Here is the talk, watching it will put the following (very long piece) into context.
Auditoning:
In October of 2021, I was approached by Lou Watson on twitter and she asked if I had ever considered auditioning for a TEDx. She was part of the TEDxKingston team and thought I had a story to tell. At the time, I had written about quitting drinking in lockdown for You Magazine and was eager to share the story. I auditioned over zoom to a team of six and talked about how I quit when the bars were shut and it helped with the FOMO, and now, out the other side, I was taking on some new challenges.
In January 2021, I had received word that I would be an alternate for the lineup. They were very conscious of the whole day not revolving around lockdown stories as we had all probably had enough of our own lockdowns let alone anyone elses; and the team has an important role in shaping the collection of talks to reach and touch as many people in the audience. So you wouldn’t want to show up to seven TEDx talks on addiction, or motherhood or anything else limiting like that.
I had no idea that due to continued covid event restrictions, my whole life would change drastically before the live event actually took place over 15 months later on April 30th of 2022 and I would end up headlining the event. Over the course of those fifteen months, my quitting drinking extended into a permanent state, I took up running, lost 7 stone and became co founder of Reclaim These Streets, a national organisation campaigning for women’s safety that was formed after a serving police officer abducted, raped and killed Sarah Everard in March of 2021.
I’m going to detail the process for me; but understand that TEDx are community run events and each community has their own way of working so this may not be representative of everyone’s experience, but I am hugely grateful that it was mine. In many ways, this piece is a love letter to Tara Majumdar, my speakers coach provided by the TEDXKingston team. My success on the day is largely down to the faith and work that Tara put into my performance.
Getting Started:
In December of 2021, Liam, who was in charge of the speakers asked if I would be prepared to spend the next six weeks working on a speech with Tara, I was about 6 weeks behind the rest of the speakers in terms of preparation.
I’ve asked Tara’s permission to share this, as it is very much relevant to the journey and relationship we developed, but Tara’s mother passed away that December, just as we were meant to start work. Given that most of my speech revolves around my grief from my mother’s passing, I wasn’t sure if it would cut too close to the bone or be too painful for Tara to revisit constantly.
She assured me that she was prepared to work with me when she returned from India and the date for the event moved for the sixth and final time, in the meantime Louise recommended that I read TED Talks by Chris Anderson. I listened to it on Audible as I drove through the mountains of Pennsylvania to visit my family for Christmas. If you are constructing a speech for work or anything else, I highly recommend the book. I ended up buying a physical copy and spending hours and hours listening to the talks he references in the text. Sometimes the talks intimidated the hell out of me, but they set the standard that I would be striving for.
I am sure that every person needs coaching and help for different parts of their talks but for me, most of the work Tara and I did in the beginning was getting to the heart of my story. My first draft was thirty eight minutes long. There were long sections about my taking up running. There were pages and pages of detail about how I lost seven stone. There was tons on why I became an activist and exactly where the half a million pounds that we raised was being donated. But it was way way too long and unfocussed.
Finding my focus:
We spent weeks tightening the screws, focussing on the crucial details and cutting so so much unnecessary detail. While we were doing this, my campaigning group Reclaim These Streets was fighting the Metropolitan Police in high court. I also performed in a Cambridge Union debate titled “This house has lost confidence in her majesty’s police force”. That debate was a great confidence builder for the TED. My original speech was heavily academic and cited. I was really self conscious about the regal surroundings and was trying to sound as smart as possible (read: Not like a girl from Philly). But after a vigil in January for yet another woman murdered by a man, Ashling Murphy; I read my speech to my best friend and a colleague from Reclaim. Gina (my best friend) said that it was all well and good, but people don’t remember stats. They remember how you make them feel. They remember if you are authentic and genuine. And I had lost the heart and authenticity that I usually brought to the table. She told me to tear it up and start over.
Everyone needs a Gina in their lives. Tearing it up lead to me giving a speech at the debate that was 100% me. I wasn’t trying to be anyone else, I wasn’t trying to sound more educated. I was just raw me. It was some of the best advice I was ever given and played out the night of the debate and I carried it with me through the crafting of my TED.
After almost five weeks with Tara, I was ready to debut my TEDx to Gina. My talk is about reclaiming my life; but addresses that I was problematically drinking very heavily for a long time and had been a danger to myself. I laid bare some of the worst times in my life and the changes that came about when I quit drinking. It is painful, emotionally draining and radically honest; and Gina cried four times the first time I read it to her. It had passed the Gina test which for me was the most important test. It meant I was not minimising or making light of my drinking dependency and I was taking responsibility for the pain it caused her and others.
Taking feedback:
We removed the direct references to the amount I was drinking and the amount of weight I lost as we wanted people to generally reflect; and not to take themselves out of the zone by comparing the exact behaviours. We removed the before and after pictures as people stopped listening and got distracted by specifics.
And then most important and crazy change to the speech happened. At one point, I lost the final note card to the speech. My conclusion was gone. I physically lost the note card. So instead of it ending with my summary about my story, it ended with my asking the audience if they were ready to invest in themselves. And it changed the whole tone of the talk. It immeasurably improved the speech and threw the action and experience back to the audience. It stopped just being about me and became more about the human experience.
