I thought I could run away from my past
I really wanted to run away
from the memory of my father drunk and
screaming and punching his rage and
shame into the bodies of his children
and I really wanted to run away from the
memory of the nights of my father when I
had to hold my breath and my mind and my
spirit separated from my body and I
saved myself by pretending this was all
just a bad dream nothing was really
happening and when I was 18 I did run
away I ran away to college and I really
believed that if I just ran far enough
and fast enough I could leave that past
behind me but you know what it doesn’t
work like that six years and two college
degrees later that pass caught up with
me and it ran me over and it happened
like this my best friend Denise and I
were visiting my mother my mother was
telling stories of my father oh my god
with every story she told panic started
growing and growing in me until I felt
like I was in a haunted house and those
monsters were about to break the walls
down and they were gonna kill me and
this fear grew so big that I had to
leave the room I just went into my old
bedroom and I sat down on the bed and I
started crying crying crying remembering
being in a basement in Alaska with my
father
now when I was finally able to pull
myself together and go back out into the
living room with Denise and my mother I
sat down and I started drinking coffee
and I was talking to my mama just like
we were having a beautiful evening and
my mama she went right along with me not
one mention of me being in another room
and crying because you know what we were
trained up in a life of ignoring denying
not looking absolutely under no
circumstances do you really tell the
truth of what’s happening now
Denise on the other hand was pretty
clear that something was wrong so when
we were driving home that night she said
what happened in there why were you
crying and I didn’t have an answer
Denise that night stood as my first
witness she said something’s wrong we
have to figure out what it is and all of
our violence’s began here they begin
with the refusal to look denial
repression that desire not to know my
mother and I we were complicit in
pretending that nothing had happened now
when we bear witness we break that
silence and when we do that it can be
terrifying our witnesses help us to turn
around and face what we are afraid of
they show us that we can find the
courage and the strength to bring those
things we are running from into the
light and when we learn how to do that
we take our power back we take the power
of the fear that’s driving us to run
fear of what we do not want to know do
not want to be true fear of what will
happen if we speak the truth fear of
what will happen because we know and
when we face that fear we are liberated
because every violence doesn’t matter if
it’s the child being abused if it is the
person taken from their homes in the
middle of the night and brought to
secret detention centers it is criminal
oligarchs in collusion with governments
stealing land and resources from the
people they should be serving every
violence big and small begins from the
failure to bear witness but here’s the
beautiful thing when we turn around and
meet that fear and begin to break that
silence we start reconnecting the parts
of ourselves we have been split off from
instead of using all of our energy to
run we have that energy to reconnect
ourselves and connection is the source
of our joy and I mean this literally
this mother and her baby right now they
are bonding and you know what that kind
of connection does it releases mega
doses of serotonin dopamine oxytocin
this is the chemical formula of joy this
chemical formula of joy
it is literally wiring that baby’s brain
right now to expect to be loved cared
for nurtured and feeling this connection
feeling this bond expecting to be loved
she is open this is joy and this is what
joy does
[Applause]
and our joy comes from our connection
now I shouldn’t be on thank you yes so
ignore that now what happens if we live
in chronic states of fear and anxiety
then the stress response system kicks in
the stress response system floods us
with the chemicals and the hormones that
prime the body to fight off danger or
run from it and if we can’t fight or run
then we play dead until the danger
passes but what if we are living in
circumstances such that we are never out
of danger long enough for our stress
response system to shut up
then our brains become wired to expect
danger it doesn’t matter if the danger
is really out there in front of us it’s
inside of us and we projected onto
everything around us and when we do that
our capacity to experience that
beautiful chemical soup of oxytocin
serotonin and dopamine that think that
lets us feel connected and loved and joy
that capacity is diminished so I am
proposing to you seriously that we must
intentionally consciously cultivate our
capacity for joy because when we are in
conditions of that stress response
system writing us we do not know who is
safe and how to love and we have to heal
ourselves and here’s the beautiful news
we can what we know now is that we can
learn how our stress response system is
affecting us we can learn how to turn it
and the more we do that the more we grow
our capacity for those neuro chemicals
of joy to bring us into the states of
pleasure and openness that can allow us
to reconnect with each other and when I
started to learn this I started to learn
something else about the violence as we
experienced my father before he was the
man I knew he was a child himself he
lived his own violence’s one of 13
children in a poor family he went to war
in Korea and Vietnam he was handed a gun
and given an enemy and that enemy became
his definition it became his salvation
it was the thing on to which he could
project everything about himself that he
hated and with that he got his identity
as a man and that’s what he brought home
to me and when I could understand that I
could see that my life my experience it
wasn’t just about me or my father it was
about war and poverty and how violence
is passed from generation to generation
and I could also see that my life my
father’s life
we are just small threads in a larger
cultural fabric that is torn and broken
and when we start the work of healing
