Attaching emotions to memories.

‘Lev’ comes from my last name.. Leavitt. A nickname I had throughout my life.

Later you’ll understand my love for the country of Bulgaria. But 'Lev' is also the name of the currency in Bulgaria, which means 'lion' in the old language of Bulgarian.

'Lev' also means 'heart' in Hebrew, representing a symbol of love, hence the importance of FEELING throughout Lev Co. It wasn't a body part to the Israelites. They thought of the heart as the organ that gives physical life and the place where you think and make sense of the world—where you feel emotions and make choices.

the story behind Lev Co.

All in all, life has been a rollercoaster of “whiplash” moments, epic experiences, and pain the last little while. But I’m grateful for each one of those emotions that put me in places I never thought I would stand.

Launching Lev Co has been a soul satisfying dream of mine and part of the process of creating something like this was also probably one of the hardest holes I’ve ever tried to climb out of.

Stay tuned.. still climbing..

I wish I could tell you guys the exact moment it all started.

“It all began with the tears of 18 year old Tori in her pumpkin orange chevy trax..” or “I realized I needed to make that decision when..”

But truth be told, all of a sudden I was face to face with a screen for 9 hours a day trying to understand how in the WORLD I suddenly was about to hop on a plane to Bulgaria to teach people about Jesus in a language that I didn’t even know existed until 2 months before. I had no idea how time just straight jumped like that, but I still don’t even remember what happened in those 3 months before that moment. All I know is that I was there.. sacrificing 18 months of my life.

“What. are. you. thinking.” was what went through my head every time I woke up. But for some reason I absolutely loved it.

PHILADELPHIA

Turns out COVID-19 was a legit thing outside of my itty bitty dust of town that still ran its normal course despite a global pandemic wiping out the rest of the WORLD.

Anyways, because of the corona virus I was temporarily thrown into Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -which was another terrifying whiplash. I didn’t know what to do with myself when preparing to go to Bulgaria but at least I had time to like.. I dont know.. prepare?

Well, it ended up being an epic time of meeting some of the best people I know and eating lots of philly cheesesteaks. But it was tough stuff. Like ‘calling my mission president telling him to send me home 6 months in’ kind of tough stuff. I wanted OUT of there because I kept telling myself that there was ‘something pulling me home.’ When in reality I was just a wuss and was bored.

COVID-19 dead-bolted my door from the outside, didn’t let me see other people in person, and it in fact gave me the worst anxiety I’ve ever experienced and I was ready to drop-kick it and run away.

Funny story about missions.. your mission president does just about everything to make sure you stay out in the field instead of going home. While some think it’s totally, absolutely, incredibly BAZURK - I actually owe everything about who I am to that moment when my mission president asked me to stay a little longer. Because God was begging me to and I didn’t even know it at the time.

You’re probably wondering how the FREAK this applies to the launch of lev co. I’m getting there.

Fast-forward a few months later, after taking a flight to L.A. for a day with Sister Marx (who had been attached to my hip since those 9 hours of staring at our screens) JUST to sign a paper for my Bulgarian visa with many ups & downs weaved in between - I get a call from the President of my mission.

“Sister Leavitt, how is your Bulgarian?”

“Um, it’s alright I guess. Why?”

(I won’t lie I hadn’t even spoken a lick of real Bulgarian like AT ALL since stepping foot in Philly, other than daily calls with Sister Marx attempting to spill mission tea in the language but it wasn’t even correct.)

“Just curious. How do you say.. ‘I’m going to Bulgaria next week’ in Bulgarian?”

I literally thought to myself, ‘I have no idea’. And then my next thought was ‘did he just say next week?’

So yeah I had ONE week to pack my things and say my goodbyes to a mission that I had just spent 9 whole months in, a companion that I adored, and english.. lol. My gut did about a hundred flips making me both nauseated and stoked.

“Well Sister Leavitt, get to practicing. Oh and you’re also staying in Croatia for two weeks because of COVID-19. Have a good night!”

hangs up

Bruh what. Croatia? Alright cool. Let’s do this.

So the big day rolls around and me and my bff Sister Marx fly out of Philadelphia at 4 AM, meeting up with the other 6 missionaries, and spending the next 13 hours praying that there is someone to pick us all up in the Zagreb, Croatia airport cause all of us were totally and completely lost in the sauces of Europe.

CROATIA.

Man.

I wish I could express the amount of love I have for those two weeks.

Have you ever had a moment in your life where you were completely and utterly present? Like, nothing mattered in the past, nothing mattered in the future, you were just right where you needed to be and it just so happened to be a place that you wanted to be too?

That was Croatia.

A time where I fell more in love with life because of the people I was around and the experiences I was having.

Seven of the other people there with me became my home and my family, and still are to this day. Nothing in this world could ever help me express how life-changing my experiences were from the day I stepped foot in that country, to the day I stepped foot out of Bulgaria.

It was the start of a kind of life that I didn’t even know existed. Pure joy.

The next two weeks consisted of studying together on the terrace of our hotel in the heart of Zagreb, getting kicked out of castles, losing one of us when they jumped off of the tram unannounced, locking ourselves in a room for 3 hours trying to relearn Bulgarian, and most of all, laughing more and being more myself than I ever have before.

Looking back, there wasn’t a SINGLE moment when I was aching for something that I didn’t have. I loved who I was, where I was, what I was doing, and who I was with.

It was believable, because it had just happened. We always say some things are ‘too good to be true’.

But Croatia was just ‘too good’.

After those life-changing two weeks, we drove at 2 AM from Croatia - through Slovenia - up to Austria - spending a few hours in Vienna before finally getting onto our flight together over to Bulgaria.

