In this deeply personal talk, writer Amy Bickers shares the challenges she faced following a traumatic incident and the insights she took away from it. She shows how the cinematic structure of the stories we're raised on isn't the right way to look at the structure of our own stories.

Amy Bickers writes frankly and often humorously about such topics as grief, post-traumatic stress, and the antics of contestants on The Bachelor.

A former newspaper journalist and associate editor at Southern Living, Amy Bickers is the author of "The Geography of You and Me," her debut memoir about suicide loss. The memoir's publication was funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx