Jean Nidetch: 'I woke up that morning and I was having a 'thin day', Weight Watchers Origin Story - unknown

March 26, 2016

Unknown, USA

Nidetch claims this is the moment she decided to lose weight, which ultimately led her to founding Weight Watchers

And I remember the day vividly. It was October 1961. I woke up that morning and I was having thin day. You know, you can weigh 214ibs and you can have a thin day. Of course! You just get up and you're thin, and I felt fabulous. I put on my size 44 muumuu and I remember putting ribbon in my hair, I felt so [inaudible 00:00:33].

As I floated, it seemed, down to the local supermarket, I felt wonderful. When I got into to supermarket, I was pushing the cart in and out of the aisles and filling it with the goodies in case we should have a snowstorm. I told every checker, when she was checking me out, "That's for my children." I want you to know, a checker doesn't care why you buy it. What's worse, my children like Graham Crackers, but all the chocolate cookies I bought were for my children.

As I was walking in and out of the aisle, I met a lady that I had met before. You see, part of the whole thing was that I didn't like her the first time I met her, and there she was, facing me, and she said, "Jean, you look so wonderful," and I thought, "She's noticing. I'm thin."

Then she said, "When are you due?"

Finally I knew I had to do something, so I went to a city obesity clinic.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPQIkmpeHI...

Brene Brown: 'The power of vulnerability', TED Talk - 2011

March 8, 2016

12 June 2010, TEDx Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

So, I'll start with this: a couple years ago, an event planner called me because I was going to do a speaking event. And she called, and she said, "I'm really struggling with how to write about you on the little flyer." And I thought, "Well, what's the struggle?" And she said, "Well, I saw you speak, and I'm going to call you a researcher, I think, but I'm afraid if I call you a researcher, no one will come, because they'll think you're boring and irrelevant."

And I was like, "Okay." And she said, "But the thing I liked about your talk is you're a storyteller. So I think what I'll do is just call you a storyteller." And of course, the academic, insecure part of me was like, "You're going to call me a what?" And she said, "I'm going to call you a storyteller." And I was like, "Why not 'magic pixie'?"

I was like, "Let me think about this for a second." I tried to call deep on my courage. And I thought, you know, I am a storyteller. I'm a qualitative researcher. I collect stories; that's what I do. And maybe stories are just data with a soul. And maybe I'm just a storyteller. And so I said, "You know what? Why don't you just say I'm a researcher-storyteller." And she went, "Ha ha. There's no such thing."

So I'm a researcher-storyteller, and I'm going to talk to you today -- we're talking about expanding perception -- and so I want to talk to you and tell some stories about a piece of my research that fundamentally expanded my perception and really actually changed the way that I live and love and work and parent.

And this is where my story starts. When I was a young researcher, doctoral student, my first year, I had a research professor who said to us, "Here's the thing, if you cannot measure it, it does not exist." And I thought he was just sweet-talking me. I was like, "Really?" and he was like, "Absolutely." And so you have to understand that I have a bachelor's and a master's in social work, and I was getting my Ph.D. in social work, so my entire academic career was surrounded by people who kind of believed in the "life's messy, love it." And I'm more of the, "life's messy, clean it up, organize it and put it into a bento box."

And so to think that I had found my way, to found a career that takes me -- really, one of the big sayings in social work is, "Lean into the discomfort of the work." And I'm like, knock discomfort upside the head and move it over and get all A's. That was my mantra. So I was very excited about this. And so I thought, you know what, this is the career for me, because I am interested in some messy topics. But I want to be able to make them not messy. I want to understand them. I want to hack into these things that I know are important and lay the code out for everyone to see.

So where I started was with connection. Because, by the time you're a social worker for 10 years, what you realize is that connection is why we're here. It's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it's all about. It doesn't matter whether you talk to people who work in social justice, mental health and abuse and neglect, what we know is that connection, the ability to feel connected, is -- neurobiologically that's how we're wired -- it's why we're here.

So I thought, you know what, I'm going to start with connection. Well, you know that situation where you get an evaluation from your boss, and she tells you 37 things that you do really awesome, and one "opportunity for growth?"

03:54 And all you can think about is that opportunity for growth, right? Well, apparently this is the way my work went as well, because, when you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak. When you ask people about belonging, they'll tell you their most excruciating experiences of being excluded. And when you ask people about connection, the stories they told me were about disconnection.

So very quickly -- really about six weeks into this research -- I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection in a way that I didn't understand or had never seen. And so I pulled back out of the research and thought, I need to figure out what this is. And it turned out to be shame. And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection?