ourselves and I am begging you take up
that work because we’re all in need of
it and we do that with our joy and when
we start that work that work is
something we have to do not just in and
with and for ourselves we have to bring
that work
to the world we have to do it with each
other because what I suffered what you
suffered we are not unique this is part
of a pattern and if we want to be well
ourselves we have to work to make the
people in the world around us well and
we do that with our joy now now here’s
the other thing that I learned that
night Denise stood as my first witness
she showed me also that the roads that
we are traveling we travel together and
the more that we can bring ourselves to
our states of connectedness and joy the
more energy we have to bring that into
the world around us and that generates
energy it generates hope and that
generating of energy and generating of
hope we start mobilizing that and we
have the possibility of a radically
different world in front of us and you
know what else that shows us when I can
see that my father is a man not a
monster I have my compassion for him and
that compassion for him is a compassion
I can find and bring to the world around
us and that compassion is what will
allow us to heal the most violent and
the most broken parts of our world and
that compassion it helps us love
ourselves because you know what when we
have been the victims of violence we
live with the shame of our helplessness
and our humiliation and when our
witnesses helped us to find compassion
for ourselves and to begin to love
ourselves that grows exponentially and
we bring that to the world around us
and that is the work of healing which
requires begs of us consciously
intentionally cultivate our own states
of joy I want something very very simple
I want every life on this planet to be
loved cared for safe and nurtured and we
have this possibility we have the
possibility to grow this in ourselves we
have the possibility to grow it with
each other and this is what can bring us
into a world that we can inhabit for not
just the next five and ten and fifteen
years but for centuries to come and if
we don’t do that we don’t have centuries
and sometimes I cannot grasp how we have
made up a world of money weapons war
violent and exploitative political
systems that enslave and kill we have
made this up these are all human
inventions and we have the possibility
to make something different if we can
learn to turn around and face the things
that we are afraid of and we liberate
that energy for reconnecting ourselves
because what we have to reconnect is
both within ourselves it’s what we’ve
been running from what we’ve split off
and it is between us because in order to
understand my father as a man not a
monster I had to reconnect the
historical fabric of his life to see how
what I experienced it’s just one thread
in this social and cultural fabric if we
do this we have the possibility of
creating a world that is based on joyful
connection
hope for love and our creative
imagination and it is our choice we
choose I am praying that we choose hope
[Applause] [Music]
I really wanted to run away
from the memory of my father drunk and
screaming and punching his rage and
shame into the bodies of his children
and I really wanted to run away from the
memory of the nights of my father when I
had to hold my breath and my mind and my
spirit separated from my body and I
saved myself by pretending this was all
just a bad dream nothing was really
happening and when I was 18 I did run
away I ran away to college and I really
believed that if I just ran far enough
and fast enough I could leave that past
behind me but you know what it doesn’t
work like that six years and two college
degrees later that pass caught up with
me and it ran me over and it happened
like this my best friend Denise and I
were visiting my mother my mother was
telling stories of my father oh my god
with every story she told panic started
growing and growing in me until I felt
like I was in a haunted house and those
monsters were about to break the walls
down and they were gonna kill me and
this fear grew so big that I had to
leave the room I just went into my old
bedroom and I sat down on the bed and I
started crying crying crying remembering
being in a basement in Alaska with my
father
now when I was finally able to pull
myself together and go back out into the
living room with Denise and my mother I
sat down and I started drinking coffee
and I was talking to my mama just like
we were having a beautiful evening and
my mama she went right along with me not
one mention of me being in another room
and crying because you know what we were
trained up in a life of ignoring denying
not looking absolutely under no
circumstances do you really tell the
truth of what’s happening now
Denise on the other hand was pretty
clear that something was wrong so when
we were driving home that night she said
what happened in there why were you
crying and I didn’t have an answer
Denise that night stood as my first
witness she said something’s wrong we
have to figure out what it is and all of
our violence’s began here they begin
with the refusal to look denial
repression that desire not to know my
mother and I we were complicit in
pretending that nothing had happened now
when we bear witness we break that
silence and when we do that it can be
terrifying our witnesses help us to turn
around and face what we are afraid of
they show us that we can find the
courage and the strength to bring those
things we are running from into the
light and when we learn how to do that
we take our power back we take the power
of the fear that’s driving us to run
fear of what we do not want to know do
not want to be true fear of what will
happen if we speak the truth fear of
what will happen because we know and
when we face that fear we are liberated
because every violence doesn’t matter if
it’s the child being abused if it is the
person taken from their homes in the
middle of the night and brought to
secret detention centers it is criminal
oligarchs in collusion with governments
stealing land and resources from the
people they should be serving every
violence big and small begins from the
failure to bear witness but here’s the
