Transcriber: Ian Brown Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
This is my family, and I would like to tell you a bit about myself,
and where I come from, and who I am as a person.
These are my two moms and my sister and me.
I am the little kid in the right, smiling a lot.
And this is us at Indian Heritage Camp.
I was adopted from India.
And we would go to this camp to learn about my culture every year,
to talk about where did I come from, and what is being adopted like,
and what does this mean, growing up with two moms?
I got to ask all those questions, and it was a really fabulous experience
for the many years that we got to do that.
So, yeah - this is me.
I would really like to dive a bit more into me,
some of the things that you can’t see on the outside.
We have these preconceived notions about who people are,
and what they bring to the table.
You can only see so much from the outside.
So, I was abandoned at birth in India, and I was unadoptable by Indian standards.
I was misdiagnosed with Down’s syndrome,
and rejected by another family due to this.
So due to this, I was undoubtedly facing a life in the streets of Calcutta.
If not for my two moms here, that would have been my upbringing.
As two women adopting in 2000, they faced much prejudice,
being a same-sex couple.
After they adopted my sister and me, my family constantly worried,
would we be targeted, would we be bullied because of the diversity of our family?
We were not the white picket fence stereotype of what maybe some people
think a family might look like.
So after this, I grew up in a small town, this was before, when I was in California.
I grew up in Oregon in a small town where there was a specific Christian group,
and they were not fully accepting of LGBTQ+ couples within their beliefs.
And this was really difficult.
They were really kind people, really genuine,
could not ask for anything better.
At the end of the day, knowing that we weren’t welcome
in their church, or their community, was really confusing,
and really difficult for me, growing up as a young child.
It made me feel inadequate, or that I wasn’t welcome at the table.
At 16, fast forward a few years,
I was diagnosed with a mental health disorder,
and I had extreme suicidal ideation.
High school was an immense struggle.
I had a sense of inadequacy every day,
and I didn't really feel like I could ever push through.
And then around the same time,
I was also diagnosed as legally blind because of such poor eyesight.
The massive E on the board, when you go to an eye doctor, it’s blurry for me.
And so then wearing glasses, and having something different on my face now,
and having this worry, what other kids would think,
what if I look different?
That took a really big hit on my sense of self.
Now fast forward a few more years, and I moved to England for university
after I graduated from high school.
And now I was an immigrant, now I was an international student.
So the sense of the stereotypes, and the visa challenges,
and the confusion about my future, what I wanted to achieve,
and my identity and ethnicity versus nationality,
it was pressing down on me like an immense amount of pressure
with the amount of questions, and confusion from different people.
But this is just one story, and we all have our own unique version of this.
I’m looking around in this room, I know that we all have our own story,
faced with different challenges, different aspects, different perspectives.
And that's why I'm doing this talk today,
because we all are individuals, and let’s champion that together.
Life is about the good, the bad, and the ugly,
to quote that movie, I suppose.
And life is complicated enough,
but now we are adding an additional layer of a pandemic,
and we are figuring out how do we move forward now, how do we see through this,
how do we move past this?
I remember when we were in lockdowns, I would hold on to my phone for dear life,
because I was living in this small room away from home.
I wasn’t able to go home to see my parents.
It had been almost a year and I wouldn’t put it down,
I wouldn’t let it touch the table because if I let it touch the table
and even if it was five inches away from my hand,
then that meant maybe I would miss a call from my parents or my loved ones.
And that was the hardest thing that I have had to go through for the pandemic.
But now we have to think about how did COVID affect how we see ourselves?
Obviously, not great.
There are a lot of implications about what has happened:
How are we going to move forward?
And what are the challenges that we have all faced in different ways?
I would like to tell you that the ONS shared that three surveys
from November 2020
revealed that over 50% of students in higher education
said that their mental health and well-being
declined due to the pandemic.
So let's just have that sink in for a moment.
Over 50% of students in higher education felt this way.
I think that there are two different things going on here.
There is surviving, and then there is thriving in life.
Surviving is getting your basic necessities - food, water, shelter.
