meeting, off my white sucks so that they wouldn't give us away after the helicopter left. I ran into the darkness. I ran

and I ran ass fast ass. My legs could carry me. And when the sun finally came up over, ought I mountain we looking at it from the other side of the border. We had made it into california and lay That day, we finally arrived at my father's home. After finishing my story, I tell thought I have been In this country, for thirty three years, but what I don't tell him is that I came when things were different when I republican president Ronald Reagan passed a law that forget If three million people, including both of my parents for coming into the country illegally

and he had allowed them to remain as legal permanent residents and build their life. Here I don't tell door how free and limitless I felt when our green carts arrived in the mail. When I was fifteen, I don't tell him how I took that bring cart and I ran with it to my american dream, all the way to being a college graduate a best selling author and public speaker, I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I came at a time when forgiveness and the chance of legal status were still possible,

wish. I could give him hope. I wish I could assure him that those times will come again. I wish with all my heart that actors daughter doesn't have to grow up looking at her fathers, photograph hanging on the wall. when we land a or gives me a hug goodbye, and he whispers that rcs sport, though, to look at their school. Thank you for everything, I'm very grateful and I'm grateful to because he has to remind Tell me why I do what I do. He has reminded me why I have to push pass my exhaustion and keep goin two days later, when I'm back up here,

port heading to city number, twenty four, I think of ecuador and his one year old, daughter back in what the my love and I get on that airplane, determined to keep on writing and fighting for him for her. For all those fatherless, daughters and daughter, less fathers separated By border walls longing for the day when they will see each other again,. Thank you ring and funding is often the best selling them the distance between us and the sequel, a dream called home. We asked for she kept in touch with our fellow passenger. She said she was able to connect with him briefly and he was still waiting for his court hearing,

something that stay with her was it when she met him, he didn't have anything to eat. First, Seventeen hours she wrote, I offer their the snacks. I had an accepted all, except for the kind of tuna He said the smell of tuna would bring back bad memories in nothing but tuna for breakfast lunch and dinner ass. He made his way across mexico to the border I imagine that, for the rest of his life, the smell of tuna will trigger the trauma of his journey rina says now: the smell of tuna will always remind her of him. Rennie continues to fight for people's right to have better ways to gain citizenship. Legally. To see it rain out with her father go to them off dot. Org The coming up a woman in the motherhood struggles to make peace with parts of her past. That's when the

I read you our continues the. Hmm hmm the radio hour is produced by atlantic public media woods, hole massachusetts and presented by the public radio exchange, Pierre ex dot org. This is the moth radio, our from pierre acts, I'm catherine burns. Our final story took years to develop its about how the past can sometimes- in our way when we're trying to live out our dreams, a warning the is. The story includes a depiction of sexual violence here's. Sarah Jane Johnson live

my partner and I are out of fertility clinic in downtown brooklyn highrise It feels sterile and expensive because it is, I don't have any future are the issues, at least none that I know of yet anyways outside of the fact that my wife doesn't make sperm. I think carry on is pretty nervous too, but per usual she's playing a pretty cool. She has a high pressure job so is often quite serious, but luckily for me, she's pretty soft on the inside and. I remember the first time I saw her rough housing with her nephews and just throwing them around the air hen. They can't get enough of them. I thought to myself. I can't wait to make a baby with this woman

so are waiting for the specialists and I'm thinking about how expensive sperm has its own. So a really unfortunate word, so I like to call it better so unless you're, using a friend's, batter or of friends of a friend's better in this works beautifully for a lot of people. But if you are like me in a marriage when attorney who manages risk for a living, this is not your path, you our poring over anonymous donor profiles and reading case laws about same sex couples having to adopt their own children. So This process is starting to get a little tricky from me, I'm starting to feel I myself pulling in these procedures when I'm examined, I sometimes feel, Like my body is not my own, and it takes me

the place and my past. That was one of the darkest things. Never lived through fourteen years ago I was studying abroad and I went to paris for the weekend and one night I hung out with a couple of guys and when they offered to walk me back to my hotel room. One of them raped me in the lobby of an apartment. Building He was caught three days later and this thrust me in two these seven year journey being an afore. Legal system, in a language I could only order a sandwich in, but I chose to prosecute and I went back multiple times and one It was wildly empowering and next minute I was drinking my memories away being a server I ever became my identity and determined my worth.

