The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: The Moth... Works

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

On this week’s episode, we hear a story from a Ukranian refugee. And we take a look at one of the coolest programs at The Moth... MothWorks. This episode is hosted by Anna Roberts and Amanda Garcia. Storyteller: Katerina Lyublin

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 Anna Roberts. I'm Amanda Garcia and we're your host for this week's episode.

We're part of the team behind Mothworks. Mothworks develops storytelling programs for teams leaders and communities. These programs are designed to help folks use personal stories to better communicate, connect and build culture at work. Every weekend 2022 the Moth has been celebrating its 25th anniversary by taking a look at our history, counting down year by year. In this episode we're bringing you back to 2002. The year Mothwork's got started. The story goes, an agency called the Mothline and asked for a storytelling workshop for their employees. We said, we don't do corporate training, and they said, but we don't want

corporate training. We want great storytelling training. We were skeptical that what we were doing in downtown theaters would translate into a corporate space, but we're so happy that we took the leap. 20 years later, Mothworks has led hundreds of storytelling workshops and events for thousands of people all over the world. Back in July 2021, General Motors reached out to us to explore how they can use storytelling to support their goal of becoming the most inclusive company in the world. As part of the Moth's relationship with GM, Mothworks is holding a series of personal storytelling workshops, which is where we met this week's storyteller, Katarina Lublin.

We liked her stories so much, we invited her to develop it. Katarina worked with Kate Tellers, the director of Mothworks, to transform the story she told for 20 colleagues on Zoom into a full-length main-stage story that she shared with over 1,500 people live on stage. Here's Katarina in Champagne, Illinois. I got my first three-year-old necklace on my 16th birthday. It was heavily weighed, rose gold, all pendant was letter K for Catarina on it. It was 1989.

I was leaving with my parents in Cargiv Ukraine. It was still part of USSR. My father is Jewish. And when Gorbachev's British Troika lifted the Iron Curtain, it allowed for my family, as well as thousands of other Jewish families, to leave USSR. When my parents told my sister and I that we're leaving, we were sad to leave our friends behind, but at the same time we were excited to see the other side of

the world. But first my mom wanted to take me to get me a new winter coat for the trip. There wasn't much in the stores, so we went to the black market, and she got me this off-white, fake for foreign brand coat. It was about three sizes too big. You don't get exactly to pick what's there is what you get. But when I would wrap myself up in it and with my necklace on, I felt like such a fashionista ready to take on the world.

Our first stop on the way to the United States was Vienna, Austria. We were placed in a little apartment just off downtown close to the street we call the Street of Millionaires. It was this long, clean street with endless rows of display windows showing the latest fashion. We would walk past St. Stefankasidral, past beautifully dressed people, walking there equally groomed dogs.

I've never been to a place like this before. And it seems like every step we've taken was a new first for us. And in the middle of the street, we suddenly smelled something delicious. We looked and off to the side, there was a street vendor with an exotic sign that said, had dogs. Now we were getting ready to go to the United States, so we studied English, we knew what had means, we knew what dog means. However my parents were not sure if we should be eating that.

But after some whining, they said, okay, we'll get one, we'll split and we'll try it. We ate it, we liked it. We survived. In December, we finally landed in Detroit, Michigan, and got a little apartment in the suburbs of Detroit, Southfield. Couple of these in, we started exploring our vicinity by food. our vicinity by foot. During one of these excursions, we stumbled upon a big parking lot, a lot of cars and the big building in the middle. As we started approaching it, we noticed a heavy traffic of people going in and out.

We did not see any signs on the building. There was no windows to look inside, and being new to the country, we were not sure if we'll get in trouble for going inside. But my little sister said, let me go check it out. She came out a couple minutes later. Her eyes are shining. She's all excited.

Pulling my mom by the hand, you have to see this. So bravely, we followed her inside, we opened the door and stepped into this magical wonderland. There were lights and music and decorations, people walking with colorful bags. It was a busy Christmas shopping season at a Northland mall. And here we were in the middle of the hallway, taking everything in while our mom walked into one of the closing stores off to the side. And she came out about five minutes later, crying, big tears running down her face.

Of course we got scared, mom, what happened? Did somebody hurt you? And she looked at us, she looked at my coat, she looked all around, and she said, no, nobody hurt me. It's just seeing all of this made me so painful as sad for our life back in USSR, sad for all the people who spend their whole life trying to make their ends meet and get excited when they can get a code three sizes too big. Whereas here, you can just walk in, get whatever you need, the right size, the right color, and not even give a second thought to all of this availability. And so after all the travels we've done, after all the refugee hardships, it's the American mall that finally put a tear on this hardened refugees face. And so we started getting used to our new life. I started going to high school and upon hearing my Eastern European accent, kids would ask me where I was from.

And as Ukraine was still part of USSR, not easily recognizable geographically, I would just say that I'm Russian. But in the classroom, when teachers would do icebreaker exercises like, tell us something we don't know about you. I would jokingly say, my name is Katerina, and I glow in the dark, as the radiation in Chernobyl was probably most identifiably geographically. most identifiably geographically. Well, it has been over 30 years now and on February 24th, Russian invasion of Ukraine put it on the map and on the forefront of world news.

My parents leave a couple miles away from my house and stop by often. During the first weeks and months of the invasion when everyone was still hoping for a quick resolution, she would come by a lot, tears in her eyes to give me updates from their friends who still live in Karkiv. My hometown was established in 1600s, survived World War II, just to be nearly destroyed now. After seven months of steady, nearly daily bombing and shelling. And another disturbing piece of news that's coming from that area now is that all the fighting that is happening near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Parisian nuclear power plant, which is the largest one in Europe, is putting everyone at risk of radiation leak in case of the power

interruption to the facilities. So during one of these coffee visits, a memory of an old trip came to my mind. Shortly before living Ukraine, my parents needed to take a 13-hour car drive to Kiev, the capital, to take care of some last-minute pre-exit business. They took me along and riding in the back seat. I was looking outside and started noticing that the closer we were getting to Kiev, the more beautiful and vibrant the nature outside was getting. It was this crazy, technical color of green I did not think was possible to exist in real life.

