Life Changing with Dori Fern
Life Changing with Dori Fern is a podcast about the seeds that make us, the communities that shape us, and our lives in progress. This is a show for people open to change at any (st)age.
Podcast music is Cool Jazzy Bass & Vibraphone by Marc Serra / M33 Project
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode.en
Life Changing with Dori Fern
Trusting the Process with Broadway Performer Khori Petinaud
Dori's long-term consulting job had ended and her next-door neighbor Khori Petinaud's Facebook post about the urge toward negative thinking as her show, Lempicka, was closing struck a chord. Khori talks about choosing faith over fear, a lesson that took Dori years and a coaching certification to learn.
Khori shares her journey to becoming a Broadway dancer and performer, from her traditional ballet roots to the experimental world of downtown dance during her NYU days and the instability inherent in an artist's career, insights that resonate with Dori's childhood dreams to be a musical theater performer.
She reflects on her single mother's influence, a woman who pursued her dreams in cosmetics with relentless ambition, shaping Khori's views on success and parenting. Khori also opens up about the challenges she faced as a
Black ballet dancer, about her struggles with body image and disordered eating and how she's developed a healthier relationship with food.
The episode explores the courage it takes to chase dreams, even as they change, the shaping of a balanced life, being an artist in NYC, and how, in trusting the process, new connections are made.
Follow Khori
X @khorirpetinaud | Instagram @kmr8787
TW: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please listen with care. In the United States, the suicide help line to call is the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can reach them by dialing #988
Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: lifechangingwithdorifern@gmail.com
Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary session.
I've been trying to put my finger on the central through line of this conversation with Kh performer , who is also my next door neighbor. It was a Facebook post she wrote, which I read back to her at the start of our talk. You'll hear that in a moment. That initially sparked my interest to have her on the podcast podcast. I was struck by the insight she shared about negative thinking.
Dori Fern:As the show she was in was about to close, my own job was ending at the same time, leaving me again, like during my sabbatical, filled with plans, some decent savings, but no clear source of new income. No clear source of new income, and at 36, Corey articulated this idea that took me over 50 years and a coaching certification to understand and put into practice that we are not our thoughts and that we can choose not to move from a place of fear and lacking. There's something else, though, but let's start there. Welcome to Life Changing with Dori Fern a podcast about who we are, where we're going and what connects us. It's a show for people in progress at any stage.
Khori Petinaud:Watching my mother navigate motherhood and also being an extremely successful woman, informed what I knew was possible for myself hello everyone.
Dori Fern:Today I have cory petno on the podcast. Welcome, cory, thank you. Cory is a new york city-based performer, educator, wife and mom. She has been in many shows on Broadway Lempicka, aladdin, the musical Moulin Rouge, the musical Chicago, the musical and her Broadway principal debut in the company of Bob Fosse's Danson was where she landed a Chita Rivera award nomination for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show, as well as a win Outstanding Ensemble in a Broadway Show. She has TV credits that include Up here, rent, live, the Marvelous Mrs Maisel, vinyl, the Nick, and I just have to say she's also the best neighbor with the absolutely cutest son, and her husband's cute too, but her son Carver, is pretty incredible.
Khori Petinaud:So welcome to the show, Corey. Thank you for having me.
Dori Fern:Okay. So before we get started, you and your illustrious self, I'm going to read you something, and this is the Facebook post from April 12th. You ever notice how it's so much easier to worry than it is to trust? I was thinking about this yesterday because I've been navigating life and all its dualities and complexities. My life is a lifing in the wildest of ways and I've been meeting some unexpected challenges. Recently.
Dori Fern:I had a bit of time to reflect and take stock of what emotions were coming up for me, and it was so interesting to be an observer of my thoughts. I rarely take the time to do that, but as I observed, I noticed how badly I wanted to cling to negativity and worry. When a negative thought came up, I had to actively resist the urge to let my mind wander down the what-if path of cynicism. I found it fascinating how much I had to muscle my way to faith, but in the same breath, I didn't have to fight too long before I was reminded that I've been in this place before and I've made it out even better than I could have imagined.
