Talks

I didn't write one speech for today. I didn't write two speeches. I didn't write three. I wrote four speeches. The last speech was thrown out this afternoon. This speech that I'm speaking to you has been written in the last hour or two. Basically, this piece is an accumulation of me and where I am at now. It's me. It's me being in the soup. The soup is about one meter, sixty-two high, and it's thirty-six and a half years old. It's been simmering for thirty-six and a half years. It's the story of me not being ready. It's the story of how are we ever really ready in life. And it's the story of how we came to be here. It's a story of who I am. Who I am. I'm Australian—far out! I've been told I have to say that at least. I arrived here right before COVID-19 hit. I was here for five weeks, and I left for two weeks, and I came back, and COVID hit. It's been a pretty insane journey since and a journey that I haven't been ready for. I come from a working-class family. I come from a family with two kids, two adults, a house that my dad built. I'm a Libra. I'm a vada/petar. There's a lot of air going on in here. I dance. I am a social worker by background. I'm an A+ blood type. I'm here, and I'm figuring out every single day. I come from a lineage of women who have experienced quite significant mental health issues. My mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was fifteen years old. And at the time, we had lots of social workers coming to visit our family. I watched what they were doing. They would come, and they would sit in with our family, and they would drink cups of tea. I looked at them, and I thought, Wouldn't that actually be really fun to just drive around all day, visit people, drink cups of tea, and help them feel better. So fast forward a few years. I'm twenty-two, and I'm knocking on the door of a family's home. I don't know what I'm walking into. A man opens the door—a man I've been working with for a little while. He's yelling and screaming at me, holding a cup of coffee that he's shaking like this. And the coffee's almost splattering everywhere. His child, the ten-year-old, is screaming in the hallway. And I walk in with my pile of paperwork. With the paperwork that's already filled out saying that I'm removing that child. I sit down in the living room with the dad beside me and the paperwork between us. I say to him, "This is what's going on." And he bursts out into tears. He says to me, "I'm trying the best that I can, and I don't know what to do anymore." And I say to him, "Is there a way that we can work together?" I wasn't ready for that conversation. And I wasn't ready for any of the conversations that happened like that, that continued on from that time. My mom, for over twenty years, my whole adult life, has been in and out of mental health facilities. We have spent Christmases and Mother's Days visiting her in mental health facilities. And I haven't been ready for any of that or any of the conversations that have come with that. Fifteen years fast forward. My cousin is now graduated as a social worker. And she says to me, "I don't know if I'm cut out for this." I say to her, "You know what? None of us are. Basically, all we can do is look at what's in front of us and take the humanity from it and find a way to turn it into some kind of magic and to create something better with it. We can't be ready for this." Fast forward another couple of years. And I'm at work. I'm sitting at my desk. A young person calls, and his debutante partner for that day has pulled out as a deb. She's not doing it. He's like, "That's it. I don't care. I'm not doing it." This is something that matters to this young person more than anything else. He has spoken to the children's commissioner and said, "This needs to happen for young people like us." My boss gets off the phone, and she says, "What are we gonna do?" I put a post on Facebook. And I say, "Who do I know who has a white dress in this size and can get it to me within three hours." A girl contacts me straightaway and says, "I not only have a dress, I have a tiara, and I have jewelry. I'll have it to you." Within three hours, I'm at a venue surrounded by all these teenage girls with white fluffy things everywhere. And I'm getting my hair and makeup done, watching a video on my phone of how to learn these dances. I wasn't ready to be a debutante at thirty-three years of age. And I wasn't ready to be a debutante that day. A couple of years later, I'm with a group of young people, and we're preparing for a massive event. I've got young people, a row full of young people, who are preparing to share their personal stories. The people in the audience are ministers. They're commissioners. They're politicians. One of my young people, she runs out of the room. I run after her. I stand in front of a toilet cubicle, and she's behind the door. I hear sobbing. I ask her if she's okay. She says to me, "There is no way that I'm going out there. There is no way that I'm sharing my story. There is no way that those people in that audience are gonna listen. And this matters to me more than anything. And I can't deal with the fact that they might not hear what I've got to say." I take this in, and I go, "Hmm. They're not gonna hear you from behind a toilet door." I hear the click of the lock, and the door opens. She stands there in front of me. And she's like, "How's my makeup? Are my eyes okay?" I hand her a tissue, and I'm like, "We can sort this out." She's like, "I have no idea what I'm gonna say. Like, what do I do?" I'm like, "We can sort that out. Fix your makeup. We'll be right." And she comes out. I ask her what she's most passionate about, and straightaway, I know that she's ready because the fire in her heart is what's going to deliver the message that she needs delivered. Anything else is a bonus on that. When we started this, Colleen asked us, "What is the story that you are most afraid to tell?" The story in this that I'm the most afraid to tell is the story of what comes next. It's the unwritten story. It's the story that I'm not prepared for and the story that I'm not ready for. It's the story that I don't have the answers for. And I can only prepare myself for that so much. And I don't know if all of these experiences and all of this life journey has prepared me enough for that. And there's nothing that I can do about that but just keep taking another step, knowing that I'm not ready for that. The story that I'm not ready for is the one that I will one day tell when this woman sweeps herself off her own feet and carries herself away in a way that she could not even imagine. And that all starts by being here. Thank you.

