Bekah Medford
@bekmedford by her parent’s pool
-Theatre-
Bekah’s parents live on a beautiful property west fo the city and, as I’m winding up the driveway, I knew I would be spending a decent amount of time chatting because they had…wait for it…two cauldrons as part of their yard decor. 2 CAULDRONS! These are my type of people. They aren’t plastic halloween decorations, these are solid rod iron tripod mounted witch’s paraphernalia gently placed within the shrubbery.
And the lovely Bekah was there to greet me on a swing just like the Sabrina the Teenage Which she truly is. We probably talked twice as long off the record as we did on but sometimes you just need a little catch up session before you can fully understand and articulate what it is you are feeling.
Interviewed 5.31.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: How are you doing?
Bekah: Well, OK, so it's weird. The last few days with the news, it's been very heavy. There was a while in quarantine where I actually felt more peaceful than I've felt in years. I had time to self reflect in ways that I haven't had in a long time. And there were issues that I haven't let go of or hadn't dealt with. And I felt like I finally was like, "Hey, Becca, why are you feeling these emotions?" And actually was able to think through them and find some peace with that. My mom can't get sick so that's a stress. And seeing people die from this; it's horrible. Absolutely horrible. I hate that. Those were elements that brought some anxiety at times. But also I find a lot of gratitude in this slowdown for myself, I think.
Casey: What do you think your overall prevailing emotion is today?
Bekah: Today I have heartbreak. I woke up, and you mentioned this earlier for yourself, I woke up crying and spent several hours just crying over my friends, my black friends, who are hurting and who are outraged and who are devastated and their hearts are breaking. I feel helpless trying to do what is beneficial for them or what is beneficial for the community. But it's hard to figure out what to do exactly.
Casey: How is your family dealing with covid?
Bekah: I'm living with my parents right now and my sister as well. My mom has a liver disease and she has diabetes so she's very high risk. I can see the anxiety in her all the time. She's been very uptight and very stressed out. My sister was an essential worker for a long time during the quarantine period, and she ended up moving down to our basement. For a very long time, the only way we would see her is if we were out in the backyard at a bonfire- like maybe once a week, we would do that- and the rest of the time she was in the basement and we would put food at the top of the stairs so she could get it. But because my mom, I think we just all felt this heaviness like if anything were to happen to her, we would feel to blame. So we've all been very careful. So her and my dad stayed home pretty much the entire time. They walk like a few miles a day to kind of get out. And then my sister usually would do the grocery shopping since she was already out. And I've just kind of been here, I guess.
Casey: What have you been doing during quarantine?
Bekah: Me and my mom made a garden in our backyard. I made a scarecrow. I struggle with if I'm not being productive, I feel like I'm not doing anything with my life and I get into this weird place. Another thing I had to sit with was like, "hey, you know what? You can take time to slow down and not do anything." You can say to your brain, "Hey, it's OK to just BE today." And with that silence, I was like, "you know what? I've wanted to learn how to play another instrument." And so I got a mandolin and I've been learning how to play that. Sometimes as an artist we get caught up in that, "I have to do this. I have to make money." It's been nice to find things. Like I've been reading plays. I haven't done that in while. I'm putting together a project. Me and my friend are doing Reasons to be Pretty, which is a play we're working on. We're doing Zoom rehearsals right now for that.
What else have I been doing? Rose Alexander's mom passed away a few years ago and they gave us forget me not seeds. And so by my bed, I have all these little Styrofoam cups. I’ve been trying to get them to grow. And today, actually, right before you got here, they had all started blossoming. And so I've been putting them into bigger pots so they can grow. I've been outside as much as I possibly can.
And I've been taking pictures. Like I've been doing these silly photoshoots through the decades. And that has been because I bought these new lights for auditions. And so one night I just had this vintage vest, and I was like, “I'm gonna take some pictures.” And then I was like, “What if I did this for several decades?” And right now I'm working on trying to figure out how to do the 80s.
So that's some of it. Trying to rest, but be proactive in ways that I want to be proactive.
Casey: How is finding that motivation for you?
Bekah: There are days where I don't feel motivated and I allow myself to sleep in more than I normally would in real life. In real life, I'm usually waking up by 6:00 am or I'm out of my house by 6:15 am to get to one of the schools I teach at. I do crunches every day. Once I've gotten out of bed and done the crunches, I'm up and then I just go, "What do I want and what do I need to do?" I make a lot of lists and I get a lot of joy out of marking things off my list. It helps a lot. And once I start marking things off, I'm like, "Okay, well, what else can I get done?" So those are some things that have helped.
Casey: What do you miss? I know we miss theater.
Bekah: Yeah, I miss theater. I'm an extrovert. So I miss people and I miss that energy you get when you're, as an extrovert, with a big group of friends because I'm a very silly, goofy person once I'm with my core group of friends. And so sometimes I feel like I'm missing that part of myself. I have my family. But also they see a different Becca. I'm a different person with my friends.
Right before quarantine, I felt like I had hit this place where I was like, “Wow, I have these several jobs, they're all balancing together. I'm able to do what I love, pursue auditioning, work all part-time theater-related jobs, and make money to a point where I finally feel stable.” Then quarantine starts. And for a while I kind of was able to maintain some of the jobs. And then a lot of us got laid off and you don't keep in touch with everyone and there's a lot of “what-ifs”. And so I miss that excitement that I was feeling at the beginning of 2020 that kind of fizzled away. If that makes sense.
