LAURA FRYE: My ex sits on the couch, so I had to pull up a chair, and I'm already feeling like I'm not part of the family anymore.

SAKET AGARWAL: "Why is it that your parents "never come to visit you?

"Do they hate you?

"Did they send you to the boarding school as a punishment?"

MACKENZIE VIEIRA: She said, "I came from the same background "that your uncles did.

"They weren't raised with women joining "male-dominated fields and they never allowed themselves to understand this."

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "Modern Family."

As the world changes, so do our understandings of what makes a family.

Family can be the people that you're born into, it can be the people who brought you in, it can be a group of your own choosing.

And no matter what it looks like, all families go through the same challenges, and joys, and sorrows.

Tonight's storytellers are bringing their stories of the shapes of their families, and how they made all the difference in their lives.

♪ FRYE: My name's Laura Frye.

I live in Lowell, Massachusetts, with my husband and our three cats.

I work as a major gift officer for an organization called From the Top.

It's a classical music radio show that promotes kids who play classical music.

And I also started an organization called Lowell Storytelling.

Is storytelling kind of important in your life overall, and in what ways would you, would you say that it is?

FRYE: I don't have very much experience as a teller, but the more I listen to stories, the more I just could empathize with people and I could really put myself into people's shoes.

I'm never going to know what it's like to move to a new country, or live life as a different person, but I think listening to people's true storytelling, that's probably the best way I'm ever going to find that, and I think it's so magical that way.

Yeah, yeah-- it is an insider view, right?

Yeah.

Why do you think that it's important to share hard or difficult stories?

I mean, it's so easy to feel alone in this world, but hearing a story from a stranger that they also felt these emotions, they also went through something similar, can just bring a connection and it can just fill something in your heart.

We go through hard times, we're not in an Instagram world.

(laughter) You know, there's, there's real hard things in the world, but we get through them and that's, that's an important thing to hear.

♪ The decision to get divorced was an easy one.

We weren't in love.

We hadn't even been sleeping in the same room.

But leaving my stepdaughter, that was the hard part.

I had met Olivia when she was two, almost three, and now she's seven.

She was in this great rhyming phase when we first met.

So she was rhyming my name, Laura, Flora, Gora, Gorga-- and when she said Gorga, I burst out laughing, and it stuck.

We would be out at the store and she would yell, "Gorga!"

And people would look at us, but I didn't care 'cause it was our special little thing.

And the three of us were a family for a little while.

Except, honestly, there was really four of us in this family.

Because Olivia was so young, her mother was a big part of our life.

Andrea was my husband's first ex-wife and they knew each other from high school, so I knew a lot about her.

First, Andrea's very pretty.

She has this long brown hair, she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow.

She played volleyball in high school and she was the star in all the high school musicals.

And I was in band.

And I can't run a mile.

And...

I have short hair because I'm terrible at doing hair.

She would drop Olivia off and Olivia would have these beautiful French braids and then we would drop Olivia off, and her hair would be kind of combed.

(laughs) Not because we didn't care, just because that's not my skill set.

And, and Andrea was really nice to me, but I just always felt insecure.

Because I was living in the house that she bought with my now husband, and I was spending time with her daughter, so I didn't know if she really... meant it when she was nice to me.

And it didn't help that my husband would tell me, "Don't believe her when she's nice.

"You know she's an actress, and she's a really good actress."

But it doesn't matter anymore because I'm getting a divorce, and I have some problems in front of me.

First, I need to move out.

And I also need to tell Olivia that I'm getting a divorce and I don't know what we're going to do about visitations, because as a stepparent, I don't get any custody rights, so I have to arrange those visits with my soon-to-be ex-husband, and all we want is space from each other.

First things first, I call my mom, and she helps me find an apartment and helps me arrange to move out.

And then I'm thinking about how to tell Olivia that we're getting a divorce and I realize I'm 32 years old and I just called my mom, so she is probably going to want her mom there.

