so last year around October my daughter
comes and announces to the entire family
that this year for Halloween she will
Batman not Batgirl Batman right and of
course me and all of my women is fancy
and all my powerful woman say well what
about superwoman and she looks me
straight in the eye and says mom
superwoman is lame I want to be Batman I
mean I kind of can’t blame her right
Batman is pretty cool think about it he
gets to get up in the night travel in
his private jet fly all around Gotham
saving people then come back to his
mansion where he can lacs as his
wonderful company makes plenty of
dollars for him as he sits in this
global economy right I know as a young
girl growing up we didn’t really have a
lot of female millionaires to look up to
there were superheroes of course there
was Oprah right but outside of that
right we found ourselves lacking just a
little bit and so for me it’s funny how
as much as those images don’t exist I do
remember being called superwoman quite a
lot and I don’t really remember when the
first time I was called super moon was
it might have been when I was around six
years old and I looked around my church
and realized everyone was getting ready
for Easter service and of course me and
all my entrepreneurial spirit said how
could I make money off of this I
remember going to jo-ann’s fabric and
gathering all the ribbon that I can find
and making hair bows so during all the
little girls and fill all of my pockets
it might have been more around the age
of 15 or so when I was illegally working
for a few organizations under the table
making PowerPoint presentations for all
of their major events but I do remember
one of the most recent events about two
weeks after I had one of the most
complicated cesareans that I’ve had in
my children I found myself interviewing
for the poet laureate position my
newborn child in the car me unable to
stand in the interview because I was in
so much pain then all my friends
labelled me superwoman
and it started out originally as a
compliment right I’m amazing I can do it
all but over time I started to see it
turn into much more toxic language
superwoman meant I didn’t need any help
right superwoman meant that sometimes I
was left
out and pushed away I remember asking a
few of my friends that went out and had
this really great event how come I
wasn’t included and they told me they
just thought I was too busy saving the
world somewhat problematic I started
thinking about where do these issues
with Superman start to enter our lives
Oh in my nerdy nature I took to Google
to figure it out and I looked up where
superwoman originated DC actually
introduced her in 1943 she was a
derivative of Lois Lane she shows up she
has a dream in which she gets a blood
transfusion from Superman and suddenly
is adorned with all kinds of superpowers
by 1947 she’s appearing again this time
she’s duped by fraudulent merchants who
put her in a trance and somehow she gets
superpowers by 1981 she starts to show
up as the doting lover of Superman who
only gains her powers do a lovely gift
he brings in a plant but asked aside and
killed to remove her superpowers from
her I thought it was very interesting
and telling what says about us as women
in society and our ability to be
successful one that we can only be
wildly successful in some alternate
reality that doesn’t really exist – that
that power can only last for a temporary
amount of time the time it takes to kill
the plant the time it takes to wake up
it seems kind of interesting to me that
we are constantly looking for ways to
hero eyes hero as ambitious women
without acknowledging that their
humanity is still a part of this and so
the biggest problem that I started to
see in addition to the way society looks
at it was that for women like me who
were called superwoman we actually took
to it right we started to make it part
of our personalities
I found myself adding project after
project to my plate job job I could do
it all in my mind until I couldn’t write
a few years ago I found myself so
overloaded with things to do that I
found myself with massive internal
hemorrhaging laid out in the floor of a
friend’s bedroom I was rushed to the
emergency room and the doctors labeled
it Crohn’s disease now for me I saw it
more as my inability to be deity because
that’s what superheroes do right
well a good friend recently reminded me
that the inability to be deity doesn’t
make you weak it just makes you the best
kind of human and so for me I started to
think about what are the things that I
want to say to my daughter what are the
things that I want to say to myself
about the ability of women to be strong
even when we’re not and I started to
reflect on my journey to this point of
course for me I do that through poetry
so I spent a little time with the page
and I started to craft a poem that I
felt like was gonna celebrate and say
all the things that the voices around me
weren’t saying it was going to
compliment my ability to be both sick
and strong it was going to be a tale of
how I could take on the world and still
be absolutely tired at the end of the
day it was going to celebrate all of my
humaneness and I’m getting ready to
share it with you in just a moment but
as I do I want us to think about is it
time which I think it is to take the
cape off of superwoman to start to
praise the complexity of a woman without
looking at the impossibility that
ambition has right isn’t it time for us
to just embrace ourselves wholly to
think about the fact that a woman who
holds multiple projects is successful in
the same way a woman who focus on the
excellence of simplicity is neither
better or worse both just successful in
different ways so for us I wanted to
make sure that I took time to praise
that and in crafting this poem I thought
of it as the poem that I wanted to hear
myself say not necessarily the truth and
I feel like sometimes as artists we need
that right we need to say things until
