Translator: Nivin Burhan Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
For me, being here is the definition of vulnerability,
and I could have a speech that's scripted and rehearsed a million times,
but you're going to see a different side of me
than the side that I know and the side that you know,
if you already know me.
I am going to begin with a poem that I wrote.
"I had no home, and with that I was content,
because I never knew what it felt like to feel like home.
So you built a home for me,
and all of my scattered pieces suddenly came together.
Somewhere, I put my heart to sleep as you cradled my worries away.
I woke up one day cold, abandoned,
without a roof on top, without windows or walls,
without you.
And you wonder why I'm so unable to let you go.
Before you, I never knew what a home was.
You gave me a taste of heaven, and with your hands, you took it away.
Once you enter heaven,
you can never live again the same way."
This poem is me.
This poem is probably most of you.
When we think of the word "home,"
most of us live for so many years not knowing what it means.
We long for a place
where our hearts feel at peace, and our souls feel loved.
And the first instance that we get that feeling,
we get so attached to it.
That's the story of my life.
You see, I've spent most of my years building homes in other people
and defining my self-worth based on how much those homes welcomed me,
and how much those homes loved me.
I truly believe that there is a big power in stories.
So I'm going to tell you my story.
Would you like to hear it ? (Audience) Yes.
Years ago, decades ago actually,
my parents met and got married in Canada.
They had five children and decided that they wanted to go to Lebanon
so that their children could learn Arabic.
And many, many years later, I was born,
making me the youngest by many years in the family.
I had five older siblings and they were all so much older than me.
Maturity came to me at a young age,
because I was constantly surrounded by people
who were from a different generation, that's how it seemed to me.
So I struggled a lot.
I was bullied in school,
not physically but emotionally.
I was bullied for being too sensitive, for being too vulnerable,
and even my teachers took part in this.
So I always felt like I was a shadow of a person.
I actually believed that I wasn't worthy of being loved.
I actually believed that something was wrong with me,
for feeling the way that I was feeling
and for wanting to express certain things within me,
but feeling like I couldn't.
So I was silent for most of my life,
and I was just quietly observing everyone around me.
I'd go to school, I'd come home.
But here's the thing, there wasn't just one place that I went to after school
because from the age of eight,
my parents and my siblings were in constant motion
between Lebanon and Canada.
So I lived at different points with different uncles and aunts
and my sister and many people took care of me.
So I didn't have a constant home that I could go to everyday,
a safe place where I could speak about what I was going through.
And if my parents were around and I knew how much they loved me,
I didn't want to talk about what I was going through
because I felt that there was such a distance,
and again, I felt like it was wrong for me to feel the way I was feeling.
So when I turned 13, a friend of mine gave me a journal for my birthday,
and I remember the first time I wrote in it, I felt weird,
because it wasn't something that I normally did.
But day after day, I found myself coming back to the journal
and just writing, writing and writing,
even if it was just about what I did that day.
And day after day, that journal became my home
because it was a place of no judgment,
no one telling me, ''No, you're not allowed to feel that way,''
no one telling me, ''You're too sensitive,''
no one telling me, ''I don't want to listen to you.''
So that home welcomed me, and I kept coming back to it.
Fast forward three years,
when I came to Canada just for the summer to visit my family,
and the war broke out that summer in Lebanon, so I couldn't go back.
I remember, when I finally decided that this is where I was going to stay,
I felt so stuck and I felt I was angry, I had this anger on the inside,
because yes, maybe back home I didn't feel like home,
but I knew the streets, I knew people.
People spoke to me in my first language.
I spoke in my first language and it was a language I loved.
I knew the mountains and the trees.
I was familiar with everything there and now I'm in a new place
where I'm supposed to find a home, but I don't even feel welcome.
So all of those dreams that I wrote about in my journal,
I felt like they,
like everyone and everything else in my life betrayed me,
because I was writing about reaching a place where I felt like home
and if anything, I was further away from it.
So I ripped up my journal,
and I said, "I'm never going to write again,"
because writing meant feeling, and feeling meant
that I was fully aware of what I was going through
and how wrong it was,
but it also reminded me that there was nothing I could do about it.
So for seven straight years, I never wrote.
I did grade 12, first year university,
second year, third year, fourth year,
teachers college, my master's,
and during that time, I felt colorless.
I felt invisible and I was okay with that.
I didn't fit in and it bothered me,
but it was easier for me to stay on the sidelines and not express myself
than express myself and get hurt because I was expressing myself.