The things I can tell you about it: It's universal; we all have it. The only people who don't experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough," -- which, we all know that feeling: "I'm not blank enough. I'm not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough." The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

And you know how I feel about vulnerability. I hate vulnerability. And so I thought, this is my chance to beat it back with my measuring stick. I'm going in, I'm going to figure this stuff out, I'm going to spend a year, I'm going to totally deconstruct shame, I'm going to understand how vulnerability works, and I'm going to outsmart it. So I was ready, and I was really excited. As you know, it's not going to turn out well.

You know this. So, I could tell you a lot about shame, but I'd have to borrow everyone else's time. But here's what I can tell you that it boils down to -- and this may be one of the most important things that I've ever learned in the decade of doing this research.

My one year turned into six years: Thousands of stories, hundreds of long interviews, focus groups. At one point, people were sending me journal pages and sending me their stories -- thousands of pieces of data in six years. And I kind of got a handle on it. I kind of understood, this is what shame is, this is how it works. I wrote a book, I published a theory, but something was not okay -- and what it was is that, if I roughly took the people I interviewed and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness -- that's what this comes down to, a sense of worthiness -- they have a strong sense of love and belonging -- and folks who struggle for it, and folks who are always wondering if they're good enough.

There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.

What do these people have in common? I have a slight office supply addiction, but that's another talk. So I had a manila folder, and I had a Sharpie, and I was like, what am I going to call this research? And the first words that came to my mind were "whole-hearted." These are whole-hearted people, living from this deep sense of worthiness. So I wrote at the top of the manila folder, and I started looking at the data. In fact, I did it first in a four-day, very intensive data analysis, where I went back, pulled the interviews, the stories, pulled the incidents. What's the theme? What's the pattern? My husband left town with the kids because I always go into this Jackson Pollock crazy thing, where I'm just writing and in my researcher mode.

And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.

The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first ... the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees ... the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

I personally thought it was betrayal. I could not believe I had pledged allegiance to research, where our job -- you know, the definition of research is to control and predict, to study phenomena for the explicit reason to control and predict. And now my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting. This led to a little breakdown --

-- which actually looked more like this. And it did.

I call it a breakdown; my therapist calls it a spiritual awakening.

A spiritual awakening sounds better than breakdown, but I assure you, it was a breakdown. And I had to put my data away and go find a therapist. Let me tell you something: you know who you are when you call your friends and say, "I think I need to see somebody. Do you have any recommendations?" Because about five of my friends were like, "Wooo, I wouldn't want to be your therapist."

I was like, "What does that mean?" And they're like, "I'm just saying, you know. Don't bring your measuring stick."

I was like, "Okay." So I found a therapist. My first meeting with her, Diana -- I brought in my list of the way the whole-hearted live, and I sat down. And she said, "How are you?" And I said, "I'm great. I'm okay." She said, "What's going on?" And this is a therapist who sees therapists, because we have to go to those, because their B.S. meters are good.

And so I said, "Here's the thing, I'm struggling." And she said, "What's the struggle?" And I said, "Well, I have a vulnerability issue. And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. And I think I have a problem, and I need some help." And I said, "But here's the thing: no family stuff, no childhood shit."

"I just need some strategies."

Thank you. So she goes like this.

And then I said, "It's bad, right?" And she said, "It's neither good nor bad."

"It just is what it is." And I said, "Oh my God, this is going to suck.

And it did, and it didn't. And it took about a year. And you know how there are people that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important, that they surrender and walk into it. A: that's not me, and B: I don't even hang out with people like that.

For me, it was a yearlong street fight. It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.

And so then I went back into the research and spent the next couple of years really trying to understand what they, the whole-hearted, what choices they were making, and what we are doing with vulnerability. Why do we struggle with it so much? Am I alone in struggling with vulnerability? No.

So this is what I learned. We numb vulnerability -- when we're waiting for the call. It was funny, I sent something out on Twitter and on Facebook that says, "How would you define vulnerability? What makes you feel vulnerable?" And within an hour and a half, I had 150 responses. Because I wanted to know what's out there. Having to ask my husband for help because I'm sick, and we're newly married; initiating sex with my husband; initiating sex with my wife; being turned down; asking someone out; waiting for the doctor to call back; getting laid off; laying off people. This is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability.

And I think there's evidence -- and it's not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it's a huge cause -- We are the most in-debt ... obese ... addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't say, here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.

I don't want to feel these. And I know that's knowing laughter. I hack into your lives for a living. God.

You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

One of the things that I think we need to think about is why and how we numb. And it doesn't just have to be addiction. The other thing we do is we make everything that's uncertain certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. "I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up." That's it. Just certain. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, the more afraid we are. This is what politics looks like today. There's no discourse anymore. There's no conversation. There's just blame. You know how blame is described in the research? A way to discharge pain and discomfort. We perfect. If there's anyone who wants their life to look like this, it would be me, but it doesn't work. Because what we do is we take fat from our butts and put it in our cheeks.