Sometimes you just need your mom.

So I talk to my ex, and he agrees, and we ask Andrea if she would be part of the conversation and, luckily, she agrees.

So, the day we decide to tell Olivia is the same day I move my things out of the house.

And when Olivia gets there, we usher her right into the living room because I didn't take anything out of the living room.

So she doesn't know that anything has changed yet.

And Andrea sits on the couch, and then my ex sits on the couch.

So I had to pull up a chair, and I'm already feeling like I'm not part of the family anymore.

And he starts by saying, "Olivia, we have something to tell you."

And she takes this deep breath, the type that starts in your diaphragm and moves up your whole body.

And I remember that I need to take a deep breath.

And he says, "Gorga and I are getting a divorce, and she's gonna be moving out."

And I jump in, I say, "But we love you, "and it has nothing to do with you.

"It's just because your dad and I, we're not a good couple anymore."

And she nods, and she looks at her mom, and her mom says, "We are your team.

"You can ask us anything, we're here for you.

And Gorga is always going to be here for you."

And I really appreciated that.

After the conversation, I leave the house and...

I feel like I lost my family.

I'm standing in the driveway and Andrea comes up to me and she says, "Do you want to get a drink?"

And we go out that night and we become friends.

All of a sudden, this barrier, this ex-husband-sized hole that was between us disappears and we get to know each other as people.

A few years later, I get remarried, and Andrea and Olivia are there and they're dancing with us at our wedding reception, and then a little while later Andrea gets remarried, and my husband and Olivia and I are singing bad karaoke at her wedding reception.

And now I realize I didn't lose a family.

I made my own modern, fabulous family.

♪ AGARWAL: My name is Saket Agarwal.

I'm from Kathmandu, Nepal, and I currently live in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

I've been in the United States for about 14 years.

I work as a scientist at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals.

And the work really involves de-risking or, you know, studying the toxicology profile of our compounds, making sure it's safe before we take it into higher species, and eventually, of course, in humans, to make medicines out of it.

So many people have heard of Kathmandu, and sort of know of it as this large major city, but few people really know what it's like.

Can you talk to us about some of your favorite memories of growing up there?

Nepal is a pretty small country.

It's landlocked between China in the north and India towards the south, and Kathmandu is the capital city.

It's a pretty large valley.

Most of the people are agriculturists, a lot of farmers.

So the outskirts of Nepal are all, you know, very beautiful, green farming areas.

Wow, it sounds like a really beautiful place to grow up.

Yeah, it is quite wonderful.

What are some of your favorite memories, or what kind of stories did you grow up hearing in Nepal?

AGARWAL: My grandmother was very interested, and still is, in religion.

She's grown up with these Hindu mythology stories, so those were our bedtime stories.

Can you talk to me about how you went about arriving at this particular story as the one that you wanted to tell?

I think there's an amount of... relatability that I wanted to get across.

It's very interesting to me, you can be from anywhere in the world, but there's something you can find common between two set individuals.

- Mmm.

- And so the differences really should not be highlighted.

It's the commonalities that should be highlighted, and the differences should be celebrated.

♪ My suitcases are packed.

I'm at the airport, waving goodbye to my parents as tears roll down my cheeks.

As a six-year-old, I'm being sent to a boarding school in India.

Traveling alone, I'm to take a two-hour flight from Kathmandu to Delhi, and then a ten-hour bus ride from Delhi to Dehradun.

I was a shy kid and I found it challenging making friends.

I used to especially dread the weekends.

Sunday was the day when parents came to take their kids out, and of course my parents weren't able to come every Sunday.

And I remember feeling very alone and out of place as one of the only kids left behind.

Once a classmate asked me, "Why is it that your parents never come to visit you?

"Do they hate you?

"Did they send you to the boarding school as a punishment?"

And I couldn't answer.

Somewhere inside, I started to think perhaps my parents didn't like me after all.

