Confessions of a Recovering Nobody

[Music]

[Applause]

half breed

oreo brown on the outside but white on

the inside

knocked up hoe man face

full of yourself

these are just a few of the labels that

have been slapped onto me like a second

skin

an unwanted tattoo on my soul

and the real power behind these labels

is that i believed them

i started hearing them when i was about

eight

and they were reinforced throughout my

life

at school on the playground at church

and as i got

older in the workplace and when you hear

something about yourself so many times

you start to believe it

and all of those labels combined can

make you feel like a nobody

didn’t always feel like a nobody in fact

i believe that everyone’s default

setting at birth

is that we’re meant to be somebody we’re

bound for greatness

we’re special and unique and we’re

hungry all the time

but somewhere along the way the world

delights in telling us

that our stories our experiences and our

lives don’t matter

and so for a lot of my life i felt that

way

and it wasn’t one big event that made me

feel like a nobody

it actually started pretty innocuously

as otherness

so as a kid we’re given these forms to

fill out

and i remember seeing this for the first

time and it says fill one

circle well my mom is white

and my dad is filipino so i didn’t have

one circle that encompassed both of

those identities

except for that circle labeled other and

as a kid

feeling like an other an outcast it

makes for a really easy leap to feeling

like you’re not as good as the other

kids

and i had friends of all different

backgrounds and they all seem to belong

to relatively homogeneous and clearly

defined circles

but i never knew which one i could or

should claim

and this set a precedent for my entire

life and i knew

i was expected to fit in certain circles

and to check off certain boxes

and i inherently knew that those boxes i

checked

would determine my worth

as a young girl i checked off the victim

box

i was sexually abused by my father for

several years

according to the cdc one in three girls

and one in seven boys will be sexually

abused before their eighteenth birthdays

and more than ninety percent of them

know their abusers

but teenage stacy did not know that and

she did not realize how often this

happened

instead that girl felt completely alone

ashamed embarrassed what would people

think of me if they knew

and even worse than the trauma of the

years of abuse

was how it was handled by church leaders

when my mom went to them seeking advice

she had a really long list of my

father’s wrongdoings

and my abuse was one tiny item on that

list

and they counseled her to forgive him

to not talk about it and to move past it

and this told me that i did not matter

my story didn’t matter

at 16 i checked off another box i got

pregnant as a junior

i very quickly became the gossip of my

small high school good old goose creek

high home of the gators

and i was chronicled in black sharpie on

the bathroom stall door

as a knocked up hoe

i made the painful decision to place

that baby boy for adoption

i graduated a year early and i just

wanted to sweep that whole experience

under the rug the road to becoming a

nobody

continued to pave its way ahead of me

throughout my life

brick upon shame-filled brick and one

brick would tell me i was worthless

and another brick would tell me i’d

never do anything right and another

brick would tell me i wasn’t worthy of

love

and these thoughts manifested into

reality and self-sabotage

so that by the time i was 31 i was a

three-time divorced

three-time college dropout i had lost

custody of my daughter

i was bartending and waiting tables i

was barely making it

and i was raising a son who had just

gotten diagnosed with autism

each month i hoped my food stamps would

last long enough to get me to the next

month

shame does what shame does and it kept

me very quiet and small

it dictated the spaces i could be in it

allowed me to be objectified and

dehumanized in my workplaces by both my

co-workers and patrons and it told me

i deserved this at one of the

restaurants i worked at

i found out all the servers called me

man face behind my back

sorry men imagine

your face the very badge of who you are

being something offensive and something

you should be ashamed of

i felt like a complete nobody and one

night i had a breakdown i was lying on

my bathroom floor crying like who hasn’t

had one of those nights

and i just wanted those tiles to crack

open and swallow me up

the pain from the years of labels was

consuming me

and i needed to do something about it i

desperately

wanted to feel like a somebody but how

do you go

from feeling like a nobody to just

becoming a somebody

well it’s not an overnight process i can

tell you that much just like being a

nobody was

a years of events the long and winding

road of recovery to being a somebody

was also a series of events and even is

in this very moment

a work in progress i started saying and

doing things that felt like something

that somebody would do

so naturally i decided to run a marathon

because

somebody does that

the following year i went back to school

and i finally graduated summa [ __ ] laude

and on that day i felt like a somebody

i started getting involved in my

community volunteering with

organizations whose causes were

important to me

but even with these great things

happening in my life

that nagging voice would still pop up

and say stacy but if they really knew

they wouldn’t like you and so i kept my

stories

safe and sound and untold until about

three years

ago and i had an opportunity to do a

presentation for some work colleagues

and i decided i was going to share some

of my story i called it failure to

finisher

and i was terrified to publicly speak

about my past about my abuse and the

adoption because

these stories were the same stories that

had kept me bound in silent shame

for most of my life and now i was going

to put them out into the world

for people to know and judge in his

book the body keeps the score dr bessel

van der kolk wrote

it is one thing to process memories of

trauma

but it is an entirely different matter

to confront the inner void

the holes in the soul that result from

not having been wanted

not having been seen and not having been

allowed to speak the truth

i started rethinking all of the labels

that had defined me all my life and i

thought

maybe i could possibly redefine myself

i am a pr major so i’m pretty good at

spin

so it maybe instead of a man face

or oreo or half breed maybe i’m a bold

biracial beauty

maybe instead of thank you

maybe instead of a knocked up hoe maybe

i’m a badass birth mother

[Applause]