I'm at a new school and for good reason. It wasn't going well. You see I'm nine years old and I'm at a private school—a French school. So I've got my white button-up shirt. I've got my maroon cravat. I've got my wool gray slacks. I'd love to have some new friends. So I walk into this courtyard, and I see some kids playing over on the wall. And as I walk over to them, my eyes widen because they've got paper and pencils and drawings and maps, and they've got these dice that look like gems. And I say, "What are you doing here?" They say, "We're playing Dungeons and Dragons. You wanna play?" "Y-yeah." Now I didn't know what Dungeons and Dragons was. So I was like just happy to be accepted to do anything. And so they said, "Here. You can be this character." And then I was on a boat, and in one hand I had a sword. And with my other hand, I had the tiller, and we were going towards this island. And then I looked in the water, and I could see these gems in the coral. And there was a treasure chest and I wanted at it, and I just jumped over and into the water. And I swam, and I could get to the gems and the chest except for I was wearing thirty pounds of chain mail. And I couldn't get up out of the water. And I drowned to death. And with tears in my eyes, I stumbled back away, and I was devastated. I didn't know what to do. My new friends, my new opportunity, my new school. It just felt like the world was crashing in on me. To take you back a year . . . I woke up to pounding on the door, and I had a little peephole in my bedroom where I could look down and see the front door, and I could see a woman there, and she was screaming for help. And curiosity got the better of me, and I went down the stairs, and I followed her out to a man lying dead on the ground with blood pooling out all around him. And my dad turned and saw me. "Get back in the house!" I ran back in the house, and I went in under my sheets. And that's when the nightmares started. "Mommy, don't go in there. Don't go in the closet. There's a witch in there. She's coming for you. She's coming for me. She knows you're here." My imagination had gotten the better of me, and everything every night was one nightmare after another. So I went the next day, a year later, back to see those boys after a night of crying myself to sleep, and I sidled up to them, and I was like, "So I died. Is that it?" They said, "Oh, you wanna make a new character?" I was like, "Yes!" And that became this moment where I came alive, and a whole new world came out for me. And I found a new place for my imagination. My imagination a year before that felt like a curse. And every time I went to bed, I was so fearful. And I don't want to tell you that Dungeons and Dragons made my life better because life is what it is. And life offered me a lot of different opportunities to face challenges. At ten years old, I was looking down into the coffin of one of my classmates. And I could see his white face, his cold body lying there. And at fourteen, I was hit with it again. One of my best friends had passed away, and it was announced at school while I was sitting there eating a bagel that just turned to sand in my mouth, as this was one of our brotherhood. This was one of the people who had gone on these journeys with me. We had slayed dragons. We had faced monsters. We had rescued damsels, and we had formed a brotherhood. And we had felt like we had connected with something. And then there I was at fifteen, and I was standing on a balcony with my dad. And I was just telling him, "I just don't know if I can go through this anymore." I was so cynical. "I just don't know what it's worth. I don't get it. I don't know what we're doing here. I don't know what this planet is. It's for rent. You know, like, what am I doing? I feel like I'm in a Tron light cycle, and I'm racing with my friends inside of a giant machine, and we're trying to beat each other and cut each other off just to get jobs." And this is the way I was looking at the future. I'm trying to get myself into university. "Who can get in there?" It's like, "Why do I even wanna do this? What is the point? Why don't I just pitch myself over the railing right now?" He talked me down from that ledge. And I carried with me this feeling of darkness. And it kept creeping back in on me. But I did have this imagination and this feeling that when I played role-playing games, there was something in the pain that my characters would go through that wouldn't stay with me. It was just in the game. Why was that? Why did I not mind the pain in the game, but in reality, it was so prevalent? It was so intense. And so, using my imagination, I thought, Well, why don't I role-play my own suicide? I didn't act it out. And I don't mean it in that way. I mean, in my mind, in my thoughts, like what would it be like if I just let everything go and just let go of all this intensity and let go of all these things that are haunting me because every time I was just getting upset. I was just getting anxious. And so I made a decision that day. "I'm committing suicide. I'm done. I'm finished. And I'm just gonna stick around to see what would've happened after." And I'm standing before you here today, having manipulated myself. So that the next day when I woke up, I actually felt a lot lighter. And I walked up to that girl that I wanted to ask out, and I asked her out, and I went up to the bully in our tennis team who kept correcting how I was playing. And I told him, "Let the coach coach me. Stop riding me." And, you know, I also had to come clean with some of my friends. And I remember really clearly deciding, all right. And I went to a couple of different friends of mine, each on my own. And I said to them, "You know, remember I told you about that girl that I got together with last summer at camp? Well, I didn't, and actually, I'm still a virgin." And it was really hard to do these things, but I started to feel lifted. And I had used my imagination to bring me to a new place. And role-playing stayed with me. It was always a place I could come back to. And I did when things got difficult, especially when I had a few long-term relationships. And in one of them, I just decided and said to her, "Look, let's get married. We don't have to get married like for real, but let's get married, you and I. Let's make our own vows. Let's commit not to leave each other. Let's commit not to walk out the door. Let's figure it out. Let's hash it out. Let's figure out what's going on—why I'm always trying to win in the relationship, and I'm hurting you. And I don't like that, and I don't want that anymore. And I wanna figure it out." And you know what? We got married for a year, and we renewed that vow for another year. And we stayed together for three years. We made it work, and we worked it out, and we played it out. And when it didn't work anymore, it didn't, and we let it go. And it was okay. We were okay. She left, and she found love. And I left, and I found love. And she's still sitting here with me in my life twenty-one years later. And you know, I've been trying to figure out how can I share this experience of role-playing and using our imagination in a positive way to uplift ourselves and to move forward in our lives. And so I wrote a book. It's called the Teacher-Gamer Handbook, and I just want everyone to have it—adults, teachers, gamers, psychologists, educators, social workers, community leaders. These are all people that could benefit from this. But the real people who benefit from it are the kids. The kids who are trying to make their way in the world who don't have tools or who don't know how to imagine or use their tools of imagination to move themselves forward when they face tragedy, when they face upset, when they face heartbreak, when they face their identities, and they try to work through their pasts and their futures. So I just want to share the joy and the gift that I've had of figuring this out. I feel like I'm very serious right now, but I wanna say to you that there's so much freedom that I found in it and fun and play and risk-taking. And there's so many things that are creative about it that I just wanna share. And I took a really big risk myself actually, working in a public school, working in a very official environment—I brought meditation into the school. But I didn't ask if I could do it. I just did it. This was in an inner-city school in Canada, where the retention rate was 50%. So one out of two people by the end of the year dropped out of this school. And so, I just taught my students how to meditate and how to bring it into their lives so that they could just ground themselves and get to work and find a way to connect with themselves. And they did. They connected with themselves. They found a way to empathize with each other and the world around them. And they developed skills—life skills—and they went into their lives, and they started to crush it. And the retention rate of the school went up to 80%. Yeah, we quadrupled how many students were actually staying in the school. And actually, from taking that risk, I got hired by a prominent globally recognized school—Green School. And that's how I got to this place where we are. And I just want to be able to share that commitment, the commitment that I have to try and move education into a new realm of using our imagination. And that's risky because as an intellectual and as an academic, I know that people don't always appreciate imagination. They want to keep it really straight. They wanna keep it really straightforward. And I struggle with that. I try to figure it out because it's tricky. How do you bring imagination into school and make it legit? And I want that to be something that people can try. And so, I commit myself to bringing role-playing games into schools worldwide. I don't know how it's gonna go, but I'm gonna do my best. And you can count on me for it. Thank you.

I feel trapped. I can't breathe. My stomach! Hi, I'm Felicia. I'm a leader. I do not always feel like a leader, though. I was appointed to a leadership team within an organization, and it was so much fun getting there. I might know a couple things about success. I'm from an overachiever family. For example, keeping my focus, an eye on the ball. My father - pro ballplayer, being results-oriented and sticking the landing. Sister - gymnast - agility and strength. Brother - wrestler - discipline and dedication. Me - professional ballet dancer. Now we can't forget the most important person of all, the one that keeps us together with love and care—our chauffeur mom. These fundamental values given to me at a young age are all a recipe for success. And all I wanted to do when I got to leadership was dance. But when all of the successes were off, there was this overwhelming force that came over me, and it all came tumbling down. "Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. I have so many ideas." "But Felicia, not too many ideas." "Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. I put my heart and soul into this, and I killed it." "Great, Felicia, but do you really want credit for that? Nobody else does. Why don't you just go do what all the other leaders are doing?" "Go be friends with this person, but not this one." "Go and do this, but not this." Is everyone telltale-ing on each other? I'm surrounded by fact-checkers. Do don't do don't everything. It's getting dark. My light—it's dimming. My motivation gone. My creativity gone. Now the catalyst. Let me set the stage. Multi-millionaire, big house, big desk, small me, small chair. I go to him with a problem about another leader's abusive behavior. "Felicia, I've known this person for a really long time. Are you sure you want to stay on leadership?" "What? Yeah, no. Yeah. He just threatened me." His desk just got bigger and my chair smaller. "Felicia, leaders. They don't create problems. They make them go away. "Huh?" I think he's . . . Yeah, he's showering me with semantics now. "Felicia, you need to learn how to fly above the fray and not let anything bother you." Wow. That day I was in complete and utter astonishment that a guru in personal development, mind you, had no care for my thoughts and my feelings, let alone be in alignment with his teachings. Teachings that I spent hours upon hours on. I played a critical role in his organization. I sold his products. I vouched for him and the company. Whew. It took courage to do what I was doing, and it was not acknowledged. I was angry. Was I being bamboozled? Was he a sham? Because if he was a sham, what does that make me? I'm a person of my word. I feel trapped. Every time I speak, the wind is taken outta me. I'm sick. I can't do this. Shortly after I stepped down from leadership, I thought that I could still do the business and be successful, but that just was not the case. But only if I could push, and push, and push through the bullshit, it would all be okay. I felt completely and utterly loony. What was wrong with me? Why didn't I want it? But you know what I really wanted? To be in alignment with who and what I was—a good fricking person. So I left success and money behind me. And I did it by keeping my focus on my values, which is my end result with the strength to say, "Fuck you" to a multi-millionaire while driving through life with integrity—chauffeur smart. I found my power of choice. I found me. I feel grounded, at peace and in alignment. I learned a great lesson. I learned that all I needed was right here inside me. My family values were more important to me, more valuable to me than anything a guru could ever teach me. I finally feel like a leader. Thank you.