It was a really challenging time, and I was constantly homesick.

But, after three years, I finally put my foot down and I refused to go back to the boarding school.

My parents had no choice but to keep me home, and I cheered on my victory.

We've been in Nepal for six or seven generations, but our family roots trace back to India.

We are fluent in both Nepali and Hindi, but interestingly, we never spoke in Nepali within our family, and this was always a bit strange to me.

It was as if we had created a barrier between ourselves and the locals.

I thought we were locals.

In school, whenever I spoke in Nepali, folks giggled and said I had a very thick Indian accent.

This left me feeling very detached in my own country, and created a sense of not belonging.

My shyness continued as a young teenager, and I was still struggling to make friends, especially with some other male kids.

Being closeted just added another reminder of how I was not part of the society.

During the summer, we were required to wear shorts as part of our school uniform.

Once, I was watching a game of soccer with a friend of mine and he says, "You know, the only thing that makes you masculine are your hairy legs."

I, I was completely lost-- at loss for words and I tried to laugh it off.

As an awkward teenager, I wasn't comfortable wearing shorts anyway, but this conversation just made it ten times worse.

I wanted to hide somewhere and never come out.

In the pursuit of best education possible, my parents, yet again, decided that I needed to go to India for part of my high school.

I found myself in Bangalore, in India.

As I settle into my assigned room, I'm being asked to go to a senior's room to get acquainted.

Or, in other words, I was being called to get hazed.

Of course, one of the first questions they asked me, "Where are you from?"

"I'm from Nepal."

And immediately, there was laughter.

I was extremely confused.

Then they said shaabji and giggled more and laughed.

This roughly translates to saying, "Yes, sir," but in this instance, specifically refers to a security guard or a door man.

This was their way of stereotyping a whole nation.

This left me completely angry and, and I wanted to get out of there.

I was... felt, you know, completely desperate.

I was out of home again, and out of place yet again.

As a Nepali citizen, I wasn't eligible to take entrance exams needed to get into colleges in India and unfortunately Nepal did not have a great program for the sciences, either.

If I were to get a scholarship in the U.S., perhaps that was an option worth considering, my parents had proposed.

My first thought and reaction was, "No way in hell."

Another country, another culture, more loneliness?

Definitely not going to happen.

Unfortunately, I did not see any other option if I were to pursue my interests.

So very reluctantly, I packed up my suitcases yet again, this time to move halfway across the world.

At the airport I was reminded of my six-year-old self.

The tears wouldn't stop, and a very, very long flight awaited.

I enter Behrakis Grand Hall at Drexel University as a freshman for my first day of orientation.

I'm completely dazzled by the sheer amount of diversity I see around me.

There's a tremendous amount of energy in the room.

It's, you know, abuzz with conversation, and, you know, the air is just infused with this exotic smell of buttery goodness.

I later found out that it was warm pretzels that I was smelling.

As I walked to my assigned table, I see somebody who's South Asian, so I, you know, gravitate towards some familiarity and try to strike a conversation.

He asked the dreaded question, "Where are you from?"

And I go, "Well, I'm from Nepal."

And he says, "Oh cool, I'm from Dubai."

I was so relieved to not have to explain further about where I'm from.

We both kind of related that we were from South Asia, but we felt a sense of not belonging.

I immediately knew we'd be good friends.

As time goes on, I become more comfortable being in the U.S. Philly was a great first city to come to.

Just being in the Gayborhood was so liberating.

In my mid-20s, I happened to be at a bar having a casual conversation with my friends.

It's a comfortable late spring night.

You know, when we are having this conversation, at some point the conversation turns to relationships, and a friend of mine asked me why I never had a girlfriend.

I wanted to tell them the real reason, but I was very anxious about their reaction.

After all these years, I'd finally found a group of steady friends and I did not want to go back to feeling that otherness all over again.

A little bit later, I muster up some courage somehow and I say, "Well, you know, actually, I'm interested in a boyfriend, not a girlfriend."

