we were on route 64 in northern New
Mexico just outside of Cimarron Valley
when we saw them hulking horned
billowing heavy breaths into the chilled
December air buffalo Mallory and I
exclaimed in the otherwise quiet car she
pulled a u-turn on the deserted country
road we got out of the car and
approached them in Native American
culture the buffalo stands as a symbol
of self-sacrifice
it gives everything it has its flesh for
food its hide for clothing and shelter
it gives all that it has and in doing so
makes life possible for the people as I
stood there watching the herd my boots
cracking through the frozen grass a
single female buffalo emerged from the
herd and came towards me I stared dark
eye to dark eye with her here I was
broken a shadow of myself and there she
was untamed with strength untold in that
moment an otherworldly gray seemed to
encircle us we spoke of ineffable things
of grief and gratitude and what it is to
give all of oneself we’re here at the
Yale TEDx conference where the theme is
uncharted my uncharted territory comes
in relation to the limits of our sanity
in the face of successive trauma
and our ability to transcend that trauma
via a practice I call radical
authenticity what is radical
authenticity for me it was a reckoning
a facing of everything that I’d tried to
how I came to be standing in front of a
herd of buffalo on a deserted country
road in northern New Mexico and how I
came to this philosophy is a very long
story I’m gonna do my best to try to
tell it here my early life was not easy
I could go blow-for-blow and tell you
everything that happened and make this a
very depressing TED talk but we’re
already kind of walking that line so
we’re just going to establish that it
was bad and move forward flash-forward
to my early 30s where things were bad
but getting better until at the age of
31
I had to undergo a year of invasive
testings
and surgeries to be diagnosed with late
stage endometriosis a year after that I
suffered a traumatic fall wrecked my leg
broke it in three places dislocated the
ankle had to have reconstructive surgery
to put it back together again
I’d spend the next year or learning how
to walk and then as if that wasn’t
enough a year after that I would suffer
the miscarriage of twins when the
miscarriage happened my mind tried to
process things the way I’d always had up
until that point when something bad
happened I did what most of us do to get
through these things I put my head down
told myself I was okay and pushed
through it I dealt with the logistics of
what was happening but I didn’t deal
with how I felt about what was happening
some would argue that this is how we get
through things we have to set aside our
feelings and just plow through it and I
would agree with them to some degree but
we always have to
round back to our feelings I learned
this the hard way
a momentary coping mechanism became a
25-year toxic habit creating an entire
when the miscarriage happened my mind as
I said did what it always does
it tried to repress only instead of
repressing how I felt about what was
happening I tried to repress the entire
event it didn’t happen
I didn’t go to the doctor I didn’t tell
my family nothing in the weeks after the
miscarriage I started to unravel let’s
face it we can bury something within
ourselves but deep down we still know
it’s there one night I was out having
dinner with my friend Mallory I’d only
known her about two months when in a
vodka fueled confession I told her that
I had had a miscarriage a few weeks
before almost the moment I said the
words I started to unravel we got the
check we left the restaurant we went to
my nearby office I just signed the lease
there was no furniture the room was bare
I curled up in the middle of the floor
and just was undone there had been 20
years of things happening one after the
next after the next and I just couldn’t
take it anymore
I came into a frame of mine where I just
wanted the suffering to end and the only
way I could see it ending was by my own
hand I honestly don’t know what would
have happened that night had Mallory not
been there she stayed with me the entire
night
and held me together in a moment when I
couldn’t hold myself together after that
night I did what most of us do to
overcome these things I went to therapy
in an effort to process what had
happened let it go and move forward
I was only in therapy a few weeks when
the formal diagnosis of depression PTSD
and mild dissociative disorder was given
to me I was referred to a trauma
specialist for intensive therapy long
story short the therapy didn’t work a
few weeks in I started having episodes
all the repressed emotion was coming up
in these episodes I would go from Full
Tilt rage to fight-or-flight
to crashing back down into the bleakest
despair and cycle back again these
episodes happened on a bi-weekly basis
for over a year when I told my therapist
what was happening she said it’ll get
worse before it gets better stick with
it you will be able to let go you will
be able to heal wanting to heal wanting
to let go I stuck with it and the
episodes only increased in frequency
finally I felt I had no choice but to
suspend the sessions around about this
time I was sitting out on Mallory’s deck
watching the Connecticut River flow by
when she came to me and said we have 10
days off at Christmas why don’t we go
west it’s been years since I’ve been to
Arizona
I remember replying you want to drive to
Arizona
isn’t that like 2,500 miles one way
it’ll take days to which she said you’ve
always wanted to see mountains you’ve
