successful moment this is the moment
when after decades honing my craft as an
actor after recording 500 audio books
after innovating ways to stay at the
forefront of leadership and craft in a
multibillion-dollar rapidly expanding
growing industry I had this amazing
success in May of last year
I won the audio book industries one of
the most high one of the highest awards
in the audio book industry I won best
female narrator I had set a career goal
that at least once in my work as an
actor behind the mic I wanted to at
least be nominated for one of the most
prestigious awards in the industry and
that night I achieved well more than my
goal I hadn’t just been nominated I won
success is what we all aspire to and
external markers of success are what
many of us count as the primary gauge of
whether or not we’ve been successful and
we believe that if or when we are
successful it will change us it will
change our life it will make us
different it will make our lives
different it will give us peace and rest
because we will have achieved something
essential that we need and there’s
nothing wrong with external markers of
success I’m proud of this award I’m
really pleased that I won it was an
honor and it means something to me and
it means something to me in my career
because it gives me entree to them to
the next level of my work it connects me
to people with whom I will collaborate
and make new innovative projects so it
definitely changed my career and I’m
glad that it happened but did this award
change me know that moment of hearing my
name called did not shame
me that moment had happened well before
let me give you a little bit of history
which will bring us up to what was
actually the most important and
significant moment of my life I was born
with deformed feet and if you look at me
you would have no idea its I look
perfectly normal perfectly unaffected
but at seven months old before I had
ever taken my first steps I had my first
major surgery elementary school junior
high high school college and beyond I
had surgery after surgery so by the time
I was in my late 20s I’d had over a
dozen major corrective foot surgeries
whenever somebody would hear that story
they would ask me how did that affect
you what did that do to you and I would
say that did nothing it had no effect on
me it was temporary it was physical once
that I had healed I moved on it had no
impact and that was a story that I
completely bought into I totally
believed myself and for three decades I
told everyone this story it was a great
story
when I was thirty in 2008
I suddenly experienced the most
excruciatingly debilitating limiting
pain of my life and it’s hard to imagine
that after all of that suffering it
could get even worse I’d learned to live
in my body in a particular way I had
learned to live with myself in layers
split I’d learned to inhabit part of the
space in myself but not all of myself
and this was how I protected myself from
the pain I thought that if I released
into it
it would end me there was so much that I
held it pay so I learned to live from
the neck up I allowed denial and
resistance and fighting and lying to
myself and to others to take up all of
the space inside me
so that I didn’t have to feel everything
and I did this so well I was so good at
it
this was invisible to other people and
it was totally unconscious to myself I
had no idea that that was the tactic
that I had learned to cope with all of
this pain and all of this anguish but
that was my tool and it served me so
well but in 2008 suddenly and
unexpectedly for no apparent reason my
body had become so dysfunctional so
stressed partly because of the pain and
the surgeries and partly because of all
of the effort of that denial resistance
fighting my body had had enough and it
just broke so in a sudden moment no
morning a cervical disc herniated
pinched a nerve and my body exploded in
pain pain erupted in my back and my neck
shot down my arm into my hand into my
fingers and I went from being a young
professional actor recording books
during the day and doing professional
theater at night to not being able to
turn my head lift my arms walk down the
stairs without sobbing this is a picture
of what I saw out my bedroom window I
lay in bed for months propped on pillows
breathing shallowly as not to feel
everything I did what I could to heal I
walked a block to the local swimming
pool and walked in the water three times
a week tears running down my face I
walked beyond that to the Buddhist
meditation center and sat on a chair in
excruciating pain and meditated tears
running down my face I very gingerly
with great trepidation drove to physical
therapy tears running down my face but I
was so angry I was furious
as I had done my work which was to
ignore resist deny fight lie to myself I
had done what it took to escape and all
of a sudden I was in my worst nightmare
my body was completely out of my control
and the pain that I was experiencing far
surpassed anything that I had been
through before which was extraordinary I
had told myself all those years none of