beautiful thing when we turn around and
meet that fear and begin to break that
silence we start reconnecting the parts
of ourselves we have been split off from
instead of using all of our energy to
run we have that energy to reconnect
ourselves and connection is the source
of our joy and I mean this literally
this mother and her baby right now they
are bonding and you know what that kind
of connection does it releases mega
doses of serotonin dopamine oxytocin
this is the chemical formula of joy this
chemical formula of joy
it is literally wiring that baby’s brain
right now to expect to be loved cared
for nurtured and feeling this connection
feeling this bond expecting to be loved
she is open this is joy and this is what
joy does
[Applause]
and our joy comes from our connection
now I shouldn’t be on thank you yes so
ignore that now what happens if we live
in chronic states of fear and anxiety
then the stress response system kicks in
the stress response system floods us
with the chemicals and the hormones that
prime the body to fight off danger or
run from it and if we can’t fight or run
then we play dead until the danger
passes but what if we are living in
circumstances such that we are never out
of danger long enough for our stress
response system to shut up
then our brains become wired to expect
danger it doesn’t matter if the danger
is really out there in front of us it’s
inside of us and we projected onto
everything around us and when we do that
our capacity to experience that
beautiful chemical soup of oxytocin
serotonin and dopamine that think that
lets us feel connected and loved and joy
that capacity is diminished so I am
proposing to you seriously that we must
intentionally consciously cultivate our
capacity for joy because when we are in
conditions of that stress response
system writing us we do not know who is
safe and how to love and we have to heal
ourselves and here’s the beautiful news
we can what we know now is that we can
learn how our stress response system is
affecting us we can learn how to turn it
and the more we do that the more we grow
our capacity for those neuro chemicals
of joy to bring us into the states of
pleasure and openness that can allow us
to reconnect with each other and when I
started to learn this I started to learn
something else about the violence as we
experienced my father before he was the
man I knew he was a child himself he
lived his own violence’s one of 13
children in a poor family he went to war
in Korea and Vietnam he was handed a gun
and given an enemy and that enemy became
his definition it became his salvation
it was the thing on to which he could
project everything about himself that he
hated and with that he got his identity
as a man and that’s what he brought home
to me and when I could understand that I
could see that my life my experience it
wasn’t just about me or my father it was
about war and poverty and how violence
is passed from generation to generation
and I could also see that my life my
father’s life
we are just small threads in a larger
cultural fabric that is torn and broken
and when we start the work of healing
ourselves and I am begging you take up
that work because we’re all in need of
it and we do that with our joy and when
we start that work that work is
something we have to do not just in and
with and for ourselves we have to bring
that work
to the world we have to do it with each
other because what I suffered what you
suffered we are not unique this is part
of a pattern and if we want to be well
ourselves we have to work to make the
people in the world around us well and
we do that with our joy now now here’s
the other thing that I learned that
night Denise stood as my first witness
she showed me also that the roads that
we are traveling we travel together and
the more that we can bring ourselves to
our states of connectedness and joy the
more energy we have to bring that into
the world around us and that generates
energy it generates hope and that
generating of energy and generating of
hope we start mobilizing that and we
have the possibility of a radically
different world in front of us and you
know what else that shows us when I can
see that my father is a man not a
monster I have my compassion for him and
that compassion for him is a compassion
I can find and bring to the world around
us and that compassion is what will
allow us to heal the most violent and
the most broken parts of our world and
that compassion it helps us love
ourselves because you know what when we
have been the victims of violence we
live with the shame of our helplessness
and our humiliation and when our
witnesses helped us to find compassion
for ourselves and to begin to love
ourselves that grows exponentially and
we bring that to the world around us
and that is the work of healing which
requires begs of us consciously
intentionally cultivate our own states
of joy I want something very very simple
I want every life on this planet to be
loved cared for safe and nurtured and we
have this possibility we have the
possibility to grow this in ourselves we
have the possibility to grow it with
each other and this is what can bring us
into a world that we can inhabit for not
just the next five and ten and fifteen
years but for centuries to come and if
we don’t do that we don’t have centuries
and sometimes I cannot grasp how we have
made up a world of money weapons war
violent and exploitative political
systems that enslave and kill we have
made this up these are all human
inventions and we have the possibility
to make something different if we can
learn to turn around and face the things
that we are afraid of and we liberate
that energy for reconnecting ourselves
because what we have to reconnect is
both within ourselves it’s what we’ve
been running from what we’ve split off
and it is between us because in order to
understand my father as a man not a
monster I had to reconnect the
historical fabric of his life to see how
what I experienced it’s just one thread
in this social and cultural fabric if we
do this we have the possibility of
creating a world that is based on joyful
connection
hope for love and our creative
imagination and it is our choice we
choose I am praying that we choose hope
[Applause] [Music]
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