The Past Does Not Define Us
[Music]
so growing up
the kitchen was the heart of our family
gatherings we’d sit at the table and we
would watch my grandmother cook and
listen to her wisdom
she often said we’re going to the poor
house
i didn’t know where that was but it
sounded scary
and she said a lot of scary things that
made me wonder about
my future and was i going to be happy
so
where did she get her stories and
beliefs and she got them from my lineage
my great great grandmother was brought
to the u.s from indonesia as a slave
she was raped by the plantation owner
in macon georgia
and she became pregnant
with my great grandmother susie
whom she hated
and treated badly and susie had this bad
life i mean she had four children three
stillborn and then
she had
my grandmother mary
now my grandmother was a 4 foot 11
firecracker
she raised four kids by herself in the
south because she was a fighter
her three daughters
were
all challenged in life and her only son
was raised by a friend until she could
get her feet on the ground but then
everybody moved up north
and that’s where she started to break
the
cycle of being a victim
she got a job
she bought her own house she made sure
that all the kids got educated on some
level
and when she was in her late 40s she
went to nursing school and she became a
licensed practical nurse
she even made care packages for soldiers
now my mother
susan the second one from your left
she wanted a better life too but we were
on welfare
and
she
worked menial jobs
she had this thing she wouldn’t have
called it this but it was a mantra
become educated so it’s not a surprise i
went through two master’s degree
programs and my brother has a degree in
computer science
and given our family history it’s also
not surprising that we had this family
script of scare tactics
life is hard you have to fight if you
want to get anywhere you have to work
hard if you want to make it
make yourself invaluable because you’re
not safe you can’t trust anyone you’re a
negro in america so be quiet act like a
lady
and do not make any trouble
so you might have heard some things
similar to that growing up but i’m here
to tell you that your past does not
define you
everybody’s got a story with good news
and interesting news
but we all can rewrite the story if
that’s what we want to do but first you
have to know the truth of the story and
then you shift it
so i came on the planet with a lot of
energy and curiosity even though my
family was challenged
and i’m a creative
so i sang i made up stories i danced
and at 12 years old i’m looking at this
betty davis movie
and i’m struck that’s what i want to do
i want to act
it did not dawn on me
that betty davis wasn’t black
i just knew i wanted to shine
and i wanted to be more than the queen
of my church
and my grandmother saw me
she saw me she loved me she wanted to
to take care of me and she knew i wanted
to act so she took me to see plays where
i could see black people acting
and she became my biggest fan years
later
when i was an actress
so at age 30 i’m a working actress in
hollywood and i
i’m loving it but it’s hard
i have a lot of odd jobs i’m i’m taking
classes
second guessing myself insecure
wondering and doubting myself and
sometimes sabotaging myself
but eventually i get a job on a soap
opera
days of our lives
and
i
finally have enough money to go to
therapy
and that was a game changer for me
so in therapy
i learned three techniques to rewrite my
story create healthy neural pathways
examine and revise negative self-talk
and have self-care be a priority
so my therapist was non-traditional and
he taught me to look at at life from a
new perspective he introduced the
concept of neural pathways which made me
curious so i started reading everything
i could about neuroscience and i learned
that thinking habits behaviors
release positive and negative chemicals
that create neural pathways and when you
learn something new
your neurons communicate making a new
synaptic connection in your neocortex
your thinking brain
so the more positive you think the more
positive chemicals get released
like dopamine
serotonin they call them bliss hormones
and
a thought is nothing but energy and
information
so i decided i was going to change my
thoughts and my behaviors
i taught myself to sit down
to breathe
to scan my body and i journaled what was
happening in my body anytime i was upset
or
or negative
you know what was happening was my body
tight in my neck and my shoulders and my
stomach
and then i wrote down what kind of life
i wanted and i was really specific
if you don’t want to write you can
dictate into your phone it’s just as
effective
i also am visual
so i created a vision board that had
pictures and words and phrases
that mirrored my desire
i needed to look at something every
single day
that was going to make me
understand my intention
it didn’t happen overnight but
eventually
i began to see life with a new lens
so i’m sitting with my therapist
and
i hear myself with negative self-talk
and i realized i am reiterating the
kitchen wisdom from my childhood and i
needed to change it
so i got serious about my self-talk
because those old family phrases would
creep in
plus ones i had picked up along the way
so i needed an antidote
but the hard part was
catching myself in the middle of the
negative phrase and changing it
because i could hear my grandmother’s
voice
and her kitchen phrases and i needed to
counter it
be quiet
act like a lady don’t make no trouble
and i would say
i have a voice
i’m here to use it
you have to work hard to make it
no
life can be easy i’m smart and i’m
powerful you not safe
i am safe and i can protect myself you
can’t trust no one
i can trust myself
and i deserve to be successful
and i said those phrases every morning
every night throughout the entire day
and when negative things were coming i
would say no and i would bring in a
positive statement
you know you could sit at your kitchen
table
and think about phrases you heard as a
child and write
new
antidote affirmations
in the 1980s
black activist and poet audra lords
wrote a series of essays and journal
entries
about self-care and she said caring for
myself is not self-indulgence
it is self-preservation
so in all the generations of my family
the women left ill
overweight depressed
and they didn’t know how to take care of
themselves
they had heart challenges diabetes
paranoid behavior was prevalent
and at 50 i was 30 pounds heavier than i
am today
and i didn’t like where i was headed my
adrenals were shot from overwork and i
wasn’t motivated i didn’t know how to
take care of myself so i’m sitting in
this class and i hear this woman talk
about radical self-care and i think oh
that’s what i need
so that became
my focus
to love and honor myself and to make
self-care a priority
so i changed my
dietary habits i cleaned out the pantry
the refrigerator brought in healthy food
with the help of a nutritionist
i had to get serious about exercise
so i hired a trainer
i worked out three to four times a week
and then i had to quiet my mind
so i learned to meditate and i meditate
every morning
i also needed positive input
so i listened to
podcasts
and i listened to positive talks
i’m here to tell you
i’m living proof
that you can rewrite your story and
create the life of your dreams
no matter where you are or what you’ve
been through you have the power within
you
to create a new reality
and it’s never too late
so today
i sit at my kitchen table
and i honor my legacy i honor my history
but my children have new kitchen wisdom
they have learned
about
possibility tonight i encourage you to
sit at your table think about your
stories
think about
your antidotes think about your scripts
and what self-care could look like for
you
because this is what i know
that you can change your life at any
given moment
no story
no history
no past
can define anyone’s future
you get to choose
thank you