Transcriber: Annet Johnson
Reviewer: Peter Van de Ven Wow. So, are you guys familiar with the saying, "You come into this world alone
and then you go out alone"? You know that saying? When I hear it, I think, yes, we come in alone, we go out alone. What about all this space in the middle, this space that is our life? And how often in our lives, we feel that same kind of alone
that they're talking about in that saying? It's a very specific feeling
because it's not on the outside; it's here, sort of alone
on the inside with yourself. And you know it's that kind of alone when you're going through something and suddenly you realize
only you can get you through. I'm just convinced that so much of how we feel
about ourselves and how we sit in our lives is a result of how we get
through the hard stuff and how we deal
with this place on the inside. I went through a difficult experience
as a younger girl and found myself having to reckon
with this place inside. I learned a lot from it. I'm number five out of seven kids. I was raised in an affluent bubble
of the suburb outside of Chicago in the top two percent
of the overprivileged in America. Our life did not see
a whole lot of struggle. We had an abundance of love
and support and opportunity. Like, in general, my life
was a really safe and easy place to be. So in the summer of 1979,
going into my senior year of high school, I had sex with my boyfriend
for the first time. Every time I say that sentence,
it feels completely ridiculous, but trust me, that's going to go
somewhere in this story. (Laughter) After having sex for the first time - This was not something that
he and I talked about or planned. This was something
that just sort of happened. And, honestly, I wasn't even quite sure
that it happened when it was over. You know what I mean! (Laughter) So, four and half months later,
I find out I'm pregnant. That is when I was sure
that we did it. (Laughter) I was actually on vacation
in the British Virgin Islands with my dad and a bunch of siblings
sailing on a big sailboat when I learned this. I decided to wait to get home to tell
my recently divorced parents together. Probably, still the least fun conversation
I've ever had in my life. You know, they were
obviously shocked, disappointed, and gravely concerned
about my future. The one thing that my parents
agreed upon that day was that no one could ever,
ever find out that this happened to me. So, it was decided that I would
go away and hide in a Catholic Home and have the baby
and give it up for adoption and get back to graduate from high school. My mother was completely convinced,
with all that she was, that if anybody ever, ever found this out,
it would ruin my life, truly. So they told my brothers and sisters,
my grandparents, my friends, the dog, the mailman, everybody that I was sick and living in the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minnesota. So a couple of days after
that conversation with my parents, my mom found a place and we got in the car to drive a few states away to drop me off. The quietest drive
in the history of the world. And when I arrived is when I learned
that this wasn't a Catholic Home. It was a locked, government-run facility for delinquent, underprivileged,
wayward, pregnant teenagers. A world completely foreign to me. A world I didn't even know existed. So, I lived there for five months - no contact with anybody I knew - had the baby and made it home to graduate. When it was all over, I promised my mother that I would
never tell anybody this story, and I kept that promise
to her for 38 years until very recently, when I wrote a book, my memoir called "Look At You Now." It only takes about
a two-minute version of this story to see that it is fraught with lies, secrets, deception, betrayal, gossip, rumors, judgment, shame, all of the things that we try so hard
to stay away from in life because they make it
so difficult and so painful. I wanted to mostly talk about,
sort of, what I went through internally to get to the other side
of this experience. So I arrive in this place, and I meet the girls, and I learn that they're on pregnant leave from juvenile detention
or failed foster care or from the streets. Of course my instinct is to just run
as far and as fast as I can get, but I had nowhere to go. And I lived pretty terrified
in this place for weeks, until I started to question things. At a certain point it felt like everything
I thought I knew about the world, all of the things I had been taught
to believe about people and about life, it felt like they sort of dropped off
of me and vanished. And I started to see
that these girls and I had everything in common
that actually mattered. We were teenagers
and we were pregnant. I started to get to know them. They were very different
than I thought. They were interesting, funny; in fact, they were hilarious. They told me stories about their lives and their "adventures" with the law. And I shared my life, about my family and skiing and sailing. You know, they taught me
how to play poker. I read books to them. They made rich-girl jokes. I never quite had the balls
to make poor-girl jokes, but we were like
soldiers in a platoon. I mean, we bonded over this pregnancy. These girls, who I thought
were hardened teenage gangsters, were really mostly
these endearing misfit toys, and I sort of became one of them. You know, when people hear this story, I often hear the word "strength." Everybody talks about
the strength and grit, you know, it takes to get through challenge. I really think it was
the removal of judgment that helped me get
to the other side of this story because looking back on it, that is what dropped off and vanished - the judgment I had of these girls
and their lives and their poverty. And once it was gone, I was sort of able to see them
for who they really were. And then of course
it trickled down onto me and the judgment I had of myself,
which was massive. I was wrecked with guilt and shame and hating myself for the mess
I'd made of my life and the disgrace
I had become to my parents. All of that stuff inside of me
started to let up a little bit. I stopped beating myself up and actually imagined
that maybe I could have a good life even had I been in this place. The things inside of me started to feel just a little bit kinder
and a little more forgiving. There is something
about the removal of judgment that brings this indescribable meaning
to the word "openness." Your mind opens, your heart opens, everything opens when judgment is gone. Things around you feel so different. They feel safer and better. It makes you think - You know, how you have
a couple of people in your life, if you're lucky, when you're around them and you walk away, you can't help thinking,
"God, I really like that person" - that feeling. And you don't quite know what it is, but the truth is
you feel good around them; in fact, you feel really good
about being who you are when you're around them. That person is open,
and they don't have judgment. That's sort of what it feels like
and what it looks like. So if I were, I know I can't, but if I were to ask everybody in here, "How often do you think
you judge yourself?" Think about that for a minute. I'm going to guess
that whatever your answer is, it's a whole lot more. Because judgment is really tricky. Because it's a habit,
and it can go so unnoticed, particularly self-judgment because this, sort of,
perceived virtue to it that it's okay because you're
not hurting anybody else, right? So here's the test. The next time a challenge comes in, just notice, pay attention to what goes on
inside of you. Is it - Do you feel something
is sort of rooting for you? It's on your side, reminding you you've been
through stuff before and you're going to get through this? Or do you have an asshole in there? Because an asshole is what reminds us of all the things that we
cannot stand about ourselves, particularly when we're in challenge. It is from where all the doubt comes. Of course, when the doubt comes in,
then comes the fear, and the fear comes in
to scare the crap out of you. That is self-judgment. We don't need an enemy in there,
making the hard times harder. We kind of really need an ally. The only voice that matters, the only voice that truly makes
a difference in your life is your own. Three days after I had the baby at 17, I had to go home and actually walk in the ceremony
of my high school graduation; it was some rule. And, today, I can't seem to figure out
what was scarier: giving birth to a baby
out of my body in that facility or going home and facing my peers
after five months of being gone, knowing somewhere in my heart
that this lie was not going to hold up and the judgment and scrutiny
I might have to face. So I arrived at graduation. And I was right. The lie kind of
didn't hold up all the way. Lots of kids had made
their own ideas of where I had been, and there was whispering
and pointing and gesturing, and it was quite a lot worse
than I thought it was going to be. But what surprised me the most was that I sort of just waited there to feel like I wanted to burst out crying or run away or flip everybody off or hate myself, and none of that happened. And I realized that day that all I had gone through, internally,
to survive in this facility was exactly what I was
going to need to survive my life, and I knew I had. So if there were one thing that I could encourage
anyone to do in this life, it would be to think about
letting go of judgment, particularly the judgment
you have on yourself, because to be able to create
and have inside of you a place that you can turn
that will hold you up and root for you would be quite a gift. Thank you. (Applause)