Heads turned and there was silence as I held my breath.

My friend next to me turned to me, held my hands, and said, "I'm so glad you felt comfortable "sharing that with us.

We are your family and we love you."

That broke the silence.

We cheered and went back to our conversation.

I couldn't believe it, I was so happy, I was so relieved.

I was finally out, but this was the first time that none of my identities were at conflict with each other.

In this faraway land, I'd found a family that accepted me for who I am.

I am Nepali, I'm Indian, I'm gay, and I do belong.

♪ As a child, I think I was very resentful to even the extent where I literally hated my parents.

So it took a lot of conversation after I was a young adult with my parents to kind of resolve that.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm very glad that we were, finally, you know... we talked it out and we...

I finally understood why they made the decision that they did.

So after having had that discussion, I do not regret going there.

At the same time, I can see my life without having that-- without having gone through that experience.

Mmm.

I'm not quite sure how that directly affects me right now.

It's, it's more just a cumulative experience.

♪ VIEIRA: I'm Mackenzie Vieira.

I go by Kenzie.

I go to Emmanuel College here in Boston.

I'm studying neuroscience and biology.

I'm part of the lacrosse team there, and I am a first-generation Portuguese American born.

Amazing.

Tell me more about what you're studying at school.

What exactly is it?

Okay, so I want to be a neuropsychiatrist.

So basically I want to be able to look at brain traumas and diagnose them.

I want to be able to diagnose any type of mental illness, really.

I've been interested in the medical field since I could talk.

So, probably, like two or three, my mom used to tell me, like, I've always said I wanted to be in the medical field.

Mm.

That's awesome.

So what have you learned about storytelling so far?

Um... that it's a lot harder than it actually seems.

You would think it'd be so easy, like, hey, just sit with your friends, tell them a story, but it takes a lot more work and practice, and I just have so much more appreciation for the whole art.

OKOKON: So considering the story that you're telling us this evening, why did you decide to share this particular story, and why is it important for you to share this story?

So I think it's so important for me to tell this story because I talk about stuff that a lot of women, and people in general, can relate to.

Being part of something that women traditionally aren't part of can be really scary to kind of take those first steps, but I was raised by a really strong woman who took a step into a male-dominated field and I'm just passing on that tradition to any little girls who are listening.

♪ It's my freshman year of high school and it's Christmas Eve.

I'm at my tía and tío's house, and after just eating a five-course meal-- at least that's what it felt like-- my tía is still trying to force more food down all our throats.

Of course, we didn't want that, so me and my tíos ran to the living room and we flicked on the TV and started going through the channels.

One show in particular really caught my attention, and that was Girls Garage.

It's basically a show where two female mechanics show you how to do simple jobs on your car, whether it be from brakes, all the way to engines.

I was obviously astonished by this.

Two other women interested in the same topics that I am?

I had never even seen such a thing.

My uncles, on the other hand, had some not-so-very-nice comments to make, saying that it's fake, women can't do that, and the age-old comment, "Women belong in the kitchen, not the garage."

I grew more and more irritated, but kept my mouth shut because it was Christmas Eve and I didn't want to start any issues.

But it really bothered me because back when I was eight years old is where my true love for cars really came from.

I remember helping my dad fix my sister's first car.

I turned the wheel when he needed me to, used the flashlight and hold it for him when he needed me to do that, and got him any tools he needed.

It's really where my love for cars came from, and I just felt like the coolest eight-year-old.

I got to help my hero, my dad, fix cars, and I didn't think there was anything better I could be doing with my time.

When it came time for my journey of high school to start, I decided that I was going to go to vocational school much like my parents.

At a vocational school, if you've never heard about it, it's basically a trade program high school, where you can-- there's 13 trades, and you get to pick eight of them.

They had trades all the way from health careers, to graphic design, and all the way to, of course, automotive.

