The Moth - Shame On You: Lizzie Peabody & Samira Sahebi

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

This week, we're talking about one of the most powerful feelings in the world: shame; maybe it starts as a pit in your stomach when you put your foot in your mouth or washes over you like a wave when someone points out something you hoped they wouldn’t notice. Our storytellers this week show us that the only way to beat back the shame dragon is to talk about it. Hosted by: Michelle Jalowski Storytellers: Lizzie Peabody, Samira Sahebi

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the moth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm your host for this week, Michelle Jalasky. This week we're talking about one of the most powerful human emotions. Not love, not fear, shame.

Shame can be difficult to understand where it comes from the strange ways it moves us, but we all know it when we feel it. Up first this week is Lizzie Peabody. Lizzie told this story at a DC Story's Land where the theme of the night was caught. Here's Lizzie, live at them off. So I'm volunteering for DC's first podcasting festival. I'm brand new to audio production, but I figure that volunteering at this festival is a great

way to rub elbows with the muckety mucks in the audio world. And the first night of the festival, there's sort of an opening party, and there are cake pops. I avoid them for the majority of the party, but the very end of the night finds me in front of the cake pop table. And I eat one, and it is just velvety and smooth, and chocolatey and fudgy, and so, so sweet.

And I know immediately that I have made a huge mistake. See, growing up, my family ate the most austere breakfast cereal out there, grape nuts. And the only time I was allowed to have honey on my grape nuts was on my birthday. The closest thing that my brothers and I got to actual fruit snacks or fruit roll-ups was this like aptly named fruit leathers that you had to chew on for like an hour and they got stuck to all the parts of your mouth. And the closest thing we got to soda was juicy juice,

100% juice for 100% kids. And as a result of this sort of draconian health food policy, my brothers and I were always on the hunt for our next sugar fix. And in the summers, this meant going door to door to neighbors and eating their popsicles, usually when they weren't home because nobody locked their doors in Blue Hill main.

One night after a successful raid on the Millican's freezer, we came home with purple mouths. And the gig was up, Only strawberry and cherry popsicles from then on. As an adult, I'd like to say that I have managed to overcome my sugar addiction, but it's not true, and I found that abstinence only is really the only way to go. I manage it fairly well, but here I had eaten this cake pop and it's too late. And I immediately began scanning the scene for the next sweet thing I can eat. And my eye lands on this jar of balls. They look like melted milk balls, like black and white, dark chocolate white chocolate.

But the lid is on it and no one is making moves to open it. And I want to be the volunteer who's guzzling all the food. I'm trying to make a good impression. So I watched the jar, but by the end of the night, it's put away unopened. And I forget about it for two days. It's the final day of the podcasting festival. And exhausted by my efforts to make a good impression with the Muckety Mucks. So the audio world, I slip into an empty conference room for a breather.

And I see it, silhouetted on a chair. The balls from Friday night. I am alone in this dark room. I immediately go over to the balls, I pick them up, and then turning my back to shield them. I walked to the far corner of the room. I don't know why I did this. I couldn't have looked more creepy if I tried. And when I feel like this is,

and I'm getting this rush thinking of like all the fervent of eating I did in closets around my childhood home, usually like my little brother's Halloween candy that I would steal. So I unscrew the lid and I pull out a ball, dark one. And it does occur to me at this moment that what I'm holding might not actually be food. So I lick it.

The results are inconclusive. It's sweet and it's hard, not unlike a candy shell on a malt ball, but also not unlike, you know, a marble that is rolled in old apple juice. So I need more data. So I put it in my mouth and I suck on it. And nothing happens. It doesn't get more flavorful, it doesn't get softer, it just gets slobbery. And holding this ball in my mouth in this dark room all alone,

I am presented with a dilemma. On the one hand, I've come this far. I've risked my reputation as a podfest volunteer. And spitting the thing out would be like an over-to-mission that this has been a bad idea, and I'm just not ready to admit that. But on the other hand, I don't have health and I don't have dental insurance.

And I had broken a tooth a couple years before, chewing on ice, so I know that the stakes are high. But I can just imagine cracking through that exterior and like pressing my tongue against that multi matrix and feeling the little crystals start to dissolve and then the chocolate and robing it would get all velvety and it's sort of crackly at the same time. And I've wanted that malt ball so badly,

so I bite through. And my mouth is flooded with this coiingly sweet, laced with bitter juice. It's the most horrible thing I think I've ever tasted. And I realize that it's technically a gum ball. It's a decorative gum ball not meant for human consumption that somebody ordered on Amazon as a table decoration. And I need to spit it out immediately.

I cast a glance around the room, there's no trash can anywhere. And I think, okay, the nearest bathroom is 45 seconds away. I can hold anything in my mouth for 45 seconds. I just got to get to the bathroom so I turn, I go. And at the threshold of the door, I just can't do it anymore. I spit out my hand, I close the fingers. I weave my way through the crowd, like trying to hide this thing that I have in my hand, smiling politely.

