Being Human.
Transcriber: Rhonda Jacobs
Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
The human experience fascinates me.
It drives me to research and understand
what it is that creates reality.
Now, of course, there’s a multitude
of layers to that.
We’ve got what creates physical reality
and then we’ve got
what creates consciousness,
and then a beautiful blending
of the two of them
to create what we know
as our human experience.
So over the last 20 odd years,
I’ve been researching
and trying to understand: Who are we?
And on a more selfish level: Who am I?
Because this question of who am I,
I believe, is intrinsically linked
to the answer to a broader question
of what are we here for?
Now, I’m what introverts like to
often shudder to verbalize: an extrovert.
I have been driven by my connection
with other people my whole life.
I find it very easy to make friendships
and to adapt myself to social situations.
I used to wear a badge of honor
around being a “chameleon,”
someone who can show up in any situation
and become whatever it is
that is required from me
in order to mold into that situation
and to make sure that everybody
in that situation is at ease
and that I am accepted in that situation.
Now, being an extrovert and having
a capacity to mold myself has benefit,
and it also has challenge
because within the ability
to mold oneself
what can often happen
is we can lose ourselves
and we can find it a challenge
to actually know,
Well, who am I in this mix of the colors
of the chameleon that I wear?
Who am I in amongst
the masks that I put on,
the hats that I wear,
the outfits that go on,
the barriers that come up?
Because we’re all born into this world,
this beautiful, pure
piece of consciousness
that comes into the physical form,
and through trauma,
through challenge, through heartache,
through being human,
we put on these masks,
we put on these hats,
we put on these clothes
and we put on these barriers around us
that protect us and keep us safe.
And then we get to a point
where those hats and those masks
and those barriers no longer
keep us safe but keep us weighed down.
Now, through the 20 years
that I’ve been researching what it is
that actually creates
this experience that we call life,
through spirituality,
through human behavior,
through neurolinguistics programming
and more recently,
through psychosomatic healing,
or the connection between the body-mind.
Through that whole time, I’ve really
always come back to this question,
Who am I?
And I’ve never really found a way -
or hadn’t found a way
to uncovering that truth.
Not really.
I felt like I had found
pieces of that puzzle,
but I always kept showing up
in these ways that would betray myself
for these promises that I made to myself.
In order to have a good family,
I had to betray myself and my needs.
In order to have a good relationship,
I had to compromise myself
and give up on myself and my needs.
In order to be myself, or be accepted,
I had to mold myself
to other people’s expectations
or my perceptions
of other people’s expectations.
And so it was very interesting.
I found myself going for a run
in October 2019.
At the time, I was training
for my black belt,
and I was also training
for the Rottnest Channel swim.
So as you can guess, I like to move,
(Laughs)
and I also like a level of control.
Don’t we all.
So through this process, though,
I was running through the streets
and it was a neighborhood
that I had recently moved to
just maybe 10 months earlier.
And I was running through the streets
and I’m hearing my voice
going on in my head.
And you know, that familiar voice
that tells you all the things
that you should be doing
and make sure
you don’t forget each thing.
Then you reflect
on these conversations
that you might have had a week ago
and really remember these witty responses
that would have been perfect in the moment
and then congratulate
your ego for being so smart.
(Laughter)
So it’s this voice that I’m listening to,
and I quite enjoy listening to this voice
because it helps me unpack my experience
and it helps me unpack the reflection
that I see with my experience.
And all of the sudden, as I’m running,
I hear this voice say to me,
“In order to be fully seen,
you must be willing
to be completely invisible.”
(Phoo)
Light bulb.
It was like the answer to that question
that I’ve been asking my whole life.
How am I able to be known?
How am I able to be seen?
What is it that makes me unique?
And how am I ever going to experience that
if I can’t express it?
In order to be fully seen, I must
be willing to be completely invisible.
Now, with any new realization,
there comes a time of integration.
