♪ GREG DELUCIA: The very next day, I just quit my job.

And I didn't know what I was going to do.

But it didn't matter, because I had a dream.

THOMAS POUNCY: What is wrong with me?

Who doesn't cry at the funeral of a loved one?

Did I love her at all?

Am I some kind of robot?

You need to understand-- I was the woman who had everything.

And now I have nothing.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "New Beginnings."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

My mother's side of the family is from Ghana.

And in Ghana, we have a symbol that's called the Sankofa.

The image of Sankofa is one of a bird who's holding an egg in its mouth, which is like a symbol of rebirth.

And the heart and feet of the Sankofa bird are facing forward, while the head is turned back.

Sankofa means that as we begin again, there is value in taking our memories from the past with us.

Now tonight, you're going to be hearing stories about new beginnings.

And while these stories are about beginning again, we know that storytelling is the art of paying homage to our past.

TAPPING: My name is Mercia Tapping.

I'm a Brit.

I was not born in this country.

I came over here when I was 27 years old.

I married an American that I met in college, and then fell in love with the country and never went back to live in England, although I still love my native country as well.

And can you tell me a bit about how your journey as a storyteller began?

I started storytelling by joining Toastmasters after I retired.

And I sat in the back of the room for about six months, and didn't say a word, and was in awe of everybody.

And when I tiptoed to the front of the room and told my first story, and people kept telling me that they loved my stories.

- Mmm.

So I kept on telling more.

And then, this year, I've taken the plunge of telling stories outside Toastmasters.

What, in your mind, is the biggest challenge of telling a story onstage?

Remember, I grew up as a Brit, and "stiff upper lip."

We never expressed emotion in public.

Perhaps to a couple of close friends.

So it's a risk for me to expose some of my deepest emotions in public, onstage.

And I hope that people understand and appreciate what I'm trying to say.

It's 2015, and I'm watching "Dancing With The Stars" with awe and amazement at the dancers, but with a little wistfulness, because, alas, that could never be me.

And now, I'm too old.

And I'm also far too sick.

I get up, and I'm moving across my living room, clutching onto furniture just to get my balance.

And I feel so tired, absolutely exhausted.

Because the medicine which is keeping me alive after breast cancer is making me feel like I'm 90 years old.

Every muscle and bone in my body is aching, and I'm in such pain.

What kind of a life is this?

You need to understand that in 2009, I was the woman who had everything-- health, wealth, and happiness.

I'd been riding high as a successful businesswoman, and my marriage was very happy.

And now, I have nothing.

My husband died of brain cancer.

And I had to empty out most of my retirement savings just to keep the company alive.

And now, I have advanced breast cancer, unable to run the company, and so it was sold recently in a fire sale just to avoid bankruptcy.

How do you start your life over at 69 years old?

And what's even the point of living?

Being with my husband in heaven looks a whole lot more appealing.

I get to my bedroom, and I sit on my bed, and through my tears I turn my eyes up to heaven and I ask, "Why did you have to die?

We were so happy."

And the reply comes back, as incomprehensible as ever, that I have a job left to do on Earth.

But what?

Now, you may find it a bit weird that I talk to my husband, but after he died, he showed me in ways that I couldn't argue with that he was still very much alive.

But just not here on this Earth.

Months passed, and I was exercising by walking around my house to music, and I put on a slow rumba, and I was swaying to and fro to the music.

And I lifted up my arms as if to simulate dancing with my husband.

And then, I felt his presence, and as tears rolled down my face, I hear his voice.

"Honey, you should go and learn how to dance."

Me, dance?

I still have neuropathy in my feet, a leftover from chemo.

I have no balance to speak of, and I'm still in constant pain.

Yes, I am making slow progress, but my will to live is more like a flicker, not a burning flame.

But I didn't forget the advice from heaven.

And so, just before Christmas in 2016, I enrolled in dancing lessons at a local studio.

Now, I was justifiably very nervous, because I'd had a whole lifetime of thinking that I couldn't dance.

Now, sometime in the middle of my first lesson, my instructor looked at me with amazement, and said, "Are you sure you don't have any dance experience?

Because you're a natural."

Oh, it felt wonderful to move to the music!

And although I know I didn't look like a contestant on "Dancing With The Stars," I really did feel like one inside.

And when I went to my car that evening, I could feel the constriction in my throat, and a tear came to my eye as I heard my husband's voice saying, "Merry Christmas, honey.

This is my gift to you."

