(calm music) - Good evening.

Y'all doing all right?

All right, that's good, that's good.

I'm so glad to be able to be here at the American Theater, to be at my home, it's so great.

And I just gotta announce that Hampton Storytelling is the one partnering with WHRO and we cannot wait for our Hampton Storytelling Festival to be in July.

I think it's the 13th or the 17th or something like that.

Somebody will tell me if I'm wrong.

So put it on your calendar.

Some of y'all need to write that thing down 'cause I want to see all y'all there.

Is that all right?

- [Crowd] Yes.

- All right, 'cause we're gonna hear some great stories there as well.

So, I brought, because, you know, sometimes you can do show and tell.

So I brought some show and tell, 'cause I am a professional storyteller and some of you all I know think that I'm a lawyer or a politician, but that is not true, I'm just a storyteller, and I travel all over the United States and then internationally as well.

And I am always trying to have a little bit of home with me.

This past January, I spent the whole month at Monticello doing research, staying there.

Oh yeah, I'm gonna say it again 'cause y'all were so nice on that one.

In the month of January, I spent the whole month at Monticello.

(crowd laughing) I was so good.

I love that.

I love that.

Thank y'all for doing that for me.

And I had a good friend, another storyteller, who said, "I wanna give you something."

And she gave me a little plaque, a little thing that says, "Home equals house plus love."

And I put that on my desk right there in Monticello.

And another friend who was not really a story teller, just a good friend, she decided before I left, she gave me, and I know you can't see it up here, I'll put it out on the Hampton Storytelling table and y'all can see it back there when you come over to buy a t-shirt and give a donation.

(crowd laughing) Amen.

But when you go over there, but then another one gave me this beautiful little figurine.

It's a Native American woman sitting down with her legs out and children are crawling over her and it's called Storyteller.

And every Native American culture has this.

And then another person who helped me at storytelling festivals gave me a rock that said faith.

And so as I have traveled since Monticello, I've traveled and I've taken this with me in a bag.

And I set it up every time I walk in a room because it reminds me a little bit of home.

And it really reminds me of this.

I've been on the road early on.

I've been a storyteller now for 22 years, full time.

So, early in my time as a storyteller, I did what storytellers or anybody who's starting a business, I said yes to everybody, which meant I was traveling everywhere, anybody, entrepreneurs in here?

And the answer is, "Can you do such and such?"

"Yes."

And then you turn around to the next person behind you and go, "I have no idea how to do that, but we're gonna figure it out."

And that's what I did, I said yes to everybody.

And so with me saying yes to everybody, one time I was on the road for almost four weeks.

That was a long time, several states, I can't even remember them all.

All I know is when I got home, I was weary to my bones, I was so tired.

And I came back to my house and I immediately got in bed, but it didn't feel like home, didn't feel right.

And so the next day I was gonna just work at the house and my mother called and she said, "Sheila, you coming over?

You just got home."

"Yeah, I'm coming over."

So, I went over to my mom and dad's house.

You know, I have a key to get in, and usually I knock on the door or ring the doorbell just in case they're in a compromising position, which you never wanna think of with your parents, but, you know, could be.

And so I didn't want them to be in a compromised position so usually I knocked on the door as well as unlocked it.

But this time I just unlocked the door and I walked in and I closed it behind me, put my keys down, and it seemed really quiet in the house and so I looked in the kitchen and no one was there.

And I looked in the bedroom and no one was there.

And I looked around and then I saw them.

They were on the patio that was a step down.

And when I opened the door to the patio and I stood there, there was my father sitting in the chair his legs up on the cushion in front of him and his eyes were closed as he was watching television.

And there was my mother who was sitting in the rocking chair, wicker rocking chair and she was reading a book.

And my mother looked up to me and said, "Hey."

And went back to her book, she was not stopping the chapter from me.

My father raised an eye, "Eh."

Went back to watching the television like he was doing before.

And I sat down on that step and it flooded me, the love in that room without a word.

And it just overwhelmed my heart and my being and I knew without anybody saying it, you are home, and here you are loved.

And then I remembered my mother saying to us all the time as us military dependents, we were army dependents, she said, "Home is where your family is.

No matter where we move, no matter what the building looks like, home is where your family is."

And as I sat there and I relished that moment and bathed in that love knowing home was there and I've kept that memory.

For all the times I came home and my mother would say, "Come on over, tell me about it all."

For the time I was in a dangerous place in a relationship.

And I went home and my dad said, "Stay as long as you need.

You'll be fine."

And now with my stepmother, after my mother's death, always saying, "I wanna hear about what you did.

How do you do that?

How are you doing things?"

And opening the space, the space that reminds me of sitting on those stairs between the two people that were my pillars of love.

Home, as a storyteller, who walks in faith is with my family.

Thank you.

(crowd applauding) (calm music)