Which just, I hope in 100 years, people will look back and go, "Wow."

And we perfect, most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children. They're hardwired for struggle when they get here. And when you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not to say, "Look at her, she's perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect -- make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh." That's not our job. Our job is to look and say, "You know what? You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That's our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that, and we'll end the problems, I think, that we see today. We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on people. We do that in our personal lives. We do that corporate -- whether it's a bailout, an oil spill ... a recall. We pretend like what we're doing doesn't have a huge impact on other people. I would say to companies, this is not our first rodeo, people. We just need you to be authentic and real and say ... "We're sorry. We'll fix it."

But there's another way, and I'll leave you with this. This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen ... to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee -- and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult -- to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough" ... then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Leslie Cannold: 'I had an abortion ... or maybe I didn't', TEDx Canberra - 2012

March 8, 2016

2012, TEDx event, Canberra, Australia

I had an abortion. Or maybe I didn’t. Why does it matter?

Abortion shame is very zeitgeist at the moment. Or, more precisely and far more happily, anti-shame is very zeitgeist. In The New York Times, in a number of online magazines and on websites like 1 in 3, 45 Million Voices and Exhale women are speaking out. They’re resisting the shame by breaking their silence about their abortions.

But the success of this fledgling speak-out movement is far from guaranteed. Indeed if we want it to succeed we are going to have to help. But before I can tell you what it is that you can do to stand up for women, I really need to take you on a bit of a 360 around shame. I need to talk to you about what it is, how it works and what it does to its victims.

So I thought what I would ask you to do is just actually stop looking at me for a minute, and have a look around you. So look at your neighbours, smile at them, we’re at TED – “it’s cool!”(does a little dance) – and now focus in on the women. So just meet the eyes of the women and smile while I tell you that one in three of those women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Now that would be true if this were an Australian audience or a British audience or an American audience. One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. And if you haven’t yet, you can stop looking at each other now.

Now there are a lot of ways that I could have made that point. I could have thrown something like this up on the screen (illustration of 1 in 3 women) and I could have said “One in three Australian, British and American women will have an abortion in their lifetime”. I could have said “According to the World Health Organisation, abortion – medical or surgical – is one of the safest and most common medical procedures. But it’s not the same, is it? What if I had said “Ok, have a look around at everybody in the audience, focus in on the women while I tell you that every single one of those women in the next five years is going to blow her nose”. Not the same.

That is shame.

We actually aren’t born feeling ashamed of anything. We’re not ashamed of our nakedness, we’re not ashamed of our bodily functions, our sexual desires, our reproduction or abortion. We learn, from our communities, what is shameful. And it is the real or perceived oversight of those communities that make us feel shame.

Now shame is about fear, but what are we afraid of? This is Renee Brown (shows picture on screen). She gave a fantastic TED talk – which I really commend to you – about shame and when I went screaming off to find her academic work. And what I discovered was that according to Brown, what shame IS, is the acutely anxiety inducing experience that we are flawed and that others are going to find out. That we are flawed in comparison to other people and other people are going to find that out. And when they do, they’re going to demean us, or ridicule us, or judge us and cast us out.

So I’ve used that word cast out for a reason. And the reason is that I’m trying to underscore the fact that the consequences that people fear, the fear that shame evokes in people, the consequences they fear of being shamed are very, very real. They’re very, very significant.

So in ancient times, if a woman brought shame on her name, or her family, or her community she could literally be thrown out of that community. Cast out. She could be stoned. In some places in the world today, that is still the case.

In our world, a woman might be afraid if people find out that she’s had an abortion that her church community will evict her. Or she might be worried that her family, or her boyfriend, or her husband might throw her out of the house. Or that her friends will start a whisper campaign about her. But the thing is, that those fears all cut to something very, very essential about us; very, very primal. And indeed that is why shame is such an ancient form of social control. Because it actually goes to something that may be hardwired in us. Which is this desire to stay in connection with other human beings. Shame evokes the fear of disconnection.

I had an abortion. Or maybe I didn’t. Why do you care?

That’s the shame cycle (Diagram of shame=silence=ignorance etc.). Shame equals silence equals ignorance. But before I can tell you and will tell you about that silence and that ignorance and how it hurts women I wanna tell you one thing that shame doesn’t do.

Shame does not stop women having abortions.

Now the data on this is not great and I’m a researcher so I care about this kind of stuff, and it’s not great because it’s difficult data to get and because abortion is stigmatised so the research funding isn’t there. But from what we can tell, shame does not stop many, if any women from having abortions. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt women. It does. And it hurts them by silencing them and by causing ignorance. So let’s talk about that.