Now, I wish I could tell you that my road to becoming a dancer was some overnight miracle.

Not so.

But dancing became the metaphor for rebuilding my life step by step.

First of all, dancing cured the neuropathy in my feet.

And then, I lost 90 pounds.

And I can smile at myself in the mirror again.

And, in a couple of months, I enter my first dance competition.

(applause) I am a dancer, standing proud and tall, full of the joy of life again.

(applause) DELUCIA: I'm Greg Delucia.

I am a writer and a storyteller.

I'm from New Jersey, and I love being from New Jersey.

I have a wife, Ali, and two cats, Cellino and Barnes.

Mm-hmm.

And I understand that you've been telling stories for quite some time now.

Yeah, I started doing storytelling maybe four years ago.

I dabbled in standup before that, and I loved it.

I grew up a huge comedy nerd.

But I feel like storytelling was a little more for me, and when I started doing it, I just fell in love with it.

I'm like, "This is... yeah, this is the best way for me to express myself."

And in all these times that you've been onstage, what have you learned about yourself?

DELUCIA: One day, onstage, and I'm telling a story, and I think it's about me, and getting revenge on a bully from when I was a kid.

But what I found out, in the middle of story, based on the audience, it was a story about me and my father.

Mmm.

And, so, yeah, so that's what I love about it.

Yeah, that is the magic of storytelling.

Yeah.

OKOKON: Yeah.

There's this bit of figuring yourself out as you're doing it.

Right, yeah, because we start out, we don't know who we are, I think, yeah.

So do you have a storytelling hero?

I'm from New Jersey, and it's Bruce Springsteen-- shocker.

Hey-o!

(laughter) No, but, so, you know, growing up, he was always on the radio, and then we'd go to all these concerts.

I've seen him only 28 times.

And what I learned from Bruce is he was very vulnerable, and he, to me, made it okay to be, like, "Hey, this is what's going on in my life."

That's why I'm here today, or it's a big part, big part.

When I was a kid, growing up in New Jersey, my mom loved to read to me "The Little Engine That Could," that awesome children's classic.

She'd read it, she'd do quotes, whatever.

She loved it so much that she never stopped.

Like, this time I remember during one of our daily calls, I was talking to her, and I was complaining.

I said I wasn't happy at my job.

I was a reality TV casting producer, and I was getting sick and tired of telling people it was a good idea to be on reality TV.

(laughter) Because what I really wanted to do was be a writer-- that's what I really wanted to do.

So my mom stopped me.

She said, "Honey?"

That's how she talked.

"Honey, it's like I always say, 'I think I can, I think I can, I know I can, I know I can!'"

And I ate it up!

Because she believed in me, and she believed in my talents.

But the thing is, this is what... this is what her idea was.

She was like, "Look, come up with a game plan, save some money, then you quit your job and you be a writer."

But the deal is, if I get this belief in my abilities from my mother, I get reckless spontaneity from my father.

(laughter) Like the time in 1995 when he went out to go get a pair of Teva sandals, and he came home with a Dodge van.

So that's what I got going for me.

The very next day, I just quit my job.

Oh, no problem!

I had no money, no money saved at all.

I had this expensive Hoboken apartment for rent that I had with my then-girlfriend, now wife, Ali.

And I didn't know what I was going to do.

But it didn't matter, because I had a dream.

And I actually got to realize that dream-- sort of.

There's an asterisk there because I was an intern at the age of 30.

But it was at a pop culture website, and it was awesome.

Like, right off the bat, I'm writing blogs and features on all sorts of celebrities.

But the deal is, the payment structure there was a little unique in that they paid me, like, five dollars a day, and then all the mac and cheese I could want.

I only wanted, like, two weeks worth of mac and cheese.

Because I got on the phone with my mother, and I was like, "Oh, my God, Mom, I don't know what I'm going to do!

Like, I'm getting five dollars a day, and there's tension with Ali, and I, because, you know, she gets paid in dollars.

(laughter) And, and also, I'm pretty sure my insides are turning orange.

And she's like, "Honey, don't worry about it.

"I've got a plan.

I'll be there in two hours."

All right.

I'm waiting and I'm thinking, like, what is this plan?

Like, what could it be?

I'm like, "Maybe it's, like, a sweet check," because I have no shame.

Like, I'll take that money.

I don't care.

So, in that time, she's now taken a train from central Jersey all the way to Newark, New Jersey, and she's got to get on the subway, and she takes it to Hoboken, and then she gets off there, and she walks ten minutes to our apartment.