So there I am, leaning over the glass counter at the deli section of the grocery store, and it hits me—my first contraction. A tornado begins to spiral in my womb and a pain I can only describe as being trampled by wild animals in a stampede. I am hit with a wave of orgasmic energy, and I look up, and I can see and hear and smell and sense everything. I am like a psychic mama deer in a tornado, in a stampede on ecstasy. And as I look through the crowd, I see this one woman. She comes right towards me. She's present, she's clear, she's bright, vibrant. And she walks right up to me, and she says, "Are you gonna have a baby?" I say, "Yes." She says, "When?" "Now!" "Can I touch you for good luck?" "Of course." We grab hands, and I look in her deep, rich, dark eyes—cornrow hair, dark chocolate skin. And she holds my pale white hand. Two conscious present women just marveling at the experience or the miracle really of birth. Life. "Good luck," she says. Yeah, I was gonna need some of that because, you see, this was not the plan. I was not supposed to be going into labor a month early at the grocery store while my girlfriend is buying sandwiches. My husband is not supposed to be at a job interview in New York City. My midwife is supposed to be delivering a home birth in the canyon—canyon views, nature, birthing tub on the patio, crackling fire. Yeah. And now that I'm a month early, legally, she can't do that. So we call my backup doctor at the hospital, and he says, "Okay, keep her somewhere close in town for the early labor. And when she's dilated, bring her in." So on the way to my girlfriend's apartment, as I am tornado-ing and moaning in the car, I remember the words of my midwife in birthing school. "Having a conscious birth is your birthright. To choose how to bring in life from the immaterial to the material. But remember," she said, "man makes plans, God laughs. Trust and surrender." This was surrender time. We get to the apartment. I drop on all fours. My midwife comes in. Three girlfriends. I look up, and I'm surrounded by a circle of women. They put me in a warm bathtub, and my midwife says, "Okay, Amara, this is the part where you open. So I want you to focus on your baby. And when the pain comes instead of pulling back, lean in instead." Okay. So I'm in the tub, and a sort of life review begins—a sort of inner schooling. I remember moments from my childhood. I begin to make amends, accept apologies. Yes, yes. And I prepare myself to be the mother that I need and I want to be. And as I embrace that openness and become one with the vortex, forty minutes later, I feel my son's head make contact with my pelvic bones. Boom. I look at my midwife, and I say, "Well, you told me to open." She feels me and says, "Oh my God, she's crowning. Get her to the hospital now." I just wanna stay in the tub, but she could lose her license. So we gotta go. They pull me up out of the tub, throw me in a pair of pjs that my girlfriend had worn two years earlier when she was giving birth to her baby. They grab a bag of groceries or handbags, a boombox, and into the car we go. Driving down the road. Five minutes flat to the hospital. We open the door. The emergency room. They get a wheelchair. Put me in it. I enter the field of the hospital. Bright lights, nurses coming at me, trying to get me to fill out forms, registration. Wounded people in the emergency room looking at me in horror. "What happened to her?" says one guy. "She's having a baby." "Good God!" They wheel me into the elevator. I get into a quiet room. And now I am a psychic mama deer in a tornado, in the epicenter of the stampede, on ecstasy, and now on fire. I'm like 300 degrees. My girlfriends are sweating. How can anyone even be this hot? And I rip off my shirt. I squat down, and I let out a lion's roar. Waaaaaa! I think I can deliver this baby myself. The nurse comes in, and she says, "You'll have to wait. Your doctor's not here." "Wait? I'm crowning. I can't. I can't. I can't." They put me on a table. They strap me with a heart monitor, and I hear the sound of medical clinking metal equipment coming into the room. An intern walks in, sits down between my legs. She's like thirteen years old. And I look at the nurse, and I say, "I want my doctor." She says, "He's not here yet." "Then I want my midwife." "She's not allowed." "I want my husband." "I don't know where he is." "I want drugs." "It's too late for that." And all I can think is I can't. I can't. I can't. And I begin to wail. I am inconsolable. I don't know if I'm breathing or birthing. I'm confused. I'm lost. I'm panicking. I'm afraid. My doctor walks in ten minutes later, pushes the intern aside, sits down. He looks at me. He looks at the heart monitor. He looks at everyone in the room, and he says, "Amara, the baby's stuck. His heart rate's dropping. If you don't get him out on the next contraction, I'm gonna pull him out by force." I think. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know what this means. Metal forceps coming in and grabbing a hold of my child's head. Pulling on his little neck and spine. No. Cutting my perineum. Blood. Stitches. No, no, no, no. My midwife leans in and whispers in my ear, "Amara. This is it. Be present and focus on your child. You can do this." And so I tune in with my son, and I'm saying, "Okay, okay honey, this is it. This is it." I can feel him. He's cramped. He's squished. He's hot. He's thirsty. He just wants out. "Are we doing this or not? What's happening?" "Yes, this is it. We're doing it. We're doing it. I'm sorry about the . . . it's confusing. It's complicated. "We're going. We're going now." Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And as the next wave comes, the room suddenly fills with thousands and thousands of little golden Buddhas. Ahhh! And as I bear down to give birth to my child, all the little golden Buddhas they go like this ...... The universe was with me, birthing with me. Out my baby comes onto my chest. I look at him, and I am looking into the eyes of Source. Source is looking back at me. This is what we are. My girlfriends cut the cord. Placenta comes out. Everything's cool. And the nurse comes over to take my son. And I know what she's thinking because I'm psychic. She wants to take him away to do unthinkable things in this moment of trust, at this most profound moment in our lives. To cut him and inject him and leave him abandoned, looking at the fluorescent lighting. I reach over. I grab her hand, and I say, "Take your hand off my baby." Mama deer becomes tiger mama. I step up off the table. I'm naked with my child. And everyone in the room gasps. I walk over to the boombox. Background music my girlfriend had been playing, and I turn it up. And the song that happens to be on is Hare Krishna by Krishna Das. And so I begin to dance around the room with my son. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare Hare. Everyone backs up. And I am so happy. One of the nurses in the corner, she grabs the phone. "Yeah, she's doing that bonding thing. Yeah. We're not gonna be able to take him. No, no, no. It's not gonna happen." My girlfriend from the grocery store, she pulls out a bottle of champagne and chocolate cake, and we have a party. The nurses eventually warm up. They come over to me, and they ask, "What was it like?" They had never seen a natural unassisted birth in their career. Never. Not one. I told them about the psychic mama deer and the vortex and the stampede and the ecstasy. And my doctor comes over. He looks at my child. Five pounds, five ounces perfectly healthy. Legs off the charts. "He's small. You're small. Your husband's small. It's okay. He's fine." I'm alone in a room resting. And I'm looking at my precious son, his little head fitting in the palm of my hand. He's waiting for something, and I know what it is. And then his head just turns towards the door, and in walks Daddy. Yeah, he's psychic too. Daddy picks him up. And in these last moments before he falls asleep, Source meeting Source, they bond, connect. And he takes him in his arms as he falls asleep. My husband looks at me, and he says, "Honey, you look great. How was it?" That day, behind the fear and the doubt and the story that says, I can't, I can't do this, I can't, I found my I can. And I'll tell you this. Man makes plans, God doesn't laugh. God smiles. Thank you.