and maybe instead of being full of

myself maybe i’m strong and confident i

mean why not

in this positive regard these labels

became sources of pride rather than

stigmas of shame

and i believe that was the most

important part of the recovery process

which is why i’m here tonight are

recovering nobody

now what does that mean because i’ve had

some people that are like stacy that

sounds sad

yes that does sound sad but according to

a 2014 psychology today article

to be in recovery it means a person is

making progress

even though they aren’t cured we’re

never perfect we’re never cured but we

can always be making progress right

we can recover from sickness and surgery

we can recover from addiction we can

recover from broken hearts

we can recover from feeling like a

nobody recovery means i was once one way

but

now i’m another hope

the belief that these challenges and

conditions can be overcome

is the foundation of recovery and i

believe we could all use some hope

and i imagine that some of us in this

room have maybe felt like a recovering

nobody

after i hit my own rock bottom i learned

some secrets along the way

and i’m here to confess them with you

tonight so

confession number one this is not going

to be a big surprise

it feels really good to be seen to be

acknowledged to be valued

in her book braving the wilderness dr

brene brown call me bibi

she wrote true belonging is the

spiritual practice

of believing in and belonging to

yourself so deeply

that you can share your most authentic

self with the world and find sacredness

in both being a part of something

and standing alone in the wilderness

true belonging doesn’t require you to

change who you are

it requires you to be who you are and

this is not easy

and it is not without fear but when you

can look past your fear to the other

side you’ll see that everything you’ve

ever wanted

has been waiting for you confession

number two

feeling valued can feel like an

uncomfortable privilege

having felt voiceless for so much of my

life

it felt surreal to be in circles where i

was empowered to contribute

going from bartender to board member i

went from slinging jager bombs to gruppy

men

to getting zoom bombed by

anonymous keyboard warriors all because

the name of our online public meeting

had the word diversity in it

when you stand up for what you believe

in you become susceptible to getting

knocked

down discomfort is the cost of the

privilege

of finding and using your voice

confession number three not everyone’s

going to be happy about you becoming a

somebody

i was once told i was full of myself for

being excited about graduating college

at 36 mind you when we evolve into the

people we’re meant to be

we outgrow the circles that once defined

us and we defy certain people’s

expectations

sometimes we lose the love of those we

least expect

when it happened to me i was devastated

and it nearly derailed me as i felt

myself wanting to shrink back

into that safe space of being a nobody

and i might have

if it hadn’t been for the fire ignited

by confession number four

when you feel like a somebody your

perspective changes

and your perspective might not always be

welcome but that’s exactly why it’s

crucial i went from feeling like a

victim

to becoming a survivor a warrior

whether it’s as a mom to a special needs

child

or the only non-white member of a board

or the only female in a room

my perspective is crucial i still see

the world from my perch of otherness and

what i see

is kind of frustrating like why does my

atypical child

have to fit into a one-size-fits-all box

that isn’t really one size fits all

why are so many top and mid-level

leadership positions always

white and male-dominated and why and so

many pictures i’m a part of

does the song one of these things is not

like the other

always play in my head i don’t know all

the answers

but i do know if you want to see a

change

you have to be the change it’s why i

created an autism appreciation event in

my community

it’s why i joined my city’s diversity

commission

it’s why i speak on implicit bias and

it’s why i continue to show

up because children cannot be what they

cannot see

and i want kids to see a brown woman who

once felt completely invisible

become outspoken and take up space in

unexpected spaces

i want anyone who has ever felt like a

nobody to know

that they are somebody if you are like

me or recovering nobody

i challenge you to test your voice

know that your story matters become full

of yourself

and for those of you in the positions of

power and privilege you default

somebody’s

i challenge you to look at your own

circles are they pretty homogeneous

are there things that you can do to

change the culture and to challenge the

status quo

and i encourage all of us to listen to

the stories of current and recovering

nobodies

and empower them to be catalysts for

change

now they’re about to play the music like

they do at the academy awards to

encourage me to get off stage

but before they do that i’ve got one

last confession i have to share with

y’all tonight

standing in this red circle this is a

somebody

moment

but it has been a journey and i’ll

continue to be on this journey for as

long as i live but this one

started in 2017 the first year they held

tedx ogden

when i applied i interviewed and i was

rejected in 2018

i applied again did not get an interview

and was rejected again

in 2019 because like janie said i’m not

a quitter

i applied i interviewed and when i got

that third rejection i said stacy

maybe tedx isn’t for you in the meantime

in the meantime i went about my life i

just you know taking care of the family

doing my things speaking wherever i

could

i created a 501c3 nonprofit and i wrote

a book no big deal

so imagine my complete and utter joy

when i was invited to speak

at the 2020 tedx ogden

it had to happen to somebody so why not

me

hi my name is stacey brunell and i’m a

recovering nobody thank you

[Applause]

you