And often integration into a new level
of understanding of oneself is not easy,
it’s not graceful
and it’s certainly not clean.
And mine was very reflective of that.
As we birth ourselves
into a new version of ourselves.
it’s messy, and it’s full
of contractions and pain.
So January 2020,
it was the first Monday of the year,
and I remember walking back into my house.
I had gone for an appointment
after I had received a diagnosis of a UTI,
which I don’t normally get.
And I opened the door to my house
and I remember seeing my daughter Tatsi
standing at the end of the hallway.
And so, you know,
I’m quite fit and I’m quite healthy.
I had been noticing some symptoms
of some nausea and some dizziness,
but I’d been on antibiotics for the UTI,
so, you know, that’s kind of acceptable.
So I’m standing there at my doorway,
my daughter in front of me
at the end of the hall,
and I took three steps and then it hit.
I had excruciating pain in my head.
It was like a white light went on.
My legs started to feel like jelly,
and I found it really,
really hard to stand.
At the same time,
a numbing sensation that I had had
in the the fingertips of my right hand
moved from my fingertips up my arm,
up my shoulder and into my face
instantaneously.
And I started feeling as if I had eaten
some psychotropic plants
and the trip was just kicking in,
but I hadn’t.
(Laughter)
And so my first thought was,
Holy crap, I think I’m having a stroke.
My daughter looked at me
and she goes, “Mom, are you okay?”
And I held on to the wall, and I said her,
“No, sweetheart, I’m not.
I need to go to the doctor.”
So very quickly,
I ended up in emergency room
and spent the next five hours
with doctors telling me
that there was absolutely
nothing wrong with me
and that I should go home and rest.
So I knew my body.
I have a very good
awareness around my body,
but I had been pushing it.
I’d been working hard in my business,
I had been training for two, you know,
decent physical adventures.
And so I thought, okay,
maybe they’re right.
Maybe I just need to go home and rest.
So I did, and took
the next three days to rest.
And then I started feeling better
and patted myself on the back
for being very good.
And then I got back into work,
and I got back into training.
And two days later, my legs went again.
Now, over the next couple of weeks,
this would continue to happen.
Basically, I would rest for a couple
of days and then I’d feel better,
and then I’d try to get back
into things, and then my legs would go.
And then all of the sudden, it was
the time between episodes was shortening
and the duration of the episodes
was lengthening.
And so the time that I had outside
of that was very minimal
to the point where it got to the stage
just before the Rottnest Swim,
where I actually wasn’t able
to leave my house by myself anymore.
I couldn’t go anywhere unassisted.
I couldn’t stand up
to do the dishes by myself.
I couldn’t walk to my toilet by myself.
I couldn’t check my mail.
I certainly couldn’t look after my kids.
And so all of these promises
that I had made to myself,
either before becoming a parent,
always a great one,
or since becoming a parent
started being brought into question.
They started really coming
to the forefront
and triggering my emotional response
as to how I was then dealing
with this thing that I was dealing with,
that we didn’t really have any answers
around what it was.
At the time, the doctors
were saying potential for MS
and so I was researching that.
And it’s really interesting
because some of these emotional
triggers that were coming up for me
was loneliness, severe loneliness.
I felt so terribly alone.
And I felt like a complete failure.
I felt like I was failing my kids.
I felt like I was failing my community.
I felt like I was failing myself.
I felt like I was failing my profession,
like my intellectual mind.
I had failed my intellectual mind even.
All of the ways that you can
possibly fail anything,
that’s what I was doing.
Just being super kind
on myself, obviously,
(Laughter)
This is what we do.
We hit hardship and instead of being kind
and supportive to ourselves,
what do we do?
We beat our selves up,
and we tell ourselves how wrong we are
and how if only we had done it another way
we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Especially those of us who -
extreme control freaks,
although I do believe that we all are
to a quite large degree -
we can really take that and run with it
and find ourselves the bottom of a pit
of a spiraling of self-
deprecation and punishment.
