[Music]
[Applause]
did you know that there are more than
seven billion people on the planet with
us today seven billion people and I like
to ask how many of us are living the
life that we were born to live let’s
pretend for a moment that you’ve been
invited to a party a birthday party for
someone you love very much and you want
to bring something special to
acknowledge the relationship that you
share so you pour all your time and
effort and energy into creating or
making or finding the perfect gift and
you wrap it in beautiful paper and you
type beautiful bows around it or on the
day of the party you arrive and you
carry it very carefully through the room
you see your friend across the way and
you don’t want anything to damage the
present but you’re so excited you cannot
wait to give her this gift you know
you’ve brought the perfect thing
something that’s going to bring her so
much joy and love and you’re gonna feel
happy giving it to her and she’s gonna
be happy receiving it and everybody who
gets to share in that exchange is going
to feel happy and the rooms gonna light
up and all good things are gonna come
but before you make it to your friend
you pass other guests who have arrived
before you and one of them says hey
would you bring what’s in the box and
you tell them because you nailed it
and you’re ready to give this gift but
she does not react the way you expect in
fact she says no whatever you do don’t
give her that that is not gonna go well
and as she continues to tell you why
this gift is the worst idea ever
all those truths that you carried so
surely through the door just moments
before start to shake and you look down
at your gift and you start to think oh
my gosh what have I done something
really bad is going to happen if I dare
to give this to my friend even though I
want to
and so you sneak that out of the party
and you tuck your gift away in the car
and you hide it away in the dark where
no one will ever see it and nothing bad
will ever happen and then you carry on
safe we’ve all heard of people like
Einstein
Edinson Elvis Presley and Walt Disney
but did you know that Albert Einstein
was told he would never amount to much
and Thomas Edison was told he was too
stupid to learn Elvis Presley’s first
manager told him you’ll never make it
you need to go back to driving a truck
and Walt Disney was fired from his first
job at a newspaper because he told he
lacked imagination now we all know what
these people went on to accomplish in
their lives and we’ve all benefited
greatly from the gifts that they dared
to share because they didn’t allow the
people in the party to make them go hide
their gifts away in the dark we know
these people and we admire these people
whether historically our globally or
locally these are the people that we see
carry a light in them and I don’t mean
in the superficial way where we know
those people to that kind of lure you in
with a trap I mean they carry a genuine
and authentic glow
they are so true to themselves that we
look to them and we wonder what do they
have that I don’t have but I’m here to
tell you today they don’t have anything
the rest of us don’t have because in
fact we were all sent to the party
carrying gifts we don’t even have to go
out and find the gifts we arrived
carrying a gift or more and all we have
to do is look down and find it and turn
it into the best version that we can
offer something only we can give and we
have to make it through the party and we
have to give that gift now when I grew
up right here in Walker Louisiana I grew
up with a single mom public school
teacher she’s here today she’s still a
single mom still a public school teacher
and I’m very proud of that and if any of
you know much about public
schoolteachers in Livingston Parish we
didn’t have a lot of extra money for
things like books but my mother taught
us to read and write from a very young
age and she made sure that we had access
to books even though none of the homes I
went into as a child had books she
encouraged us to check out books from
the library system through the public
schools and also drove us to Baton Rouge
to check out books from that library
system so I’m so grateful that a library
system exists today in
and perish and if you don’t think
libraries are relevant ask people after
the flood where they went for
information and where they came to find
safe space and a sense of community and
you’ll understand the power of a library
but I’m here to tell you what a library
meant to me and what books meant to me
because from a very young age my mother
taught me to try to process the world
around me from reading about it and
writing about it I’m trying to figure it
out and by the time I entered Walker
High School I had the luck of entering
the classroom with a literature teacher
by the name of Linda Purcell some of you
may know her mrs. Purcell assigned to
kill a mockingbird
that’s something many literature
teachers have done over the years it’s a
classic award-winning novel by Harper
Lee and in this tale there’s a father
named Atticus and a daughter named Scout
and Atticus looks to scout and he says
if you really want to understand a
person you have to see things from his
point of view you have to climb inside
of his skin and walk around in it and in
a way this is what miss Purcell asked us
to do because she told us to journal
from the point of view of one of the
characters in the novel so for a few
minutes a day I was no longer confined
to the body in the mind in the space of
a fourteen-year-old girl in a classroom
at Walker High School I could transport
myself anywhere at any time and become
anyone real or imagined past or present
and that was a tool that was a super
power to me as a fourteen-year-old girl