Dori Fern:There's nothing new under the sun. Any challenge we face, we've likely faced it before. We just have to be willing to tussle with our fear-driven thoughts rather than just accepting them as truth. We have to silence the noise enough to see clearly that everything is in divine order. This is way easier said than done, but just sharing for anyone who may need a reminder. Love y'all. So what was going on for you when you wrote this and how does it? What does it bring up for you hearing it again?
Khori Petinaud:Oh it's wild to hear it again. I'm still very much in that place my show I was in Lempicka at the time, which is now closed, but it was feeling like things were winding in a way that wasn't necessarily the most positive in terms of the longevity of the show. And you know, that was a really challenging time and still is a challenging time because I think for artists, our life is constantly in flux. We don't really necessarily have that consistency financially, and even just knowing where we're going every day can change, and so I was really looking forward to just a little bit of stationary life and I just found myself really contemplating about all these what-ifs in the future and what if this happens, and what if this happens? What if this happens, and what if this happens? What if this happens?
Khori Petinaud:And it was fascinating to be able to see myself really desiring comfort in the negativity. Like it was something that I was paused long enough to really feel myself really wanting to latch on to the show's going to close and then I'm not going to get another job, and then and then and then and then and then Typically when I'm going through moments that I feel are you know, something that could be relatable. I usually post something on social media because I feel like oftentimes it resonates with a lot of people.
Dori Fern:When the whole Broadway performer thing ends, you have a career as a coach, because, honestly, quite a bit older than you and it's taken me a lot longer to figure all of this out, but it is the very foundation of the work that I do. So thank you for summarizing that so nicely. My most obvious connection with Corey is that she is living out my childhood dream of being a musical theater performer. I started dancing when I was three tap, ballet and jazz and spent most Saturdays in my adolescence until I was about 16 at Miss Dorothy School of Dance on 233rd Street and White Plains Road in the Bronx. I sang too, mostly in the back of my parents' banana-colored Plymouth station wagon in summer camp shows or alone in my bedroom 70s singer-songwriter pop mostly. It was my greatest escape and deepest joy and performing well.
Dori Fern:That started when I was picked to represent my 7th grade middle school in the New York City Storytelling Contest, one of many great arts programs for public school kids that once existed here. I was the Bronx winner and runner-up in the city, coming in second to the only boy in my age group who competed. Boy in my age group who competed. This win put me on the path to audition for, and get accepted to, the drama program at the High School of Performing Arts, where I started about a month after the movie Fame was released, but that's a whole nother story. I know this is true of Broadway shows in general, but you're signing autographs for people and you have people who are there and it's just like there is a degree of fame in a way. And then, of course, we went home on the two train, and that's the reality too. How does all of that feel? What is it like?
Khori Petinaud:I'm a Leo, so I like being the center of attention. Oh, I guess so many, leo.
Dori Fern:That's so tracks. When's your birthday, august 7th? Okay, what do you hear from other people that you have given them?
Khori Petinaud:I'm not necessarily putting every single thing that I'm experiencing on social media, but I found it to be really therapeutic and helpful for me to put my feelings into words and try to summarize what I was experiencing. It's been really beautiful to feel that so many people are grateful that I have normalized experiences that they may be going through in their own lives. Personally, I want to go back a bit.
Dori Fern:Tell me a bit about where you grew up, how you made your way into this world.
Khori Petinaud:I grew up all over the place. I was born in Atlanta, georgia, and then throughout my adolescence my mother was getting a series of promotions and she was, like in her boss era, getting very successful in her career, and so it was asking her to move quite frequently. My mom works in sales and marketing for a company called Color Me Beautiful, a cosmetics company. We moved from Atlanta to Chicago and then I lived in Chicago for about four years and that was from like around the time when I turned like eight or something. Those were pivotal years, very pivotal, so I was not very rooted as a child and might not be a terrible thing going into the field that you're in?