this means anything surgeries didn’t
mean anything the screws and pins
embedded in my feet didn’t mean anything
the stitches and the needles and the
scars the isolation the loneliness the
inability to play to connect with people
my age have a normal life
the cast’s and the crutches and the
walkers and the wheelchairs all of that
didn’t mean anything and that I thought
that was my work so this was
disconnected from anything logical this
pain wasn’t the result of a surgery and
yet it was totally completely consuming
me and overwhelming me and I was so
angry and I lay in this bed as winter
turned to spring and I looked out the
window and slowly-slowly I had this
dawning awareness that I had been living
in layers I became aware of this split
in myself I suddenly became aware that I
had not allowed myself to fully
experience my body that I had been
living from the neck up for three
decades I could feel myself holding back
not fully inhabiting my body not taking
up all of the space in myself I just had
no idea it was a revelation but at 30
all that I had denied and held at bay
came back with such unrelenting ferocity
screaming at me wake up you have to be
present in this that I could no longer
ignore myself so what was that moment
that actually changed me it was the
moment that I surrendered
I had been losing everything I knew that
my marriage was over I thought that my
career was over which had just begun I
couldn’t speak at that time without
crying in grief rage anguish torment I
thought I’d even lost my voice and I was
so tired I was so exhausted
keeping that pain at bay holding it away
from me
not allowing myself to experience it or
to be honest about it that I was
exhausted I could not do it anymore so
even though everything was falling away
and the old tools didn’t work for me
they were no longer protecting me or
taking care of me I didn’t know what
else to do so I surrendered surrender
for me was a very physical experience I
remember the moment that I sank into
myself I sank into my body and the
layers disappeared and all of a sudden I
was fully present for the first time in
my life and it was awful it was
excruciating and sickening and
heartbreaking and I was terrified and it
wasn’t as painful as it had been the
moment before I woke up and became
present it was not as painful as all of
that plus the resistance plus the
fighting so I learned in this moment of
surrender that important lesson that
life-changing lesson acceptance is less
painful than resistance some of the
losses were permanent did I suddenly
start getting better yes I did that
moment of surrender began my healing
process I realized that there were
things that I would never regain I could
not swing a broadsword on stage
in a Shakespeare play but I could go out
into the backyard and discover moments
of simple beauty that were majestic to
me I could make a new kind of art that
was so precious to me I could find new
hope new perspective so even though this
awakening came from a narrowing a
closing in of my focus and I lost things
that I would never regain I did realize
that I was ending with new perspective
ending with more than I had lost because
I suddenly had myself completely and it
was a relief to realize that my thoughts
are in my control my body may not be in
my control but I can choose what stories
I tell myself and I can be real and I
can be present and I can be honest and I
can get better so did this awakening and
awareness solve everything it would be
nice if I could say and then everything
changed but that’s not true my body is
my body there are times when I
experience enormous pain still and
always will and that’s discouraging
sometimes and frustrating and hard but
it is not as hard as fighting against
myself and being at war with myself
every step of the way was I wonder what
it is that you are resisting I wonder
what it is that you’re fighting against
what are you holding back what do you
want to ignore what do you want to deny
because we’ve all got something and
whatever our source of pain and whatever
our degree of pain it’s not in
proportion to somebody else’s it’s our
own our pain is extraordinary in
ourselves I suspect that if you have the
courage to release to surrender
you may find new perspective you may
find that you suddenly have so much more
space to live in
there may be new loves that you find new
things that come to you that fill your
void fill that space that you have been
trying to ignore I hope that that’s true
and I think that that’s true I’ve never
told this story and it’s hard to tell
the story but it’s so important to me
that my work now is too imperfectly take
care of this shoulder this neck this
back these feet to take as good of care
of myself as I possibly can and to
remember this lesson and remind myself
of it again and again so that I don’t
slip back into those old familiar habits
of resisting denying fighting my work
now is to stay present stay honest and
then hopefully share this with others I
hope that it means something to you as
it has meant to me and I appreciate being here with you thank you