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Growing Our Storytellers: LIFTS Out Loud with Stephanie White · The LIFTS Podcast

• 0:09
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Welcome to season six of our List podcast, where we talk about what it's like to give birth, to raise and nurture our babies and toddlers in Montana, and what it looks like to care for ourselves in this tumultuous season.
• 0:21
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: I'm Gwyneth Hyndman, storytelling coordinator for Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, and I'm so excited to share this space with mothers, fathers, caregivers, and providers who will speak on the beautiful chaos of the zero to three years It is a beautiful autumn morning here in Granite County, and we are going on a road trip.
• 1:01
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: I am meeting Stephanie White, one of our eight storytellers from the latest issue of the annual Lifts magazine, which came out last month for an episode of Lifts Out Loud.
• 1:10
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: If you follow this podcast of the seasons, you know that this is when a few of our storytellers read their stories from the magazine to our podcast listeners and share a few reflections on seeing their words in print.
• 1:22
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Because Stephanie's story begins with our local library, it made sense to record at a library.
• 1:29
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Stephanie is in Drummond today, where one of her three daughters goes to preschool.
• 1:33
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: My oldest goes to school here in Phillipsburg, about twenty minutes away, with her daughter Norma, who features in the magazine story.
• 1:40
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: We decide that after school drop-off, we're gonna meet at the Drummond Library, except when we get to Drummond, we realize that the Drummond Library doesn't open until noon.
• 1:49
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: So rather than reschedule, we go to the new coffee house that just opened up on Drummond's main drag just down the road.
• 1:55
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: We have the whole place to ourself as Stephanie nurses Judy, who just turned one.
• 2:00
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: Stephanie begins to read.
• 2:02
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: But like I said, it's a beautiful day, and within about three minutes of Stephanie beginning to read, everyone who has been moving stock, fencing, and doing all the ranching projects that need to be done before the weather turns the next few days decide to come in for coffee.
• 2:17
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: So as Stephanie reads, you're gonna be hearing the bell of the door as it opens and closes behind her, the hiss of milk steaming, background chatter about the weather, and even a blender towards the end as smoothies are being made.
• 2:30
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: But you're also gonna hear the sweet sounds of Judy hiccuping and laughing post-feeding as her mother reads.
• 2:37
  Gwyneth Hyndman - HMHB: And rather this being a distraction, the hope is that this detour feels like you can also pause and grab a coffee or a tea and have a seat with us at the table in this coffee house as Stephanie shares her story A Father's Love of Literature Lives On
• 3:00
  Stephanie White: growing up, my dad always read to me when he got home from work at the end of the day.
• 3:06
  Stephanie White: He was in construction at that time, but had been a journalist before I was born.
• 3:10
  Stephanie White: I remember always being surrounded by literature and music.
• 3:13
  Stephanie White: He was able to bring stories to life and showed me how to get lost in a good read.
• 3:19
  Stephanie White: It was so special to watch him do the same animated voices and songs with our daughter Norma after she was born.
• 3:25
  Stephanie White: At the time, I worked the breakfast shift at a restaurant and was gone before anyone else was up.
• 3:32
  Stephanie White: We lived within walking distance of our local library, and it was usually my dad who would walk there with Norma for story and music hours.
• 3:40
  Stephanie White: When Norma was three, my husband Brandon and I moved here to Phillipsburg, Montana, where my husband's family had been based for many decades.
• 3:49
  Stephanie White: I didn't know anyone when I got here and would come to the Phillipsburg Library on my own with Norma.
• 3:53
  Stephanie White: When I was pregnant with Rita, our second daughter, in the summer of twenty twenty-two, a staff member asked,"Hey, are you in the Dolly Parton Imagination Library?" Dad made sure that reading and library programs were a big part of my childhood, and I wanted my girls to have the same experience.
• 4:12
  Stephanie White: It wasn't until after Reetha was born that I signed them both up for the Imagination Library program, and they've been thrilled to get these books in the mail once a month throughout the years.