because asked most 14 year old girls and
they’d rather be anything but what they
are I was always a sensitive child and
had a lot of compassion anyway and I
wanted to understand people and fiction
gave me a tool to do that I no longer
had to look at each person and write and
try to understand them I could become
them and I could enter the world and see
it through their lens and it gave me a
well of empathy like no tool had ever
given me before in fact I could even
look at myself from their point of view
and try to understand my own journey in
a better way and I became addicted to
fiction reading it and writing it and I
started to entertain the idea that maybe
someday somehow I would become a writer
I had no clue what that meant I’d
certainly never met any authors in
Livingston Parish none had ever visited
our school that I can remember
but on the book covers there were names
so I knew somewhere somehow somebody was
writing stories and maybe one day I
could too but by the time I entered my
senior year in high school that gift
that miss Purcell had found in me and
told me was worth sharing writing
started to not have so much worth I
entered the classroom of another kind of
teacher and this teacher did not see the
light in me and steer me toward the
light in fact she told me every day no
this is not how you write this is not
how you do it and she never had one
positive thing to say about my work
or about me and so by the end of the
year I no longer believed that my gift
was worth sharing I didn’t think it had
any worth at all in fact I was so beaten
down and broken by the end of her year
that I no longer believed I had any
worth either and in fact very seriously
considered leaving the party I didn’t
think I belonged there at all and had
nothing of value of worth to share with
anyone we all have people like this in
our lives every one of us have crossed
at least one person who tells us no you
can’t you’ll never you’ll fail and if
this teacher had not done enough damage
to me already the last day I spent at
Walker High School the last time I
exited her classroom she pulled me to
the side and she said Julie whatever you
do don’t waste your scholarship to study
writing you will never make it as a
writer now I’m 17 and I have a teacher
who is wiser and older and knows better
and I trust that she has my best
interests at heart and maybe she did she
has a story too and maybe her advice was
very sound and well intended the mistake
was mine
because I dared to believe that someone
else knew more about me than I knew
about myself when in fact each one of us
knows what we’re here for
we already know it and nobody else can
tell us what that is we get to define
who we are and why we’re here and what
we’re gonna do with this short span we
call life the truth is we all arrive at
the party happy and eager and ready to
share our gifts were certain of our
truths we know who we are and we know
why we’re there and we know what we have
to offer and it’s all good
but along the way as we make our way
through the room life throws things at
us
traumas and tragedies and losses and
abuses and griefs and storms and floods
and sometimes we get to the point where
we know we are not going to survive one
more blow
there’s not one more thing not one more
wound we can take and still move through
this party alive so we do one of two
things we either take flight and we
cower and we learn to lay low and we
extinguish our light and we become the
smallest most silent form of ourselves
that we can possibly become and we hide
in the dark because then nobody can see
us and if nobody can see us that nobody
can hurt us and then we will survive and
others of us fight we don’t take flight
we armor up the lies and the wounds
build walls that are high and hard and
thick and they shield us and protect us
from another blow but you know what else
that armor does it separates us from one
another and it separates us from our
gifts and from our truths and our
purpose and if it gets bad enough we
don’t only armor up we start moving
through the room like it’s not a party
at all but a battlefield and we think
the only way forward is to plow another
man down but I’m here to tell you that
it’s never too late to peel away the
armor or to come out of the dark
it took me 21 years from the time I
walked out of that classroom so the time
my first novel hit shelves two decades
of trying to find my truth again I went
through and got my bachelor’s and my
master’s degree at LSU but I never took
a writing class not one I put down my
pen and didn’t write a thing except for
my schoolwork for almost a decade even
though I walked past that literature
building in the journalism building
every day and was drawn to it like a
magnet because something deep within me
still knew that’s where I belonged but I
never dared to listen to my own voice
because the only voice I could hear
anymore was no longer misper cells I had
silenced hers I could only hear the
voice that was nudging me the wrong
direction
I was listening to the wrong voice when
I did dare to write that novel years
later I didn’t plan on sharing it I just
wanted to look down and find that gift
again and see what it was and once I
discovered it I knew I had a choice
again I could come out of hiding and
peel off the armor and lay myself out in
the room raw and exposed and vulnerable
and shining that little light and saying
this is what I have to give you and I
had to take all the strength and courage
and faith I could find to believe that
someone would be on the other side
waiting with a grateful and open heart
to receive that gift Taylor Swift tells
us that people throw things that rocks
at things that shine and I will tell you