I get in the bathroom, I close the door, and I open up my hand, and inside is this like glob of partially-masticated black gray goo, and I tip it into the trash can, it leaves this gray violet stain on my hand, and then I look in the mirror. My lips are black. My teeth are gray, purple, and no amount of industrial hand soap and paper towels can get rid of it. I have to go home.

I have to shirk my last few hours as a pod-fess volunteer and leave wearing my shame all over my face. And all I can think of is my mom's expression that night my brothers and I came in with purple lips and I just know that she would be disappointed. But I also know that the next time I see something that looks delicious that no one else is trying to eat, I will still try to eat it. That was Lizzie Peabody. Lizzie lives in Washington, D.C., where she has the incredibly cool job of producing and hosting the Smithsonian's podcast Side Door.

She still has a sweet tooth, but she has not eaten a gumball since that day in 2015 and probably never will again. Lizzie's relationship to sugar hasn't changed but telling her story has given her a different perspective on it. Here's Lizzie with more. You know I think taking this buried moment when I felt like I was looking at myself from the outside in slow motion like what are you doing now? Like, I can't believe I'm doing this. And yet, it feels bigger than you and you just can't help it.

Taking that moment and exposing it to the light and feeling supported by the audience was really liberating and it has inspired me to try to tell more stories that come from a place of real feeling because often I think it's the harder emotions like like shame that that feel the truest and Really connect us to other people That was Lizzie Peabody to see some photos of Lizzie and her brothers with some rare childhood ice cream treats, head to our website, themoth.org slash extras.

Up next this week, Samira Sahebbi. Samira told this story at a Moth Story slam in Portland, Oregon, where the theme of the night was cold. Here's Samira live at The Moth. So when I was 14, I was sent away to the West by myself, and my family gave me a parting gift. It was a very fancy gold ring. So five years later, when I lived in Los Angeles as a pretty well-assimilated westerner, I lived with two roommates, and at that time,

the only thing Persian about me was my accent and the ring. So one night, the roommates wanted to go party, and I declined, and Laura decided to entice me by holding out her acid wash, brown leather jacket, and she said, if you come, you get to wear this. And I had this super skimpy tube top that I could never wear on its own. And this just became my motivation to go. I was like, OK, I'll go.

And so I went to get the jacket. And she pulled it back. She's like, wait, you need to really take care of this. I'm like, oh, sure, of course. And she's like, no, no. I mean it. No stains, no forgetting it. And I said, I give you my word.

And so we all got very 80s chic and went to 40 miles south to Hermosa Beach to some guys' house. And we got really drunk. And then we headed to the strip where we would go from bar to bar. And while we were dancing, the ring had come off. So as the group got smaller and smaller, people would go back to the house to sleep.

There were three people left, and I was desperately looking for the ring, and these three people are like, yeah, we'll wait for you. And so I came out the last bar, and they could just tell that I had not found the ring. I was like, on the verge of tears. And this guy would like an Eddie van Haill in haircut. He's like, don't be sad. It's gonna be okay. Oh, jump up. I'm gonna give you a piggyback ride.

And I was like, oh no. And he's like, come on, come on. And he kind of backed into me and lean, you know, he just assumed a posture from you to mount him. And it was so forward that I just felt bad declining. So I jumped up. And he had been drinking. So as soon as I, maybe I was heavier than I looked, he just lost his balance. And I had been drinking also.

And so I just watched the whole thing unfold as the asphalt got closer to my face, and then further and closer and I was like fascinating. So what did happen is that he flipped me over his shoulder onto the cold asphalt. This was winner. I know it was L.A., but it was still winner for us. And so then he lost his own balance and fell and shattered my color-brown.

There was this exploding glass sound and I passed out and I woke up in the ER and Edie Van Halen had drunk driven following the ambulance, which I was grateful for because I didn't know anybody. So the very first thing they want to do in the ER, like the whole staff has gathered behind me. And they're like, go get the shears, the extra large ones from upstairs, we're gonna cut the jacket.

And I was like, no, not the jacket. And she's like, trust me, sweetie, you want me to cut the jacket. And I was like, no, please don't cut the jacket. So then Eddie is standing next to me, holding my hand, putting it on his chest like this devoted husband who's coaching his wife through childbirth. He's like, you can do this, you can do this,

he's almost crying, he feels so guilty, I'm sobbing, there's makeup everywhere. So they take this thing off and I could not stop shaking. So they're piling warm blanket after me. And there's this hierarchy in ER. First of all, I didn't get any drugs, and I didn't know why. But so I'm in pain. And they're like, yeah, you're kind of low priority.

