Tristan and Ashley get support from the Ensemble.

Intergenerational support of the very best kind!

George Tajerian performs his story.

Betty and her lovely "daughters."

"Unless you have walked in our shoes, you cannot know ..."

James Cross introduces a poem while Stacy Sims, residency director with True Body Project, looks on.

The Performance!

Maureen Kellen-Taylor of EngAGE introduces Walk in our Shoes and talks about the mentoring program with Burbank seniors and Burbank Community Day School students.

I used to play basketball.

Unless you’ve walked in my shoes you cannot know what I’ve been through. When I was 11 years old I used to play Basketball.

I loved basketball and I wanted to join the JV Basketball team, so I tried out for the Sun Valley Middle School team. I got in. The shoes I used were some black Jordan’s and those were the shoes I used.

You cannot know what it feels like to lose someone close to you.

Unless you have walked in my shoes, you cannot know what it feels like to lose someone close to you. It’s very hurtful, watching someone you love go through pain.

When I was 2 years old, I lost a 4 year old brother, due to a brain tumor.

He was always in my heart and with my family everywhere we go. Till this day, I still see the pain in my parents’ eyes and how hard it was to lose a son. I always wished my brother was alive and wondered what it would be like to have an older brother.

About 2 years ago, my grandmother on my father’s side was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had chemotherapy for one year and is a survivor. We were so happy, until about 8 month’s ago we found out about my mom’s mother. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 Spine cancer, which is malignant. She has been fighting this horrible disease for the past many months, and sadly the doctors have been telling us she might not make it to the end of the year.

I’ve experienced some very depressing experiences, but they only made me stronger.

The most important thing was for my brother and me to be safe and happy.

During my childhood, there were things I hated and things I appreciated. I had friends that lived in my apartment complex; we have games like cops and robbers. Then it all changed when my parents got divorced, when my brother and I were 6&7.
I was moving to another place that I did not want to go, my little brother and I living with my grandmother.

We moved around a lot, even living in Arizona for seven months. I went back to live with my mom, I started a new school in Burbank. I was a little confused kid that did not know much. I started to realize I had people who cared and I trusted. So I have learned that you do not need others to tell you what to do or make decisions for yourself. So living with my dad taught me to never back down from a fight, to fight strong until you fall. I thought it was going to be hard living with my mom and step dad, but sometimes you have to take risks.

So taking a risk that can affect my life was a changing experience. I knew it was going too hard, so I tried a little bit harder, to have a good time living with my other parents. No one knew it would be so hard staying with different people in a different state. In life you make choices that affect you future, and the most important thing was for my brother and me to be safe and happy.

My family is my one and all.

Unless you’ve walked in my shoes you can not know how hard it was when my parents got divorced. You can not know how hard it was when both my parents are fighting with each other. I was about 5 years old when it happened.

To me my family is my one and all, and I love them with all my heart. Seeing first hand my family crumble in front of my eyes was the hardest part. I still have the memory of the last fight they had that eventually ended with my mom leaving the house.

I guess the one good thing that came out of the divorce was how it affected me. Forced as a five year old to understand that the once perfect family I thought to have had was falling apart. That in turn made me mature a lot faster than all the six or seven year olds I knew. Now 11 years have passed and it will always be a milestone in my life.

I have found solace, comfort and peace.

Unless you have walked in my shoes you cannot know what it is like to be the child of alcoholics. You cannot know what it is like to feel abandoned; to have your mother abandon you in alcohol after promising repeatedly not to. To feel shame; to be afraid to have your friends over to your house, because you don’t know what to expect from one day to the other.

You cannot know what it is like to live most of your life feeling inadequate; to have no self worth, to have to please everyone in order to get them to like you.

You cannot know what it is like to feel unloved and therefore unloveable, to scream into your head:

"Mommy, why don't you love me?"

You cannot know what it is like to have to control your body, your voice, and sometimes even your breathing to survive. To stuff your feelings down to the point where you don’t even know what they are anymore, to never allow yourself to cry. You cannot know what it is like to revert to imaginary friends to keep you safe. To love by “Don’t see, don’t tell” rules. You don’t know what is like to hate your mother and feel guilty at the same time.

