Transcriber: Lujain Elmallah Reviewer: Hani Eldalees
Four years ago today,
I lay on a sofa in my mother’s house,
at 3AM in the morning,
Shaking.
Shivering.
Crying.
Body bruised from having been slammed into a car door.
My then four month old lay next to me in his rocker.
While I rocked him with the tip of my toe.
Moments before I had been physically,
verbally and mentally abused by my then partner,
and I only escaped with the help of law enforcement.
And as I lay on that sofa, I asked myself.
How did I get here? Why was I here?
And what was I going to do?
And since that moment, I found that the answers to those questions,
Were in the three truths of self empowerment
that set me on a path to freedom.
And I'd like to share those with you here today as they can be
a catalyst of change for you as well.
No matter if you're a man or woman, boy or girl,
these three truths of self empowerment can set you on a path to being
the highest version of yourself.
So here's what I know for sure.
Truth number one. This is not the end of your story.
No matter what you're going through, no matter what you've been through,
no matter what you will go through in the future,
it's not the end of your story.
After that crisis moment when I found myself laying on that sofa at 3AM,
I went on a spiritual journey.
And like a lot of us do when we go through a crisis,
we look for religion or spirituality.
And I began to study and learn Buddhism.
And after weeks and weeks of practicing Buddhism,
I understood something profound that Buddhism teaches us.
And that is the notion of impermanence.
That is nothing stays the same.
Everything changes.
And so I begin to get up every day trying to climb out of this crisis,
knowing that what I was going through was not going to stay the same.
It was going to change.
In right around this time,
a good friend of mine said, Sheena,
you should read the success principles by Jack Canfield.
And not only that, she sent me a passion planner and she said,
Let's read it together and let's document our journey in this passion planner.
In the book, Jack Canfield teaches you a lot of things about self-empowerment.
But one of the most profound things that I took away from the book was
the notion of taking 100 percent accountability for your life.
And as someone that had been in abusive relationship,
I did not want to take the onus off of the abuser.
But I begin to understand that I had to take 100 percent accountability for
the fact that I found myself laying on my mother’s couch.
And taking accountability meant that I had to think about all of
the decisions that I made that led me to that point.
And once I began to embrace 100 percent accountability for the reality that
I had created, it allowed me to think about a radical future,
a future that I can control my future, the future that was in my own hands.
And I began to take my power back,
and I began to understand that that moment and
the moments that lie ahead were not the end of my story.
Truth number two.
Define your own story.
See, I grew up in a very loving, fulfilling household,
and anybody that knows me will know that
I talk about how great my childhood was, 2 vacations every year, a great family,
a great household. I was happy. I never wanted to grow older.
And I remember being 11 or 12 years old in a department store with my mother
and we were at the cash register and my mom was buying me.
Yet the latest sneakers and the latest outfit and I looked up at her and I said,
Mom, we're rich, right? And she looked down at me like only a black woman could,
and she didn’t say yes or no. She just gave me a little grin.
And it wouldn't be until years later when I was in college
and my brother was in college that we learned that my mom had filed
for bankruptcy. She had spent all of those years raising us,
turning pennies into dimes and creating resources out of nothing.
So I didn't grow up in a rich household financially,
but my household was rich in all of the things that
a loving household should be.
Then around the age of 22 or 23, I was on a date.
And after, you know, you get past the,
Where are you from and what do you do?
And you know, who are you?
My date had learned about my upbringing and being from a single parent household,
and my date looked at me and said.
I don't date people from single parent households.
And from that moment,
I began to engage on what you would call confirmation bias,
I began to look at all of the signs and commentary around what
a single parent household meant.
And it placed a seed within me,
and I began to internalize all of
the negative labels that people have about single parent households.
Broken.
Dysfunctional,
And even though those labels didn’t square with
the actual experiences that I had in my household,
I internalize those labels
and I began to date people from two parent households
because I thought that people from two parent households had some special secret
sauce or some special insight into how relationships should work.
And unfortunately, that led me to being in not one
but two abusive relationships at
the hands of people who had parents that were still together
Because I thought they knew how relationships worked better than I did
because I was from a single parent household. I let others define my story.
And today, 25% of children live in single parent households.
And here in Philadelphia, that number jumps to 57%.
That's millions of people right now living in single parent households.
And you know what, they all have their own story.
And just as ridiculous as it is to label a single parent household dysfunctional.
Broken, it's just as ridiculous to label all two parent households as whole
and healthy. But this is the version of me talking today that has defined my
own story. The version that laid on that couch four years ago had not
yet understood the power of defining your own story.
And though it's hard to escape the trappings of societal labels,
it is necessary if we want to live a life of freedom and empowerment.
Truth number three, be the hero of your own story.
Not only am I a professor,
I am a creative writer from fiction to nonfiction,
from writing for DC Comics in Lion Forge Publishing Company.
I understand what we call the hero's journey.
It’s a narrative story arc where the hero starts here,
An ordinary day in ordinary life and then something tragic happens in
the rest of the story is about the hero clawing his or her self out of
the tragedy growing. And by the end of the story, the hero is the hero.
And so for me and my journey to self-empowerment and freedom,
I had two choices I could either stay rock bottom and self-sabotage,
or I could be the resilient woman that my mother raised me to be.
I could be the hero of my own story.
And I'm happy to say that today, standing here on this TED stage,
I am the hero of my own story because I decided to define my story and become
the hero. And you can do the same.
So what does self-empowerment mean and how do we access it?
Number one, we understand that this is not the end of our story,
no matter what we are going through right now,
no matter what we’ve been through in the past, no matter what
We will go through in the future. This is not the end of your story.
Also, define your own story on your own terms.
And number three, be the hero of your story.
So I'm asking you to use these three truths of self-empowerment to become
the highest version of yourself. Thank you.