Silent women can’t ask for support. Two thirds of women fear that if others find out their abortion they will look down on them and so, nearly that number – 58 to 60% – don’t tell their friends and their family about their abortion and talk about their abortion little or not at all.

Silent women can’t share information. So if I reach out to someone and say “Oh my God, I’ve got, I’m pregnant when I don’t wanna be, I don’t know what to do” and someone says to me “Oh you know, that’s terrible, like that happened to me too and here’s how I felt and here’s how it went and I went to this clinic and it was terrific or I went to that one and it wasn’t so good but WHATEVER you do if you go to this one, be really careful because across the street, there’s a building that’s dolled up to look like the abortion clinic but it’s actually not an abortion clinic at all. It’s run by a pro-life agency and by the time you even work out where you are, they will have told you a whole bunch of false information about abortion, they may have told you you’re going to hell, and by the time you stumble out of there you’ll have missed your appointment.”

Silent women DON’T ask for the laws they need and deserve. And indeed this was actually how I came into the shame issue because I am an abortion rights activist. And in order to change the laws, to try to get things out of the law that hurt women, to try to put things into the law to protect women, I actually need to raise awareness amongst decision makers and amongst the public that there is a problem. So if you think about any news item that you’ve ever seen or a newspaper article about some broad social issue, you’ll see that it starts with a story. It starts with a story of a particular person and that’s so that it doesn’t seem so abstract and you can actually see that this broad social issue that’s being spoken about is actually hurting someone and that’s why it is, we need to make the effort to change things.

But if I can’t get women to tell their stories, I can’t get things in the media. Or if I do get them in the media, I get them buried at the back of the news bulletin or at the back of the paper where they have less influence. I couldn’t even get women to come to Canberra and talk to politicians. And that means that it’s really hard for me to make some of the changes that I wanna make.

So you’ve gotta ask yourself; if shame is so bad for women, then why is it still happening? And who is doing it?

Well the answer to who’s doing it is the Shame Stokers. And the reason is that shame is a gift that just keeps on giving. Shame equals silence equals ignorance equals shame equals silence equals more ignorance equals more shame and more silence and more ignorance. And that silence and that ignorance is the fertiliser for the ground on which repressive abortion laws and policies flourish.

So I wanna give you a bit of a feel for what Shame Stoking looks and sounds like. Because the weird thing is that women who’ve had abortions can hear it and it is around us all the time. But people who aren’t tuned into it can’t hear it. So it’s really important that you see it, you hear it and you recognise when it’s about. Ok, so here’s some examples, and I should say to you that I could have picked from thousands, so this is really just a tasting plate.

“A legacy of unutterable shame.” That was said by an Australian Health Minister, who said that Australia’s abortion rate was a national tragedy that left a legacy of unutterable shame.

“Vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.” This was said very recently by an American legislator who was one of a number who’s trying to change laws, and indeed some of these laws have been successfully implemented, that require a woman who is seeking abortion to have an ultrasound. But you see most women who have abortions have them very early on in pregnancy, which means that kind of usual ultrasound doesn’t work. You can’t see anything; it’s all just too small. So, instead, they mandate that a probe be inserted inside that woman. This is a non-medically indicated, trans-vaginal ultrasound. The woman’s doctor is forced to give it to her, even though there’s no medical reason for it and she may have denied consent. And when it was pointed out to this legislator that in any other context you would call that rape, he essentially said “Well, we don’t have to worry about those sort of women because, after all, they were vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

And our final Shame Stoking is “abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people”. This was said by a Catholic Archbishop, again not long ago, to a group of young people. And I just wanna stop for a minute on this one, and just underscore what is really being said here. So what is being said is, the moral evil that we need to concern ourselves about is NOT men in positions of authority and trust who rape children and or then cover it up. The REAL moral problem of our time is women who have abortions.

So there’s a couple of messages that the Shame Stokers are sending us there.

One message is DIRECT to women who’ve had abortions. So what they’re worried about is if they talk about their abortion, they’ll be shamed and judged and cast out. And the Shame Stokers are saying to them “you bet your LIFE you will. You put your head above the parapet Missy and we will kick you in the teeth.”

And the second message the Shame Stokers are sending is to all of us. And it’s really a lesson worth learning. And it is this. That if you don’t tell your own story, other people will tell that story for you. Silence does not stay silent for long.

So. This is an optimistic challenge, right. And I’ve just dragged ya right down into the mud. Do not worry because we are heading up! And the reason we are heading up is because there is absolutely nothing that I have just told you that you can not do something about.

(Crowd starts applauding) You bet! You bet!