So I'm thinking about getting a nose job. I just wanna look more Jewish. I'm gonna make it bigger. I had a breakup, and my grandma called. I was crying. She was like, "Honey, it's time we get you a nose job. "What?" "Find you a husband." "What?" "I mean, it's not very attractive to wake up next to a giant schnoz like that, Alicia? Hmmm?" "Grandma, ouch. I mean, if a husband is what we're going for, wouldn't a boob job be more effective? Or a blow job or a day job—that'd be less invasive." So it's 2015. And I'm about to perform these opening lines for my brand new standup comedy show, The Oy of Sex, at the Hollywood French festival. And something weird is happening. They're delaying the show because it's so sold out. They're actually lining the stage with audience members. As I get on, they cue the music. I do my show. "Hi. So I'm thinking about getting a nose job . . ." And it goes amazing. I kill it. People leave having grown and laughed and cried. And I have an amazing time afterward. This woman pushes through the crowd. She's got cat-eye glasses, and she says, "Phenomenal show, Alicia. I'm a producer, and I'm taking you off Broadway." I go home. I get into my ritual postshow bath, and I am riding high. I'm thinking, you know, sure. I've performed around the world. Sure. I've won a bunch of awards, but now I think it's finally happening. Like I think, this is it. And I flash back to a few months before. I'm on the operating table. I am having my eggs harvested and frozen—pushing snooze on my biological clock. Just hoping that my career takes off before I have a family. And this anaesthesiologist says, "Okay, Alicia." He hooks me up with morphine, and he says, "Can you count back from ten for me?" "Okay. Ten, nine, eight, you're cute. . ." Flash forward. Four, three, two, one . . . Happy New Year. It's December. I'm in Big Sur, California. I am floating nude in a hot tub, overlooking a cliff, watching shooting stars fall into the Pacific Ocean. And this painfully handsome British man leans over, and says, "Happy New Year. I'm Colin." "Colin?" "Colin." "Colin, ha ha ha ha!" And for the next like several hours, we just start to banter back and forth—very high-level witty banter. And we're giggling, and we're sharing stories of life-altering medicine journeys, and Advaita gurus, and world travel. And oh! Colin just says, "I'm very impressed you're taking a show off Broadway. What's it about?” "Um . . .Inner peace. Love. Sex." . . . "Really?" That's when he leans in. He caresses my face. He kisses me, and Korea just starts to rumble up my spine as his hands sweep through the water toward my yoni. And I just give in to the absolute bliss of Esalen Institute. Thank you. This is what I came here for. For the next week, Colin and I are just being totally inappropriate in the tubs every night. One night at dinner, we're eating spaghetti, and he just in like the best possible move of comedy and romance in combination, he takes one long piece of spaghetti. He places one end in his mouth and one end in mine, and just bit by bit, we go full lady and the tramp, and my heart is a flutter. I can't believe this is happening. Is this really happening? Like, can I actually have this? I dunno if I can have this. I freeze. And that old fear of loss just starts to haunt me. And I just breathe through the fear because it's so good. I don't wanna miss this. And I just say, "Yes, I can have this. Yes, I can." And Colin, oh my God, he's amazing. He's a massage therapist in Argentina. And he says that he actually just got a job offer in California. Like he might move here. So two days later, he flies back to Buenos Aires. I fly to New York for my show, and we're sending love notes across the globe. And then our calls start to taper off. And I realize I was just a post-divorce fling. And I have by this point in my life done mountains of therapy, meditation, healing my inner child work. I have traveled solo throughout India. I have tasted moments of nondual awakening but, no matter what I try, nothing works, and it just hurts. And I'm single again. Flash forward to New York. It's opening night. We have the premier. They cue the music. I come out. I kill it. People laugh and cry and grow. All of our hard work has paid off, and it feels really good. Afterward, I take the train uptown to 72nd street. I'm missing Colin. That's mainly what I'm thinking about. I get in the postshow ritual tub. And I check my belly in the mirror, and I'm carrying into the tub like literally a bucket of chocolate malt balls with me. I flip on the music and, of course, it's this song “I'm so tired of being alone. I'm so tired of on my own. Won't you help me?” And I just start bawling. And then I spiral further into the rumination, into the misery around my career. And I think, you know, people get really excited when they hear I'm a comedian. They go, "Oh my God, you know what you should do? You should do a show about . . . mmm . . . spirituality." "Oh, you know, you should talk about white fragility." "Oh, you know, you should talk about the pandemic, you know, tell the truth, you know, the truth." Whatever that is! "The truth." And whenever people say, "Oh my God, you know what'd be so funny . . ." or they wanna pay me to write a script or a show, like on the outside I'm like, "Oh yeah, that would be totally fun. That's awesome." And on the inside, I just cringe. And I’m just like, oh no, I can't. I can't. I just can't be funny on command. Can't do it. I don't know why, but it's really frustrating to watch all the people I started with get on TV and just not have the kind of conventional success that I dreamt of as a kid. And after eighteen shows in New York, nothing comes of it. No new booker, no new manager, no agent, no Netflix special. And I just start to wonder, like, Maybe I'm not good enough. And some part of me just gives up, which in a way is really freeing. A year later, I'm doing the show for some friends in Bali, and we have a lot of fun, and I'm just doing it for fun. That night I go home alone. Again, I get into the postshow bath. I'm missing whoever I'm missing when there's a knock at the door. Two people who were at the show saw me leave alone. I don't really know them, but they bust the door open. They sweep me onto the couch, and they hold me in a tight embrace for the next hour. Robin and Ben are sharing love, and appreciations, and care. And their wisdom just breaks my big tender heart open. And Robin looks me straight in the eye. And she says, "Alicia, you know, you're not just a comedian, right? You're also a priestess. You're like a badass comedy tantrika. I see the goddess moving through you and awakening that entire audience. I see it. You know, after the goddess performs her magic, she needs to return to the temple for replenishment." "You know, I'd really like to be replenished with some money and success." "Alicia, just go talk to the goddess." So after they leave, I climb back in the tub. I light the requisite candles and incense. I play the requisite flute music, and I speak to the invisible comedy goddess in the air. And I plead with her. "Goddess. I have not been honoring who I am, what I provide, and what is flowing through me. Please show me your will for me." Just then the candles flicker. The music stops. And the goddess of comedy speaks to me . . .like in my head. A . . . LI . . .CIA! Ha ha. Just kidding. I'm the god of the comedy. Come on! "Write this down, so you can speak it. Alicia, other comedians may use me as a means to an end. But for you, that's a betrayal cos you're here to wake up. That's what you get to do. You don't get to control how your career goes. You just get to enjoy the ride." I don't wanna be forced. I wanna be invited, discovered, savored, known. "I wanna trick you into seeing every painful truth, feeling every sensation and emotion, and then transcending it all. I want all of you from the broken down, cracked out miserable parts to the dancing night rainbow parts. Baby, I wanna make you rich in spirit, but only, only after I have tied you up and teased you and knocked you down on your knees, so you are begging me to chop off your head to slay every last thought of disconnection, untruth, and disease till you are worshiping me with uncontrollable orgasmic laughter. So fuck your little Instagram following, fuck your childish attempts to impress and seduce with your cleverness because what's on offer is so much bigger. And guess what? You don't even need to be healed to be funny. You just need to welcome everything as it is right here now cos this is it. And welcome all of these people—these miraculous precious beings—into your temple. Nothing to fix, nothing to prove, nothing to become. This is it. And I hope you enjoy the shit out of it right here now." Thank you.

