My phone rings; it’s my friend, Ian. “I just saw you walking down Embankment Road,” he says. “Were you talking to yourself?” I laugh. Not quite….
I was practicing my TedX speech. Tomorrow is the official rehearsal day, when myself and the other speakers will run our speeches “as normal.” I feel ill-prepared for a big event, and as a natural Girl Scout (“Always Prepared!”) this is disconcerting. I have practiced the speech a handful of times, once alone and more in front of friends. I find it incredibly difficult to practice in my room and to edit the Word Doc, choreograph, and memorize. The words ricochet off walls like heavy boomerangs, hitting me in the gut. Hence my walking-and-talking tactic. I curse myself for being a loud-mouthed foreigner in a small city. Of course someone I knew drove by!
For some reason, it is only today that I recognize the creeping gravity of the whole TedX thing. Yesterday I received a message from Olivia Palmer, poised TedX organizer, asking how I planned to drive interest about my speech now and in the post-event delay. We have to wait around three weeks for videos to post, I learned. “Um, I hadn’t really thought about it…” I answered. Because until this point, my speaking at TedX has felt like a sort of delightful happenstance, a lucky break.
I found out about TedX on the Leading Women UK newsletter, an organization whose membership I cannot actually afford but still subscribe to the newsletters. I get the impression that most Ted speakers are asked to speak and often coached. After establishing an initial line-up, the TedX Totnes organizers decided they had space for a couple more female speakers. They put out a call for auditions. It was around the same time that one of my posts went viral (relative to the miniscule size of my start-up company). It’s called “I Learned to Live Abroad in Treatment” and discusses how loony-bin lessons equipped me for international living. After sharing it with them, the treatment center shared my post in their newsletter. Today, it has five long comments. I have received many more personal emails and messages. The feedback convinced me that my story was a powerful one. Other people would benefit from my sharing it, whether they were in recovery or trying to build up the courage to move abroad.
So I used the post as inspiration, wrote up a jaunty little speech, sent my pitch to the TedX team and was asked for a live, five-minute Skype interview. I took it from a dark, hot corner while traveling. I was bright red and sweating. They saw me as “glowing and energetic.” I got the gig! When I shared the news on Facebook, I received hundreds of “Likes” and “Messages.” The support was amazing but also made me feel self-conscious. I love to share Facebook statuses that I think other people will laugh at or benefit from. Saying that I was going to speak at TedX felt like bragging. So support felt a like a wool blanket, warm but heavy. Gee golly, I gulped.
About a month later the TedX team asked us to practice our speeches in front of Olivia and another coordinator for coaching and feedback. I relished in an excuse to scoot Dr. V through the English countryside, arrived energetic, and delivered a speech that was too long but well received. It was here that I actually became aware of the other speakers. Yah, I had seen their pictures and read some of their bios on the website. But the whole thing was such an unexpected, delightful coincidence that I did not spend much time thinking about. I had a company to run!
After meeting four other speakers and listening to two speeches, another thought dawned on me: I am the TedX Totnes fluffer. (If you don’t know what a “fluffer” is, I am not going to be the bad kid on the playground that tells you. Google it and be warned!). Among the line-up is the owner of Dartmoor Zoo, who has a whole movie dedicated to him. The actor who plays him? Matt Damon. Who would play me in a movie of my life? I muse. Phoebe from Friends, obviously. Another speaker is a neruo-bio-physical-genius-sexy-international-intellectual-person who is offering totally radical views of sciencey-stuff. And I am the girl without a Power Point, the girl talking about her backpack, joking about dipping Oreos in milk, and giggling my way through the most important speech of most peoples’ lives. I am like the guy who comes out between live television show tapings to throw balloons at the crowd and shout, “Yah! You guys ready! Let’s cheer!” while people flex and release their pained butt muscles.
Tedx Totnes tickets sold out in an hour. I learned that they were on sale two hours an hour after that. So, I would have no one in the audience that I knew to give me a hug when it was over. Furthermore, anyone who could make it was not someone who knew me when I was in treatment. They did not know me at my worst; they could not really conceptualize what the speech means to me. They were not my Dad. In my speech I actually talk about my Dad, and it is at that part that I keep choking up. Or the part about my friend, Adrienne, who is no longer living. This realization made me feel worried about the speech, not because it was BIG but because I wasn’t sure if I could do it without crying. If only someone I knew was there, ready for me to exit sobbing, I might not feel the need to sob at all.
Then, magically, Olivia notified me that three tickets were available. I immediately posted a Facebook status. GUESS WHAT? My fabulous Auntie in London gobbled up a ticket, then requested the time off work, then booked an Air BnB fit for two Queens, then notified me she was coming. I cried when she told me. THEN, a mother-daughter pair from one of my English “adopted families” booked the remaining tickets. They asked if I needed a ride. I just couldn’t believe the love I received. On the flip side, I felt that familiar wriggling feeling in my belly. This must seem really important, I thought.
Still, somehow, STILL, it is only today that I feel proper worried, as a Brit would say. Walking-practicing my speech this morning, I still left out key parts. I’ve re-worked the whole thing in my head but have yet to edit it on paper. I’m delaying. I have a website to build and another one to edit and an article to post and social media to manage and a yoga class to teach. I’ll edit it and practice again in the morning, before reporting to Totnes. That’s a good plan, right?
Sure. But it’s not about the plan. It’s about what’s right, right? This is what’s right:
Here and now, as ever before, I remind myself WHY this matters. I read my own damn speech, listen to its story, hear the lessons in my heart. This speech matters for all the people who suffer from eating disorders, the misunderstanding that is within them and toward them. This speech matters because going crazy is more than okay, it is a gift. Because the world provides all kinds of gifts that we have to be brave enough to accept, to step up to and say yes to. Because my Dad supported me and now I can thank him. Because there are so many people in the world presented by challenges they want but are afraid to take. People who need to hear that they will succeed, because they are all they need to be.
Oh, great. I’m crying again.
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