some people do this five years have been
the hardest I’ve ever lived and yet I’ve
never been more sure that I’m on the
right path in my entire life that novel
became a international bestseller it
spent time on the New York Times
bestseller list the USA Today list
starred reviews six languages it goes on
it launched my entire career as a
novelist I’m about to release my fourth
novel and I’m writing my fifth and those
are wonderful things that would have
never happened if I hadn’t dared to give
my gift but what I learned from this
journey is that it was never about me in
the first place and it was never even
about the writing writing was just the
tool I was given as we all have a tool
that we’ve been given but the tool is
supposed to be used to share love and
light with other people and if we don’t
do that we’re not living out our purpose
all of us have a light to shine all of
us have a gift to share so as you leave
today I want you to ask yourselves two
things first of all what have I hidden
not only your gifts and your talents and
your passions but what pieces of
yourself did you hide away in the dark
because you didn’t think they had worth
anymore somebody made you feel so
unloved so unwanted so unseen so
unvalued
that you no longer thought that part of
you mattered you may have to reach all
the way back to your childhood decades
back into that dark space and pull it
out and retrieve it and reclaim it
but rediscover your true identity and
your true purpose and dare to live your
own truth regardless of all of the other
voices that have told you not to and to
with each step on each breath we take
along this journey we are making choices
and every choice as we have heard today
has significant consequences in our
lives and the people around us from this
moment forward I literally challenge us
all to ask with every choice we make
what leads to the light not only for our
own lives but for the people whose paths
we cross I’m so grateful that 21 years
later when I dared to write I went back
and found the voices of my mother and
mrs. Purcell the light workers in my
life who saw the worth of me and said
share it you have something to offer
share it because today I still receive
letters from readers all around the
world who have read my stories and
writes me to tell me that those stories
have shaped their souls and changed
their lives and help them rediscover
their own truths and purposes and light
it ripples out one way or the other at
the beginning of the talk I told you
that we have more than seven billion
people on the planet with us today and I
really like to imagine a place where all
7 billion of us are moving toward the
light and encouraging all the people
around us to come with us whatever you
do don’t hide don’t harden dare to shine
your light and never choose to leave
this party thank you
[Music]
you
[Applause]
[Applause]
did you know that there are more than
seven billion people on the planet with
us today seven billion people and I like
to ask how many of us are living the
life that we were born to live let’s
pretend for a moment that you’ve been
invited to a party a birthday party for
someone you love very much and you want
to bring something special to
acknowledge the relationship that you
share so you pour all your time and
effort and energy into creating or
making or finding the perfect gift and
you wrap it in beautiful paper and you
type beautiful bows around it or on the
day of the party you arrive and you
carry it very carefully through the room
you see your friend across the way and
you don’t want anything to damage the
present but you’re so excited you cannot
wait to give her this gift you know
you’ve brought the perfect thing
something that’s going to bring her so
much joy and love and you’re gonna feel
happy giving it to her and she’s gonna
be happy receiving it and everybody who
gets to share in that exchange is going
to feel happy and the rooms gonna light
up and all good things are gonna come
but before you make it to your friend
you pass other guests who have arrived
before you and one of them says hey
would you bring what’s in the box and
you tell them because you nailed it
and you’re ready to give this gift but
she does not react the way you expect in
fact she says no whatever you do don’t
give her that that is not gonna go well
and as she continues to tell you why
this gift is the worst idea ever
all those truths that you carried so
surely through the door just moments
before start to shake and you look down
at your gift and you start to think oh
my gosh what have I done something
really bad is going to happen if I dare
to give this to my friend even though I
want to
and so you sneak that out of the party
and you tuck your gift away in the car
and you hide it away in the dark where
no one will ever see it and nothing bad
will ever happen and then you carry on
safe we’ve all heard of people like
Einstein
Edinson Elvis Presley and Walt Disney
but did you know that Albert Einstein
was told he would never amount to much
and Thomas Edison was told he was too
stupid to learn Elvis Presley’s first
manager told him you’ll never make it
you need to go back to driving a truck
and Walt Disney was fired from his first
job at a newspaper because he told he
lacked imagination now we all know what
these people went on to accomplish in
their lives and we’ve all benefited
greatly from the gifts that they dared
to share because they didn’t allow the
people in the party to make them go hide
their gifts away in the dark we know
these people and we admire these people
whether historically our globally or
locally these are the people that we see
carry a light in them and I don’t mean
in the superficial way where we know
those people to that kind of lure you in
