Final 12 months, I delivered my fifth TEDx discuss reside on the TEDxUIUC reside occasion on April twenty second, 2024, on the Lincoln Corridor of the College of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
The occasion was themed “Odyssey” and featured six different audio system: Christine Lewington, Hema Reddy, Jack Fusco, Nathaniel Provencio, femdot., and Joe Simonetta, every sharing their empowering journeys that led them to the fantastic work they do at present.
It was a significant expertise and so rewarding, after I noticed the non-public influence it had on many members of the viewers.
You possibly can watch my TEDx discuss Elements Poetry on YouTube, however I made a decision to additionally share my TEDx script with you under – simply as I wrote it earlier than I delivered it reside to the viewers.
TEDx Discuss Transcript – Wounded to Complete: Love Suicidal Ideas By way of Elements Poetry | Elayna Fernández | TEDxUIUC Salon
Nota Luctuosa: Ha fallecido en Ocoa, la niña Elayna Fernández, sus restos están siendo velados en la Funeraria native.
This was the each day verse that began crucial quest of my life.
Little Elayna Fernández has died within the metropolis of San José de Ocoa, her stays are being laid to relaxation on the native Funeral Residence.
I used to be solely 5 years outdated and my deepest need was to die.
I heard so many occasions: You need to endure… you shouldn’t even be alive! Part of me believed it. The voices of the folks round me grew to become the voices in my head.
So I fantasized about dying… Each. Single. Day.
And, at evening, I might be certain that everybody was asleep so I may write about my dying till I collapsed…. I wrote it within the clean areas of my Bible… as if to cry out to God in prayer that it will come true.
Loss of life appeared like the one escape from the horrors I skilled.
However my coronary heart sank once I’d open my eyes early within the morning, and I used to be nonetheless alive …and in hassle once more, as a result of I used to be too
Dramática
Trágica y
Emocional
Dramatic. Tragic. Emotional.
I used to be accused of looking for consideration…
And guess what?
It was true.
Like everybody on this world… Like YOU
I wished to be … SIGNIFICANT.
However quickly I realized that displaying my ache didn’t work… Nobody wished to speak about ache or poverty.
In the future, sitting in entrance of our 12” black and white TV set, crushing on El Príncipe de la Colina, the dreamy love curiosity in my favourite anime, once I heard him say:
“Eres mucho más linda cuando te ríes que cuando lloras”
“You might be a lot prettier if you smile than if you cry.”
And I’d at all times hear las señoras respetables – you understand…essentially the most well-regarded women on the town say – “calladita te ves más bonita.” “While you’re quiet, you look extra lovely.”
Smile in Silence.
I wasn’t thought of fairly to start with, and the percentages weren’t in my favor.
However someday, after strolling a number of kilómetros to the library, I got here throughout self-help books that taught me the key to “make associates and affect folks:”
Smiling …and Suppressing…
I realized that if I dismissed, downplayed, and denied my ache, I might be … acceptable.
And if you happen to’re trustworthy with your self proper now… you realized that too.
And so I noticed there have been two methods to really feel vital regardless that I used to be not fairly sufficient.
Being sensible… and being profitable.
I see a few of you possibly can relate…
And so I did what we’ve been instructed is the sane factor…
To connect our id and value to possessions, place, and efficiency.
And that’s the place I used to be at age 13… pushing myself, proving myself, and people-pleasing…
When the ideas of suicide was suicidal habits.
As a result of… I had notebooks full of constructive pondering, roses, and butterflies … Sure, literal butterflies.
So I didn’t have any outlet for the darkness that usually overcame me.
Scratch that…
The darkness that usually overcomes me.
Sure, over 3 a long time later, I nonetheless battle with these ideas…
Solely now, I give myself permission to jot down about them, like I did as just a little woman, and to present my suicidal elements a voice…
I’ve notebooks full of suicidal ideas, thorns, and bats… Don’t fear … Simply figuratively this time…
As a result of suicidal ideas are a cry for assist
And thorns are a protecting mechanism
And bats… their function in nature is crucial to many ecosystems – they usually’re cute if you happen to look just a little nearer…
And what I found is our quest to repair, numb, and masks our ache is protecting us caught in it.