Communities cause shame. And communities can stop it. So let’s talk about what you can do.

Reach out. (Photo of two hands holding, “You are not alone” written on their arms.) Women who’ve had abortions who feel supported experience less shame. And less of shame’s noxious, down stream consequences. So let the women in your world know that you are NOT a Shame Stoker. That if they talk to you about a problem pregnancy or an abortion, you will NOT judge them. You will NOT shame them. But YOU will listen with empathy and compassion, and let them know that they are not alone.

You can dance. (Photo of a woman wearing a T-shirt that says “Abortion. A fact of life. Let’s end the stigma.) At the end of this month in Melbourne, women, and men are going to get out onto the street wearing T-shirts like that and they’re going to say exactly that. “We are not Shame Stokers.” They are going to say to women “We wanna stand up for you and AGAINST abortion shame”. And we are hoping, umm, Reproductive Choice Australia is hoping – ‘cause we’re organising this event – we are desperately hoping it’s gonna catch on like wildfire; we want it to go right around the globe; we want communities everywhere to kick this sort of positive, uplifting message to send out to the women in their community that says “The time for shame is over”. And if you can’t get to one of those flashmobs and/or if you do go and you wanna do something else, you can actually take that precise pledge online. You can pledge that you will not engage in abortion shaming and you will not tolerate it when others do so. So please keep an eye out for that opportunity.

So if you do all that, what do you get? So instead of this negative, downward cycle -of shame equals silence equals ignorance which causes more shame and more silence and more ignorance – you get an upward spiral. (Diagram of empathy=connection=empowerment, etc.).

You get, empathy equals connection equals empowerment equals empathy equals connection equals empowerment for women. So, some of you may have seen this, I’ll just give you a quick chance to just run your eyes over it. I in no way mean to disrespect the person who said this. Ok, he said, he was one of the first people to speak out against the Nazi’s and he deserves heaps of respect. But I’ve put it up there because the truth is that I don’t really like it.

(Quote by Martin Niemoller. “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”)

And I don’t really like it because, even though it’s true, even though it is true – that one of the reasons we act morally is because we’re worried that if we don’t stand up for people – women who have abortions, say – that women who have abortions won’t stand up for us. That is true. But I’m looking for something morally, much bigger than that.

I’m looking for something more Lady Diana. Who in the midst of the Aids crisis, when people were seeking to shun and stigmatise and judge and cast out anybody who was thought to have the virus and gay men; she started REACHING out her hand to touch those people and to shake their hands.

I’m looking for something more like the King of Denmark, who the apocryphal story goes – when the Nazi’s came into Denmark and said “You have to brand all your Jews with a star” he said “Well, fine. But if that’s gonna happen, I’m gonna wear a star too and so is every Dane.”

I’m looking for people who wanna say “Not by my hand, not on my watch, because I am the strong one. And standing up for women against abortion shame – it is just the right thing to do.”

And so. I had an abortion. Or maybe I didn’t. But I hope by now you know, that it doesn’t matter either way…because we won’t be silent any more.

Thank you.

Anthony Griffith: 'It was the best of times. It was the worst of times', Moth Presents, US Comedy Arts Festival - 2003

February 10, 2016

28 February 2003, Moth Presents, Aspen, Colorado, USA

Charles Dickens' classic tale, 'Tale of Two Cities' starts off with the phrase 'It was the best the times. It was the worst times'.

In 1990 I moved from Chicago with my family to LA to seek my fame and fortune and and (within) a couple weeks of being there I got two important phone calls: one was from the talent coordinator for The Tonight Show offering me to have a spot as a comedian of on The Tonight Show and the second call was that my daughter's doctor had called up to say that her cancer had resurfaced.

A year prior she was diagnosed with cancer and we fought it and it went into remission and now it was back. And for that next year my life was pretty surreal -- its was like two different personalities, during the day, in order to keep my daughter at home with me I would have to learn CPR and how to work a heart monitor and administer medicine, and all these technical terms -- take her back and forth to get her platelets and blood and check up on her.

And at night I would go from club to club with the talent coordinator and I would work on my set, and try to perfect it and I would meet veterans like George Wallace and Seinfeld and Roseanne, and I thought that everything was great because we had beat the cancer
before, and we would beat it again, and this was the first time that I was going to be in front of millions of people on The Tonight Show.

And the first time on The Tonight Show I was extremely nervous. All I could think about while I was backstage being introduced was 'don't mess up, just don't mess up - whatever you do don't mess up'. And then the curtains opened up and there were 600 people, and the camera and Johnny's over there and the band is over there, and I don't know what I said for the next six minutes but I get six applause breaks.