Like people with heart attack get to cut in front of you. And then we all sat gunshot wounds tonight. So you just need to be patient. So finally at 4 in the morning, I see this shadow of a man emerging from the hallway, and he's got an accent. He's like, I'm going to take you to X-ray, and he's walking way too fast for that time of day. He's just going to boom down the hallway, gets me to X-ray, closes the door, and he's

like, I knew someone with your last name, and then he recited the name of my father, and I am mortified. And so I tell him, because I was too honest. And then the mouche shifted. He just got very, very quiet. Like, he just went from interested to whole shit. And then he looked at me up and down. And I could like see myself through his eyes,

through these Muslim eyes. I wreaked a vodka. I looked so trashy, and he just said, what happened, child? And that cut like a knife, and then I started shivering again. And so he took the X-ray without looking at me, he pushed me down the hallway,

and this time he was not so prepared, he was just pushing me very slowly, weighted down by the tragedy that was me. And the hallway seemed eternal. And in that eternity, I got to feel the weight of the expectation of what a good girl should do, especially a good Muslim girl. And he dropped me in the room.

He said goodbye without looking at me. And he dropped me in the room. He said goodbye without looking at me. And he left. And I never saw the X-ray man ever again. But that night, my two fragmented, intentionally separated world collapsed. They just collided. And although I lost a physical representation of my origin, I tapped into a journey of integration where my

two polarities started to come together, which has been a journey ever since, and a part of me wants to find that man. I want to kind of thank him for actually genuinely caring, and a part of me wants to kind of look at him and be like, I turned out okay. Thank you. That was Samira Saheb. Samira was born in Iran and immigrated to the U.S. before became much more difficult to do so. Distan Chanted by too much California son, she now lives with her partner, their dog, and one chicken in Portland. Samira says she loves every aspect of living in Oregon,

except how often she's asked where she's really from. She's a winner of the Moth Grand Slam Championship and has appeared on risk and pickathon. We followed up with Samira and she told us that, despite the ordeal, she would not let the hospital cut the jacket and she managed to hand it back to her roommate in one piece. Samira moved from Iran to Sweden at 14 and eventually to Los Angeles at 19 where her story begins. We were curious how she dealt with such a huge transition at such a young age.

Here's Samira. I didn't grow up religious at all and so when there was a religious revolution and hey jobs and the covering of our hair for women and wearing different clothing became mandatory that was really tough. My first adventure as soon as I left Iran was to kind of rip out the hair cover and I remember feeling air in my hair and it had been years since I felt the wind in my hair and that was a very exquisite feeling. When I was assimilating, there were certain behaviors that felt okay to me but I knew it would not be okay with my father and we sort of had a don't ask don't tell policy because I was on my own and I was young.

And so I just did what the locals do and didn't talk about it. In fact, we would go months without any contact, my father and I. I became more and more estranged from my roots. I didn't have anyone to practice Persian with and I just spoke English around the clock and I started to think in English and only be able to write in English and it

sort of that part of myself, the Iranian part of me, became like a distant memory. So that's where the separation happened on some level. I think different parts of me didn't speak to each other. It was like, I've left the past behind. And there's something about the ritual of traveling for, you know, 30 hours or how long it takes to get to Iran. Where you really geographically and energetically leave a lot behind. And it was at that juncture with her Persian roots

at a distance that Samira found herself in the X-ray room with a doctor. So unpacking the moment that I realized this guy is not only Persian and sees me through conservative eyes, but also he knows my father and my father was a very respectable man in the printing industry and publishing in Iran. So I just felt I brought shame to my father because I think there's a noble idea when you send your children to the West to be educated and to become somebody like that's not their idea that their daughter would be drunk and have broken body parts in ER. Seeing myself through those Persian set of eyes brought a lot of shame. Like, oh my god, if my father heard about this, if he saw the shame I brought to him, which is perhaps an Asian Eastern value that may, you know, you may not relate to it in the West very much. But those are some cultural

bonds that we have that we live by in honor. And so in that sense I felt like I felt my father. For me that night was just such a cluster of so many things going wrong. I learned then that you cannot live in a fragmented manner and not have your two parts collide and find out about each other that it really is a small world and you can't run away from who you are. I had internalized racism quite a bit without realizing or having language for it,

but I became ashamed of my heritage. I have after 40 plus years of being in the West, there's very little left of me, that's very Persian, but in essence the most important parts of me are still Persian. That's where I was born and formed. The aspects of being Persian that lives very, that's alive and well in me, is the food, cooking, and feeding people. And then the effect and influence of the Persian language, Persian is a language of expression and poetry and depth and beauty and subtlety and communication. And I really love that and embrace that. After all this talk about shame, we asked Samira what's something about herself that makes her feel proud? I just don't give up. I'm a very resilient person. I find the human spirit to be so resilient that we're

to be so resilient that we're almost unbreakable. And that I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of not giving up and moving forward. That was Samira Saheb. That's all for this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. Michelle Jolowski is a producer and here at The Moth have a story worthy week. Michelle Jolowski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world.

This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by me, Julia Purcell, with Sarah Austin Janess and Sarah Jane Johnson. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bolls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Godowsky, and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true as we remember them affirmed by story tellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.