• 4:22
  Stephanie White: This program connected us to similar resources we didn't know about before.
• 4:27
  Stephanie White: Our house is full of all kinds of books now.
• 4:29
  Stephanie White: Some are from the Imagination Library, and some are gifts and nostalgic books I kept from my early years.
• 4:36
  Stephanie White: My mom had this really cute yellow bookshelf that I had growing up, and when it was passed down to me, I filled it with our favorite books and put a little rocking chair in front of it.
• 4:46
  Stephanie White: We were consistently grabbing books from it to get Norma interested in reading, and then Reetha.
• 4:52
  Stephanie White: Now we have Judy, who just turned one.
• 4:55
  Stephanie White: Reading is our downtime in the afternoons.
• 4:58
  Stephanie White: We all need this imaginative space to relax.
• 5:02
  Stephanie White: My husband also works construction, and like my dad, he also loves to read to the girls when he gets home, which is usually what happens when I'm working a bartending shift.
• 5:12
  Stephanie White: By kindergarten, Norma was able to read really well.
• 5:15
  Stephanie White: She was excelling so much that her teacher thought it might be a great opportunity for Norma to read to the preschoolers, which was a real confidence booster.
• 5:23
  Stephanie White: She's eight now and constantly has her nose in a book.
• 5:26
  Stephanie White: In May, she was the class winner for the local Bikes for Books program at her school based on the number of books and variety she had read throughout the year.
• 5:35
  Stephanie White: The reading programs here have been a wonderful place to work and build our kids' literacy, but it has also created a community for my daughters and for me.
• 5:44
  Stephanie White: Reetha made her best friends at the moms play group that my doula helped grow with a grant she applied for to keep moms in rural areas connected.
• 5:52
  Stephanie White: Sometimes, as many as seventeen people come to the library on Tuesday mornings from all walks of motherhood and early childhood.
• 6:00
  Stephanie White: Nobody's looking at anyone sideways here, and we all know that we're just trying to do our best as parents.
• 6:05
  Stephanie White: There's a volunteer who reads to the kids, and the other parents can just talk about life and share projects that we're passionate about.
• 6:12
  Stephanie White: Maybe that's a sourdough starter that we share, or seedlings from our gardens.
• 6:17
  Stephanie White: The kids and I look forward to it every week.
• 6:22
  Stephanie White: I'm now the chairperson of the Phillipsburg Library, and I want us to keep focusing on the needs of young families.
• 6:29
  Stephanie White: That's only going to benefit the generations by creating a safe place.
• 6:33
  Stephanie White: I don't think kids, and sometimes moms and caregivers, always have that.
• 6:39
  Stephanie White: So having these libraries and programs as that space, and maybe it's their only safe place, is a crucial asset to have in a rural area like ours, and it means that they will associate that feeling of warmth and learning with libraries and reading in years to come.
• 6:58
  Stephanie White: My dad passed away in April of 2024 before Judy was born.
• 7:04
  Stephanie White: I can still picture him reading Louis L'Amour in his favorite chair, his glasses on the tip of his nose, or writing in his journal while listening to worship music.
• 7:16
  Stephanie White: When I hear the girls singing and tapping to their imaginations with their impromptu stories, I feel like his beautiful spirit and creativity is continuing on in them.
• 7:30
  Stephanie White: So what was that like to see your words and the photos uh, initially it was pretty emotional'cause it was one of those, like, when your person isn't there anymore and something cool happens that you want them to celebrate with you, um, it's a little emotional.
• 7:54
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 7:59
  Stephanie White: Uh, but it was great'cause it was something that I could share with siblings and my other family members.
• 8:07
  Stephanie White: Like,"Check this out.
• 8:09
  Stephanie White: Like, he's, his spirit lives on." Yeah.
• 8:12
  Stephanie White: "And we can continue all of this through everything that we do." Yeah.