I'm about four years old. I remember that time. My grandfather woke me up very early every morning, and he'd tell me, "Gede, go and wash your face. We will go soon." After everything is ready, he took the equipment he had—hand knife, dirty rice bag. That was all our equipment every morning. We were going to the jungle and the rice field after that. He leaned down and told me, "Gede, jump on." As a four-year-old kid, he always put me on his back. Sometimes he put me on his shoulders to make me comfortable. As a kid, that's the only dream that kid has. We went into the jungle, played in the mud, played in the water. But that's not how the story will begin. Along the way, we passed many other farmers—young farmers and old farmers. Along the way, my grandfather always told me stories of his life, how he lived, how he struggled to keep the family alive with hard work—physical work. And at that time, I really wanted to know the purpose of him telling me these things. It seems like he wanted to tell me very early. He said I wouldn't always be on his back. And "Life will not be easy for you soon when you grow." And I realized quickly, too, that I will not always be there on his shoulder or on his back. I saw many people working and working at the age of seven years old, eight years old. I know I will be there soon doing those things. And the reason why my grandfather always told me about life, about being strong physically, about working with the hands, about putting everything on the head and being responsible for your family. Time flies so quickly. When I was six to seven years old, all changed. All things turned to me then. Seems like what I'd imagined a few years ago happened very soon. I saw myself needing to wake up every morning. So I realized something very important—why my grandfather always woke me up so early. He wanted to train me to not always depend on people to wake me up. So I got used to waking up every morning so early, taking my hand knife, taking my rice bag. Exactly the same as he did. So as a kid, I went to primary school, and every kid had a bicycle. I asked for the same to my father and my grandfather. The way they treat me is so different. "Gede, you will have that, but you need to do something. I will give you one cow to take care of. And then one day, when you keep and take care and treat this cow well, you can make this cow fat, and we will sell it. And some part will be used to buy your bicycle." So us kids were motivated, fully motivated every time, every morning before going to school—not going too far from home because we are living in the forest in the countryside of our village. So there's so many sources of cow food we can get. I got that cow food, gave the cow food, gave the cow a drink. Of course, speaking a little bit with the cow! I said, "Cow, grow quickly so I can ride my bike by your sacrifice. So now you are my boss because I'm sacrificing my time every morning for you. And one day I will sell you to get my bike, so I can go to school with it and save my uniform. So I don't use my feet and wear out my shoes because the time is coming." I have just one hour or forty-five minutes to get the food. You know why I must go that early in the morning? Because when I'm back from school, I'm not doing the same as many other kids in my village. There are two parts to the village. There is the center. And then the outside of the village or the countryside. I'm not one of the kids who lives in the center with a parent who can provide everything because tourism has come since the 1960s to our historical village. So I'm living behind the door, born from a low-class farmer. So that's how it goes. After I'm back from school, I need to take off my uniform very quickly. My mom says, "Gede, you know where your father's working?" "No. Where, Mom?" "In the corner of the village, two kilometers from here. Change your clothes. Run. Help your dad." I even didn't get lunch. You know what my father's job is? He's Spiderman. He's a coconut climber and harvester since a very early age, like me in my story. Every day of his life, he climbs many coconut trees on people's land and property. Drops the coconuts. And then my role is after school I bring some food for him. We have lunch together there. And then the new story begins. So my role is to collect all the coconuts he drops with his friend from the trees. Picking them up one by one and then putting them in a place where he orders. The job is not done yet. The place where we harvest the coconuts is almost three or four kilometers inside the jungle. And then in my village, there were no highways as we were an old village. So they parked four kilometers away. And then the next job is to collect those coconuts and carry them to the truck. Don't be shocked, guys. Now you realize why I'm not tall like you guys. I got pinched a lot by coconut grass in my head and on my shoulders. So night comes. In that time, I wasn't sleeping with my parents. Our house has a very small space, and we don't have so much room. We have several rooms and a kitchen with a fire stove, still using a wood fire. And it burns every night to keep us warm. I was sleeping with my grandfather in the kitchen. So we took the coffee wood every afternoon and burned it, as coffee wood gives constant fire and warmth for the room. And then, every night before we slept, he always put his right hand on my forehead and started the story to forget the big day we had—all the work we'd done. So he always told me about how to struggle in life, how to keep my spirits up, how to keep motivated. "Look straight, find what you want to reach in life." But in the same time, I always said to my grandfather, "I'm a young and small kid, seven years old to eight years old. I'm a normal kid." I'd compare myself to every other kid in the village. Some other kids had good bicycles. When they went back home, they played with marbles. They played other things. They played what we call Tactic or they used sticks made from wood. I'd ask my grandfather, "Why are you forcing me to work? Why are my parents forcing me to work?" I know that it's with a good purpose. But you know how he replied? He holds me by my forehead strongly, and he said, "Gede, don't blame anybody for what you feel now. Don't regret any of it and how life treats you hard today. It will impact you in your future. Maybe you are not as lucky as other kids today not having what they have got easily. You're doing hard work since an early age. And that will have a very good impact. You are the one who will carry on this family in the right way. You will be strong in your knees and carry all the problems of this family on your back. And you are the one who will be changing the family situation in the future." And that same conversation day by day, every night the same. When I'm complaining those words are coming. Until one day, I stopped complaining and just did it because I know that they're coming every time. And I know that's for the good of me. He always said, "Life is a mystery. When I'm gone, you will grow. And you will realize and say thanks when I'm in heaven." That he always said, every time we went to sleep. Time flies. 2011. I graduated from the Vocational School of Tourism—amazing for a kid living somewhere with no phone, nothing. Just playing with the cow, speaking with the cow every day. Sometimes I met my friend just for a few minutes before my grandfather called me. "Gede, take a shower in the river. Don't speak with your friend. We have something to do." So I had all those plans in my mind of how to escape from this situation and change my family life. By going to Denpasar. You know, it's not the USA. It's not Europe. But it was a big thing for me at that time. So I say, 'Denpasar.' It's my European version. You know why? Because the kids living in the forest, in the countryside of the village, in the same situation as me were thinking of going to Denpasar because it's the capital where all the money is, where all the hotels are, where we can get sources of living to change our family life. But new things are coming. I'm facing two big problems. How to go. And my mom's permission. Normally other parents will say, go, but in this case, I'm Balinese, and I don't have a brother or sister in this family. So I'm the only young guy. I have a cousin, but he married early and never went to school. Actually, he stopped going to school. So I am the one who graduated well in that time. And my mom always said, "There are so many fields to work in the village. Why do you need to go to Denpasar? There are so many people can get jobs around here. Why you need to go there?" I know the reason why my mom said those things. Not to hold me from going or stopping me from escaping from this village. She wanted me to stay with her. She had a big fear. That the only one son she has, who will be responsible for the family, will leave her and maybe a fear of the city because she never went. She was uneducated. And she was thinking I would lose my way in friendship. Maybe take drugs or have to get married early because of a mistake with a woman. That often happens now in Bali. But I said to my mom, "This is my dream. I want to chase my dream, changing our family situation." And then suddenly, a few days later, I get a call from my friend Made, which changed all the story. He called me in the morning. "Gede, you still want to go to Denpasar?" I said, "What?" "I will go in two days. Are you in?" Okay. Now the real challenge is coming. What I needed to say. And I said to Made, "I will use my gentle voice with her. I will go." And I said to Made immediately, "Yes, I will go." Stepping up to my mom's room, she