a tiny piece of gold hanging off the edge of a neon cliff - photo by badrenalin
I enjoyed the speakers at TedxNashville so very much and am so grateful to all the volunteer hours and efforts it took to make a wonderful afternoon. Writer, filmmaker, speaker and activist Molly Secours challenged the sell out audience of 400: What is your personal moment of alchemy?
Quotes from TedxNashville
“treat the individual, not the average.”, “I need chocolate” , “I saw a human ear growing on a mouse”, “I am never satisfied.”, “Love everybody”, “My name is Jill, please pass the health care bill”, “We are winning the pursuit of life liberty and happiness”, “Music is medicine.”, “Fear is the enemy”, “Researchers at Meharry will stop HIV”, “10 million orphaned by AIDS”, “38% of DC adults can’t read.”, “Jesus, kittens and flowers” and from the heart of mouth of a Youth Speaks Nashville poet; “…..all he can do with his memory card brain was to try to remember the time when games were actually games.”
My personal alchemy? It isn’t going through this extended unemployment, it wasn’t when Joan was terribly sick in 2002, or when I lost 10% of my right hand to the improper use of a mouse at a workstation in 2001. Or learning completely over again how to pick up anything, much less hold a brush to paint or pencil to write. It wasn’t when my mom got cancer or when she survived so well that I forget she had cancer. It wasn’t 9-11 or the AIDS crises on the 1980s or the the space shuttle exploding in the blue sky. I wasn’t when I helped record producers make money or when I helped reggae bands spread the gospel. My alchemy wasn’t saving Shakespeare for Nashville by falling on the pointy pen of a budget’s balance sheet. It wasn’t seeing my father respond to injustice in 1967 . It wasn’t seeing my garden renew every spring. It wasn’t even when I literally changed my name. It’s not knowing the strong strange love of a dog. It wasn’t buying a house and selling a house to buy a different house. It isn’t seeing friendship in real action. It isn’t a political campaign. What was my trial by fire, my personal alchemy that pushed out a person that was different than the one before? What has happened in my life that not only influenced my character, which all these things have done, but actually changed my character? For many people, this hasn’t happened, and maybe never will. Maybe your alchemy will burn hot and nearly kill you, like a chemotherapy treatment.
When I ‘came out’ to a few in 1999 and everyone in 2000 it was a hot burning fire. My character not only changed, it was transformed. The pursuit of kindness, the hunt for equality and the determination for dignity became a part of my passion, a part of me. This passion is not just for my community of gay folks but for my community of people who want to literally change the world. I feel like I am only ten years old and my journey is long and wide ahead of me. It takes a long time for you to really have hindsight, about a decade.
Leave a comment about your personal moment of alchemy:
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During TedxNashville, local artist Peter Durand took a live account of the discussion
Check out the images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alphachimpstudio/sets/72157623667485646/
Realizing I was gay was a big damn deal, but the fire wasn’t strong enough to keep me from marrying the profoundly persistent man that I was trying to stop dating. The fire came again, several years later, after I’d settled into the blended family, earned my college degree, remodeled the house, dealt with my eating disorder, and spent who knows how many hours of therapy to find myself and make peace with my suburban-wife, soccer-mom existence. The more work I did, the stronger my fire would rage and eventually I wanted… no needed, because that’s how the fire feels, out of my marriage. I left – not because he was anything and he was indeed a few things – but because I wasn’t capable of being the woman he wanted me to be. Even more importantly, “the fire” left me no longer willing to try.
This time it was strong enough. I was strong enough. I was, indeed, a completely changed woman. This time the fire was strong enough that his relentless pursuit didn’t make me doubt myself. The fire was strong enough to keep me moving forward, even when that meant breaking the hearts my husband, my children, and my step-children. It kept me warm when so many people I’d considered friends turned cold, and disappeared. The fire filled me with the courage to leave the only “stable” home I’d ever known, the one I built. It loaned me the compassion necessary to be gentle with my children and with my self, as we recovered from the pain caused by my weakness five years before. The fire kept me company when the isolation of single parenting overwhelmed me. The fire was so strong that I thought it would just be the two of us, me and my fire, for a very long time and remarkably, when Love came – far more boldly and suddenly than I’d prepared for – she fell, madly and completely, in love with me… and my fire.
Light up the world with that fire, Christy!