And the great part of that night was that I was going to my car and I met Johnny who was going to his car, and it was just a private moment between us in a parking lot, of him saying, "you were very funny, were extremely funny -- start working on your second Tonight Show, because I want you back.

By the time I get the official call for my second Tonight Show, my daughter was admitted to the hospital. If you don't know about cancer when it comes back, it comes back hard. It's like beating up a gang banger for the first time, and then he's coming back, and he's coming back meaner and stronger and he's coming with his friends.

So in order to compensate for that you have to raise the chemo and you have to raise the medicine, and you have to raise the radiation which is difficult for an adult but she was only two.

So she was bald, which she doesn't mind cuz every kid in the ward is bald, and she thinks this is just part of life, and she can't keep her food down and ... you're not prepared for this ... there's no books, there's no home ed class to teach you how to deal with this. And you can't go to a therapist because in the black world a therapist is taboo -- reserved for rich white people.

So you're tryin to figure it out -- what did I do? Maybe it's something I did. Maybe it's something my wife did. Maybe my doctor diagnosed it erroneously. Something.

But at night I still have to be a comic, I have to work The Tonight Show, because that's what I do, I'm a clown. I'm a clown whose medical bills are raising, whose one step from being evicted, whose one step from getting his car repo'ed -- and I have to come out and make you laugh because no-one wants to hear the clown in pain. 'Cause that's not funny!

And my humor is becoming dark and it's becoming biting and it's becoming hateful and the talent coordinator is seeing that there's a problem because NBC is all about 'nice' and 'everything is going to be okay' and we're starting to buck horns because he wants everything light and I wanna be honest and tell life, and I'm hurting, and I want everybody else to hurt!

Because somebody is to blame for this!

So I buck up, and I suppress my anger and I form and develop a nice cute routine for the second Tonight Show. And i get applause breaks and I get asked to come back for a third time. And I'm perfecting my third set when a doctor asked me to come in, and I know something's wrong because even the doctor is crying. And doctors don't cry.

And he says 'We've done all we can. There's nothing else for us to do.'

And I say 'how much time does she have?'

And he says 'at the most, at the most, six weeks'. And I should plan for that.

And I'm thinking how do I plan for that?

I have a plan to buy her her first bicycle. I have a plan to walk her to school. I have a plan to take pictures of her on her prom. I have a plan to walk her down the aisle to get married ... how am I going to plan to buy her a dress to be buried in.

And I'm trying to keep it together, 'cause I'm the man, and I'm the man of the house, and I don't wanna cry but it's coming, and I'm trying to tell myself, 'Tony', I'm trying to beg the world 'just give me a chance, just give me a chance, just let me take a breath. Stop just for a minute. I wanna call my parents, and tell em 'what do I do'? I don't know what to do. I'm a grown man, and I don't know what to do.

And a voice in me, comes up like Denzel from Training Day 'man up nigga! You think you're the only one losing kids today! Twenty five kids walked in here with cancer, only five walkin out! This aint no sit com. It don't wrap up all nice and tidy in thirty minutes. This is life. Welcome to the real world!'

And he was right. So I bucked up. Because that's what I'm supposed to do. And on my third Tonight Show, and by that time my daughter had died, and I had six applause breaks that night.

No one knew that I was mourning. No one knew that I could care less about The Tonight Show or Johnny Carson. In 1990 I had three appearances with the legendary Johnny Carson and a total of 14 applause breaks. And I would have given it all if I could have just one more day sharing a bag of french fries with my daughter.

It was the best of times.

It was the worst of times.

Thank you.

Source: http://themoth.org/posts/stories/the-best-...

Stella Young: 'And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn', TEDxSydney - 2014

January 19, 2016

April 2014 TEDxSydney, Australia

I grew up in a very small country town in Victoria. I had a very normal, low-key kind of upbringing. I went to school, I hung out with my friends, I fought with my younger sisters. It was all very normal. And when I was 15, a member of my local community approached my parents and wanted to nominate me for a community achievement award. And my parents said, "Hm, that's really nice, but there's kind of one glaring problem with that. She hasn't actually achieved anything." (Laughter)

And they were right, you know. I went to school, I got good marks, I had a very low-key after school job in my mum's hairdressing salon, and I spent a lot of time watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek." Yeah, I know. What a contradiction. But they were right, you know. I wasn't doing anything that was out of the ordinary at all. I wasn't doing anything that could be considered an achievement if you took disability out of the equation. Years later, I was on my second teaching round in a Melbourne high school, and I was about 20 minutes into a year 11 legal studies class when this boy put up his hand and said, "Hey miss, when are you going to start doing your speech?" And I said, "What speech?" You know, I'd been talking them about defamation law for a good 20 minutes. And he said, "You know, like, your motivational speaking. You know, when people in wheelchairs come to school, they usually say, like, inspirational stuff?" (Laughter) "It's usually in the big hall."