• 8:19
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 8:20
  And you can't hear us very well in this next part just because of a blender in the background, but I am asking Stephanie about her dad.
• 8:28
  I do remember taking a photo of him once, when I was the editor of the Phillipsburg Mail newspaper, and it was Miners Union Day, which is a big gathering of all the miners in the area.
• 8:38
  And then after that, Stephanie and I are talking a little bit about this group that Kat McMahon, the doula who serves Granite County, organized for these group of parents.
• 8:49
  Stephanie White: I think the first time I, I think I met him once'cause I took a picture- Oh, yeah.
• 8:52
  Stephanie White: of you guys on a rock at that Miner's Union Day I think, uh, maybe a year before he passed?
• 8:59
  Stephanie White: No, it was right after- No, it was a couple, yeah like after Retha was bor- Retha- Yes.
• 9:02
  Stephanie White: It was the first time- Yes you had gone out with Retha.
• 9:04
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 9:05
  Stephanie White: Our first outing.
• 9:05
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 9:06
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 9:07
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 9:07
  Stephanie White: I remember that.
• 9:09
  Stephanie White: Um, and now you are the chair of the Phillipsburg Library.
• 9:13
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 9:13
  Stephanie White: And so do you see moms who remind you of you when you first walked into the library- Yes years ago?
• 9:21
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 9:22
  Stephanie White: And I think we all want our kids to have all the tools to succeed, and everybody is kind of doing it fairly blindly.
• 9:31
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Stephanie White: And so walking in and being like,"I don't even know where to start." Yeah.
• 9:34
  Stephanie White: "But I know this is where I need to be and what I need to do." Can you talk a little bit about that group?
• 9:38
  Stephanie White: It is, it's so much fun.
• 9:39
  Stephanie White: It is the coolest, coolest thing.
• 9:41
  Stephanie White: Um, so postpartum with Judy, I was meeting with her and the rest of my postpartum team, and like,"Where do you need support and how?" Yes.
• 9:54
  Stephanie White: And I have been lucky enough to have a very supportive spouse.
• 10:01
  Stephanie White: He had to work out of town, and so it was like,"I need a network of people that are in a similar life stage right now." And so I spoke with Kat.
• 10:11
  Stephanie White: We reached out to the library, got the ball rolling, and I think the first week we did it, it's just like meeting a new friend.
• 10:20
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Stephanie White: You get really, really nervous, and you almost wanna be like,"Ah." Yeah.
• 10:23
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 10:24
  Stephanie White: "Maybe I just won't do this." But so I went, and There wasn't a ton of us there.
• 10:30
  Stephanie White: It was wild because we had just put it out.
• 10:32
  Stephanie White: And, like anybody and everybody can come.
• 10:35
  Stephanie White: Mm-hmm.
• 10:35
  Stephanie White: I think we had five, five or so moms.
• 10:39
  Stephanie White: None of which I had ever met before.
• 10:41
  Stephanie White: Wow.
• 10:42
  Stephanie White: And so that was the coolest thing.
• 10:43
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 10:43
  Stephanie White: 'Cause I think in these small communities, you think like,"Oh, I see the same people all the time." Yeah.
• 10:47
  Stephanie White: Like,"I know all the moms in the area." And it just opened the door to the accessibility to these moms- Mm that like may or may not have been in hiding or these moms that thought like,"Oh, I can mom on my own." In kind of this old-fashioned way of thinking.
• 11:04
  Stephanie White: Like- I am my support.
• 11:05
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Stephanie White: And so it was, that was really cool, and it has kind of like evolved since then.
• 11:11
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Stephanie White: So it started out pretty small and trying to get the traction.
• 11:14
  Stephanie White: Now there's pretty consistently, with the exception of everybody getting sick- it's back to school.
• 11:21
  Stephanie White: We've had that entire little like play corner full of kids, and the little table that we all sit at just plum full of moms, and it is, I think the most that we've had is about 22- for like a little meet, and it's- Mm-hmm it's been amazing.
