Tori’s Story
A girl with a heart for kids….then, now and forever.
Hi! It’s me, Tori! Man, oh man, that picture above makes me giggle. I was somewhere around 5 or 6 years old. Our family friends were photographers so I was frequently pulled into photoshoots, which I absolutely loved. I was born in California and moved to Texas not long after to be raised in the hometown my mom is from. Growing up an only child was wonderful in my eyes. I started dancing at the age of 3, got involved in theater with my mom at the age of 4 and started singing when I was 15. It was a fulfilling and busy childhood.
My parents were together until I turned 16, when they divorced. It was quite the shock to me growing up, but the friends and family I had around me were the reason I was able to keep moving forward in positivity. To this day, I remain very close to my parents and I’ve been a Daddy’s Girl my entire life ;)
In 2007, I graduated high school and moved to Chicago, Illinois to chase a dream of performing. While I never ended up on one of the big professional stages, I still did tons of shows with some of the best people around. I also started teaching, which truly won the key cornerstone of my heart and passion.
Wow! This picture above sure brings back some of the best memories. I was about 26 or 27 years old in this picture and working as the associate director and associate choreographer for a project called Let It Be Christmas in Naperville, Illinois. I started teaching dance and music theater when I was 18 years old and it was one of the most rewarding and incredible opportunities I could’ve ever dreamed of having. I’ve been surrounded by kids my entire life. If you asked me on any given day if I’d rather be in a room full of adults or children, I’d tell you ‘children’ 9.8 times out of 10 without a doubt.
There’s something to be said about the imagination and drive that a child has that is purely incredible; it’s a stage in their lives where it’s untouched by the inevitable difficulties of this world. The heart that children have is the reason I chose to work as long as I did as a teacher. Some of my fondest memories were in the studio or theater and I sincerely doubt anything would ever trump that (professionally speaking, that is).
Now let’s buckle in and talk about the true beginning of kids in my life on a personal level…
I became “Auntie Tori” when I was just 10 years old to that strapping kiddo on the left side of the picture. My nephew, Cooper, and I have been close from the beginning. Biologically, I’m an only child, but luckily for me, I have siblings. My god-sister, Becky, is a bit older than I am so it meant that I got to reach “Aunt” status pretty young. I’ll never forget the first Christmas that Becky brought home my nephew to Texas. At that point in time, he was just 8 weeks old and I was absolutely ITCHING to meet him. The family was all asleep and I just could not wait to hold that sleeping baby. It wasn’t log before he was fussing in his crib and I walked over to see him. Although I had never really held an infant or had any prior experience with babies, I somehow knew that I needed to hold him (supporting his head, of course) and get a bottle warmed for him. After some amount of time unknown to me, my godmother woke up and went to check on Cooper. She panicked slightly when he wasn’t in his crib and came running into the living room where she found me sitting cross legged in the rocker holding my nephew, feeding him his bottle and watching cartoons. The rest of our story is history.
In total I have more nieces and nephews than I can even count. Between stepsiblings, god-siblings, and best friends who are family, I’m immensely blessed to have the best kids surrounding me calling me Auntie Tori, Aunt Tor, Mellow, Miss Tori and everything in between. Below are just a few of the many pictures of the kids that are in my life.
One day in 2016, I met a man who I absolutely fell in love with. Paul and I were working on a production of Guys & Dolls in the suburbs of Chicago (thanks, Frank <3) and we quickly became an item. Even thought I had always told myself I’d be the type who would date for a long time, be engaged for longer and take my time getting to marriage, I found myself Mrs. Stowick on August 3, 2018. It was by far the best decision we’ve ever made and I’m more in love today than I was then. Here’s a picture of us…
This blog post is just a small fraction of my story, but hopefully it gives you an idea of who I am. The next title we’re looking to our lives is “Mommy and Daddy”. We know our baby or babies are out there somewhere and we hope that our blog helps us get a little bit closer to them.
