Choosing Joy Ambition and SelfLove
[Music]
hi
my name is kia brown i am a journalist
author and screenwriter growing up there
was nothing i loved more
than going to the park up the street
from my grandmother’s house
i went with my twin sister leah and my
cousins
we’d run through what we called a field
of grass
pretending that it was a short cut to
the park when it really wasn’t
at the park we would do things like
swing on swings
learn boondoggle we would take field
trips to the other parks to visit the
other kids
it was one of the most exciting times of
my life
i loved being there and being around my
family
and the friends i made when the park day
was through
we run back through that grass slot to
my grandmother’s house
with grass stains on our clothes and
laughter on the tips of our tongues
i grew up as a kid who believed she
could do
whatever she set her mind to that was
thanks to my mom
hi mom she bought me
every rollerblade every roller skate and
every bike
that my twin sister leah had and my
older brother had
let me be clear i can’t ride a bike
i can’t roller skate and i certainly
can’t rollerblade
but i appreciate her confidence in me
nevertheless
i was a kid full of joy i thought life
was full of possibility
my cerebral palsy was the last thing on
my mind
in fact i had no concept of what
disability was
no one ever brought it up and everyone
treated me just like i was
everyone else i was and i
am a dreamer as a kid
i dreamed about a prince falling in love
with me like he did brandy
and rogers and hammerstein cinderella
i dreamt of the possibility of story in
the 90s remake of annie
which is my favorite and i’m a little
biased but i think it’s the best
it starred audrey mcdonald’s and i was
again
floored when i watched the rap and
rhyming special voiced by whoopi
goldberg
watching those things and being able to
see those people live out the dreams
i had for myself allowed me to dream
bigger
by the time i got to high school i was
dreaming about being on red carpets
with reese witherspoon and mindy kaling
long before they ever starred
in a wrinkle in time together i
let my dreams carry me through most of
my childhood
i was a dreamer until the age of 12.
that’s when everything changed for me
when i was 12 a classmate
in the cafeteria began making fun of me
and my limp you know i walk with a
visible limp
and he began making fun of it like it
was a joke
the thing is i didn’t know what was
happening my friends
defending me was what alerted me to what
he was doing
i’m so grateful that i had friends
willing to defend me even at that age
when you’re just trying to figure out
who you are and not make too many
mistakes along the way
so grateful for them and it really made
me think you know what
was wrong with me that he could ever you
know think anything bad or make fun of
me
again i grew up as a kid not even
realizing she was disabled as all
because everybody treated me the same
way
as my siblings as my cousins as anybody
in the neighborhood
and so i made some silly excuse and said
i had to use the bathroom
and i went to the bathroom watching
myself walk for the first time in the
mirror
and i started to cry because i had no
idea
that i was limping at all i had no idea
that i was different and that that
difference somehow meant that i was
worse
or something to be made fun of and
the entire time i thought of the way he
made fun of me
and that played in the back of my mind
and it sounds so dramatic
but that day really changed me for the
rest of my life
because i began to resent myself i began
to be angry at my body and at god
for the way he created me i began to
hurl insults at myself and call myself
names under the guise
of protecting myself you know getting
ready for war
my insults were my armor but the only
person i was hurting was myself
i didn’t know that yet and so i spent
the rest of middle school
high school and college doing that work
of hurting myself to help
myself and while i was hurting myself
and hurting the ways in which
i was made by god i
absolutely was loved by my family and
friends
they carried me through that time and i
didn’t know
then but the idea that i was worthy of
love
was just so foreign to me they gave me
more love than i ever thought was
possible
more love than i ever thought i deserved
because i was so sad
and so depressed and i didn’t think that
i deserved to be alive
and so by the time i got to college i
was meeting
new friends connecting with my old ones
and my family
and i was hoping again for that love
that was romantic for that prince to
come and save me
for that person to say hey kia you’re
good enough
that kid in the cafeteria years ago he
was wrong about you you’re perfect
just the way you are i didn’t get
that wish that hope that dream
but what i got was something just as
beautiful just
as important just as necessary
my ambition i have always been an
unapologetically ambitious person
there is such a stigma around ambition
this idea that we should both be weary
of it and make sure that we’re not
showcasing too much of it because
we don’t want to alienate other people
my ambition got me to where i am today
my ambition and my drive to see more
for myself to figure out who i wanted to
be
got me here i am a firm believer
of speaking things into existence i
spoke
two books a today show appearance a new
york times byline
an event with roxanne gay who is one of
my absolute heroes
i spoke a netflix byline i spoke
so many things into my life through
my ambition and so i’m never going to be
apologetic about it
i am never going to tell anyone
especially you
women in particular women of color that
you should hide your ambition and you
should
make sure that you’re never talking
about what you want because for me