always wanted to go west I still wasn’t
feeling it
and then she played dirty or writers we
need new experiences how could I argue
with that and so it was that I came to
be on a deserted country road in
northern New Mexico standing in front of
a herd of wild buffalo after spending
time with the Buffalo we pushed south to
Taos where we were to stay with two of
Mallory’s old friends going into mark
and Sara’s house there was just
something simple and true about their
house and they themselves it was a
single floor Adobe structure the wood
beams were still visible on the ceiling
there were wide red clay tile floors and
a small wood stove heating the whole
house there was just something honest
about their way of life and it bound
like a bandage around my soul that night
I was to sleep in Marc’s music room mark
like Malorie is a singer-songwriter only
I couldn’t sleep I stared up through the
darkness at the ceiling I felt filled
with images and memories that I would
have had made with my children had they
been born I’ve been running away I’d
admit to the medical event of the
miscarriage but I had never taken the
time to let in the full loss and grief
for that life not lived but that night I
let the images come and like a real they
played in my mind the doctor putting
them in my arms the nights reading aloud
teenage fights and mended fences college
acceptance letters marriages and finally
the way of of images were seated and I
saw the whole night when I got up the
next morning I felt oddly rested i sat
in the living room listening to Marc and
Mallory playing on their guitars in the
warm room reverberating with music the
sango de Cristo Mountains were in the
window just beyond I had a heavy mug of
coffee and my journal open in front of
me I felt something beginning after
years of things ending eventually we
came home and I took all of my journal
entries and cobbled them together into
an essay that I presented for course I
was taking at Harvard an advance
narrative nonfiction after I presented
the paper something very interesting
happen all of my classmates started
coming up to me privately telling me of
their stories of depression or near
suicide or mental illness it was as
though my admitting that I wasn’t okay
gave them permission to admit that they
weren’t okay later
I told Mallory of my plan to take the
essay and publish it in a book and she
said why are you going to share that
much of yourself with people I had
always been a private person at the
tender age of 26 when I got my first
book deal I decided to write under my
initials LM browning because I thought
in doing so I would magically be
anonymous
and that’s what I wanted little did I
know that I would go on to write
personal essays in which I share
infinitely more personal details with
the reader than my name so here I was
poised to share my most vulnerable
moment with the world
why share this much of myself because
I’m finished with denial because I’m
willing to admit that I’m broken we’re
all broken and right now we’re all
isolated within that brokenness the cure
for my breakdown the cure for our
isolation is radical authenticity we
can’t reach one another so long is that
we’re pretending that we’re okay we’re
when I first started talking about it
with people I shared my story with my
friends and when I did so I learned
details about them that I never knew
I’ve known some of them for 10 15 years
and I didn’t know that they suffered
from depression because they had just
felt they needed to pretend imagine what
could be changed in our society if we
were able to rid ourselves of the
terrible notion that we are alone it’s
when we’re in those dark times and we
believe things won’t change and that
we’re alone
the truly terrible and irreversible
things happen when I went through
everything that I did there were those
people that watched everything happen
and they came up to me and said this
must have been meant to be because
something good came from every bad thing
that happened to you
as though God or the divine were trying
to teach me something through pain I’m
affronted by this notion because it robs
me of my achievement of transcendence we
don’t learn anything from suffering if
we did we would be an enlightened
society and we’re not we learn from
suffering if and only if we are able to
take the bad things that happen to us
and transcend it into something
meaningful I’ve come to believe that we
all go through different things in our
life but we all cross the same emotional
terrain we all feel the same depression
the same hopelessness the same isolation
and healing fruit things would be
infinitely easier if we knew that we
were not alone if we were able to be
authentic with one another and authentic
with ourselves in the end what is
radical authenticity this is radical
authenticity two years ago I couldn’t
say these words out loud without having
a breakdown and now I’m standing in
front of all of you saying it out loud
and yeah for the first five minutes of
this talk my heart pounded because I’m
saying things that I don’t want to tell
myself and I’m telling you things that I
would rather hide in the end why share
this much of myself because you can’t
change what has happened to you you
can’t hide it you can’t spin it you
can’t let it go all you can do is own it
own your journey you don’t have to give
a TED talk or write a book to be
radically authentic you just have to
stop pretending so talk to one another
don’t pretend that you’re okay if you’re
not owned your journey be radically
authentic thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you