Khori Petinaud:Definitely it definitely makes it easier for me to live that nomad life. I didn't really have to because Wayne and I got married when I was so young, but I am not uncomfortable with that of having to move and do that thing. But yes, we lived in Chicago for a while and then when my mom got another job opportunity that was going to cause her to have to travel like every week, she thought it was going to be best if I go back to Atlanta and stay with my dad for the year while she was figuring that out. So I went back to Atlanta for I believe it was sixth grade while she was doing that and then, once she was settled in Virginia, then I moved with her to Virginia and Virginia is where I went to middle school and high school. So that's kind of where I say I grew up, Because that's where I was like expanding into my womanhood and being a grumpy teenager and all the things in Virginia. So you were about 13, 12? Yeah, 12 or 13. Right around puberty, yeah, which is fun, fun time, and yeah. So that's where I graduated from high school. And when I was there is when I actually got very serious about my dance training, because I didn't start dancing very seriously, like taking class regularly until I was 13.
Khori Petinaud:Oh, okay, so my mom put me in ballet and I started going to summer programs and all of that and then only wanted to be a ballet dancer. That was like what my focus was. I wanted to be a dance leader of Harlem. After she took me to see them at the Kennedy Center, it changed my life. Take me back to that time being that person. Yes, they did Firebird at the Kennedy Center and I was like this is the most incredible thing I've ever seen. They were all black and brown ballet dancers. I don't even know if before that I'd ever even seen ballet, but there are pictures of me when I was like three or four years old in like tutus jumping around. I just felt like it was very much divine, Like the dancing for me was divine. But the training came so much later because my dad wanted me to be Serena Williams, so I was playing tennis and I was doing all those things.
Dori Fern:And by the way, everyone, this is not a video podcast, but the guns on this lady are unbelievable. I mean her arms.
Khori Petinaud:No, she's not carrying guns.
Dori Fern:Not that I'm aware of, no. And also the other little tidbit. Being her neighbor, I can tell you if you're working out next to her in the gym, do not talk to her. She does not want to. I'm in the zone. She is in the zone. Not interested in that.
Khori Petinaud:I'm fully in the zone.
Dori Fern:So we're in the. It was in the Kennedy Center.
Khori Petinaud:Yes, we are in the Kennedy Center and I'm watching.
Dori Fern:Firebird you have performed, by the way.
Khori Petinaud:I have performed there. Yes, I've performed there multiple times as a teenager also.
Dori Fern:To see this. You're there.
Khori Petinaud:Yes, I'm there and I'm like watching it and I'm seeing all of these black ballerinas, like women who look like me and have body shapes like me, because that was a big thing too is like the way I'm built and because I played sports, like I am built, very like I'm muscular. I've always been muscular. I haven't always been as cut as I am now, but I've always just had like thicker thighs and all of that. And I never saw anyone who looked like me or had a body shape like mine, on point and doing ballet. And when my mom took me to see it, I just sat there and I was like dumbfounded the whole time, like this is amazing. And we walked out and I told my mommy I want to do ballet, I want to go to Dance Theatre of Harlem. And that summer I did. And the rest was history.
Khori Petinaud:My mom let me come to New York City by myself. I stayed with a host family. She hosted six of us like young ballet dancers whose parents financially couldn't get us their own place but wanted us to have the experience. And I fell in love with New York that summer. So from there I honed my ballet training super strong and then by the time I got to my junior year where you're like trying to figure out colleges and stuff I knew that the ballet dream that I had was probably no longer going to be realistic for me, because 16 and 17 is like your prime as a ballet dancer, and I knew that education was really important to me.
