Stories That Stay
Stories That Stay is where healing happens at the intersection of art, science, and storytelling. Hosted by therapist, learning strategist, and refugee Shamm Petros, alongside facilitator, educator, and artist Dwight Dunston, each episode invites listeners into conversations that make space for resilience, rupture, and repair.
Grounded in over 35 years of research in psychology, racial socialization, and human development, Stories That Stay is a project of Lion’s Story—an organization committed to building racial literacy and transforming identity-based stress into tools for healing and change.
Through personal stories, reflective questions, and practical tools, Shamm and Dwight guide you in navigating identity and difference with more clarity and less fear. Whether you’re an educator, organizer, artist, or simply trying to make sense of the world around you, this podcast offers a space to process what’s hard, discover new language for your truths, and move toward healing.
Fair warning—it gets emotional. But that’s the point.
Stories That Stay
Brian Caselli Jordan: Holding Love and Accountability in Our First Stories of Race
In this powerful episode, educator, musician, and longtime Lion’s Story trainer Brian Caselli Jordan takes us deep into one of his earliest memories of racial difference. What begins as a tender portrait of his Italian American grandfather expands into a layered exploration of inheritance, identity, silence, and the emotional weight of witnessing racism from someone you adore.
Together with co-hosts Shamm Petros and Dwight Dunston, Brian traces how this childhood moment shaped his understanding of race, family loyalty, grief, anger, and repair. He reflects on the contradictions in his lineage—his grandfather’s generosity and creativity alongside the anti-Black racism he absorbed from his environment—and how becoming a father has opened new paths toward healing.
Listeners are invited to slow down, breathe, and notice what arises as Brian moves through the emotions in real time. The episode models Lion’s Story’s racial literacy practices: naming feelings, locating them in the body, holding multiple truths, and moving toward transformation rather than avoidance.
Key Themes
- The earliest memory of racial difference
- Intergenerational inheritance: gifts and harms living side by side
- Silence, complicity, and the longing for protection
- How racial stress imprints on the body
- Grief, anger, gratitude, and complexity as data for healing
- Parenting as a site of repair and rewriting the story
Compelling Quotes
- “There’s no throwing out your beloved grandfather. And also I’m not comfortable excusing it away.”
- “We’re going to be healed this time.”
- “Telling the truth is how you honor someone you love.”
About Our Guest:
Brian Caselli Jordan is an educator, singer-songwriter, and facilitator who jokingly aspires to be “a 2025 Mr. Rogers.” For 17 years, he has taught young children, with over a decade in kindergarten and preschool classrooms. He holds a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Temple University.
Brian co-founded City Love in 2014, leading music-driven school assemblies and workshops on race, equity, and belonging for tens of thousands of students and educators nationwide. Since 2012, he has taught first and second grade at The Philadelphia School, and he is a proud father.
He has been a Lion’s Story trainer since 2019, helping individuals and institutions build racial literacy skills rooted in healing, accountability, and community.
Stories That Stay is a project of Lion’s Story, a nonprofit dedicated to building racial literacy through storytelling, mindfulness, and healing. Rooted in over 35 years of research by Dr. Howard C. Stevenson at the University of Pennsylvania, our work guides individuals and institutions to reclaim their stories, reduce identity-based stress, and step into authentic inclusion—not as a checklist, but as a way of being.
Produced and edited by Peterson Toscano.
Mindful moment music by Dwight Dunston.
Music by Epidemic Sound.
Podcast site: StoriesThatStay.net
Hosts: Shamm Petros and Dwight Dunston