and there was a time when I was so broken. I actually thought it was the only thing that made me really interesting. The daily experience of living with it was like a pulled her on my chest, suffocating away. I just didn't know how to carry And you really never know where a reminder will come from when going through airport security. For me is a nightmare. I have no power, you have to fully submit, doesn't matter if I don't want to be touched in that way. I used to even carry a card. I could hand to an agent that said, I'm a survivor of sexual assault and please make sure you tell me everything you're going to do before you touch me and a few years ago I was living in a small town and I went to this cosy family planning clinic and careful like the furniture came from staff numbers homes over the years.

and one of the exam rooms has posters of these different cities on the walls and put my feet and stirrups materially exam. You can imagine. This is not the greatest dave me, and I leaned back and there on the ceiling is a poster of the eiffel tower. The poster card image of the the city, the the source of all of my pain and you, you think, being a survivor and those are those moments where you're walking down a dark, sidewalk and the guy walking towards you gives you this feeling washes over your ears. Are ringing your flashes behind your eyes. Your stomach drops heart pounding. and it is those moments, but it's also the cosy family planning clinic. So you learn to keep your fists and

learn though that is an utterly exhausting way to live. So I tried to work that bolder rub it down, make it a little bits, dollar and eventually I try to believe tat this concept of of thinking that maybe I deserved a little bit more stability in my life, some more goodness. And so I'm out with a group of friends- and I mean a friend of a friend- and she's pretty cool and their bragging about their glory days, playing college basketball, and I'm, like I played fast. while two in high school and there are like cool as I like. I had a uniform and everything. They were like right, cool, and no surprise. There had been some drinks involved and truth be told. I was not good at basketball in high school, and I just I can't I can't tell if I'm lying. On her radar at all and before you know it. I'm on my feet.

doing something that I actually was really got out in high school, which is true am reading and I've got my best, turkey, I'm landing, jumps spirit fingers. I do a kick and I get us kicked out of this bar I'd. Never that never happened to me before, and things got a little blurry that night, but two years later we were married Can this safety of carryin filled holes and mean that I dont know how to fill, and I used to not know if I deserved a family I could be a mom now, I know, and the process though, of us starting a family relies on me, gene in the concept of half of my body.

And its stirring all of this stuff up and I just can't reconcile how I'm supposed to make a baby in the same exact. Please in my body that I received so much violence, so we decide to try and get pregnant at home, and this is stretching her boundaries, but social cared for in a way that I never had been. So I read a five hundred and twenty eight page gay Bible called the new essential. It's a lesbian conception, pregnancy and birth and I'm a little cheap. So I don't have the batter shipped to our home. I schlep to midtown and the tank is really heavy, so they have a special backpack for it and strap two grand central for babies. First subway ride

I get home and when carry on, carry and comes home that night, she sees the tank on the counter and she looks at me. She looks at the tanks me and yellow spiral of all and we're so nervous than excited when. Finally, the time comes we put on guard and gloves so that we do burn ourselves on the dry eyes to pull out the violet better than we do. It is routine for four months, but it's not working we're getting really frustrated, but then we hear about. This meant wife will actually come to your home and help you be a little bit more exact and medical about this. Turkey based her situation and just for the record, you don't actually use a turkey baser so we're waiting for to arrive and were in the bedroom. having a glass of wine to relax. We have our lucky couldn t shirts on because they had won the world series that year

and the midwife arrives with her kit and the lights are low, so she punks on this headline. an essentially just hops, into bed with us When you can imagine the thoughts racing through Karen's, mind like good god, why are we not at a doctor's office? But this is how much I needed to control this, and this is how much she loves me and it works, and so now I'm going through this incredible process of of this pregnancy and I'm actually feeling more in my body than I ever have and I'm dreaming of like this super crunchy birth, where I like, and rolling around in a we feel like I desperately want to have a home birth, but you all know I married you. So this is not my path now, I'm obsessing of ballot, a birth plan and I want no drugs. I am truly terrified of being inside of a process where I'll have to have medical and urban

and an epidural, an epidural means that I won't be able to move from the waist down, and this is a level of feeling trapped. I can't grasp, but those thoughts are opening the doors to this darkness and these doubts and I'm starting to panic, like maybe I'm not as far along in my hearing as I thought that I was and what, if I can't show up and what, if I can't feel at all, even the good stuff, that these feelings are countered with this carnal desire to finally push this bold or off my chest and get on with my life. I think a lot of new parents worry losing their identity, welcomed. It couldn't wait for my baby to be the centre of my story, so I go to bed on a tuesday and just after midnight, the contraction start