Fortunately, I have found a group that has walked in my shoes: Adult Children of Alcoholics. In this group, I have found solace, comfort and peace and the ability to work through my issues at the age of 77.

You will not know the tragic task of watching your husband die.

Unless you have walked in my shoes you will not know the tragic task of watching - over 8 months - your 50 year old husband die of stomach cancer, leaving you with three young daughters to raise alone.

Or the daunting challenge of trying to carve out a career as a musician and learning that being a woman was a definite disadvantage, as the music industry was then, and still is to some extent, dominated by men.

But my happy ending is that those three young girls grew into beautiful, loving women who are taking wonderful care of their mother in her senior years. How lucky I am!

You cannot know what it is like to have two older sisters.

Unless you have walked in my shoes you cannot know what it is like to have two older sisters. I am 8 years younger than my oldest sister and 6 years younger than my other one. I have no brothers. It has been kind of boring for me because I have no one to hang out with in my house.

When I was younger, my sisters would love to play with me and help my parents take care of me. They when they became teenagers, they didn’t as much because they started doing things with their friends.

I always wanted to hang out with them and their friends but they would not let me. It got worse as they got older. They were doing things and watching things on TV that I shouldn’t have been watching because I was much younger.

I wanted to watch the things they did so I would bother them. When they had friends come over I would but them because I was so bored.

The hard thing about having no siblings around your same age is having no one to do things with. My sisters always have each other to hang out with. Sometimes they take me to the movies or to eat but most of the time I am alone.

My mom and dad are always with me though.

I play with my dog and I just got a new baby rat. My dog loves to play with me so I guess he is like my brother. If I have kids I think I will have two or four or make sure they are closer in age so one of them doesn’t feel left out.

I have a giant hole in my heart.

Unless you’ve walked in my shoes you can not know….what it felt like for your mom to tell you pack your shit we are moving to California. To a new place you don’t know anybody. Not knowing what’s normal or how to act or talk to people. What it was like to be told by your uncle his twin Josh, whom I loved so much, committed suicide due to an overdose on crystal meth and alcohol. The feelings of having a part of me die when the man I loved so much... dies is unbearable a giant hole in my heart.
Also the constant fear of abandonment brings back the pain I felt by my father of him abandoning me and it constantly kept me wondering “what did I do wrong???” The pain I felt when he left has scarred me for the last 15 years and has kept me from getting attached so I never felt the pain again if the next one I grew to love left. But those scars helped me turn into the woman I am today so I guess I have to thank him for that right??

It can only get better from here, right?

Unless you’ve walked in my shoes you cannot know how hard life is for a gay teenager. It started in 7th grade my coming out year, insults flew at my left and right. Being gay is not something I chose. It’s something that just happened, why would I choose to be teased and laughed at everyday? Eight grade it was really bad I got into a sexual harassment issue. So I ran from my problems and went to a different high school than everyone else. But when I came back it only got worse. Now I go to C.D.S it can only get better from here right?

In an ocean of feelings, I am a non-swimmer.

THE HYPHENATED MAN

I realized as I was writing that I was avoiding something about me. It was that I grew up in a home where my father was an alcoholic. We were not allowed to talk at the table and no one could invite anyone into our home. I did not learn the social graces. As a result of being raised in an alcoholic home, I am very much out of touch with my feelings.

In an ocean of feelings, I am a non-swimmer.

I am a Mexican-American
A retired Seventh-Day Adventist Minister
A Bi-lingual person.
A married/divorced man
A religious/no longer religious man
I am not an Agnostic, not an Atheist
These terms carry too much baggage.
Therefore, I word myself as a non-theist.
A borrowed self-designation that is in a contant state of
flux.
I grew up in a Chicago barrio,
Right next to a Jewish ghetto
I grew up wanting to be Jewish
As a boy, I was a Sabbath-goi
Doing the required chores in the synagogue that
orthodox Jew could not.
I became a lover of Jewish tradition and customs.
An advantage of being a hyphenatged man is that
you can choose to live on either side of the hyphen.
At times, I am very American; at others I feel feel
`very Mexican.

Walter and friends rehearsing.

Sally's ration books.

One of the stories features ration books and how they were used to buy shoes in WWII. Sally brought hers in to show us.

Practice makes perfect.

Rehearsal with students and seniors at the Burbank Senior Artists Colony theatre.