they become truthful we kind of need to
be the Proclaimers of the things that we
want to happen in the change we want to
see and so I hope that as you listen to
this poem you consider the things and
the change that we want to see around us
and the ways that we want to go about
redefining femininity strength and
success after sickness had its way with
me strip me of 80 pounds over 4 months
left Crohn’s disease in my gut like a
famished tapeworm after my body learned
do rejection the inflammation of weight
gain the excommunication of my entrails
from the chapel of myself after eight
years of cringing bracing myself when
the next episode will twist my truths
into a bloody bloated mess a toilet
to faraway a soiled sheet hidden from my
lovers eyes I’m beginning to give myself
permission to Pat myself on the heart
for perpetually living in the eye of the
torrent for standing still with the
torment on every side for the night’s
asleep runs right through me and I find
it hard to hide the vetting hair and
wonder where all of this weight came
from I refuse to give it to the remorse
of being this biggity longer to swallow
the idea that at any moment I can
vermilion into insignificance it’s so
easy to see yourself as a failure when
your body is failing you and I’m tired
of stockpiling the shame of the mocking
clothing of pinching myself in the
mirror every morning and stealing I have
something to justify like the mercury
rising in my skin is not enough but
there was a boiling point for every
makeshift glass of a woman where the
corsets and medical bracelets fall off
and she’s forced to give in to all her
unreliable life is left behind it’s time
it’s time I stare myself in the
looking-glass see nothing less in this
wide-load majesty this self-love time
around I won’t fear the weight of
remission won’t hold on to my next flare
like it’s a lifeline for my longevity I
will give into this mine car shaft and
ride the rails of my own waistline but
maybe a here waiting at midnight so I
will revel in every 1159 every
trepidatious trip to the throne room I
will step weighty and heavy make sure
everyone knows where I have been hasn’t
always benefit but it has fit me like a
righteous scar I do declare this disease
will not only or define me I am a proud
glutton for life in every role every
chance to show that I love handling more
of myself in my own arms as a testimony
I haven’t succumbed every pound says I’m
still willing to fight off the cat of
nine tails that lives in my intestines I
have been ripped out but not desecrated
there was still a holy summer in me
looking for a vessel big enough to in
Goergen ah I am an acre of good soil
I am lush I am sumptuous I am not cured
I may never be cured but I’m following
the bloody breadcrumbs back to myself
being slim and sickly has nothing on
voluptuous and vibrant I’m vibrant
full-bodied rich complex doubtful
triumphant shaking yet substantial
voluminous and full I am for yah I am
full I am
so full
[Applause]
comes and announces to the entire family
that this year for Halloween she will
Batman not Batgirl Batman right and of
course me and all of my women is fancy
and all my powerful woman say well what
about superwoman and she looks me
straight in the eye and says mom
superwoman is lame I want to be Batman I
mean I kind of can’t blame her right
Batman is pretty cool think about it he
gets to get up in the night travel in
his private jet fly all around Gotham
saving people then come back to his
mansion where he can lacs as his
wonderful company makes plenty of
dollars for him as he sits in this
global economy right I know as a young
girl growing up we didn’t really have a
lot of female millionaires to look up to
there were superheroes of course there
was Oprah right but outside of that
right we found ourselves lacking just a
little bit and so for me it’s funny how
as much as those images don’t exist I do
remember being called superwoman quite a
lot and I don’t really remember when the
first time I was called super moon was
it might have been when I was around six
years old and I looked around my church
and realized everyone was getting ready
for Easter service and of course me and
all my entrepreneurial spirit said how
could I make money off of this I
remember going to jo-ann’s fabric and
gathering all the ribbon that I can find
and making hair bows so during all the
little girls and fill all of my pockets
it might have been more around the age
of 15 or so when I was illegally working
for a few organizations under the table
making PowerPoint presentations for all
of their major events but I do remember
one of the most recent events about two
weeks after I had one of the most
complicated cesareans that I’ve had in
my children I found myself interviewing
for the poet laureate position my
newborn child in the car me unable to
stand in the interview because I was in
so much pain then all my friends
labelled me superwoman
and it started out originally as a
compliment right I’m amazing I can do it
all but over time I started to see it
turn into much more toxic language
superwoman meant I didn’t need any help
right superwoman meant that sometimes I
was left
out and pushed away I remember asking a
few of my friends that went out and had
this really great event how come I
wasn’t included and they told me they
just thought I was too busy saving the
world somewhat problematic I started
thinking about where do these issues
with Superman start to enter our lives
Oh in my nerdy nature I took to Google
to figure it out and I looked up where
superwoman originated DC actually
introduced her in 1943 she was a
derivative of Lois Lane she shows up she
has a dream in which she gets a blood
transfusion from Superman and suddenly
is adorned with all kinds of superpowers
by 1947 she’s appearing again this time
she’s duped by fraudulent merchants who
put her in a trance and somehow she gets
superpowers by 1981 she starts to show
up as the doting lover of Superman who