And then thriving is being able to find your passions,
being able to explore, and live life to the fullest.
It’s building on that foundation of those those three basic things
and saying “I can go further.”
With the pandemic, we were really hindered
from being able to do this thriving element,
being able to search into “what does thriving mean to me?”
We were stuck on just the basic elements of survival, and making it through.
I would also like to point out that you may have heard of a mid-life crisis,
but new studies are showing that now there is a quarter-life crisis emerging.
The Yale Medicine Journal has said that as many as 70% of young people
have these quarter-life crises.
70% - so a large percentage of us even in this room.
Doctor Jacob Tebes, who is a psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine,
said that during their early 20s, and early 30s,
young adults may feel either ill prepared, or not expecting
of what adult roles may bring, and say, “wow, I’m really out of my depth here,
and I don’t really know what’s coming next.”
And this may trigger this quarter-life crisis
because this leads to the heightened feeling of stress,
as well as anxiety and depression.
Then there is Terry Bowles from the University of Melbourne,
who has said that we welcome a shift when it is a positive one in our lives,
when there’s something good that comes up.
I am making a positive move, I got a job promotion,
I succeeded in something that I am really excited about.
Then we really welcome these shifts.
But when it is a shift for the worst, when a pandemic comes,
when we experience grief, an illness,
if we lose someone that is loved to us in our lives,
then we are not ready, and our mind goes “nope, don’t want it.”
And we are just trying to push that away as far as we can,
because we feel threatened.
So the question now is how do we overcome,
and use these experiences to empower ourselves?
I would like to first talk about trying again.
When I first graduated, I am a university graduate from last year,
and I applied for hundreds of jobs, hundreds and hundreds.
And I felt like I am not good enough, I am just going to keep getting nos.
And I had this tribe around me saying “you know what, Alana?
You are going to make it, because you see in yourself the potential you have
and others are going to believe it, too.
And it might take a while to get there, but in the end, it is going to work out.”
And I did not believe them, I thought that is easy for you to say,
person coming from a secure role that is thriving already in a job.
But I kept thinking about that often, when I kept submitting applications,
kept getting feedback, or sometimes not even any feedback.
You spend hours on an application and then you don’t hear something.
And I wanted to give up, really, and move back to the States,
I thought there is not a future for me in this country.
But I did try again, and now I am working at a company I love.
I am at a company called Grayce,
and I am an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Lead.
Grayce is a consultancy that supports and trains graduates
to have meaningful careers in change, data, and tech.
And it is in a field that I love.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion is my passion.
The second area where I have really had to try again is my activism efforts.
I am the founder and director of a cultural inclusion
and international voices initiative called The Empowerment Project.
The Empowerment Project I started while I was here at Chester University,
as a student during the first wave of the pandemic.
And I saw the need for more support for international students,
more support for people who are far away from home,
and that is how it stemmed.
And a lot of people said to me:
“oh, you know, that is great what you’re doing, but so are 500 other people.
I am not really interested in you, hearing your voice.
I am not interested in bringing you on to this event.”
And I kept poking people and I said “please can I speak at this?
Please can I do this, please can I have this opportunity?”
And nothing fell into my lap.
It still doesn’t really.
And, I kept having to try.
Fast forward two years,
it has been two years since I started that.
And now we are a team of 13, based in five different countries.
And I am working with the Teachers Learning Association of Pakistan
to provide cultural inclusion and education training resources for them
so that teachers can have a better background and understanding
about bringing cultural inclusion into their classrooms.
So I have been invited to give a lecture on that to them,
in addition to actually providing them with those resources
that they will hopefully be able to utilize within their classrooms.
So, you do have to try again.
That is all I am going to say on that one.
It is hard and you don’t want to.
But at the end of the day, how are we going to learn?
How are we going to grow?
How are we going to develop if we don't keep putting ourselves out there?
Some people might say to me,
“you haven’t done anything earth shattering enough.”
And, maybe that’s true.
But, that being said, I choose to persevere.
So even though things are hard, process it and tackle it again.
Choose kindness.