You aren’t too emotional
You aren’t too dramatic
You aren’t too tragic
You simply have some elements that want just a little consideration, recognition, and validation.
Elements that you simply’ve been burying for years in your quest to be acceptable, and hopefully even vital …
These elements carry rage, worry, disgrace, harm, and excessive unhappiness they want your assist to launch.
And you may give them a voice by means of poetry. I name it Elements Poetry.
I didn’t comprehend it as just a little woman…not less than not consciously.
However writing my dying announcement, obituary, and eulogy and writing about my need to relaxation in peace by means of dying had been all methods wherein I instructed the story of essentially the most wounded elements of myself and gave them consideration, recognition, and validation.
My poetry didn’t simply assist me survive… It gave me a spot on the earth the place all of me was acceptable…so I may lastly really feel vital.
After we validate our disowned elements, we are able to flip our wounds into wholeness.
Once I wrote my first poetry ebook, it didn’t begin as a “bestseller undertaking.” I wasn’t even certain if I used to be going to share my poems with anybody apart from my daughters.
I bought up each morning at 5 a.m. when everybody else was asleep, sat on my sofa, with a cup of heat natural tea, prepared for my date with ache.
I began an inside dialog with completely different youthful variations of myself,
1- I apologized for neglecting them for therefore lengthy…
2- I allow them to know I used to be:
excited to know them,
keen to grasp their function in serving to me cope, and
prepared to assist them inform their tales.
As I listened with compassionate curiosity, I wrote poems about these tales.
Tales like being in a coma, being kidnapped, raped, and nearly overwhelmed as much as dying, and so many extra tales of violence and invalidation I hadn’t absolutely processed but.
I realized the right way to converse with these elements from the numerous disaster counselors I’ve chatted with over time, whose consideration, recognition, and validation helped me keep alive.
With every poem I wrote, I shed a sea of salty tears… and the sense of reduction and self-acceptance was like nothing I skilled earlier than.
And I need that have for you.
Expressive writing is among the best methods to course of your ache. And possibly one of many least expensive, too!
As you write poetry, you can provide a voice to the ideas, emotions, and recollections which may really feel too scary to share with anybody else.
The ache would possibly really feel too uncooked or talking about it may appear too taboo or too heavy, due to the stigma, disgrace, and dangerous stereotypes in society.
As a phrase nerd, I liked discovering that, in Chinese language, the phrase poem is a mixture of two characters: phrase and temple.
A poem is a sacred therapeutic ritual by means of phrases.
It’s a protected area the place each half is welcome to indicate up as-is.
You might be tragic, dramatic, and over-the-top emotional – whether or not it’s a pleasing or painful emotion and simply delight in it.
My private experiences with poetry have helped me reside by means of extreme melancholy and sophisticated post-traumatic stress dysfunction as a result of it offers me the braveness to change into an empathetic witness to myself.
And I’m not alone on this expertise.
“Analysis exhibits the constructive results of poetry remedy for Veterans, together with [those] experiencing posttraumatic stress dysfunction.”
I’ve learn so many inspiring tales of veterans who discovered that means and objective of their ache by means of poetry.
And since I’m a musical theater geek, let me inform you about Bandstand, a Tony award-winning present set in 1945, which explores this fantastically – as one of many characters writes poetry to deal with the aftermath of battle. I promise I gained’t spoil it for you, however right here’s one in all my favourite strains:
“They’re simply little poems, however writing them helps me get by means of all of it.”
By way of all of it refers to grief, guilt, disgrace, melancholy, habit, and suicide. There’s nothing little about that!
Are you able to already see how poetry might be good for our psychological well being?
However wait… there’s extra!
I’m a accomplice and contributor to the work my pricey associates on the American Academy of Pediatrics do to stop and buffer Adversarial Childhood Experiences – ACEs. In 2021, they revealed a research displaying the therapeutic energy of poetry.
A couple of dozen hospitalized kids acquired a poetry-writing equipment, with paper, pens, markers, and writing prompts, in addition to some poems to learn. The findings point out that poetry helped them navigate difficult feelings, decreasing worry, unhappiness, anger, fear, and even fatigue. It additionally helped them domesticate self-reflection.