She goes all the way up to our apartment, and I open the door, and my mother's standing there with this giant suitcase, and, you know, she's this tiny little lady, and she's got this big suitcase.

And now I'm like, really, now, like what... seriously, like, what's her... like, is it, like, a novelty check?

Because that would be awesome!

Like, who needs Ed McMahon?

You've got Mom coming with a big fat giant check!

And she unzips this thing.

She's got... she's so proud.

And there it is, the answer to all my problems.

A giant ham.

(laughter) I mean, it was so sweet.

And, look, she just wanted her boy to be fed.

And I... that meant the world to me.

The thing is, what wasn't so great, the next day, when I cooked said ham.

It was late, it was late at night, I was tired.

I threw the thing in the oven.

Couple hours go by.

And now it starts smoking.

A lot.

And the whole apartment starts filling up with smoke.

and we're trying everything-- we're opening windows, we've got every fan going.

But our fire alarm is going off, and it just won't stop.

So, in a panic-- because I am not MacGuyver, I don't have any good ideas-- I open the door to another hallway, and now the entire building's fire alarm goes off.

And it's midnight.

And now I look out the window, and I see all our neighbors with, like, real jobs filing out into that cold November night.

And there's now a symphony of our fire alarm, the building's fire alarm, and now there's fire engine sirens, like, coming up closer and closer.

And then, we hear firemen rushing up to our floor.

And they're banging on doors.

They just want to make sure, like, you know, everyone's evacuated and everyone's safe.

And as we hear them getting closer and closer, Ali turns to me and she's like, "Dude, you're on your own."

(laughter) And she runs off into the other room.

But not before saying to me... she turns around and she's like, "Whatever you do, don't say it was you."

And I hear banging on the door.

I open it up.

And I say, "It was me, it was me!

I'm sorry!

"I have an internship, it pays in mac and cheese!

My mom gave me a ham."

They looked at me, "What?"

But, miraculously, I didn't get into any trouble, but I got a little too cutesy when I said to the nice fire chief, I said, "Hey, you want some ham?"

And he looked at me like I was an idiot.

I can't say that things got better overnight or anything like that, but that ham and several other hams that my mom gave me in the coming months got me through a really hard time.

Until I actually became a writer at a website, and it paid in cash!

It was awesome!

My, um... my mom died about a year ago.

and I'm not going to lie, it was one of the hardest things in my entire life.

I didn't know if I could go on sometimes.

And one day, I was at my... at her house with my stepdad, and he leaves the room, and he comes back in at one point and he's holding something.

I'm like, "What is that?"

It was a ham that my mom had bought a little before she died, that we all could enjoy.

And even in her death, she had the answer to all my problems.

So am I going to be okay?

"I think I can, I know I can."

(applause) My mother was and is a huge source of strength in my life.

She was my first fan, you know?

She really believed I could be or do anything.

So I try to grab from that.

And even in the hard times, in grieving since her passing, I've used that to really, you know, get through it.

And sometimes little signs will pop up, and that will remind me of her, and it helps.

♪ POUNCY: My name is Thomas Pouncy.

I'm currently a third-year graduate student in the Ph.D program for psychology at Harvard.

I come from a family of amateur storytellers.

My dad tells a lot of stories around the dinner table, and my mom is a writer.

But tonight is my second time performing a story on a live stage.

So we'll see how that goes.

Can you talk a bit about how your perspectives have changed through storytelling?

I actually come from a mixed cultural background, so my dad is African American, my mom is Scottish.

I think growing up in that world pushed me towards being really interested in trying to understand how to communicate between different cultures, or different groups that may not necessarily understand each other.

And stories have provided a really useful way to do that for me, because, oftentimes, trying to be very precise with language in one arena can lead to more misunderstandings, I feel like.

But a good story can mean different things to different people, and so it can be a really helpful way to start a conversation, I think.

OKOKON: Mmm-hmm.

What are you hoping that the audience takes away at the end of your story?

A reminder that there really is a difference between the stories that we think people might want to tell, or the stories that we would tell about other people, and the stories that they would tell about themselves.

And I also struggle with this a lot.

It's really easy to look at somebody and think, "Oh, I can imagine the story that you would tell."

Yeah.

And it's a lot harder to actually remember to have that conversation and be able to hear the things that don't line up with what... what we might expect.

When I was a kid, my grandparents lived in this house in New Jersey.