with a trap I mean they carry a genuine
and authentic glow
they are so true to themselves that we
look to them and we wonder what do they
have that I don’t have but I’m here to
tell you today they don’t have anything
the rest of us don’t have because in
fact we were all sent to the party
carrying gifts we don’t even have to go
out and find the gifts we arrived
carrying a gift or more and all we have
to do is look down and find it and turn
it into the best version that we can
offer something only we can give and we
have to make it through the party and we
have to give that gift now when I grew
up right here in Walker Louisiana I grew
up with a single mom public school
teacher she’s here today she’s still a
single mom still a public school teacher
and I’m very proud of that and if any of
you know much about public
schoolteachers in Livingston Parish we
didn’t have a lot of extra money for
things like books but my mother taught
us to read and write from a very young
age and she made sure that we had access
to books even though none of the homes I
went into as a child had books she
encouraged us to check out books from
the library system through the public
schools and also drove us to Baton Rouge
to check out books from that library
system so I’m so grateful that a library
system exists today in
and perish and if you don’t think
libraries are relevant ask people after
the flood where they went for
information and where they came to find
safe space and a sense of community and
you’ll understand the power of a library
but I’m here to tell you what a library
meant to me and what books meant to me
because from a very young age my mother
taught me to try to process the world
around me from reading about it and
writing about it I’m trying to figure it
out and by the time I entered Walker
High School I had the luck of entering
the classroom with a literature teacher
by the name of Linda Purcell some of you
may know her mrs. Purcell assigned to
kill a mockingbird
that’s something many literature
teachers have done over the years it’s a
classic award-winning novel by Harper
Lee and in this tale there’s a father
named Atticus and a daughter named Scout
and Atticus looks to scout and he says
if you really want to understand a
person you have to see things from his
point of view you have to climb inside
of his skin and walk around in it and in
a way this is what miss Purcell asked us
to do because she told us to journal
from the point of view of one of the
characters in the novel so for a few
minutes a day I was no longer confined
to the body in the mind in the space of
a fourteen-year-old girl in a classroom
at Walker High School I could transport
myself anywhere at any time and become
anyone real or imagined past or present
and that was a tool that was a super
power to me as a fourteen-year-old girl
because asked most 14 year old girls and
they’d rather be anything but what they
are I was always a sensitive child and
had a lot of compassion anyway and I
wanted to understand people and fiction
gave me a tool to do that I no longer
had to look at each person and write and
try to understand them I could become
them and I could enter the world and see
it through their lens and it gave me a
well of empathy like no tool had ever
given me before in fact I could even
look at myself from their point of view
and try to understand my own journey in
a better way and I became addicted to
fiction reading it and writing it and I
started to entertain the idea that maybe
someday somehow I would become a writer
I had no clue what that meant I’d
certainly never met any authors in
Livingston Parish none had ever visited
our school that I can remember
but on the book covers there were names
so I knew somewhere somehow somebody was
writing stories and maybe one day I
could too but by the time I entered my
senior year in high school that gift
that miss Purcell had found in me and
told me was worth sharing writing
started to not have so much worth I
entered the classroom of another kind of
teacher and this teacher did not see the
light in me and steer me toward the
light in fact she told me every day no
this is not how you write this is not
how you do it and she never had one
positive thing to say about my work
or about me and so by the end of the
year I no longer believed that my gift
was worth sharing I didn’t think it had
any worth at all in fact I was so beaten
down and broken by the end of her year
that I no longer believed I had any
worth either and in fact very seriously
considered leaving the party I didn’t
think I belonged there at all and had
nothing of value of worth to share with
anyone we all have people like this in
our lives every one of us have crossed
at least one person who tells us no you
can’t you’ll never you’ll fail and if
this teacher had not done enough damage
to me already the last day I spent at
Walker High School the last time I
exited her classroom she pulled me to
the side and she said Julie whatever you
do don’t waste your scholarship to study
writing you will never make it as a
writer now I’m 17 and I have a teacher
who is wiser and older and knows better
and I trust that she has my best
interests at heart and maybe she did she
has a story too and maybe her advice was
very sound and well intended the mistake
was mine
because I dared to believe that someone
else knew more about me than I knew
about myself when in fact each one of us
knows what we’re here for
we already know it and nobody else can
tell us what that is we get to define
who we are and why we’re here and what
we’re gonna do with this short span we
call life the truth is we all arrive at
the party happy and eager and ready to
share our gifts were certain of our