And I found myself there.
Now what is very interesting
is at the same time,
my community was rallying.
So very soon after
I had my first symptoms,
my community had organized
a meal rotation.
There were people
who were coming to my house
and cleaning my house
for me, doing my dishes.
There was one friend in particular,
she would come
and grab my dirty washing.
She would take it home, wash it, dry it,
fold it, and bring it back.
I love that friend.
(Laughter)
Amazing.
My partner would come over
every day after work
and check on me and my kids,
make sure we’re okay,
give me a hug, reassure me,
see if there was anything that we needed
before going home and checking on his own.
That same community raised over $7,000,
both in a one-off payment
and in ongoing payments to help me
while I got back on my feet.
And still I felt alone.
But that didn’t stop there.
They also organized massages,
healing treatments, whatever I needed.
They took my kids to school.
They made sure that their extracurricular
activities were still taken care of.
We were well and truly taken care of.
We were so supported.
And yet I felt so alone.
And I would cry for hours
at how alone I felt.
And then I would cry for a few more
riddled with guilt
when I looked around
at how supported I am.
How can we feel so alone
when we’re so supported and so loved?
But I’m certainly not alone in this.
Back in 2018, the father
of my children took his own life,
and I believe he did so
because he had that same feeling.
He felt so alone.
And I think that a huge part
of why we have the issues
with mental health that we have today
is because we have that same feeling.
We feel so alone.
We feel so isolated,
and we feel so wrong all the time.
And it’s one of the biggest lies
that we could ever possibly believe.
And it’s also one of the biggest lies
that has infiltrated through our society.
Because it sells.
Buy this, you’re going to be
more accepted.
Buy that, you’re going to be
so much cooler.
If you buy this,
you are going to be so pretty,
people are going
to love you way better, right?
So we’re constantly fed this story,
this lie that we aren’t good enough.
That if only you were a little bit
different in this way and that way
and that way,
and don’t forget about that
because that, it’s horrendous.
But if we could fix all of those things,
then you would be worthy of love,
then you would be acceptable.
But the reality is,
is that it’s complete nonsense.
And what I learnt through this process
of sitting in the depths of my loneliness
was that not only was I sitting
in the depths of my loneliness,
I was also sitting
in the depths of myself.
Because for the first time in my life,
I didn’t have my hats.
I didn’t have my masks.
I didn’t have these barriers anymore.
In my own crumbling,
what was actually crumbling
was the barriers that kept me separate
from the people in my life
and from life itself.
You know, it’s really fascinating
because I had this talk really
well-rehearsed about a week ago,
and then I ended up in emergency.
I had a cyst that burst on my left ovary,
and it actually burst through a vein
and created internal bleeding
that was quite prolific and well-timed.
FYI, I’m here.
(Laughter)
But what I find is really
fascinating is the difference
between how I’ve been able
to move through this journey
compared to how I moved
through that journey.
And one of the things
that stands out for me the most
is that I don’t feel alone anymore.
And I think that’s because
I’ve learnt how to show up in a way
that I’m not showing up to be seen.
Because I don’t need my masks,
and I don’t need my hats,
and I don’t need my barriers,
and I don’t need your acceptance.
I am who I am, and you are who you are.
And I highly encourage you
to try on the idea
that you can strip yourself down naked
and for the first time
be seen completely in all of your glory,
in all of your beauty
and in all of your humanness.
Because we are human beings and none
of us are supposed to be perfect.
We are supposed to be messy.
Life inherently is messy
from the second that we’re born
to the] moment that we die, it’s messy.
Think about birth in and of itself.
I don’t know anyone
who does that gracefully.
(Laughter)
I certainly don’t proclaim
to do life gracefully.
But maybe, just maybe,
by being willing to be
completely invisible
to those around you who can’t see you,
you may become a shining beacon
for those who can.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)