Khori Petinaud:I wanted to go to college. I wasn't necessarily interested in just moving to New York and auditioning for ballet companies. I wanted to go to school. And so I was like all right, I love ballet, but I have to just trust that I'm not going to be doing it in the way that everybody else does it and I'm just going to audition for these college programs for dance and see where I land. And I ended up getting accepted into NYU. And so then I moved to New York and I started college and was a dance major and a double minor in law and society and religious studies.
Dori Fern:I was a religious studies major Were you, yeah, yeah.
Khori Petinaud:I was originally a psych major.
Dori Fern:But then I was like I don't care what Freud and Jung had to say but I really wanted to understand human behavior and psychology. And I thought I would learn that more from comparative religion.
Khori Petinaud:Yes, okay, yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, I felt similarly. I just was interested in. You know, I grew up in the church too, so I had a fascination about combining the religions of multiple cultures and understanding how that informs their experience in the world, how they view the world, how they see other people. So, yeah, I mean, nyu really allowed me the opportunity to expand my mind as an academic, but then also I was in a conservatory program for dance, so I was able to get like really insanely amazing training.
Khori Petinaud:But my training was flipped on its head at NYU because it was very downtown. Here in New York City it's like the downtown dancers like they're the dancers that do the weird stuff. They're like crawling on the floor. Yeah, the modern dancers they're like not wearing any clothes and they're standing on the stage with like pig blood and screaming. And the uptown dancers are like New York City Ballet and the Broadway dancers, and those people are like a different type of person. And so it's interesting because I felt like a fish out of water for a good portion of my college experience.
Khori Petinaud:I was like wearing my hair in a bun to hip hop class. You know, I didn't know about all these other forms of dance in terms of studying them, really studying them, because I was so focused on ballet, and so it really changed my outlook on dance during my time in college and it expanded my vocabulary. Obviously, and really, I think at the time I didn't fully appreciate how expansive it made me, but now, as 36 year old, I can look back and be like I'm so thankful that I did have that diversity of training, because Broadway is just asking dancers to be able to do so many things now, and I felt like I had a lot of tools in my toolbox from that experience.
Dori Fern:Have you always been a super disciplined and focused person.
Khori Petinaud:Have you always been a super disciplined and focused person? Yeah, I feel like I have very disciplined sides, but I also have sides of myself that are not. I think I struggled a lot with anything that I don't feel a fire or a passion around. I always did well in school, but I did well in school because I knew I had to do well. It wasn't necessarily a driven like I'm going to be the best in the class.
Dori Fern:So, in other words, you didn't care about being an, a student.
Khori Petinaud:No, I didn't care about that, but I do think I have perfectionist tendencies and so it worked to my advantage a lot in school because I could just read things and remember them, but I wasn't really absorbing a lot of the things because I didn't care about it. I'm a great test taker because I can just memorize everything. I can just memorize it, but the things that I really care about, those are the things that I'm really absorbing. What's a family?
Dori Fern:memory that you think about a lot that feels so deeply, part of how you see yourself, something that happened in your childhood, an event that you play back in your mind. You think this is so me, or this formed me in such a way. This is such a great question.
Khori Petinaud:It's not necessarily one specific memory, but I think a lot about my relationship with my mom and how it has evolved. And what has made me the human that I am now is because I watched my mother as a single mom. She was just such a badass. She always had dreams of working in cosmetics. That was her dream from the very beginning. My grandparents were against it. They didn't want to necessarily pay for her to go to school to do that. She had a lot more resistance in her experience of wanting to follow her dreams than I did, and yet she still did it, even with a child and not being married to my dad and achieving all of this success. She was like I'm going to have it all and she managed to navigate me and an extremely demanding career and I never wanted for anything. I was able to go to all the programs I wanted to go to. I was afforded a lot of opportunities that many young kids are not able to have because their parents probably can't afford it or they just don't have access or whatever it is.
Khori Petinaud:Watching my mother navigate motherhood and also being an extremely successful woman, informed what I knew was possible for myself.