So, at the end of those seven years, I started teaching.
My very first teaching assignment
was with eight Libyan students who had just arrived form Libya,
which was also torn by war.
And I remember looking at them
and seeing them going through exactly the same struggles that I went through.
So I started writing for them to motivate them.
And as long as I was writing for someone else, that was okay.
But with writing, something magical happens.
Sometimes you think that you're leading your writing,
but at a certain point, it starts leading you.
So little by little, I started writing for myself
and about myself and feelings that I went through.
And this is how "Mind Platter", my very first book came about.
It is just a compilation of reflections on my experiences.
Those were addressed to me,
and they were addressed to those students,
and they were addressed to anybody out there who goes through feelings,
thinking that it's wrong to feel them or express them.
So this was my very first shout into the world to say,
''You know what? I have a voice, and it's going to be out there.
And if this book makes one person feel heard or understood
or takes that feeling of judgement away from them,
that's enough for me."
And I put it out there and I'm very proud of it.
I'm very proud of how many people reached out and said,
"I feel exactly the same way,
and I'm no longer embarrassed to say that I feel this way."
During the process of compiling everything in Mind Platter,
I met the first person who I actually felt loved me,
who I actually felt cared about me,
who I actually felt home with.
He never touched my body but deeply touched my soul,
and I felt at peace and it was an amazing feeling.
One day,
he, like everyone else, walked away
although he promised he wouldn't.
And slowly colors started fading again from my life,
and I started going back to that same 16-year-old
who decided to rip up her journal.
I was weak.
I was still functioning fully,
but I was so miserable on the inside,
I was suffering on the inside.
One night, before my dad took off to Lebanon,
he sat with me and he reminded me of this.
This was the picture that I shared for Father's day.
He said to me,
"Do you remember that picture that you shared?"
He said,
"When I was holding your hand in that picture,
I looked at you and I said, 'This girl is going places'
because of the look that you had in your eyes."
and that look is gone.
I remember that night looking in the mirror
at a person that I had no idea who she was.
My face didn't resemble me.
My features actually looked distorted.
I felt like I was looking at a sky,
when it was just choking on grayness,
no sun, no clouds, no rain,
nothing, just choking.
And tears started streaming down my face,
but they were a different kind of tears.
I realized how far I've come from myself,
looking at this stranger.
And I also realized that I needed to come back to myself.
So this time, my pen didn't go dry,
and I didn't rip up my journal.
I wrote about my pain as painful as it was,
and the deeper I dug into that pain,
the higher I rose in confidence,
and in feeling like I was heard.
If I could describe that day and that moment, this is what it was:
"These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb."
I realized that the mountains of rejection, fear, and feeling neglected,
all of those things, I had been carrying them with me
when really what I should have been doing was climbing them,
reaching their tops and saying, "Look how far I've come."
So I take this with me wherever I go.
I always remind myself
that just because I have things on my shoulders,
it doesn't mean that I have to keep dragging them.
I could be doing something else with them and empowering myself.
So on this journey, "The Nectar of Pain" came about, but I want to tell you
what realizations I had to make while I was writing,
and these weren't writings written for a certain audience.
These writings were from me and they were about me.
I realized that the biggest mistake that we make
is that we build homes in other people.
We build those homes,
and we decorate them with the love, and care, and respect
that we want to come home to at the end of the day.
We invest in homes in other people.
And we evaluate our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us.
When those people walk away,
those homes walk away with them,
and all of a sudden, we feel empty,
because everything we had within us, we put in those homes,
and we trusted someone else with pieces of us.
So that emptiness that we feel doesn't mean that we had nothing to give
or that we have nothing within us.
It's just that we built our home in the wrong place.
We built our home that should be within us
and we should come home to at the end of the day,
in someone else and, all of a sudden, it's not our own anymore.
So, I'll leave you with this:
I truly believe that it's time for us
to embrace the homes that are already within us.
And instead of expecting the world to bring things to us,
we should start cultivating our own strength,
and we should start building homes within us.
And I'm going to leave you with this poem:
"My dear self, forgive me for building a home
for the broken pieces of my soul within someone else.
My dear self, forgive me for only loving you,
if that home loved you, welcomed you and welcomed me.
I will not pretend to be the victim and say that they abandoned me.
You see, in my stories, I'm always the hero.
So from today, I promise you to start building a home
for you, for me, within me."
Thank you.
(Applause)