sits in conversation with my dad. And I said, "Sorry, I'm interrupting. Mom, this is gonna be the last conversation we have about this argument. A friend called me, and I need to go to Denpasar in two days. All the papers required, all my clothes are ready. I will go." My mom looked me in tears, and she said, "Okay, I cannot hold you back anymore. If that's your dream, as long as you can keep yourself safe, you can go." And the tears story is coming. Everybody knows we are coming from the low-class of farmers, but the good thing is we are really good in family relations. I didn't have money to help my friend to buy the petrol. So my mom took her small savings from her candy box to give to me. My auntie gave money to me. My uncle came giving some money. And then my grandfather gave me some money. And the one who's strong and the tough guy in the family, my dad, which I never expected. He was crying. Yes. He always treated me hard, like, "Gede, don't let that go. Take that, do that." But in that time, he's crying. In that moment everybody gave me a big responsibility by giving that money. And I believe in their mind, "This guy will change the family and give that money back in a different amount." I carry that responsibility as I have all the basics; I'm strong after working, have good shoulders to carry any problem. A top childhood taught me to be strong in my personality, strong in mentality and physically, to hold any problem, to carry any problem. Finally, we went to Denpasar. Lively. Not that friendly yet. For a jungle kid, it's not easy to get a job in the city. We needed a connection, someone we knew. Trying from one hotel to the other hotel. The power of patience. They refused in many places. And I said, "No problem, Made. We will try." Made always complained like, "Oh Gede. This is so hard. Let's go back to the village." "Wait, we sacrificed so much to come here. We had so many arguments before we came here." And then one day a friend called me, another friend. "Gede, there is a big company opening recruitment for employees." And I said, "Where?" I wrote by hand and brought my papers. Then Quiksilver, in collaboration with Savrical Bali, built a big store in Nusa Dua and hired me in the warehouse for three months. I worked so hard, and a new recruitment came for a sales promotion boy. I'm climbing. I got that position. I worked so hard. And I got a quick promotion from my boss, but life is still a mystery. Four years seven months, or almost five years. After all those feelings I get in the city, I feel this is my life. I got friends. I got money. I paid off debts of my mom's from the lender by sending money every month. But June 2015, everything began. I think this is the reason why my mom never liked me going to Denpasar. I got a call from my dad. My mom had a big problem with her health. And I'm the only one guy. Like he said, I will be responsible. Like my grandfather said, I will be responsible for the family. In that time, I'm facing the biggest decision of my life. What do I need to do now? I'm happy with my life in the city. You can imagine for a young kid who went from jumping to seeing clubs, many women from other regions. I did not see them a lot in my jungle. Honestly! I saw so many Australian girls. I was even working with them. Listen to my language. You can imagine where I could find them in my jungle! So this is a big problem at that time. These are the people I love most is the problem. There is no other woman I love more than my mom with all that she sacrificed for me. I need five months to think. I don't sleep well. My work capacity is going down. My boss asked me "What happened, Gede?" I said, "My mom is sick. I love my job, but I love my mom." So finally, with the support of my friends, they said, "Anytime you want to come back, the door of this store is always open." So I decided to go back to my mom. And then I imagined since I've been in the city, I needed to prepare myself to go back to that jungle, but that's not hard for me. It will not be so hard. That's where I began my childhood. I went back to the village. Everybody looked at me with my new Quiksilver T-shirt, Ripco shorts, Havaianas sandals. And you know what? Some Balinese joke with us when we're back from Denpasar. "Hey, boss, when you go back?" "No, I'm not going back. I will stay. My mom is sick." The first week was so hard. What to do? I'm here. All my skills don't work here. I tried to find a job nearby. That's still hard. Everybody's got the same problem as me. So one day I'm standing in the big door to the village when a guy from Holland approached me. His name is Harold. "Hey, young man. Can you tell me what is behind this door? I see just a jungle. Is it a cemetery?" "No, that's where I live. If you think that's a cemetery, I'm a zombie. "You wanna come in to check?" "Yeah, I'm interested. I want to see." I said to him, "You will like this place. The center is just eight hectares, and the rest is nine hundred hectares, sir. We have rice fields. We have people weaving. We have people making baskets." And in that time, he told me, "You are doing a good explanation, and you have such good English. Where did you learn?" "I practice. I never did a course or anything. Even listening to something in bed is so hard." So I said to him, "What do you think?" "You can do something with it if, as you say, you don't have job." So this is what my grandfather said. Life is a mystery. So I started thinking about what Harold said and then created something, which I'm still doing today. So I built a trekking activity which explains all the history of my village, which is the oldest village in Bali. It exists since the eighth century, and then a new mystery appears. So the trek I'm using is the one I used to hold the coconuts, to bring grass on my head for my cow. I'm using that same track today for trekking. So since I was a kid, my grandfather always said, "Life is a mystery. We never know what will happen." So whatever I've done as a kid, I can use for something in the future. So for the trek, normally I'm climbing, I'm working hard, with a heavy weight on my head. Now I'm using it to earn something. I even teach some of the young community to do the same trekking as me, and then we do it. I train them to do the same to earn money, train them in English, build their confidence. And we can do it. We are not just kids in the jungle. We can do something. I'm therefore beekeeping with my cousin in the jungle, which I'm doing today as the next story. And then something happened really big for myself. I was elected to be the Youth Community Leader in my banjar because of all my ideas—everything. I'm not proud of myself for that, but the people are proud with what I'm doing. So I said to them, "I'm not leading you. We will share the direction, how to do everything. I am not a leader who gives you orders. Let's find direction together." So we created something. We created trekking activities speaking a lot about the equality between the outsider and the original who lives in the center. Not all people like me, honestly, because I speak a lot about that. I'm really happy with this thing going well. The honey is going well. I'm helping my cousin with marketing to people that start to come to the jungle, tasting our honey, buying our honey, doing basket workshops, got enough hours coming. And then we never imagined that would come, this big, epic story. For Bali. Everybody in this room knows we got a big hit. We hang on and depend a lot on tourism. I cannot lie about that. So at that moment, I start thinking again. What to do? A few weeks later, my friend from Canada—her name is Suzanne—she often comes to Bali and really loves Bali and been to my bee farm, which I'm developing with my cousin, calls me. Life is a mystery. She tells me, "Gede, I remember your honey has a medication purpose and an old historical Balinese medication with a natural base. Why don't you join with the things I'm creating together with my beautiful friend, Colin, with my inspiring friend, Made, and Steve—Stephen McCluff. And then I said, "Yes, I will join in with your purpose." I went back to my ancestors' village nearby Slove of Monagune, where my grandfather originally came from. Every time I go back there to pray in ceremonies, I see so many people have these hives, these black beehives. So I said to Suzanne, "Yes, I will be involved in this Togetherness Project with the spirit of togetherness and make an income sustain an income for my community in this village and my ancestors' village. I went to Ubud to speak with Steve and Colin and brought some product and put this beautiful stuff in Bags of Hope. The coffee from the north, the recycled bag from North Gianyar. There are some herbs from my friend Futu. They are beautiful weavings—the process of which had been laying down for twenty-five years and woke up because of COVID-19. So we are in the same team with the spirit of togetherness. And then, after a few months working, this thing goes well. Many people came to support and remembered all about our purpose. So this is what I say. Life is full of mystery. We never know when we are doing something hard in the past, it can create something beautiful for our future and supply strong knees, a strong back to hold everything, to show to people that we can. I can feel a togetherness spirit in this room. You are very kind to have me here, and I hope this pandemic will pass soon, and we will meet in a different situation—in a good situation. Let's keep the spirit of togetherness, and let's spread it. Hold each other's hand. The solution is there. Life is good when we are together. Thank you so much. I'm Gede.