What an epic 14 hours. At one point I tripped down the steepest set of airport stairs I have EVER seen with a suitcase and arms full of things I definitely didn’t need. What kind of German architect builds stairs that HAZARDOUS?!

Like I said.. epic.

BULGARIA.

It was nothing like I expected. But in the end, it was better than what I ever could have imagined.

Bulgaria consisted of so much heartache, so much pain, many tears, and weeks where it felt like the sun forgot about the country as a whole.

I had some of my hardest moments in that apartment that for some reason got the lame nickname of oborishte because that’s what the street was called. It was a ‘mental institution’ kind of empty with cold tile floors and dark, closed off rooms.

I remember laying on my bed with my head in the bottom left corner of the mattress at 10:42 AM every day because it was the only time and place that the sun would shine.

But what came with those brutal moments was piles and piles of growth.

A friend and I made a deal revolving around the kind of growth we both were going to have during our time in Bulgaria, and it was like Jack and the bean stalk I mean I’ve NEVER seen anything like it.

You may think that I would never do it again cause like, I cried on the floor of that leaky oborishte shower for weeks.

But I would.

I never ever ever would take it back or wish that it didn’t happen.

GROWTH became my word that appeared in my head a bajillion times a day, reminding me of who I was becoming.

I owe so much of where I am at in life to my time in Bulgaria and the people I grew close to there.

Like I said.. the point of Lev Co is coming.

HOME.

Eighteen months and suddenly I was right back on the exact same dry dirt that I started. It felt like a dream and a nightmare all at once.

Although I was standing in the same place I was 18 months ago, the person I had become was unrecognizable in my eyes.

But in a good way.

I found myself when I was in Bulgaria. And I felt jipped that I was forced to do it all over again in an environment that required much more self-discipline and hope.

I did what any returning missionary does and I moved myself up to northern Utah for school.

It was a wild ride needless to say. The start of it was tough, struggling to figure out where I was meant to be or who I was meant to become.

There wasn’t enough opportunity for me to even be myself sometimes because I was so petrified to allow it.

The next few months from August to December felt like the ‘woopdy doo’ road in my hometown.

Going up then down then up then down at 65 miles per hour.

My stomach dropping to the floor everytime I came flying over a high point only to descend to a low point.

It was the weirdest experience because I was struggling so much with understanding myself, but I was LOVING who I was around and the experiences I was having.

It didn’t make any sense.

The last few days of the year of 2023 were some of the worst and loneliest days of my life. Experiencing a real-world kind of depression and anxiety. After a particularly BRUTAL year, it felt like a cruel joke. Ending it the way it did.

I was ticked for a while at God. Mostly because I couldn’t see from His perspective and that made me angry.

But never did my trust in Him fall short.

I spent New Years walking around in the rain watching people run out of their front doors to watch the fireworks. Celebrating an epic year with high hopes for the new one.

I envied them.

I knew I needed to think like those people, and that I should have spent that night with friends. But I physically could not allow myself to do anything other than be alone. It was my own kind of torture in my own kind of headspace.

One of my best friends ended up calling me right around the time that the fireworks were coming to an end.

His celebration of an epic year with high hopes for the new one was put on pause for a moment, for me. I wish they could understand the kind of light that they were for me that night, catching my hand before I fell further into the darkness of a rock bottom that I had never even been to before.

That was real.

So.

Within the time-span of like.. what.. four days? I sold my lease at the place I was living, bought a new one 3,000 miles away, and booked my flights to Hawaii.

I wasn’t about to let myself feel all of the emotions in a place that was cold.

So I sent it. Spontaneous little Tori.

FEELS.

Between the big moments of Pennsylvania, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Home; it’s the little ones intertwined within that are forever etched on the surface of my heart.

As happy as that is, it hurts too.

To love an experience, the people in it, and the moment in time so much that you can’t ever fathom letting yourself forget those feelings.

It brings just as much pain now, as it did joy then. Because life goes on and life changes. Life gives us the highest of highs as well pushes us down to the lowest of lows. We experience moments when all we can see around us are tears because that’s the only thing radiating from within us. And even moments when we feel on top of the world with people we care about by our side.

I think many of us are scared to let ourselves feel any of it.

Scared to allow ourselves to feel that kind of joy because sometimes it doesn’t last.

Scared of the experience of love because of how easy it is to be ripped away.

Scared of being a part of something, afraid to get left out later.

Scared to chase a dream because failure is a topic in the world.

Scared of new experiences because sometimes they’re uncomfortable.

Scared to let someone choose you because you can’t choose for yourself.

Scared of eternity because you believe that you’re not allowed to mess up.

Scared to make a decision because you don’t want to make the wrong one.

We’re all just scared of feeling. But feeling is life. And feeling is cool.

Bulgaria is the place where I fell in love, in a lot of ways.

And videography was one of the things I fell in love with.

The rollercoaster of emotions that I experienced in those 18 months of serving God and others was the foundation of a lot of different things for me. A foundation of love. A foundation of my passion for filmmaking. A foundation of understanding what it’s like to let myself feel. And a foundation of Christ, Who catches me no matter what kind of emotion I feel or part of life I’m in.

For the last 21 years I have attached emotions to memories, because I didn’t let myself be afraid to feel.

Throughout those moments from the time I have realized that the only way towards the pattern of growth is letting yourself not be so afraid to feel something. I express those kinds of feelings in several different ways, and film is an outlet of that expression. I hope that it allows you to understand the importance of letting yourself feel too.

That’s why I created Lev Co. A visual outlet of feeling & story-telling.