• 11:43
  Stephanie White: 22.
• 11:43
  Stephanie White: Wow.
• 11:43
  Stephanie White: 22.
• 11:44
  Stephanie White: Yep.
• 11:44
  Stephanie White: In Phillipsburg.
• 11:45
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 11:45
  Stephanie White: Which is a town of less than 900.
• 11:47
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Stephanie White: Yeah, and some moms have like just their first brave new baby.
• 11:52
  Stephanie White: Mm-hmm.
• 11:53
  Stephanie White: And some moms have three.
• 11:59
  Stephanie White: But it's just, the dynamics of it all are- Yeah the coolest thing that I have ever seen.
• 12:06
  Stephanie White: Um, and you guys, you talked about, like, you guys have done, uh, like sourdough starters.
• 12:12
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 12:13
  Stephanie White: Like, there's that sharing- Yes that mom sharing time and- Yeah, it's...
• 12:18
  Stephanie White: I- we joked one time'cause it's, all of us, every mom ever, there's always a hobby- Yeah that you end up doing just- Yeah to keep your sanity.
• 12:27
  Stephanie White: And so one of the moms, it was sourdough, and it was,"Ah, I've always wanted to do sourdough," and I've always talked myself out of it.
• 12:33
  Stephanie White: "It's too hard." And so she brought some starter in.
• 12:36
  Stephanie White: Like,"It's super easy.
• 12:37
  Stephanie White: I don't have a ton of time.
• 12:39
  Stephanie White: This is what I do.""I'll kind of walk you through it." Yeah.
• 12:41
  Stephanie White: "I'll send you your little instructions sheet." And so a handful of moms took the sourdough home.
• 12:46
  Stephanie White: There's another gal who is a, herbalist, naturalist.
• 12:51
  Stephanie White: Mm-hmm.
• 12:52
  Stephanie White: So she came in, and she gave us little samples of the lotion that she makes.
• 12:57
  Stephanie White: And it was, like, the sweetest network of sharing and things like that.
• 13:03
  Stephanie White: And I know she took at least one of the moms, if not a couple of them out to f- uh, gather up rose hips- recently.
• 13:13
  Stephanie White: And it's, like, widening our accessibility of,"Hey, I wanna try this out- but I don't wanna do this alone.""And I don't feel confident just taking my kids," and the meltdowns that's happened.
• 13:28
  Stephanie White: Like, if you put what you wanna do with another human and other little people it makes things so much easier.
• 13:38
  Stephanie White: Yeah, it does.
• 13:38
  Stephanie White: Like, my kids won't break down if their friend is there.
• 13:41
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 13:41
  Stephanie White: 'Cause...
• 13:42
  Stephanie White: And I'm probably not gonna break down if I have somebody to support me.
• 13:45
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 13:45
  Stephanie White: Like, it's a whole dynamic.
• 13:48
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 13:49
  Stephanie White: Our kids have grown out of stuff.
• 13:50
  Stephanie White: And it's,"Oh, well, your kid is about that size.
• 13:54
  Stephanie White: Here's a bag of shoes," or anything like that.
• 13:58
  Stephanie White: I was thinking to, I was talking to another mom about how there's a lot of, like, young families Yes right now.
• 14:06
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 14:06
  Stephanie White: Do you feel it's the same way?
• 14:07
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 14:08
  Stephanie White: And in a lot of these cases, we all have, my husband too, but a lot of those partners are away- Yes like, for seasons- Yes or weeks, or they're in construction- Yes mining.
• 14:19
  Stephanie White: Forest service Yeah All of that.
• 14:22
  Stephanie White: Seasonal work of some kind.
• 14:23
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 14:23
  Stephanie White: So there's a lot of pa- of mostly moms doing it on your own like in the summer months.
• 14:28
  Stephanie White: And it's, it's hard.
