hi I have been trying to weasel my way
out of being on this stage for weeks I
am terrified but about a month ago I was
up early panicking about this and I
watched an old TED talk that Bernie
Brown did on vulnerability dr. Brown is
one of my heroes
she is a shame researcher and I am a
recovering bulimic alcoholic and drug
user so I'm sort of a sham researcher
too it's just that most of my work is
done out in the field
and dr. Brown the defined courage like
this
she said courage is to tell the story of
who you are with your whole heart and
that got me thinking about another one
of my heroes Georgia O'Keeffe and how
she said whether you succeed or not is
irrelevant there is no such thing making
the unknown known is what is important
so here I am to tell you the story of
Who I am with my whole heart and to make
some unknowns known when I was eight
years old I started to feel exposed and
I started to feel very very awkward
every day I was pushed out of my house
and into school all oily and pudgy and
conspicuous and to me the other girls
seemed so cool and together and easy and
I started to feel like a loser in a
world that prefered superheroes so I
made my own capes and I tie them tight
around me my capes were pretending an
addiction but we all have our own
superhero capes don't we perfectionism
and overworking snarkiness and apathy
they're all superhero capes and our
capes are what we put over our real
selves so that our real tender selves
don't have to be seen and can't be hurt
our superhero capes are what keep us
from having to feel much at all because
every good and bad thing is deflected
off of them and so for 18 years my cape
of addiction and pretending kept me safe
and hidden people think of us addicts as
insensitive liars but we don't start out
that way
we start out as
extremely sensitive truth-tellers we
feel so much pain and so much love and
we sense that the world doesn't want us
to feel that much and doesn't want to
need as much comfort as we need so we
start pretending we try to pretend like
we're the people that we think were
supposed to be we numb and we hide and
we pretend and that pretending does
eventually turn into a life of lies but
to be fit there we thought we were
supposed to be lying
they tell us since we're little that
when someone asks us how we're doing the
only appropriate answer is fine and you
but the thing is that people are truth
tellers we are born to make our known
our unknown known we will find somewhere
to do it so in private with the booze or
the over shopping or the alcohol or the
food we tell the truth we say actually
I'm not fine because we don't feel safe
telling that truth in the real world we
make our own little world and that's
addiction that's whatever cape you put
on and so what happens is all of us end
up living in these little teeny
controllable predictable dark worlds
instead of all together in the big
bright messy one i binge and purge for
the first time when I was eight and I
continued every single day for the next
18 years she was normal to me that years
I every single time that I got anxious
or worried or angry I thought something
was wrong with me and so I took that
nervous energy to the kitchen and I
stuffed it all down with food and then I
panicked and I purged and after all of
that I was laid out on the bathroom
floor and I was so exhausted and so numb
that I never had to go back and deal
with whatever it was that had made me
uncomfortable in the first place
and that's what I wanted I did not want
to deal with the discomfort and
messiness of being a human being so when
I was a senior senior in high school I
finally decided to tell the truth in the
real world I walked into my guidance
counselor's office and I said actually
I'm not fine someone helped me and I was
sent to a mental hospital and in the
mental hospital for the first time in my
life I found myself in a world that made
sense to me in high school we had to
care about geometry when our hearts were
breaking because we were just bullied in
the hallway or no one would sit with us
at lunch and we had to care about
ancient Rome when all we really wanted
to do was learn how to make and keep a
real friend we had to act tough when we
felt scared and we had to act confident
when we felt really confused
acting pretending was a matter of
survival high school it's kind of like
the real world sometimes but in the
mental hospital there was no pretending
the jig was up we had classes about how
to express how we really felt through
music and art and writing we had classes
about how to be a good listener and how
to be brave enough to tell our own story
while being kind enough not to tell
anybody else's we held each other's
hands sometimes just because we felt
like we needed to
nobody was ever allowed to be left out
everybody was worthy that was the rule
just because she existed and so in there
we were brave enough to take off our
capes all I ever needed to know I
learned in the mental hospital
I remember this sandy haired girl who
was so beautiful and she told the truth
on her arms and I held her hand one day
while she was crying and I saw that her
arms were just sliced up like pre-cut
hams in there people wore their scars on
the outside so you knew where they stood
and they told the truth so you knew why
they stood there so I graduated from
high school and I went on to college
which was way crazier than the mental
hospital
Oh in college I added on the capes of
alcoholism and drug use the Sun rose
every day and I started binging and
purging and then when the Sun set I
drank myself stupid the sunrise is
usually people signal to get up but it
was my signal every day to come down to
come down from the booze and the boys