And at the time, it seemed like a totally normal house.

Although in retrospect, I suppose it was a bit eclectic.

For example, I remember baby blue wallpaper and sweet potato colored carpets, sort of like the ones that my grandmother used to make for Thanksgiving.

I remember a couch with this kind of paisley jungle floral print, and then a lot of plants of different sizes and shapes from all over the world.

I remember the secret passageway in the attic that I loved as a kid.

But more than anything, I remember it was full of stuff like porcelain angels and clocks and things that she had bought off the Home Shopping Network.

And yet while you wouldn't think any of that stuff would go together, somehow my grandmother made it work.

And so when you walked in, you just got this overwhelming sense of warmth and comfort.

That's kind of what she was like as a person as well.

I remember she used to wear these Sunday jackets that would have, like, 12 different colors and patterns, all of which clashed with one another.

And she'd wear a hat that had an actual bird's nest on top of it, afloat in, like, a pound of lace.

And it was the kind of outfit that if you saw it on somebody else, you would go, "Wow, that is a number."

But when she wore it, you'd just think, "Oh, that looks nice."

Because she was so big and loud and friendly that it just kind of drowned everything else out.

And that same big personality led to a sort of chaos that just kind of happened around her at all times.

For example, I don't really remember my grandmother ever telling stories, but she certainly created a lot of them.

(laughter) Like the time when I was a kid and she took me to a park, and she was so sure that she knew where she was going that she left me on the top of a mountain as she walked two miles in the wrong direction looking for a bathroom.

And when I was a kid, I kind of loved that unpredictability of her house.

But when I got older, those trips became a little bit less fun.

In part that's because she and my grandfather moved to a retirement village down in Georgia, where the house was a little bit smaller, they didn't have enough space for all their stuff, it didn't have the same personality.

Everything felt kind of sterile.

But also it was because as I got older, that unpredictability that I loved as a kid is not so great as an adult.

So, for example, the stories that we used... that we told about her changed into things like, "Remember the time that she yelled at you for an hour about the thing that you said to her in her dream?"

(laughter) But I still loved those trips a lot because of the ride home.

My parents and I used to drive all the way down to Georgia from Pennsylvania, and then on the way back we would spend the whole 14 hours sharing stories about the wild things that she had done that time.

And as an only child, that opportunity to get to be one of the people telling stories instead of the center of attention was a very welcome moment.

And then my sophomore year, my grandmother passed away.

And I really did not want to go to the funeral.

And then when we got to the viewing room, my worst nightmare came true.

I very distinctly remember watching as the rest of my family cried over the tiny empty husk, which was all that the pancreatic cancer had left of my grandmother, while I stood in the doorway and just watched.

I didn't shed a single tear that whole time.

Now, in the years since then, I've thought a lot about that moment.

What is wrong with me?

Who doesn't cry at the funeral of a loved one?

Did I love her at all?

Am I some kind of robot?

It wasn't until recently that I got any sort of clarity about this.

I was on the phone with my grandfather, and on a whim, I just asked, "What was it like when you were growing up?"

And as he was telling me this story about how excited he was for his first day of work, so excited that he got up at 4:00 in the morning just to get there on time, and as he was walking through his sleepy Southern town, how that excitement quickly turned to fear when he, a young black man, was stopped by the cops, who wanted to know what he was doing up that early.

As he was telling me that story, I suddenly realized I never really knew my grandmother.

I didn't know any of these stories from her childhood.

I didn't know what made her excited.

I didn't know what made her afraid.

I didn't know any of the things that would have made her a real person to me.

And in that moment, I felt a tremendous sense of loss.

I'm never going to get a chance to ask her about those stories, the ones that she would have told.

And then one day I was sitting in my apartment, and I was thinking about this story.

I was trying to figure out where it ends.

I was sort of staring off into space.

And then suddenly I realized I wasn't staring off into space, I was actually looking at something.

I was looking at a book.

Now, earlier, when I said that my grandmother never really told stories, that's not entirely true.

She told at least one.

And I know this because she published it herself.

It's a fictional novel that she wrote.

Now, I'm going to be honest with you-- I haven't read it yet.

I'm not quite ready for that.

It's full of typos, the narrative is kind of hard to deal with.

But at the very least, I have put it on my desk as a very useful reminder that when I'm talking to the people around me, my friends and my family, Just to remember to ask them, "What is your story?"

and then try to listen to what they have to say.

(applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪ ♪