I am standing in the foothills of the Himalaya. Blue expansive sky above me. Prayer flags fluttering in the breeze and just above the rhododendron forest, white Nepali mountains. And I'm not gonna see any of it because I can't take another step. My physical body is fine, but finally, the weight of my self-hatred is so heavy that I can't even pick up my leg. Next to me, with love in his eyes, my ex-boyfriend. He's just broken up with me because I'm toxic. It's not that I'm mean to him or abusive. He says it's like living with a black hole that all the joy and the happiness has just sucked inside. And I haven't realized that I hate myself. I've wanted to commit suicide for years just to escape the pain that's in my head. But I believe so strongly in reincarnation. I think you just come straight back. I can't even kill myself to escape from this planet. And even though everything is falling apart in my world, I know that I chose this. I chose him leaving me and walking away. You see, two weeks before, I'm in a temple in India. And I am praying. Who am I? I've been reading books by gurus with unpronounceable names. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and they're all saying, "Ask the question, who am I?" And they talk about how we are not our body, and we are not our mind. And I think, Wow, maybe I can go beyond my mind. And so I start to pray. I want to know myself. I want to know myself. And this question comes, "What if your parents think that you're nuts?" I have dreadlocks. I've been barefoot for years. I quit my successful corporate job in advertising five years ago to hang out with shamans in Siberia, monks in Tibet. My parents are kindhearted small-town Scottish Christians. They probably already think I'm pretty far gone. So yes, I want to know myself, even if my parents think that I'm crazy. Who am I? Who am I? Last question. Do you want to know yourself more than you want to be with Nicholas? Nicholas is my love. He's my best friend. He's my teacher. Don't make me choose. And I see those two paths. I see the life with Nicholas, us traveling the world, living in our home in Rishikesh. Maybe having a family. And the other path is just darkness. Where does that go? The path of knowing myself. Who am I fooling? And yet I know this is the only chance I ever have to be happy. I return to my prayer. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I am praying with every fiber of my being, every cell of my body. I've never wanted anything more than I want in that moment. Who am I? And then nothing. There is a void. There is not even an eye to experience a void. And it's not the kind of nothing where everything stays the same after. It's the kind of nothing where everything changes. Later I discover this experience, which isn't an experience, is called Sunyata. The void. Emptiness. And after an eternity, there is an eye again, observing a void. And then my mind scrambles back. What just happened? What just happened? Did I just die? Did my dad just die? Did Nicholas just die? What just happened? What just happened? And even though I am freaking out, something inside of me knows my question was answered, and I just experienced the truth. And so I returned to Rishikesh excited to share with Nicholas this powerful spiritual experience I've had. And he dumps me. And I know that this is leading me on my path of knowing myself, but it doesn't help that twenty-nine-year-old little girl who's just lost her home and her life and her beloved. And I take myself to Lumbini where the Buddha was born. And I lock myself in meditation boot camp. From four o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night, I am in constant presence and meditation in a tiny Tibetan temple with a monk banging a drum and chanting deep dark Mahakala Pujas, the destroyer of the ego. It's dark, and there's yak butter lamps and paintings of the Buddha's life on the temple walls. And I sit there for days and weeks. And after a while, I see my self-hatred. I see that monster and that beast, and I know that I've created it. I'm this tiny little girl with a candle. And it has fangs, and it's snarling. And it can destroy me at any moment. I've got no idea what to do. And I just back away from it. And the beating of the drum from the monk, it's like it starts to beat from inside of me. And I start to feel my heart coming back on line. And from that place, I look at the stories I've been telling myself about what's wrong with me, about why I hate myself and I trace them back. And they're just stories cos I can see from this place that nothing is true. And I get to a story where I am six years old in the playground in Scotland, and Allison and Emily are standing over me. "You're ugly. No one likes you. No one wants to be your friend. Your mom's English." And I think they must be right because no one wants to be my friend, and I am a crybaby. And this continues for six years. Every break, every lunch, I'm running away from them, or I'm locked in the toilet with my feet up on the toilet seat so they can't find me. And I grow into an adult believing what they're telling me is truth. That no one will ever love me. That I am broken. And I put on masks, hoping that other people can't see inside—thinking if I hate myself, no one else will need to hate me. And with this monk beating the drum and from this experience I've had in India, I realize these girls who said these things to me, they were kids. They were just kids. And I remember they had big brothers and sisters who were probably saying that to them. And, of course, I can forgive them. Of course I can just let it go because it's not true. But I realize I did the same thing. I took that hatred and that bullying home. And I did the same thing to my little brothers, and I bullied them and I was so cruel to them, and so mean to them. Can I ever forgive myself for that? And as I ask the question, I realize that I'm stroking my hair. Yes, I can forgive myself for this. I am forgiving myself for this. And I realize every single part of me, everything I've experienced, is worthy of love. All of it. And what I didn't know then that I know now is I needed to be covered in those paper cuts. So I could sit in front of other people who've been stabbed and say to them, "You are worthy of love. You can get through this. You can forgive this. You can let this go." And they know that it's true because they see in my eyes that I've been through hell and escaped and that now I'm happy. And in that temple, I pull the scarf back off my face, and it's packed with golden dragonflies. Out of nowhere, golden dragonflies everywhere. And it's like they're flying all around my head, and they're taking these thoughts out of my brain. And I am free. For the first time in my life, this love is just pouring through my brain, and through my heart, and through my body. And I look down at my heart and, you know, sometimes you just see that little boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, that little pulse. And I thank my heart for always beating for me. I've treated her so badly. I've been so mean to her. I've blamed so much on her, and she's always cheered for me. And I hear my heart say to me, "Who else would I beat for?" Thank you.