only gains her powers do a lovely gift
he brings in a plant but asked aside and
killed to remove her superpowers from
her I thought it was very interesting
and telling what says about us as women
in society and our ability to be
successful one that we can only be
wildly successful in some alternate
reality that doesn’t really exist – that
that power can only last for a temporary
amount of time the time it takes to kill
the plant the time it takes to wake up
it seems kind of interesting to me that
we are constantly looking for ways to
hero eyes hero as ambitious women
without acknowledging that their
humanity is still a part of this and so
the biggest problem that I started to
see in addition to the way society looks
at it was that for women like me who
were called superwoman we actually took
to it right we started to make it part
of our personalities
I found myself adding project after
project to my plate job job I could do
it all in my mind until I couldn’t write
a few years ago I found myself so
overloaded with things to do that I
found myself with massive internal
hemorrhaging laid out in the floor of a
friend’s bedroom I was rushed to the
emergency room and the doctors labeled
it Crohn’s disease now for me I saw it
more as my inability to be deity because
that’s what superheroes do right
well a good friend recently reminded me
that the inability to be deity doesn’t
make you weak it just makes you the best
kind of human and so for me I started to
think about what are the things that I
want to say to my daughter what are the
things that I want to say to myself
about the ability of women to be strong
even when we’re not and I started to
reflect on my journey to this point of
course for me I do that through poetry
so I spent a little time with the page
and I started to craft a poem that I
felt like was gonna celebrate and say
all the things that the voices around me
weren’t saying it was going to
compliment my ability to be both sick
and strong it was going to be a tale of
how I could take on the world and still
be absolutely tired at the end of the
day it was going to celebrate all of my
humaneness and I’m getting ready to
share it with you in just a moment but
as I do I want us to think about is it
time which I think it is to take the
cape off of superwoman to start to
praise the complexity of a woman without
looking at the impossibility that
ambition has right isn’t it time for us
to just embrace ourselves wholly to
think about the fact that a woman who
holds multiple projects is successful in
the same way a woman who focus on the
excellence of simplicity is neither
better or worse both just successful in
different ways so for us I wanted to
make sure that I took time to praise
that and in crafting this poem I thought
of it as the poem that I wanted to hear
myself say not necessarily the truth and
I feel like sometimes as artists we need
that right we need to say things until
they become truthful we kind of need to
be the Proclaimers of the things that we
want to happen in the change we want to
see and so I hope that as you listen to
this poem you consider the things and
the change that we want to see around us
and the ways that we want to go about
redefining femininity strength and
success after sickness had its way with
me strip me of 80 pounds over 4 months
left Crohn’s disease in my gut like a
famished tapeworm after my body learned
do rejection the inflammation of weight
gain the excommunication of my entrails
from the chapel of myself after eight
years of cringing bracing myself when
the next episode will twist my truths
into a bloody bloated mess a toilet
to faraway a soiled sheet hidden from my
lovers eyes I’m beginning to give myself
permission to Pat myself on the heart
for perpetually living in the eye of the
torrent for standing still with the
torment on every side for the night’s
asleep runs right through me and I find
it hard to hide the vetting hair and
wonder where all of this weight came
from I refuse to give it to the remorse
of being this biggity longer to swallow
the idea that at any moment I can
vermilion into insignificance it’s so
easy to see yourself as a failure when
your body is failing you and I’m tired
of stockpiling the shame of the mocking
clothing of pinching myself in the
mirror every morning and stealing I have
something to justify like the mercury
rising in my skin is not enough but
there was a boiling point for every
makeshift glass of a woman where the
corsets and medical bracelets fall off
and she’s forced to give in to all her
unreliable life is left behind it’s time
it’s time I stare myself in the
looking-glass see nothing less in this
wide-load majesty this self-love time
around I won’t fear the weight of
remission won’t hold on to my next flare
like it’s a lifeline for my longevity I
will give into this mine car shaft and
ride the rails of my own waistline but
maybe a here waiting at midnight so I
will revel in every 1159 every
trepidatious trip to the throne room I
will step weighty and heavy make sure
everyone knows where I have been hasn’t
always benefit but it has fit me like a
righteous scar I do declare this disease
will not only or define me I am a proud
glutton for life in every role every
chance to show that I love handling more
of myself in my own arms as a testimony
I haven’t succumbed every pound says I’m
still willing to fight off the cat of
nine tails that lives in my intestines I
have been ripped out but not desecrated
there was still a holy summer in me
looking for a vessel big enough to in
Goergen ah I am an acre of good soil
I am lush I am sumptuous I am not cured
I may never be cured but I’m following
the bloody breadcrumbs back to myself
being slim and sickly has nothing on
voluptuous and vibrant I’m vibrant
full-bodied rich complex doubtful
triumphant shaking yet substantial
voluminous and full I am for yah I am
full I am
so full
[Applause]
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