Casey: That makes sense for sure. You talked a little bit about how you're learning mandolin. Do you have any new sacred rituals or habits? Anything that you've created during quarantine, that you think you'll try to take out into the post quarantine world to maintain your new-found peace?
Bekah: Absolutely. I hope that out of quarantine I continue to do the designated time to do some crunches or if it's not that, do like five minutes of some type of other physical activity. I want to spend time outside every single day moving forward, even if it's raining and I have to go to a porch or I have to sit in my car while it rains, which is kind of silly. But being outside has been so... just relaxing to me. And as a person, I know you understand this, we are go, go, go, go, go. And I wasn't allowed myself to stop. If things start to get back to where it's go, go, go again, I have to leave time to just stop and think. Doesn't even need to be thinking anything in particular. But I just need time to sit and breathe.
Also, I've been hanging up my clothes more. And I want to keep doing that out of quarantine because... that's like so hard to do. But that's one of the things. Every day I'm like, “OK, hang up some clothes.” At this point, all my clothes are hung up or in some type of home and I want them to stay that way. That's the least likely one that will probably continue.
Casey: Talk to me a little bit about your motivation and how you found taking the pictures and stuff like that, to get you through creating.
Bekah: Yeah. So, in part of my reflecting, I started being like, “Why are you upset, Becca, to not be working on anything right now?” And I was like, “Well, because I'm not exactly where I wish I was in life as far as my career is going.” And I said, “Well, what can I do? What is something that I can do right now in this moment?” And I had some money saved up and I was like, “I can buy some lights so that I can be producing the best type of self-tape that I can.”
So when I first set up the lights, I was like, “These are so cool. This is awesome.” And I just happened to have been going through clothes at the time and saw my dad's old vest. And I was like, "What if I just had some fun and did my hair- I haven't done my hair in a few days- what if I did my hair and did my makeup and just messed around with that?" And then I ended up loving several of the pictures that came out of it. And after that, a lot of my friends were like "This is so much fun!" I listen to a lot of oldies music-wise. And so after the 70’s one, I had...
OK, actually, so this is about to divert. My friend's grandmother passed away from Covid. They were not able to be with her because she was in a hospital. And her dad, the only person who would have been allowed, has had open-heart surgery. He really couldn't go into the hospital. So when they went up to deal with the funeral, I went and stayed at their house. My friend came back and she was just so heavy. I mean, she'd been dealing with a lot. And I said, “What if we did your hair and makeup and we did another photo? Like you saw my 70's one. Would you do the kind of vintage forties kind of feel with me?” She was like, “I would love to do that.” And so that was my motivation for the second one. And then from there, it was just everyone was like, “Hey, why don’t you do an 80’s one?” And it just became a fun extra activity to do and a distraction, I think in a way.
At least for my friend, I wanted it to be lighter because she had found pictures of her grandmother. She was like, "I want to try and recreate this." And so for some of hers, which I didn't post online, we were recreating moments for her to kind of feel connected to this person that she lost during this kind of horrible time.
Casey: That's heartbreaking.
Bekah: Yeah. Very sad.
Casey: What do you think, to kind of just sum up, you'll take out of this time? Because I know you've been here a lot longer than just quarantine. You'll move out one day. You'll go back to a “normal life”. What do you think you'll take out of this time?
Bekah: Yeah. There is a long time where Becca, as a person, found gratitude in a lot. I felt like I was just such a grateful person and the world got heavy for all of us. For a very long time after college, it was just a different world and I was feeling this heaviness where I just stopped feeling grateful. I kept being like, "Life sucks. Life sucks. Life sucks." And there have been so many moments, even though there have been some horrible things that have happened during quarantine, where I've been able to be grateful.
I'm so grateful for time and grateful for my family. I'm grateful in such a different way for my friends. I'm grateful for the things that I'm not getting to do, but because they mean something to me now and there will be a time where I get to do them again. I just feel grateful. And I hope to continue that mindset moving forward because it was a very dark place to be living in where I wasn't finding gratitude. I'm glad to be finding it again.
Casey: Do you think that being grateful has helped you pull out of those dark days? Because we all have had them. How do you get out of them?
Bekah: Yeah. Going back to the list, there will be days where I write down, “What do I feel?” And I always make a section on this paper that says, “What am I grateful for right now in this moment?” And with the "What do I feel?" I write the different feelings I'm feeling. “Why do I feel this way?” And I start just drawing lines and connecting them. Just getting the thoughts out instead of letting them fester in one spot and not diving any deeper. I've been trying to connect them to the gratitude. I don't exactly know how to explain it because it maybe isn't very comprehensive. But I just I take a piece of paper and I just write everything down. And with that, I write the gratitude down. And I have found there has not been a day since I started that I haven't found something to be grateful for.
Casey: Do you keep the papers?
Bekah: I do. I just had one of those old notebooks leftover from school. And I've been doing that as a form of journaling. But it's more like bullet points. Sometimes I'll write little paragraphs or write a note. Sometimes I feel like it's to a godlike figure or sometimes I feel like it's to me. Sometimes I feel like it's to this anonymous friend. So I don't exactly know who it's to. But there are moments I do feel like the paper is connecting me to some type of other greater being.
Casey: Do you think you'll keep doing that after quarantine?
Bekah: Yeah, I think so. I hope to keep doing that forever. It's been very beneficial to me. And I can only imagine as I continue to have different people come in and out of my life, I want to write down people's names on there and be like, “I'm so grateful for this person and for this new friend or for this new experience.” I look forward to that coming out of quarantine because I can only imagine once I start seeing people that that gratitude is going to be even bigger.