Khori Petinaud:I didn't necessarily know that it was going to look like what it looks like now in terms of me being a performer, but I think it's the thing that has constantly been the lighthouse in my spirit when I feel overwhelmed by the idea of family and work.
Khori Petinaud:And she didn't even have a husband who was supporting and helping her with those things. And I do have that, and I just feel like I would not have had the bravery that it takes to do this thing had I not seen her do it. And that doesn't mean that our relationship was perfect at all. There were some things that suffered in our relationship because she was so career driven, and I think those are the things that I'm trying to be really cognizant of in my raising of Carver, because I am extremely driven and I always have been, and I know that's because of her because I watched her amass so much success by herself. I want him to see that what I'm doing is my ultimate dream and goal, so that he can follow whatever that thing is for himself as well, and that he will be informed. That thing is for himself as well, and that he will be informed with the same bravery that I felt like my mom instilled me with to go after the dream, because it takes a lot of bravery, no matter what the dream is.
Dori Fern:Life in general. Got news for you the more you try, the more you leap, the more bravery it takes to live life, and of course then the potential expands exponentially with that. And so might the failure, but the more things you do and the more times you are brave, the more opportunities you have to win. In that way, that winning is more expansive than just a prize. In what way are you a different mom than your mother to Carver? And Carver is how old now?
Khori Petinaud:He's three, three. I'm trying to talk to him a lot about feelings, which my mom did not do when I was young. Now that I'm an adult, we have a lot closer of a relationship because I can express my feelings to her. But I do think that because she was so driven and all of those things, and because she was a single mom and it was like man, we got to her. But I do think that because she was so driven and all of those things, and because she was a single mom and it was like man, we got to go. There was no time for feelings. There was no time for I'm feeling sad today and can you just sit with me and can we just be sad? It was just like why are you sad? What's going on? Let's move on. And I'm trying really hard not to be that way with Carver because I want him to have an emotional intelligence that I think it took me a long time to discover how did it affect you not to have that emotional permission?
Khori Petinaud:I think it's part of what caused me to be depressed a lot as a teenager, but like a very high functioning depressive person, because I do think it's in my DNA to be high functioning and the way that I thought my outlet was. I thought my outlet was dance. I thought my outlet was getting good grades and I wanted my mom to just tell me that I was doing a good job all the time, and she also didn't necessarily have the space to do that either, and so it was just this constant self-loathing that I started to feel around, and when you're a teenager and you can't even cipher those things out, you just think that something's wrong with you, when really it was just. I didn't have a means to express myself to the person that I trusted the most with my emotions, because I felt like she didn't necessarily have the patience for pauses that emotional responses call for, if that makes sense.
Dori Fern:There's an open-endedness to emotional responses, that if you're busy and trying to keep it all together, you don't know what's going to be required, and that not knowing for someone who's probably very used to controlling all of the elements can be hard. All that not knowing for someone who's probably very used to controlling all of the elements can be hard.
Khori Petinaud:All the things I ended up going through as a teenager that sent me into a place that I was not good.
Dori Fern:What were the kind of manifestations of that, if you're open to talk about?
Khori Petinaud:that, yeah, I definitely was suicidal when I was a teen and so my mom started me in therapy at church and I started with my pastor there and that was actually really helpful for me because it was the first time that I actually had designated space for myself to talk about how I was feeling. Also, the school that I went to and the town that I lived in was, like, majority white, so that was also a huge transition for me because I had been going to all black schools between Atlanta and Chicago and was like the first time I was fully in the minority. That was a new experience. And then, obviously, going to the ballet school that I went to, I was the only black girl there. I experienced a lot of different microaggressions that we would call them now, but I thought something was wrong with me.
Dori Fern:Do you remember how you, or if you contextualize them with that 13-year-old who saw Dance Theater of Harlem? And then you're growing up and it's very much not that experience in the reality you're living. I'm wondering what you made of that.
Khori Petinaud:Now I can think about it and say that seeing Dance Theatre of Harlem, that was my savior in many ways because it reflected back to me the possibilities within a world that was not accepting of people who looked like me.
