Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Robert Deliman
A couple of years ago,
a friend said to me, "Your life is a miracle."
I said, "A miracle?"
Well, you know you tend to think of your childhood as normal,
well, until you talk to some of your friends.
Anyway, miracle or not,
I've dedicated my life to working with people.
One day, I woke up in my bed, and I thought, "Wow!
Forget about drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or rock and roll.
My biggest addiction is guess what? Yep, my thinking.
I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about:
those thoughts that tell us we're not good enough,
thoughts that have been haunting us for years.
I call this my stinking thinking.
(Laughter)
Just imagine if people could hear that stink.
Well, here's a censored version of mine.
My stink says I need an electric shock. I took stock.
My shrink said all Negroes are manic. I didn't panic.
My stink says I need a rest. I failed its test.
My shrink says all Negroes are aggressive. I let him live.
(Laughter)
My shrink said I should be grateful. I was resentful.
My shrink says I've got marijuana psychosis.
I smoked his prognosis.
My stink says I am depressed. I was distressed.
My shrink says I belong in the gutter. I didn't stutter.
My shrink says I shouldn't be seen. I reminded him I am the Queen.
My stink says I'll end up scrubbing floors.
I didn't speak anymore.
Ha, ha, my shrink says I need pills.
I need pills? I pushed him off the hill.
The shrink in this poem
represents all the people in my life who had bullied me
from childhood into adulthood,
from the people who raised me, who called me gruesome,
to the people who physically, mentally, sexually bullied me,
to my peers who would chant in my face,
"Waga matter, are you all white?
Oh nigga-mind, go black home and eat your coonflakes,
and you'll be all white in the morning.
You will! Go black home and eat your sambo flakes
and you'll be all white; promise!"
I was bullied so much that I began bullying myself
to the extent I first tried to take my life age 12,
again a year later,
and was lucky to survive my third attempt aged 18.
I'm one of those kids
who was fostered at six weeks and placed in several foster homes.
Age four, I was placed into an orphanage,
aged 11, I was sent to live with my biological mother.
I was taken away by the police 18 months later.
Living on the streets, age 15,
picked up for shoplifting six months later,
and placed in a children's prison for 18 months.
If you had spoken to some of the adults in my life then
and said, "That kid there,
one day will be the author of several books and plays,
work as a bully doctor,
be awarded an honorary Doctorate for her lifetime achievements,"
they would have laughed in your face.
They would have said, "Absolutely no way!
Valerie Mason-John? That kid will end up in the gutter."
And you know what? I believed them.
I believed all the negative things that people told me.
I had to stop bullying myself with the thoughts in my head
that told me I was useless, no good, that I was a failure, worthless
because they were keeping me in a rut.
I wasn't living, I was surviving.
And if that wasn't enough, I continued to bully myself
with the chronic disease of anorexia, bulimia nervosa.
I'm lucky; some of those kids out there who were bullied
by their parents, or by other adults, or by their siblings, or by their peers
aren't here to tell their stories today
because they took their own lives or because they died of a drug overdose.
I'm telling you all of this because I don't want
to turn on my computer, or my television, or a radio,
or open a newspaper and learn
that another young person has died because of bullying
or an adult has taken their life because they were bullied
in the home or the workplace.
These are inconceivable deaths.
You see those people out there, living on the streets,
people who are homeless,
people walking around with mental and emotional disturbances,
many of them were bullied, and we stigmatize them.
Our stinking thinking can cause
our own or another person's depression, mental illness,
or at worst, death.
You may be wondering how did I get to be standing here today
when once, I was so far away from this place.
I was fed up of being a victim,
tired of surviving, ready to begin living.
I stopped believing those pernicious stories,
and I put the weight of those narratives down.
You know the ones:
the negative, judgmental things that adults told us
when we were children, and now we claim them as our own.
The stories that put us at the center of everything,
and whenever anything goes wrong, it's all about us.
It was our fault that our parents walked out on us,
our fault that our parents loved some of our siblings better than us,
our fault that our parents abused us,
our fault that our partner walked out on us,
that our kids messed up.
The stories that tell us
that we should have got that job, we should have known better;
should, should, should.
Stop believing in this negative chatter that makes your life a living hell.
We cannot control another person's actions,
but we can control our own.
We're powerless over the thoughts that enter our heads,
but we are responsible for what we do with them.
For example, we get that evaluation of our work performance,
and we received 20 excellent glowing remarks,
but there's one tiny comment that says
there's room for improvement in a particular skill - exactly!
Ouch! We get that horrid feeling in our gut,
and we move into aversion,
and we start bullying ourselves with, "I'm no good,"
"My boss is picking on me," "Everybody's talking about me,"
"Nobody likes me," "People are blaming me!"
Stop! Stop thinking over poop!
(Laughter)
Your stinking thinking will get in the way of your happiness.
Whenever we bully ourselves, we will bully everybody around us,
projecting all the things we don't like about ourselves onto others.