There’s proof that the easy and plain language of poetry “speaks to the human thoughts in ways in which escape consciousness,”
Proverbs and verses have been serving to folks get by means of all of it for the reason that starting of time.
I wish to emphasize an necessary lesson we are able to study right here. Poetry is accessible to everybody.
Though I began writing autobiographical poetry as just a little woman, writing poetry in English as an grownup felt daunting. Part of me was nervous that I wouldn’t do it proper…and one other a part of me felt a legitimate worry that bringing again previous trauma would intensify the hopelessness, powerlessness, and vacancy that got here with it…
However I remembered how in writing about my dying as a baby, I bought to think about that I mattered. I wrote about how liked I had been, what a distinction I had made on the earth, and the way many individuals mourned my loss and confirmed as much as my funeral.
As a result of poetry is a spot the place actuality and creativeness collide, hope and despair can coexist, painful and nice feelings can have a voice… with out judgment … or room for misunderstanding.
And what’s liberating is that… there aren’t any guidelines for artwork…
You can provide your self permission to jot down what involves your coronary heart, utilizing any type or model, within the first or the third individual, current tense or previous tense… sharing your fact in your distinctive approach.
Oh… and I higher say this. You don’t need to stand up at 5 am to do it… except you wish to, after all.
We write, to not repair or ease our ache, however to really feel it.
And we’ve all skilled emotional ache – I at all times say that “ache is the frequent thread of humanity.” And I imagine the explanation all of us expertise ache is as a result of…
Ache calls for presence. And in presence, we discover love.
And isn’t that the final word significance?
It goes past something we are able to obtain or purchase.
That’s why, for over a decade, I’ve been serving to others course of their ache by means of phrases, creating protected areas for folks everywhere in the world the place smiling is non-obligatory and there’s no room for suppression. I’ve witnessed them as they courageously give a voice to variations of themselves that couldn’t make sense of what occurred, failed to search out the phrases, or simply didn’t really feel acceptable… and I’ve witnessed them as they emerge with a brand new sense of inside peace, freedom, and value.
In sharing our lived experiences on our personal phrases, we discover that knowledge that El Príncipe de la Colina didn’t know:
There’s sufficient room for smiling AND crying – and there’s magnificence in each. It’s not about smiling by means of the ache, however about being current with it so we are able to genuinely smile once more.
And that there’s magnificence in being calladita, solely once we select to be.
The paradox of the epic journey we name life is that we spend a lot of it adapting within the seek for acceptance exterior of ourselves, and the one option to really feel vital is to return to our truest and most divine nature.
My invitation to you at present is to begin your personal elements poetry follow, setting apart only a few minutes every day to be current with the delicate elements inside you that wish to be felt, heard, and recognized – and to voice their sacred tales by means of phrases.
And if you happen to select to share a few of your poetry, your vulnerability will liberate others, as a result of dramatic, tragic, and emotional phrases are usually not solely transformative and life-saving… They convey folks collectively. I see this in my personal group daily.
So, I’ll go away you with this mantra that I share with the youthful variations of myself, and that I hope is in my eulogy… don’t make your self flawed for looking for recognition, consideration, and validation. Make your self entire by discovering them inside.
What’s your essential take away from my Elements Poetry discuss?
Let me know if you may have any questions on the right way to begin your personal Elements Poetry follow. It’s my prayer that this discuss conjures up you to like all of your elements by means of poetry.
Founding father of the Optimistic MOM® and creator of the S.T.O.R.Y. System: a blueprint to craft and share highly effective tales that can rework your outcomes and assist others do the identical. Dr. Elayna Fernández is a single mother of 4, an award-winning Storyteller, Story Strategist, and Scholar of Ache. She’s a bestselling creator, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and 5x TEDx speaker. She has spoken on the United Nations, acquired the President’s Volunteer Lifetime Achievement Award, and was chosen as one of many Prime Impactful Leaders and a Lady of Affect by SUCCESS Journal. Join with Elayna at thepositivemom.com/ef and observe @thepositivemom. To obtain a present from Elayna, click on HERE.
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