Dori Fern:I talked plenty last season about my history of disordered eating as a child. Going to a performing arts high school only exacerbated my lousy body image. It was there I learned new ways to restrict my food intake, like subsisting on an apple and diet coke until the school day ended, when I would binge on chocolate chip cookies I bought at Le Cafe on the corner of 46th Street and 6th Avenue. It's no longer there, With the money that I saved from secretly taking the subway instead of the express bus, as my mother wanted. Part of why I ultimately rejected the idea of being a professional performer was because I couldn't stand the idea of being evaluated and judged based on my weight and how I looked. So I was curious how Corey managed this inevitable pitfall of the business. Dancers and their bodies, girls and their bodies doing just about anything but especially athletes and dancers. What was your relationship to your body?
Khori Petinaud:Oh, I hated my body for so long and I think it actually got worse when I got into ballet, obviously for obvious reasons because I was going away to summer programs. I think Dance Theater of Harlem was probably my healthiest experience. Number one because it was my first and so I was just so overwhelmed with joy about like actually having manifested that goal. But number two, because the school is a predominantly Black school. They made it a priority for all of our tights to like. We were dying our tights and tea me and the girls that I was living with. We would like pancake our ballet shoes, because at the time they weren't making anything with the multiple ranges of skin tones that they have now for tights and shoes and ballet, and so we would do that. But that was the norm at that school because everyone was black and brown and also body types were very similar in terms of women, who were just built differently, like some women had butts and bigger thighs and all of that.
Khori Petinaud:But then when I went to North Carolina School of the Arts, where I was the only black girl and I'm now being matched and next up to these young white girls who've been training in ballet since they were three. They're like this big flat as a pancake Possibly anorexic, possibly and I went through a phase during my time at North Carolina School of the Arts where I was eating lettuce every day and that's all I was eating, because I was just so desperate to look like that. I wanted to be rail thin because that's what I thought it took to be a ballet dancer. Wanted to be rail thin because that's what I thought it took to be a ballet dancer. I felt like Dance League of Harlem was this wonderland of blackness that was not actually the real world, and so I spent a lot of years in loathing around that of like my natural physique and feeling like my natural physique was working against everything that I wanted as a dancer.
Dori Fern:What's your relationship with food now?
Khori Petinaud:Oh, it's amazing now, I would say probably since two summers ago, when we went out of town for dancing. I came back from that and I felt horrible. Carver was probably one and a half at that time and I felt horrible. I just felt like my body was not at all in a place. That made me feel good and I started working with a nutritional coach. Her name's Michelle West and her company is called Bia Nutrition, and she changed my life, honestly, because it was the first time in my entire life and I'm 36, that I felt like I actually had control over what I was putting in my body and having a full understanding of how it was going to affect me energetically, physically, all of those things. And I have not strayed from her program since then and it's really informed everything about how I approach my holistic health. Do you cook? I do, I pretty much solely cook now.
Dori Fern:How has cooking changed your relationship with food?
Khori Petinaud:I don't know that it's necessarily changed it so much. I think the main thing is that it just has empowered me because I know exactly what's going into my body. I was eating out of desperation, really. I was just like I haven't eaten all day. So now I'm going to eat Burger King because I haven't eaten all day and so I can just have this. It was like a reward system that I was under, which I think a lot of women do, where it's if I work hard, then I can eat this and this.
Dori Fern:But it was just marketing too, because we're marketed to believe that certain foods are prizes. My mantra about food is the minute you start getting restrictive in your thinking about food, it will then trickle down into all aspects of your life. So true, obviously, diets are a prime example of that, but for me, learning to have an abundant idea about the possibilities of what I can put in my body means that I can choose from many things Totally. What do you want to change or improve about your life? Oh, what do you want to change?