So what can we do?
I can only answer this question by sharing my personal recovery.
When I fell down on a journey,
I had to stop beating myself up into the gutter,
I had to pick myself up
and literally, give myself a hug and tell myself it's OK.
This is a new moment; let go and move on.
I spent many nights laying in my bed
waiting to be rescued, waiting for that magic pill to cure me.
The cure was staring me in my face.
It was my pillow.
I needed rest so I could change,
I needed to stop trying to take care of my stinking thinking
by stuffing it down with drugs, food, alcohol, or sex.
I had to learn to sit with the pain of my thoughts.
It was during one of these moments I had an epiphany.
Fifteen years ago, I had been terrified.
I was about to walk
into a three-week rehearsal for my one-woman show,
and I was sick with my bulimia, and my throat was hoarse,
and the publicity had already gone out;
and I lay in bed hating myself, berating myself with the voice,
"You idiot, you can never go ahead with that show,"
and a whisper said, "Yes, you can."
And I said, "How?"
And the whisper said, "Just let go of your stinking thinking."
And in that moment,
I could see clearly, for the first time, that I had a choice.
I fell asleep exhausted from my tears,
but I woke up the next morning knowing that there was something
that I wanted more than my stinking thinking.
I wanted to do that show, and I wanted my recovery,
but I had to admit
that every time I relapsed, every time I had a slip,
I was choosing my addiction over my recovery.
It was a hard fact to swallow.
But yes, of course, I had help.
That help was the practice of loving kindness.
Loving kindness was a salve that healed my heart.
I had to learn to love myself
by paying attention to my stinking thinking.
I had to learn to give myself affection
by looking in the mirror with warm, kind, loving eyes,
I had to find things to appreciate myself for,
but the hardest thing, though, was learning to accept myself,
letting go of my self-hatred
that was stuck in the past and in the future,
and seeing clearly that self-love and acceptance
was in this present moment, now.
I stopped waiting for people in my life to give me that attention,
affection, appreciation, and acceptance that I hungered for
because my stinking thinking would make sure it was never enough.
But when I learned to give myself loving kindness,
it gave me the strength and courage
to have my voice to speak out against bullying.
I don't care even if it's somebody in authority who's bullying you.
You have to speak out until somebody hears you.
It's a myth to say
that when we speak out against bullying, it will make it worse.
Research proves that when we name it, it will decline.
If we don't speak out about bullying,
we will continue to bully ourselves with all our self-harming behaviors.
When I first learned to speak out about my abusive past,
just to one other person, it was enough for me
to begin to stop listening to that negative chatter.
I heard a whisper that told me,
"I love you,"
"I'm beautiful,"
"I am unique," "I am good enough."
I made it a habit to tell myself daily until it became like brushing my teeth.
Whenever that toxic voice arises today,
I don't listen to it, and I don't believe it.
I just tell myself it's my alarm bell warning me
that I'm feeling vulnerable,
and I need to take care of myself right now.
The how was in the pause.
I would literally stop and take a deep breath.
The breath was the handbrake on my stinking thinking.
It gave me the pause to see that my thoughts are not facts,
that my thinking is based on stories of judgments, and anger, and resentments.
When I stopped listening to this negative chatter in my head,
I thought my life was going to become boring
because a part of me enjoyed my stinking thinking.
But instead, I discovered a new happiness and freedom.
Loving kindness saved my life.
Loving kindness can save yours.
Many years ago, I hated the color of my skin.
As a child, I tried bleaching my skin.
In my early teens,
I internalized all the negative views from the Black community
who told me the darker I was, the uglier I was.
In my early 20s, I wrote a poem called "The color of my skin,"
which toured all the major galleries in the United Kingdom
as part of a self-portrait exhibition.
Only a few years ago,
I had the courage to commit this poem to memory.
I offer you this poem to remind you
to stop bullying yourself with all those self-harming behaviors.
(Reciting) "The color of my skin
is the root of my ecstasy, the seed of my life.
The color of my skin
is one of nature's glories, the bloom of my life.
The color of my skin
is the flower of my legacy, the taboo of my oppressors.
The color of my skin
is the greatness of my splendor, the guilt of my kidnappers.
The color of my skin is the celebration of Eden.
Black is an omnipotent being, the rejoicing of life.
Black, the color of many skins, is nature's own deliberation.
The color of my skin is your fear, my strength,
your ignorance, my wisdom, your blemish, my beauty."
This story isn't just about me, it's a universal story.
Bullying affects everyone,
from the governments who repeatedly bully another country
by saying if you don't do what I tell you, I will drop a bomb on you;
to the child in the playground who repeatedly teases another child;
to us, who can repeatedly bully ourselves.
It's a sad fact that many of us
will be bullied, or bully ourselves, or even be a bully,
but it's a myth to say
that bullying is innate, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Bullying is a learned behavior, and behavior can be changed.
Renounce your stinking thinking now.
We are what we think.
(Applause)