As I appear before you, start to notice what impressions begin to form. What does my attire say about me? The sound of my voice, my stature, my skin color? My name is Nadine McNeil. I'm from Jamaica, where I lived until I was sixteen years old. In 1982 I headed off to Ontario, Canada - first time leaving Jamaica - where I would join a private all-girls Catholic school, Holy Name of Mary High School. There were 325 students. Three were black. Tracey, who was born in Canada, who ran track and field, myself, and my Caribbean sister Jackie from Grenada. And we got teased because we had this singsongy voice. Anyway, our fellow students would often ask us, "Did you live in a hut in Jamaica?" or "Did you wear grass skirts?" A couple of years later, I'm living in New York City. Anyone here from New York? Yeah. So it's rush hour. I'm on the D train, and the train is packed, and we're all like this, and we're right up against each other. And I said something to the woman standing next to me, and she goes, "Bitch get off me. Go back to your country where you came on your banana boat." And I went, "Oh shit." Now what was interesting was that woman and I shared a skin color. So, then I began to understand what the term racialism means. Racialism is essentially a softer version of racism, but there are more nuances that are mixed up in it. And so began my story of internalizing, silencing stereotypes, labels, identity. This would continue throughout my life. And even when I worked at the United Nations, an organization whose premise is founded on equality and inclusion, I would meet these statements and these stereotypes and these limiting beliefs. And then, when I would try to share with my colleagues my experience, I'd get about three responses. One would be, "Are you sure you heard correctly?" The other one would be, "Nah, that's not what they meant." The third one would be, "They must have been joking." So I was gaslit up the yin yang. You know, coming from Jamaica - I'm an only child - I was raised by two married parents. And up until that point, moving to Canada and then New York, I identified with my high school where I lived. The values my parents instilled in me were study hard, work hard, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And for God's sakes, don't get pregnant out of wedlock. So, here we are, 2020 living while black, and we're still having these conversations. There's a tendency to be uncomfortable about having the conversations, but how do we defy, dismantle the stereotypes without the conversations? Yes, I am a Black woman. Sometimes I'm angry. Other times I'm sad. My heart breaks that we're still having this conversation one hundred years after the abolition of slavery . . . or more. So my call to action standing here before you is that we start to pause. Think about the labels that we identify ourselves with, the assumptions we make based on what people look like. Nadine McNeil educated in Canada, the United States, and Europe. My CV arrives across your desk. And then I come through the door. "Oh shit. How do I put these two things together?" This is what happens when we fall into the danger of a single story. A Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, talks about this. And she says the danger of the single story is not so much that it's inaccurate. It's the fact that it's incomplete. So we see someone, we make some decisions and assumptions about that person. We treat that person on that basis, and we've lost a whole opportunity to learn so much more. My repeated experience, no matter where I've lived in the world, is that ultimately we all want to be seen, heard, and loved. Thank you very much.

So I would like to share a story with you today about power. And this what you can see - it's not that I'm nervous. It's because my yoni is on fire. But it hasn't been like that always. So I let her now speak. When I was twenty-two, I ended up in Nepal meeting a guru. I was innocently devoted and dedicated to be the pure tool for good, so I could serve and heal, and I would say, to save this world. How dangerous that can be. So the first day I arrived there, I was taken to his room. And first, his assistant said, "You need to be cleared, so you can work with him." And how was that? I was put onto the bed. He had his hands choking my neck, and he fucked me like a rabbit. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have anyone there. And no one actually knew where I was because I was told to not say where this sacred pilgrimage would take place. During that month, as much as I had experienced this hardcore abuse, rape, control, and manipulation, in the same time, I had experienced the beauty of the stupa and the people praying there, living in the Buddhist temple, hearing the sound of the gongs. So it was confusing to me. I went back to Czech. I made it home, but I was destroyed. And there was a moment which was, for me, was the turning point, when I saw another sister was beaten. When another sister was yelled at. When another sister was disempowered. And so I knew in the moment when I was facing death, after not sleeping the whole night as I was cleaning his flat, and I was driving back to my unit, and I fell asleep, and I woke up, and the truck was in front of me. I knew I will either die or I have to get out. It wasn't easy, but I came out. I fell into a deep depression. I really didn't want to be there. I was devastated. And in that time, I received a blessing from my father, picking me up from my room, looking in my eyes and saying, "I don't know what's happening. I don't know what you need to change but change it. And remember, you are my daughter, and we will never give up." So in the new year under the stars, I said, "Okay, I want to know what a life is. I want to live." And I set myself on a really profound journey. Little did I know what was ahead of me. So not like most people coming here to Bali. With a divine orchestration and profound synchronicities, I came here actually to forget about spirituality. Such a cosmic joke. And I came to study traditional Balinese dance. My child's dream was to just dance. And so I did, and I fulfilled my dream. I danced in a concert in Surabaya. National TV was there. I was in the newspapers. I danced in the exhibition, and I was dancing as a Czech woman traditional Balinese dance. And then I was even initiated by the priest in a small village, close to the waterfall, to that sacred dance to be the vessel for the divine to transmit its message to the tribe. So then I said, "Okay." In another new year, I said, "I want to know what spirituality is. Show me." In a week I met my teacher. And a few months later, I went to my first yoga teacher training. I was doing yoga from four o'clock in the morning. I was eating just raw food, and I was surrounded by epic, amazing human beings who didn't punish me, who weren't screaming at me, who weren't abusing me, who were showering me with so much love. And I don't know what the space was in that, you know, divine constellation. But there was one night when in the Anahata Resort, I went down to my room and I just laid down and boom, suddenly I entered the space, the dimension, where I knew myself in all there is. And I knew myself as that profound nothing. And then coming back, I witnessed the formation of this beautiful body. Like, wow, such a miracle. And I took that breath, and here I was again. But different. Something had changed. I didn't have any clue what just happened. I went back up to have dinner, and I was speaking to one of my teachers, Simon, and I was, you know, trying to put it into words, and he was just looking at me. And I just knew in that moment that he can't meet me there. So from that moment, I was on a high-speed road, like really, really high speed, like the speed of light. And I was like, where is that fan? Like when you're in front of the fan, and everything is shredding away. So I was healing. I was healing, and I was healing. And I just had this love pulsing inside of me. And I didn't have any clue, you know, what to do with it. But then I put it into creating the retreats because I just so felt I wanted to give it to others. Like I wanted others to experience that. So I created the conditions. I created a project called Your Life. So retreats with raw food, yoga, and different healing modalities as I had experienced that magic or miracle through me. Later on, I created a company, which was and still is devoted and dedicated to serve high vibrational plants to bring the health and wealth back into our bodies; to bring back that power into our hands so we can raise and remember that grace. And I saw like, you know, I'm on the purpose. I have nailed it. But there was that like, "Hey, but what about your sexuality?" You know what I'm speaking about? Right? So I dived in. I dived fully with the desire and knowing that I can, you know, experience myself through another and with the desire that I can experience the good with another. So not just that I could, you know, orgasm by myself, I could like pleasure myself, but then to really surrender into the hands of another. So, tick! And little I knew that later on, I will meet another guru, and little I knew that that would be the big initiation to really own and claim that divine power, that holy spirit, THE self, or whatever name you want to put on it as me in all its versions. And really receive myself, receive myself fully with all its shadows, with all its light and turn in to that family inside of me, to that holy child, which is quite epic, bringing me all the way here. Same as that orgasmic place, and the presence through which I can deliver this. And so the last thing. I just saw this quote, and I had to write it down, and it says, "Buddhatvam Yosityonisamasritam." I don't know if I have written it right. It means "Enlightenment is in your yoni." Or like enlightenment is in your sexual organ. So it doesn't matter if it is the yoni or the penis. But I want to inspire you to really dig in. To come down. So then you can REALLY rise up. Thank you.