Khori Petinaud:or improve about your life? Oh, that's a great question. I think the main thing that I am experiencing right now the great pruning of my life in terms of filtering out energies, relationships, situations that are no longer serving me because I am notoriously a people pleaser and someone who generally feels a lot of comfort around being liked Part of the pruning process is that you can't continue to grow if you have this dead weight on you.
Dori Fern:What types of people do you feel like you need to prune?
Khori Petinaud:I think it's people who are energy suckers, like what we started talking about in terms of how much I share on social media, how much I make myself available to people that I don't even know. But I'm realizing there are certain people that really just thrive off of taking and they don't pour into people. At this point in my life, especially as a parent and as a wife and as a working professional, I don't have the energy or the time for that anymore. So I'm currently in the process of that.
Dori Fern:Yeah, what are your goals? What do you want to be doing?
Khori Petinaud:What do you want to be?
Dori Fern:doing more of? What do you want to be doing less of? Who do you want to be in 10 years from now, or even I don't know, like you're a dancer?
Khori Petinaud:so maybe it's better to go in three-year increments. You know, it's wild to hear that question right now at this point in my life, because it's been very first time in my adult life that I can remember not having my finger specifically pointed at one thing to be like, and that's what I'm doing next. So there's a little disillusionment there that I think is clouding my vision, but it's also this feeling of trying to just nail down what I want to be feeling and less about the actual thing. So that's what I'm working on right now and I know that, much like my social media, my intent has always been impact.
Khori Petinaud:I want to be a part of impactful art. I want to be making an impact in people's lives with the words I say and the actions that I take. I want to be making an impact in every way that I can. That is the one word that has been a constant in my space, and so, while I don't know exactly like I want to be in this show or I want to, I've never had goals to like be a lead or be famous or anything like that. I just want to be able to make an impact and obviously I want to be able to make an impact while paying my bills and not having any struggles on that front.
Dori Fern:Yeah, I talked in the trailer for this new season of the show about this image I've had in my mind of the Russian Matryoshka dolls, how I see them representing our unique, individual selves, nested inside layers of influence of the communities that shape us, and how this is what I wanted to explore here, and also how the great diversity of people who form my own layers of influence would not be likely to exist outside of New York is a place where a 36, now 37, year old black Broadway dancer and performer, a wife and mother of a toddler, like Corey, would befriend me, a 58 year old white divorcee and empty nester who lives across the hall and who once dreamed of a career on the stage, and who once dreamed of a career on the stage, but who now uses my voice podcasting and who dances freestyle in small clubs to old school house music.
Dori Fern:It's the place where we can find connection points and be enriched by our differences. So, yeah, that's the story. My last question for you is this, corey. So it's been said and I'm asking everybody this question it's been said that the only thing that remains of us when we're gone are stories. What do you hope your story or the legacy you leave will be?
Khori Petinaud:I think the biggest dream that I could ever dream that I would leave behind would be for people to say that I was kind, that I was able to create and uphold and maintain spaces where people weren't afraid to fail, that I made people feel loved and cared for and heard that I wasn't afraid to speak the truth, that my art and that the way that I pursued my art and was dedicated to my craft and art, that that was something that inspired people to continue to go after the things that they wanted. And I think, obviously, the biggest legacy that I can leave behind is a son who also maintains those values and that carries that into his life as an adult. I think that would be my biggest dream.
Dori Fern:That is a beautiful dream and I absolutely see it in everything you do. Thank you, dori, thank you for sharing that I am so grateful to have you here. I only wish you the best, thank you.
Khori Petinaud:I'll see you in the hallway. I'll see you across the hall.
Dori Fern:I have a favor to ask If you like this episode. I would so appreciate if you would share it with at least one friend who might also enjoy listening. And how about taking another quick moment to rate it? Or maybe write a short review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube? Life Teaching with Dori Fern is produced and edited by Anne Pope. Music is Cool Jazzy, bass and Vibraphone and Orange Blues by M33 Project. Thank you for listening. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with another life-changing conversation.