and I thought that it would have been a little bit more of a crescendo, that they start pretty strong. But it takes us a full day for them to get close enough for us to be able to go to the hospital, and once there we spend another full day of me, walking the halls trying to work this baby down and we're getting nervous and it's getting complicated and I'm trying to believe carry on when she tells me that I'm a warrior and I'm trying desperately to not leave my body, I'm trying so hard to not let the pain of my labor talk to the pain of my trauma. The midwife had warned me that it could be similar and in in the in the darkness. These thoughts keep are creeping in like. Maybe you didn't get all of that darkness out. There is still something in your way that after sixty five

hours of labor at included for hours of pushing. I had us, section, but they pull this ray of light from me and lifted him into the air and so to welcome to the world harvey in the room, went wild and they finally brought him to me in care homes at my shoulder and everything faded away in his skin. On my skin, and I finally saw that little face. I realize that moment. I had never been so proud of my body, harvey, is a daily reminder of where I have come from, and the goodness that lies ahead. I know now that trauma is not linear. I suppose I takes comfort and knowing that it will always be here

but I am who I am because of it, but I don't have to carry this border every day, its small enough to fit in my pocket and can some be sometimes be awkward. I'm set on an out of the blue, but my hands are free to do other things. I called my baby boy. Thank you, sir. I jane Johnson is the writer performer of the solo, show devil in a box which chronicles her journey from sexual assault through the french justice system and into life after trauma. She lives in brooklyn with her family. Sarah Jane gave us a powerful range of photographs, which you can view at the marked our door sarah chains. Appearance on the moss stage was a long time coming petition.

Storytellers sometimes go through quite a process trying to figure out what story they want to tell Sarah Jane is actually staff at the moth and she worked with us for years before finally telling her story well and certainly the moments where we would pass each other in the hallway, and I would like not make eye contact cause we were like. Are we going to talk about your story yeah, and I think that we thought the story would be about the trial But we talk about the story and I would ask you know how you doing and blah blah blah and you're in the middle of your pregnancy, and you would just tell me all these fascinating, deep, beautiful things and I think one day I was like holy crap. You might not want to hear this, but I think you might be currently living your my story

that was a moment has been. I I don't think I realized how much my trauma was. Gonna come up in my pregnancy journey and you had seen my one woman show, and so I just kind of also had this assumption that, like oh, this will just be a kind of it in a boiled down version of that which primarily focuses on the trial, and I thought to an eye and a sort of finding myself like stuck in this previous identity. I had for myself. I didn't really let myself think down the road about what else I had to say so:

or jane, and I talked about what it was like for her wife, carrie Ann, who was famously private, to hear Sarah Jane tell such an intimate story from their lives on stage yeah. Oh man, that was so that was so wonderful. It felt like she was. I I think I think that she was really proud and it was cool we had her aunt and uncle were also there and their response afterwards was like. Oh, how so beautiful to lake get to see your love story, which was I loved it? That was there take away he now because so much of this is all past it's all because of our love story and the the healing and the strength that carrion has given me, and so it was, it was pretty cool. I love that one last question for you. We talked a little well you're, one woman show, so you had a one woman show about your assaults. You actually spent years on the road telling your story talking to survivors was

telling a story at the moth diffrent from telling it on stage night after night, in theatres, the process of double on a box in others. Many minutes go by and the process of memory in in my script, if you will, like the audience, is alive, time to get to know me and my humor and feel safe before I tell them about the violence and in the assault so and in and in and I'm very much in character. While I'm myself, there is still a performance of nature where the moth is about stripping away. That performance and really living in the telling of it, and so much about this process has been acknowledging how trauma was showing up on my birth

story and discovering that you know giving birth was really another rebirth. For me, as a person as a survivor That was sarah. Ain't johnson and that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the moth radio. Our since our wisdom or artistic director, Catherine, who also directed stories in the show, along with jody powell, the rest of the maastricht toil staff include Sarah hebron, Sarah genetic jennifer hickson and make balls production support from Emily couch special thanks to the cold james for her years of dedication to the moth more stories,

Who has remembered affirmed by the storytellers earthy music is by the drift other me in this hour from bill Brazil, Henry kind. David Lindley even resigned as and still wagon symphony at them, of his produce for radio by me, J alison with Vicki Merrick at atlantic, public media and woods whole massachusetts, always produce with funds from the national endowment for the arts. radio hours presented, idear exe. To find out more about our podcast to get information on pitching us, your own story and everything else go to our website, the moth dot org The.