And that's when it dawned on me: This kid had only ever experienced disabled people as objects of inspiration. We are not, to this kid -- and it's not his fault, I mean, that's true for many of us. For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire. And in fact, I am sitting on this stage looking like I do in this wheelchair, and you are probably kind of expecting me to inspire you. Right? (Laughter) Yeah.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you dramatically. I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we've been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It's a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't make you exceptional.

And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter) And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person? I've lost count of the number of times that I've been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I'm brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name. (Laughter) And it is objectifying. These images, those images objectify disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. They are there so that you can look at them and think that things aren't so bad for you, to put your worries into perspective.

And life as a disabled person is actually somewhat difficult. We do overcome some things. But the things that we're overcoming are not the things that you think they are. They are not things to do with our bodies. I use the term "disabled people" quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.

So I have lived in this body a long time. I'm quite fond of it. It does the things that I need it to do, and I've learned to use it to the best of its capacity just as you have, and that's the thing about those kids in those pictures as well. They're not doing anything out of the ordinary. They are just using their bodies to the best of their capacity. So is it really fair to objectify them in the way that we do, to share those images? People, when they say, "You're an inspiration," they mean it as a compliment. And I know why it happens. It's because of the lie, it's because we've been sold this lie that disability makes you exceptional. And it honestly doesn't.

And I know what you're thinking. You know, I'm up here bagging out inspiration, and you're thinking, "Jeez, Stella, aren't you inspired sometimes by some things?" And the thing is, I am. I learn from other disabled people all the time. I'm learning not that I am luckier than them, though. I am learning that it's a genius idea to use a pair of barbecue tongs to pick up things that you dropped. (Laughter) I'm learning that nifty trick where you can charge your mobile phone battery from your chair battery. Genius. We are learning from each others' strength and endurance, not against our bodies and our diagnoses, but against a world that exceptionalizes and objectifies us.

I really think that this lie that we've been sold about disability is the greatest injustice. It makes life hard for us. And that quote, "The only disability in life is a bad attitude," the reason that that's bullshit is because it's just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. (Laughter) (Applause) Smiling at a television screen isn't going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It's just not going to happen.

I really want to live in a world where disability is not the exception, but the norm. I want to live in a world where a 15-year-old girl sitting in her bedroom watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" isn't referred to as achieving anything because she's doing it sitting down. I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. I want to live in a world where we value genuine achievement for disabled people, and I want to live in a world where a kid in year 11 in a Melbourne high school is not one bit surprised that his new teacher is a wheelchair user.

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/stella_young_i_m...

Tony Wilson: 'Fine thanks, and you?', Cancer Council Arts Awards, 2012

September 9, 2015

29 July, 2012, Melbourne Australia

As always, it's a pleasure to be here today - this ceremony for me always has an almost ecclesiastical feel, as we share and honour work inspired by the pain and trauma of a cancer diagnosis. My category is the young writers category, and the task of judging these pieces is, I promise you, a half day, half box of tissues affair. But the standard is always exceptional and this year, I promise, is no exception.

We all know our own pain best. I don't wish to deflect from the outstanding work of young writers in the audience today, nor do I wish to conflate my pain with theirs. But given the cathartic notes this event is capable of adducing, I'll ask your permission to share a little of my past year, particularly in light of one entry that had an enormous impact on me.

I haven’t felt comfortable speaking much about Jack’s cerebral palsy. We found out on my wife’s birthday last year, a devastating ‘can you come in’ phone call from a paediatrician on the eve of our son’s discharge from the Mercy’s Special Care Nursery.

Amidst the intermittent joy of having a new baby, it’s been a year full of uncertainty and fear. How severe will it be? What faculties will be affected? Will he walk? Talk? Go to school? Have friends? Leave home? Fall in love?

Will he be okay when we die?

Will he be okay?

The best advice any medical practitioner gave me over the twelve months was a GP at Clifton Hill Medical Centre. ‘Stop trying to imagine the future because you won’t get it right. Life’s too mercurial for any of us to imagine what’s going to happen.’

I have been almost entirely unsuccessful at following this advice.

Nevertheless, I stand here today, and I feel capable of articulating the pain. The sharp grief of twelve months ago has been worn smooth by simple effluxion of time.

It’s my fifth year doing this job, and it’s always an emotional ceremony. As most of you know, the idea of the awards is that people who have been touched by cancer express their experience through art – whether it be film, photography, visual art, poetry or short stories.

Last year, as I stood here, I was full to the brim with my own sadness, and it overflowed into great show stopping sobs. I battled on, embarrassedly aware that everything had suddenly become about me, even when so many of you have your own battles, your own dark clouds to worry about.