in my life so far talking about what i
wanted
and dreaming about and working toward it
got me to where i am today and i know
it can get you to where you want to go
in 2013 with my ambition
until i graduated college and i believed
that i was going to walk out of my
college
hallways and into the job of my dreams i
was going to be the next great reporter
really focusing in on hard news and
tough subjects i wanted to be the kind
of person
that i saw on tv that i so admired
well that ambition and that confidence
was great for me
but it didn’t get me a job in fact i
spent a year
getting nothing but rejections i spent a
year
getting nothing but no responses
sometimes
and so i turned to the internet
because as a millennial i love the
internet and what i did
was i started telling my stories online
i started talking about what it meant
for me
to be a black disabled woman and what it
meant for me to love pop culture
and be unsure of the ways in which it
doesn’t love me back
and surprisingly my career took off i
began
publishing in dream after dream
publication
and making my wildest dreams come true
through my written work and so i started
to see the worth
in that work but i didn’t see the worth
in me yet
so by now i bet you’re wondering how i
did it
how did i learn to live when i spent so
long
ready to die well
the key here is effort i began
saying four things that i like about
myself in the mirror
four because four is my favorite number
and again
because four felt like the most
low stakes possible number i would say
things like
today kia i like your eyebrows and your
nose
and your toes and your shoulders just
anything to get me through that day
something to compliment myself
to counteract any negative thought that
was inherently easy for me to access
and so i want to tell you today what i
like about myself
i like my smile my passion
my desire to see a world in which
disabled people
are fully respected and understood
and given the room to be who we are in
our mainstream social medias
and in our mainstream culture at large
i know that four things sounds really
cheesy
but i highly suggest it so
with my four things i began to see the
worth
in the writer writing these things that
i was so proud of
and every single day i did this work and
in 2016
one by the time we got to the end of
2016 i should say
we were in a place of feeling good and
happy
that we were waking up every day and so
by february 2017
i wanted to celebrate and i did so by
creating
a hashtag called hashtag disabled and
cute
and that hashtag ended up at the end of
a tweet with four of my favorite photos
i posted them very quickly because i’m a
writer who was always on deadline
and i left twitter by the end of the
week we were viral
and then by the end of next week we were
global again
i did this to celebrate finally feeling
good in my body
but what happened was i felt like i gave
disabled people
enough permission to feel like they
could celebrate themselves
with all that they are in every aspect
of their life
no matter what walk of life they are in
and so for me the biggest thing that
happened with that hashtag
was fostering a community of people
ready and willing to start their own
journeys towards self-love
later that year i would meet my literary
agent hi alex
and we would craft a proposal of essay
collection
about blackness and womanhood and pop
culture about my life so far
and then that collection would go on to
sell and by august 2019
my book the pretty one was out
in stores everywhere and i began talking
to readers
about their own journeys towards
self-love and i’ve been talking about
how it is important that we try and we
start somewhere because that is what
we’re waiting to do
start somewhere i want to tell you what
i told
a couple of readers along the way after
my events
after i said things that i like about
myself
the morning of not everything is going
to be perfect
and sometimes we don’t know where to
start but again
trying is key here i’ll give you your
first
two of your four things that i want you
to say when this video is over
one clearly you have great taste and
video content because you’re watching
this
thank you two you
are a person who makes someone smile
someone in your life is so
happy that you choose them every day
whether it’s your friend a loved one a
family member
your boyfriend your girlfriend your
partner whatever there is someone in
your life
so happy that you woke up this morning
even if it’s you great now you only have
two of your own to think of i want to
leave you with this
joy is not always a guarantee
not every day will be happy will be fair
we’ll be just
will be exciting we’ll be even
just ordinary sometimes we will have
days where we feel low
and everything is hard maybe we’re
having a hard day at work
or at home or at school maybe life just
feels unfair
but what i’ve learned is this saying
four things
trying to make sure that you’re betting
on yourself along the way
helps immensely because even though it
will feel weird at times
uncomfortable or silly even i promise
you
no one has to know you’re doing it and
you’ll feel better
every single day having that task in
mind
we are not free truly until we are all
free
and it is our duty our joy
and our job to make sure that we are
fostering
ambition hope and joy
in ourselves and in others
i fully believe that who you are
and who you’re going to be will be
but the best versions of yourselves but
you have to get there
you have to keep going keep fighting and
keep moving
and remember that your hope
your joy your dreams and your happiness
matter and you have to let them meet you
where you
are in whatever form they suit you
i am rooting for you let’s keep going
thank you so much