Speech
I recently had a speaking engagement at an abuse recovery center in Oregon. It was the first time I have spoken to an audience about my book and my healing process. I was nervous at first as I stood at the podium and looked out at all the faces looking to me. Then something extraordinary happened. All the fear dissolved and I saw a room full of beautiful faces and I was connected to each person at some divine level. I realized then, the moment was not mine but ours, it belonged to us as a whole and not to all the fragments of individuals. I said a lot of things that I didn’t know I was going to say and many other things that I simply have no recollection of saying. There was a pulse in the room, a palpable singular energy that united us. I was honored to have been apart of that. After the hour long speech which I found was not long enough I had women coming up to me to thank me or to say hello. I felt the oddest sense of seeing myself in each one of them and I wondered if they were feeling the same way about me. I felt their souls through the exchange and I was touched very deeply by the experience. I hugged these strangers with an openness of a family member for I saw at once that they were part of my family, my human family. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to see into so many lovely faces and witness so many lovely hearts and to know that I am that.