Today, I won't fall apart. Certainly not in that way. Possibly because I’m feeling stronger, that the sadness for the loss of the dream of a perfect baby has been healed by time spent with the wonderful baby we do have. For Jack is wonderful, and the easiest parts of what has been a harrowing journey have been those spent with him in arms. But just as likely, it’s passage of time. Maintaining the grief is as exhausting as maintaining the rage, and although the sadness is no longer so fresh that I’m breaking down in public situations, I’m still looking at every alert, crawling, fully-sighted one year old and thinking ‘not my baby’, and I’m still looking at active, able bodied adults and thinking ‘will he ever?’.

How does it go again? ‘Stop trying to imagine the future because you won’t get it right.’

The other consistent advice we have been given by other parents of children with disabilities is to accept help, support each other, and enjoy the victories when and if they occur. A poem we’ve been forwarded several times is ‘Welcome to Holland’ by Emily Pearl Kingston. It’s right about the windmills – they are very nice – but it’s also right about the pain. We wanted to go to Italy.

Of course pain is inevitable. it’s impossible to reach middle age without facing one or all of death, illness, unemployment, estrangement, betrayal, rejection or failure. One of the privileges of judging the Cancer Council Arts Awards is that the entrants lay bare their pain in a way that takes a courage and openness that I, as a writer, rarely feel capable of. Indeed I’m only saying this because these young artists we're honouring today inpsired me to do so.

There were many great entries, all of which are profiled on the Arts Awards website. You can vote for a favourite as part of the People’s Choice award. Here are a few of my mine:

In the children’s visual art category, Lanya Johns painted this amazing piece ‘Three Faces Have We’. Her artist statement reads:

“I remember hearing my Mum talk about a quote once that goes something like, ‘Everybody has two faces – be careful of those with three’. I feel sometimes like cancer has given us three faces. There is the public smiley face, the private and terrified face – and then the face that we all try to protect each other from seeing. We are lucky we three. We have each other, and all our faces.”

In the adult’s visual art category, the commended entry was ‘Ben’ by Vanessa Maccauley

In the Indigenous Art category, Rex Murray painted this affecting piece about the feeling of helplessness he had dealing with the death of his brother, the strong, active kid that he used to jump into rivers with as a kid.

And in the Children’s Writing section, the one that I judged, the winning entry was this tribute by Mena Sebo to her Mum, ‘I Love You as Much as You Love Me’.

But maybe the piece that spoke to me more than any other was the one I awarded the top prize in the Youth Writing section. It’s a poem by Elle Richards, ‘What goes unsaid’ and it’s about the everyday ‘how are you’ gambit that opens so many of our social interactions. It's called, 'What goes unsaid'

What Goes Unsaid

A friend stops and waves,
“Hey! It’s good to see you, how are you?”

I was only twelve.

Cancer had lurked in my hallway; tapped on my window.
It had seeped through the cracks in my wall.
I had breathed it in, let it fill my lungs.
It never left me,
never stopped haunting me.
Good morning Cancer,
but never goodnight.
It had shadowed the dark,
followed me to school.
It had entwined itself in my thoughts,
left me sleeping with the light on,
afraid of its presence,
angry at its power.

I had sat by as chemotherapy claimed my mother’s hair,
turned her skin yellow and made her bones weak.

I had watched radiation therapy.
Seen my mother’s body burned by clunking machines.
The machines had no feelings, they burned scar upon scar.
But my mother had feelings, and she cried.
A lot.

I had screamed.
Slammed doors, punched pillows.
I had felt anger claw at my stomach;
it had made me feel sick and alone.
I had let tears run to my mouth and soothe my cracked lips.
I cried until I felt no emotion at all. None.

I had seen my mother break down in the kitchen.
Screaming, panicking.
She had curled herself in a ball; hugged her knees and screamed.
I had sat next to her; I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t touch her. I just sat there.
Next to her.
Just as afraid.
I had been jealous of the gifts that landed at our front door.
Beautiful soaps and chocolates.
One after the other.
Not for me.
Not a single card or flower.

I had seen her with only one breast.
I had seen her, too sick and too tired to move.
I had seen my mother tangled in tubes.
Covered by white sheets,
white pillows,
white walls,
white floors.
And unnaturally white skin.

I had checked on her every morning.
Every
single
morning.

I checked while she was sleeping,
hoping she was just sleeping.
I had slipped into her bed and wrapped myself in her blankets.
I had gently maneuvered myself between her warm arms and cuddled my head near
her chest. Gingerly. Carefully.
I had rested my chin near the scars that were her breast.
And laid there, warm and comfortable,
but still afraid.