and the drugs and I could not come down
that was to be avoided at all costs so I
hated the sunrise close the blinds I'd
put the pillow over my head while my
spinning brain would torture me about
the people who were going out into their
day into the light to make relationships
and pursue their dreams and have a day
and they had no day I only had night in
these days I like to think of hope as
that sunrise comes out every single day
to shine on everybody equally
it comes out to shine on the sinners and
the Saints and the druggies and the
cheerleaders it never with holds it
doesn't judge and if you spend your
entire life in the dark and then one day
just decide to come out it'll be there
waiting for you just waiting to warm you
you know all those years I thought of
that sunrise as searching and accusatory
and judgmental but it wasn't it was just
hoped daily invitation to me to come
back to life and I think if you still
have a day if you're still alive you're
still invited I actually graduated from
college which makes me both grateful to
an extremely suspicious of my alma mater
ah and I found myself sort of in the
real world and sort of not on Mother's
Day 2002 I'm not good at yours we'll
just say on Mother's Day I had spun
deeper and deeper
I wasn't even Glennon anymore I was just
bulimia I was just alcoholism I was just
a pile of capes but on mother's day one
Mother's Day I found myself on the cold
bathroom floor hungover shaking and
holding a positive pregnancy test and as
I sat there with my back literally
against a wall shaking an understanding
washed over me
and in that moment on the bathroom floor
I understood that even in my state even
lying on the floor that someone out
there had deemed me worthy of an
invitation to a very very important and
so that day on the bathroom floor I
decided to show up just to show up to
climb out of my dark individual
controllable world and out into the big
bright messy one and I didn't know how
to be a sober person or how to be a
mother or how to be a friend so I just
promised myself that I would show up and
I would do the next right thing
just show up Lennon even if you're
scared just do the next right thing even
when you're shaking and so I sister it
up now what they don't tell you about
getting sober about peeling off your
capes is that it gets a hell of a lot
worse before it gets better
getting sober is like recovering from
frostbite it's all of those feelings
that you've numbed for so long now
they're there and they're present and at
first it just feels kind of tingly and
uncomfortable but then those feelings
start to feel like daggers the pain the
loss the guilt the shame it's all piled
on top of you with and where with
nowhere to run but what I learned during
that time is that sitting with the pain
and the joy of being a human being while
refusing to run for any exits is the
only way to become a real human being
and so these days I'm not a superhero
and I'm not a perfect human being but I
am a fully human being and I'm so proud
of that I am fortunately and
frustratingly still exactly the same
person as I was when I was 20 and 16 and
eight years old I still feel scared all
the time
anxious all the time oily all the time I
still get very high and very low in life
daily but I finally accepted the fact
that sensitive is just how I was made
then I don't have to hide it I don't
have to fix it I'm not broken and I've
actually started to wonder if maybe
you're sensitive too maybe you feel
great pain and deep joy but you just
don't feel safe talking about it in the
real world and so now instead of trying
to make myself tougher I write and I
serve people to help create a world
where sensitive people don't need
superhero cape where we can all just
come out into the big bright messy world
and tell the truth and forgive each
other for being human and admit together
that yes
life is really hard but also insist that
together we can do hard things you know
maybe it's okay to say actually today
I'm not fine maybe it's okay to remember
that we're human beings and to stop
doing long enough to think and to love
and to share and to listen this weekend
was Mother's Day which marked the eleven
year anniversary of the day I decided to
show up and I spent the day on the beach
with my three children and my two dogs
and my one husband my long-suffering
husband you can only imagine and life is
beautiful and life is brutal life is
beautiful all the time and every day and
only one thing has made the difference
for me and that is this
I used to numb my feelings and hide and
now I should I feel my feelings and I
share that's the only difference in my
life these days I'm not afraid of my
feelings anymore I know they can come
and they won't kill me and they can take
over for a little while that they need
to but at the end of the day what they
are is really just guides they're just
guides to tell me what is the next right
thing for me to do loneliness it leads
us to connection with other people and
jealousy it guides us to what we're
supposed to do next and pain guides us
to help other people and being
overwhelmed it helps us to ask it guides
us to ask for help and so I've learned
that if I honor my feelings as my own
personal profits and instead of running
I just be still but there are prizes to
be won
and those prizes are
and dignity and friendship and so I
received an email last week and it's now
taped to my computer at home and it just
said dear Glennon it's braver to be
Clark Kent than it is to be Superman
carry on warrior and so today I would
say to you that we don't need any more
superheroes
we just need awkward oily honest human
beings out in the bright big messy world
and I will see you there