Big, overgrown leaves, beautiful blooming flowers. And from the back seat, I asked my mom something about it. I mentioned something to that effect. And she said that it's because Kiev was less than 60 miles from Chernobyl that melted just three years prior. But to teenage me at the time, it just looked beautiful. And it occurred to me now that I did not remember being afraid. Perhaps because my parents didn't look that,

whether trying to shield us from the realities of Soviet life or the disaster of Chernobyl, and perhaps because of that, the memory that did end up getting stuck with me is the one of the magical radioactive greenery. So I asked her now if she was scared back then. And she said that a couple days after the meltdown when the information came out, she was walking in the heat of the day, watching the wind blowing hot dust of the asphalt and

wondering if it's radioactive and how much of it was around her right that moment. And that reminded me how she used to ask my sister and I to dust the house every single day and to keep the windows closed to prevent more dust from getting in. Because normally on a warm late spring day we'll have the windows open to let the fresh air in. But now the bright blue sky and the sun were deceiving. And suddenly the beautiful greenery outside of Kiev didn't seem as pretty. And the radiation joke, perhaps not as funny. And I'm thinking about all the things that I wasn't paying attention to as a child.

Now, as a parent myself, I can fully appreciate everything that our parents did for us. They were younger than I am right now, but they were brave enough to approach the family, move across the world. Start from zero, learn a new language, just to give us a better chance. And when I look at my 19 and 20-year-old American born sons,

I know I would not hesitate and would do anything to save them and protect them from any harm. And the thought that's been in the back of my mind these past months is that it is my former Ukrainian classmates, are the ones who are fighting this war. And it is their kids, the ones who are instead of applying and going to colleges are being drafted or volunteering to go fight in this war, to kill or be killed just because they stayed.

Recently, my son asked me about family heirlooms, and I thought about my necklace. Back then, it was a very special birthday present for my parents. But not only that, my parents also purchased it because it was a way for them to invest some of their heart earned money because refugees were not allowed to take more than $400 per family upon living the country. And so now, not only does it carry the sentimental happiness of a very special birthday present, but it's also a reminder of the roads that we have traveled from the vivid gardens outside of Kiev through Europe and now here to Champagne, and all the stories that would tell

if it could talk. Thank you. That was Katarina Lublin. Katarina was born in Carkeev, Ukraine. Her family left the USSR as refugees and settled in Michigan in 1989. After graduating from high school, she got her bachelor's degree in information systems management at Wayne State University. Now, Katarina works for General Motors as a mobility solutions architect. In her spare time, she loves to travel, paint, read, and spend a lot of time with her family and friends.

I got the chance to catch up with Katarina at our new Haven main stage. We chatted in the green room about the importance of telling stories at work. Well, I feel like at work you don't usually know people. Like you know them at the work level, but that's about it. And then you go to this workshop, and you see these people, and you get to see this intimate glimpse of them. And it makes you emphasize those other people,

more so than before. Right, before maybe just like some person, they might come across angry or whatever, but once you get to hear their story, you realize that you have something, everybody has different experience, but there's something common underlying emotions, and at least you feel closer to that person. Like how can I yell at this person now when I heard this intimate detail about their life? After I sat down with Katarina face to face and we were talking about this work and her

work and the facilitation of these personal storytelling workshops, I was so thankful that the work that we put a lot of intention into delivering is being received by the participants in our workshops? Yeah, absolutely. And companies will come to us with a whole host of reasons for wanting to hold a storytelling workshop. Their leadership team needs to inspire their teams a little bit more, or their marketing or advertising teams need to have a common vocabulary

for what makes a compelling story. Or they're using so much data that they're drowning in it and they need to make it more engaging, more interesting. And of course, we can teach that. You know, all of these math workshops that we hold are you learn all of these things, but ultimately the real impact that we start to feel when we talk to all these folks who are in it

is that they're reflecting on their life. You know, they're going through these memories that actually mean something to them. They're sharing a piece of themselves with their colleagues. They're making connections with their coworkers, people that they see maybe every single day, and they're learning things about them that they might otherwise never have known.

And it really feels like a great honor and privilege to be able to facilitate that kind of work in these spaces. That's all for this episode. From all of us here at the Moth, have a story worthy week. Anna Roberts is the manager of Mothworks at the Moth. She is designed and led storytelling workshops for Cisco, Lulu Lemon, AstraZeneca, Daughters of the Movement, and more.

With a background in personal brand strategy and curriculum design, Anna has coached professionals and leaders to unearth the stories that define them and develop their expertise into content and live events. Raised by artists and educators, she is driven by progressive action, equity, and amplifying the perspectives of women and people of color. Amanda Garcia is the associate producer at Mothworks. Born and raised in Warwick, New York, Amanda's favorite part of growing up was the sleep away camp she attended every summer in Connecticut. She first discovered the Moth radio hour while doing laundry, and it incentivized her to make the chore a weekly routine. One of her favorite things about the New York experience is overhearing strangers share their stories with one another on the subway.

This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Katherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leanne Gully, Ingeglowowski, and Aldi Kossin. All Maus stories are true, as remembered by the story tellers. Special thanks to Frieda King and Lindy Hirsch. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, good or website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PierreIRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PIRX.org.