Memorising:
Now I just had to learn the damn thing. I was determined not to use note cards, but 18 minutes without prompts is a very long time. It was about 60 cards written out. I am not a good memoriser, but I am a comfortable public speaker; and I didn’t want to waste all of the fine tuning and miss out on the points of the story that were really important to get across.
I didn’t want to waste the months of editing. I wanted it to be amazing and worked for months to get it to that point.
But, I had gotten it in my head that I just couldn’t memorise it, it was beyond my capabilities. I was rehearsing three times a day on zoom to all kinds of friends and family. We already had it word locked, but it is very hard to ask people to just listen to it without actually giving feedback. Friends in America and Australia all had lots of zoom rehearsals. I must have done it a thousand times, and that doesn’t count the two or three times a week with Tara.
With Tara, we experienced her first Mother’s Day without her mother, while listening to me talk about missing mine. I sent her a copy of Ammu by Asma Khan, Asma’s ode to her own mother. Tara guiding me through this process was so motherly and I can’t count the amount of tears we both shed.
There is a fine line between having the emotional impact of the speech land and just being in a heap on the stage. I’m sure with other speakers that Tara coached (although I don’t know how she found the time given the hundreds of hours that we spent) it was more about delivery and stage presence. That part I was comfortable with, the part I couldn’t nail was the memorisation. And then I was panicking about the memorising, sending myself into a pretty brutal cycle of doom.
Call in reinforcements:
I ended up meeting with another coach Olivia James for some additional support getting me over the mental hump I had created about not being able to memorise. During my sessions with Olivia, I also addressed the difficulty I was having verbalising that Wayne Couzens had abducted, raped and murdered Sarah. A friend in the states had pointed out that I had assumed that everyone knew the crime, and I didn’t actually say the words. My friend was right, but actually getting those words to pass my lips was painful. Olivia and I did some exercises with eye movement to get me through that portion of the speech.
I was actually in Olivia’s office when I got news that the Police had been denied permission to appeal in their protracted court battle with Reclaim These Streets (which we won). I think I almost screamed down the building. That session was the first time I did the speech in person standing up. It led to another fifty zoom sessions with friends and family in different time zones, but with the camera on a tripod so I could get used to occupying space.
Reclaim These Streets exiting High Court vs the Metropolitan Police with a little embellishment to the pic.
Counting Down:
And then it was time for a dress rehearsal. It was so weird to head to Kingston for a rehearsal and actually get to meet and hug Tara. We had spent so many moments together with her family noise behind her and my dog noise behind me and to finally see her in person was special. To have her husband and son play with my dog while we hugged and then finally did an in person rehearsal was lovely. And I will be the first to admit that I latch onto motherly women and she was constantly walking the tightrope between encouragement and challenging me. She wanted me to own it and have the best possible experience. She was in essence my stand in mom.
Also, it was decided that as a surprise for the audience, my elderly dog McNulty would come out at the very end to greet me and end the day for the audience. I was absolutely thrilled.
At that point I was still married to my note cards.
The final five days were when I finally nailed the mental transitions between each bit of the talk and thought I was ready to go without cards. The night before the talk, I was in my local pub, and met a couple. We ended up chatting- mostly about the dog and I said I was doing a TED the next day. I ended up doing it for them and then realised that they were the first strangers to hear it. Everyone else I had performed for already loved me; they had been there for the rough parts, they had been part of the reason I survived it. Would it resonate with a room of seven hundred strangers? Cece, the woman from the pub cried and said as a German, she never cried. And said it would be amazing. That was the final boost I needed.
The day of:
The next morning, I went for the sound check, ready to be terrified, ready to be nauseous, but actually, it was the most I had ever prepared for anything in my life, and I was ready. Felt confident and happy and prepared. I kept waiting to have the fear, but it never came.
My dear friend Michael was hosting pre drinks and had rented a party bus to bring my closest crew out to Kingston. I rode into town with my crew and my dog, and what a crew they are.
The performance:
I wore the very last dregs of my mother’s lipstick and her necklace that I never take off. That night, I delivered the best version that I had ever done with no notes. I have never been prouder of myself and so much of it was down to Tara. I am so used to winging things and just flying by the seat of my pants. But for this. Trusting the process. Trusting the book. Trusting Tara. And trusting myself was crucial..
I didn’t burst into tears. I held it together although I shook with rage a bit and almost cried when speaking about my mom. I ad libbed a little which my little sister said was her favourite bit as it was so so me. And I nailed it. I highly recommend the process, the experience and the joy of sharing my experience with the world through TEDx.
As I write this it has amazingly had over 90,000 views. That I was able to share how much investing in myself launched the rest of my life, that I was able to touch some of those people who have watched is incredible.
And that I am able to publish this and thank Tara publicly, is the icing on the cake. And it honours both of our mothers.
Post speech at the Rose Theatre in Kingston with Tara