• 14:29
  Stephanie White: That has never been our usual, and so I felt really lost in that, like, moment of our lives where he was a lot further away than what we were used to.
• 14:39
  Stephanie White: And like building this program now, It's nice because even though their dad is home now- Yeah and it's a little more consistent of him being home, it's still a nice little like,"Okay, I get to go and hang out- with my girlfriends." Yeah.
• 14:55
  Stephanie White: And Aretha is so...
• 14:58
  Stephanie White: She's- You said that she met- her best friends.
• 15:00
  Stephanie White: Yes.
• 15:01
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 15:01
  Stephanie White: And they are in preschool right now together.
• 15:03
  Stephanie White: And it is the cutest thing because if I don't have anything going on and we're fairly caught up on chores, I kind of put the ball in her court.
• 15:11
  Stephanie White: Like,"What do you wanna do today?" Mm.
• 15:13
  Stephanie White: Every single time without fail, it's,"I wanna go to the library.""Okay.
• 15:18
  Stephanie White: We can go to library.
• 15:20
  Stephanie White: My friends will be there." And so now she's like correlated these friendships with going to the library.
• 15:27
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Stephanie White: And there was one, I think it was a couple weeks ago, and I told her, I was like,"We can absolutely go to the library, but your friends won't be there, so we can just sit and read." And she goes,"Okay.
• 15:37
  Stephanie White: My friends won't be there, but they'll be there next time." Then we got there and we were hanging out, reading books, having a good old time.
• 15:44
  Stephanie White: It was right around Judy's nap time, and so she started having a meltdown, and Aretha was so upset that we had to leave that she had to make sure that she had to check out her book so she could take it home so we could finish our little story time.
• 15:56
  Stephanie White: I think right now it's kind of we're in that weird kind of limbo where it's back to school, there's sports and everybody's running around doing all the things.
• 16:06
  Stephanie White: We're trying to get traction on our kids programs, but are at this kind of fork in the road.
• 16:15
  Stephanie White: The people that we have doing it, it's not consistent for them.
• 16:19
  Stephanie White: Mm-hmm.
• 16:19
  Stephanie White: And so we scaled that back.
• 16:21
  Stephanie White: So it's once a month so that it would be more like a special like,"Oh, come to the library- for this monthly thing." And so getting the traction, if you will, on that so that there's enough reminders and things to know that there are kids who show up and parents who know, like, that's on the calendar that's what we wanna do.
• 16:43
  Stephanie White: Um, I think that's our, like, the biggest thing right now.
• 16:48
  Stephanie White: Finding out what the needs of the community are so that we can meet them as well as we can with the resources that we have.
• 16:59
  Stephanie White: It's hard being, again, in a rural area.
• 17:04
  Stephanie White: It's great that libraries are this center for information, but the ways in which we can kind of bridge that gap are not as big as some of these bigger cities.
• 17:18
  Stephanie White: So figuring out how we can support our community and further that connection- Yeah without making ourselves too thin.
• 17:29
  Stephanie White: Oh, thank you, Stephanie.
• 17:29
  Stephanie White: Yeah.
• 17:29
  Stephanie White: Thank you for your time.
• 17:30
  Stephanie White: Thank you.
• 17:30
  Stephanie White: I really appreciate that.
• 17:31
  Stephanie White: It's good to see you, Judy.
• 17:31
  Stephanie White: Aw.
• 17:41
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: The Lifts podcast is hosted by Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition, a nonprofit organization out of Helena, Montana dedicated to the health and wellbeing of families expecting and raising little ones.
• 17:55
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: Opinions and views expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent the views expressed by HMHB as an organization.
• 18:03
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: If you have a topic or a story you would love to see covered on our podcast, or if you have any feedback on a podcast that has aired, you can contact me at gwyneth@hmhb-mt.org.
• 18:16
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: You can also go right to our website at hmhb-mt.org.
• 18:22
  Gwyneth Hyndman, HMHB-MT: We look forward to hearing from you.