This one might sound annoying, and it does sound a bit cliche and simple.
When you are little, you are told to be kind, you have to share your toys,
you have to say please and thank you to people.
But as we grow into adults, and young adults,
I feel like it manifests into something a bit more complex.
There are two types of kindness now,
that I feel like I have genuinely utilized every day of my life.
It is self-kindness, and then it is kindness towards others.
We are often told that we need to get into the grind, the 9-to-5,
and work hard to achieve something notable.
And we have this pressure on ourselves to do that.
So, I really encourage you to be kind to yourselves
when things get overwhelming,
instead of letting those insecure questions come in.
Because they do, they do for me quite often.
Am I good enough?
Can I achieve this?
Do I have the capacity?
Am I talented enough?
Those things circle back and circle back in your mind.
But I think that we really need to start championing for one another
that we do have the capacity, and that we need to keep trying again.
Which is going back to that other point,
and only you know what your best looks like.
And that is going to look different for every single one of us in this room.
I would like to now shift to the type of kindness for other people.
Looking outwards.
I saw this quote and it just absolutely stuck with me.
Chief Joseph, who was a Nez Perce tribe leader from the 1800s,
was in a similar region, around where I grew up in the West Coast.
He said “I believe much trouble would be saved if we opened our hearts more.”
Let’s just let that sink in for a second.
This is an indigenous leader that faced oppression,
advocated for his people, and he was not granted human rights, or even decency.
But still, at the end of the day, he chose kindness,
and this was still something that he wanted to embody,
that he wanted to share with others.
So if that is not an impeccable example for you,
let me tell you, it is inspiring,
and it lets us know that no matter what trials we face,
we can always choose that kindness, towards ourselves and towards others.
So in this world where there is often sometimes greed, and anger, and hurt,
and violence, be a light.
If you are like me, you are worrying about what comes next all the time,
and you have a self-made timeline in your head.
What's coming next?
What am I going to do, am I doing this by certain age?
And if you are like me, you are panicking often about it and worrying.
Have I met this deadline that I made for myself?
I just would like to say to you all that we write our own chapters
in the Book of Life,
and different characters come in and out, and the plot changes.
I truly believe that there is this immense external pressure
from societal expectations, for us to edit and to rewrite these chapters.
The glamour, and the media, and expensive brands,
and fame, and being rich is constantly in our eyesight.
We ask those questions again.
Am I doing enough, am I good enough?
And do people even like me?
I think that we need to alter our approach.
I think that we need to say:
instead of working hard so I can be like them,
work hard so you can be the you that you want to be.
We need to champion this individuality.
Whether it is getting married, focusing on your career,
overcoming an addiction, or even just making it through the day,
our definition of success is going to be radically different
to the person sitting next to you.
And I think that we need to be okay with that, and we need to tell each other:
“I want to empower you to be the best that you can be,
in your own definition, in your own way, in your own path.”
So morale is low right now, and we have the pandemic recovery to think about.
So I think that if we champion these three points, we can really move forward.
I would just like to say to you, to be the author of your own story,
you are the one holding the pen, so don’t give it away.
Don’t share the pen.
In life we are all dealt different sets of cards.
I would like to just stand here a moment and acknowledge that I am speaking
as a young woman who has had the privilege of having two stable parents in her life,
that have supported me, and my endeavours, and my dreams and goals,
and have been there for me since day one.
But not everyone is that lucky.
But this being said, I am speaking from my heart,
and these are lessons that I have been learning along the way
and I am still working on.
I am so far from perfect, but I am taking one step every day
to try to keep continuing on that path,
and make the most of what life has given me.
There is not really a life equation, is there?
I wish that there was something I could tell you and say,
“this is this is how to do it, this is the answer.”
Unfortunately, I can’t, because we are all too complex,
and we are all unique, and I think that is important to remember.
I am not a celebrity, or an Oscar winner, or an influencer, or anything like that,
but I am just a graduate here standing before you,
asking you to choose you, to choose kindness,
and to get back up after you have fallen.
This is what overcoming and becoming is to me.
Thank you.
(Applause)