During orientation, when school wasn't in session, we got to walk around the shops, decide what we wanted.

I remember continuously picking on my dad.

"Hey Dad, I'm going to pick automotive.

Hey Dad, I think this is the shop I want."

He just laughed it off and rolled his eyes, not expecting me to actually choose that.

That's until we got to the auditorium and I decided, hey, I think I'm going to actually put this down.

So I looked up at him, and he already saw what I had written.

He starts laughing and he goes, "You can put that down all you want, "but you're not going to pick that shop, because I'm not going to let you."

Of course, it was just a daughter getting underneath her dad's skin, right?

I didn't actually really want to go through that shop.

Well, guess what, flash forward a couple of months, and I went through that shop on the first day.

And between the grease and the smell of the exhaust, I felt like I was home.

It reminded me of my dad.

So when I got off the bus that day and I picked up the phone and I called my dad and I remember him, he was at work, and he's hearing my voice all excited and I'm like, "Dad, Dad, you're never going to believe it, like, I found the shop of my dreams."

Before I could even finish that sentence, all I heard was, "No," and then quiet on the other side of the phone.

I was really upset and confused, but I stayed quiet and I let him finish because I felt like I knew where this was going.

He told me "No, I don't...

I want so much more from you.

"I don't want you to break your back "every day going to work.

I want you to enjoy life more than I have."

And I was a little lost, but I let him continue.

He said, "I didn't have another choice in life.

This was my one choice."

On one hand, I understood it.

On the other, not so much.

But, I just made sure I thought back to the fact that my dad is from Portugal.

Luckily, I grew up with two immigrant parents, which is not something many kids get to say.

My dad went to vocational school as well, and he went through auto body-- and if you don't know what that is, it's basically the guy who fixes the car when you crash it.

He's the one to make it look brand new again.

Because he never really had anyone growing up to cheer him on and tell him he could be anything he wanted, he didn't really go to college, he didn't even try to push any further than high school.

He thought that if I picked auto, I would just stick with it and I wouldn't go to college, even though that wasn't really the case.

Although I was upset, I let the conversation drop and that was until about January and I had to pick my shop.

I decided to sit with my parents and I said, "You know, I really like the shop, "it really means a lot to me.

"Is there any way I could get you to agree to let me be in the shop?"

My mom is already on my side.

My dad, it took a couple hours of convincing, but eventually I got him to agree.

The only thing I had to do was promise him that I was going to go to college.

So that's why when it came to Christmas Eve, I just...

I felt so stupid.

I felt like all the conversations we had were for nothing and maybe I shouldn't be in auto, maybe this wasn't the right spot for me.

I kept thinking this through as we drove back to our house and I was standing across the counter from my mom in our kitchen.

One thing about my mom is she likes coffee, morning, noon, and night.

So while my dad was going to sleep, my mom was making coffee.

I looked at her and I said, "You know what Tío had said really upset me.

"Should I not be doing what I'm doing?

What is wrong with me?"

She looks at me and puts the creamer down.

She knew exactly what I was talking about.

She goes "Well, how do you think people felt "when I got into a male-dominated field, electrical, in the '80s?"

She said, "I came from the same background "that your uncles did, "but you have to keep in mind that they weren't raised "with women joining male-dominated fields.

"They weren't used to this, "and they never allowed themselves to understand this.

"They weren't trying to be rude, it's just how they were raised."

I realized where she was going with it, and I decided just let it go.

So even though I would... over those next four years, I get a lot more comments very similar to what my tío said.

That didn't stop me from graduating four years later from my high school, with one of the largest automotive classes of girls that my school had ever seen and I'm keeping my promise to my dad of going to college, of course.

Now, whether it's studying the brain of a car, or studying the brain of a human, I'll always keep my parents words in the back of my mind.

I can reach any goal that I want and I can reach for the stars, as long as I set my mind to it.

OKOKON: The Stories From the Stage Podcast with extraordinary, true stories.

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