truths we know who we are and we know
why we’re there and we know what we have
to offer and it’s all good
but along the way as we make our way
through the room life throws things at
us
traumas and tragedies and losses and
abuses and griefs and storms and floods
and sometimes we get to the point where
we know we are not going to survive one
more blow
there’s not one more thing not one more
wound we can take and still move through
this party alive so we do one of two
things we either take flight and we
cower and we learn to lay low and we
extinguish our light and we become the
smallest most silent form of ourselves
that we can possibly become and we hide
in the dark because then nobody can see
us and if nobody can see us that nobody
can hurt us and then we will survive and
others of us fight we don’t take flight
we armor up the lies and the wounds
build walls that are high and hard and
thick and they shield us and protect us
from another blow but you know what else
that armor does it separates us from one
another and it separates us from our
gifts and from our truths and our
purpose and if it gets bad enough we
don’t only armor up we start moving
through the room like it’s not a party
at all but a battlefield and we think
the only way forward is to plow another
man down but I’m here to tell you that
it’s never too late to peel away the
armor or to come out of the dark
it took me 21 years from the time I
walked out of that classroom so the time
my first novel hit shelves two decades
of trying to find my truth again I went
through and got my bachelor’s and my
master’s degree at LSU but I never took
a writing class not one I put down my
pen and didn’t write a thing except for
my schoolwork for almost a decade even
though I walked past that literature
building in the journalism building
every day and was drawn to it like a
magnet because something deep within me
still knew that’s where I belonged but I
never dared to listen to my own voice
because the only voice I could hear
anymore was no longer misper cells I had
silenced hers I could only hear the
voice that was nudging me the wrong
direction
I was listening to the wrong voice when
I did dare to write that novel years
later I didn’t plan on sharing it I just
wanted to look down and find that gift
again and see what it was and once I
discovered it I knew I had a choice
again I could come out of hiding and
peel off the armor and lay myself out in
the room raw and exposed and vulnerable
and shining that little light and saying
this is what I have to give you and I
had to take all the strength and courage
and faith I could find to believe that
someone would be on the other side
waiting with a grateful and open heart
to receive that gift Taylor Swift tells
us that people throw things that rocks
at things that shine and I will tell you
some people do this five years have been
the hardest I’ve ever lived and yet I’ve
never been more sure that I’m on the
right path in my entire life that novel
became a international bestseller it
spent time on the New York Times
bestseller list the USA Today list
starred reviews six languages it goes on
it launched my entire career as a
novelist I’m about to release my fourth
novel and I’m writing my fifth and those
are wonderful things that would have
never happened if I hadn’t dared to give
my gift but what I learned from this
journey is that it was never about me in
the first place and it was never even
about the writing writing was just the
tool I was given as we all have a tool
that we’ve been given but the tool is
supposed to be used to share love and
light with other people and if we don’t
do that we’re not living out our purpose
all of us have a light to shine all of
us have a gift to share so as you leave
today I want you to ask yourselves two
things first of all what have I hidden
not only your gifts and your talents and
your passions but what pieces of
yourself did you hide away in the dark
because you didn’t think they had worth
anymore somebody made you feel so
unloved so unwanted so unseen so
unvalued
that you no longer thought that part of
you mattered you may have to reach all
the way back to your childhood decades
back into that dark space and pull it
out and retrieve it and reclaim it
but rediscover your true identity and
your true purpose and dare to live your
own truth regardless of all of the other
voices that have told you not to and to
with each step on each breath we take
along this journey we are making choices
and every choice as we have heard today
has significant consequences in our
lives and the people around us from this
moment forward I literally challenge us
all to ask with every choice we make
what leads to the light not only for our
own lives but for the people whose paths
we cross I’m so grateful that 21 years
later when I dared to write I went back
and found the voices of my mother and
mrs. Purcell the light workers in my
life who saw the worth of me and said
share it you have something to offer
share it because today I still receive
letters from readers all around the
world who have read my stories and
writes me to tell me that those stories
have shaped their souls and changed
their lives and help them rediscover
their own truths and purposes and light
it ripples out one way or the other at
the beginning of the talk I told you
that we have more than seven billion
people on the planet with us today and I
really like to imagine a place where all
7 billion of us are moving toward the
light and encouraging all the people
around us to come with us whatever you
do don’t hide don’t harden dare to shine
your light and never choose to leave
this party thank you
[Music]
you
[Applause]
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