WEBVTT

00:00:24.358 --> 00:00:28.768
As a writer, I've spent my career 
thinking about stories and how they work.

00:00:29.569 --> 00:00:33.180
I've fit dramatic pieces
into narrative puzzles,

00:00:33.180 --> 00:00:38.130
and I've thought about what feels true 
versus what simply feels good.

00:00:38.618 --> 00:00:42.628
But I never realized
how much I bought into the idea

00:00:42.628 --> 00:00:44.645
of beginnings and endings

00:00:44.645 --> 00:00:49.285
until I started trying to make sense
of the pieces of my own story.

00:00:49.981 --> 00:00:51.501
This is the beginning,

00:00:51.721 --> 00:00:54.141
but it's not really the beginning.

00:00:55.009 --> 00:00:58.179
On a Monday night in August 2009,

00:00:58.297 --> 00:01:01.124
my ex-husband confronted me
with a shotgun

00:01:01.294 --> 00:01:03.194
and trapped me in my garage.

00:01:04.134 --> 00:01:08.104
He had been struggling
with prescription pill abuse.

00:01:08.364 --> 00:01:10.018
He'd lost his job.

00:01:10.248 --> 00:01:11.758
He'd lost his wife.

00:01:12.828 --> 00:01:16.328
He'd lost that thing
that keeps us tethered to this world:

00:01:16.451 --> 00:01:18.521
the ability to see tomorrow.


00:01:19.460 --> 00:01:23.670
He said to me,
"You don't know how hard this is ..."

00:01:23.909 --> 00:01:26.979
And only moments later,
he took his own life


00:01:27.498 --> 00:01:30.168
so then I would know how hard it was too.

00:01:31.524 --> 00:01:33.364
In the wake of devastation,

00:01:33.364 --> 00:01:36.013
those who are affected
can fall into a trap

00:01:36.013 --> 00:01:40.783
of believing the universe has punished us
based on our worth as a human being.

00:01:41.211 --> 00:01:42.761
And if we're now good enough,


00:01:42.761 --> 00:01:44.571
if we learn our lesson,


00:01:44.821 --> 00:01:46.361
we'll be rewarded.

00:01:47.026 --> 00:01:53.276
This is what books and movies and so many
tragedy narratives tell us comes next.

00:01:53.945 --> 00:01:55.765
In the wake of my own devastation,


00:01:55.765 --> 00:01:58.665
I came up with a list of things
the universe could bring me

00:01:58.665 --> 00:02:00.575
that might make things right:

00:02:01.108 --> 00:02:02.938
a Best Actress Oscar

00:02:02.938 --> 00:02:06.241
for a role I like to call
a human woman pretending to be okay;

00:02:06.241 --> 00:02:07.751
(Laughter)

00:02:08.731 --> 00:02:12.221
a call from Oprah asking me
to be part of her book club;

00:02:12.764 --> 00:02:14.294
and finally -

00:02:14.294 --> 00:02:16.106
this is the most important one -

00:02:16.106 --> 00:02:18.396
George Clooney as my boyfriend.

00:02:18.573 --> 00:02:19.983
(Laughter)

00:02:20.405 --> 00:02:24.955
So I fell into this trap for a while -
of waiting for what comes next.

00:02:25.492 --> 00:02:29.052
I made vision boards,
I read self-help books,

00:02:29.483 --> 00:02:34.283
I went to therapy,
and I tried to learn my lesson.

00:02:34.790 --> 00:02:37.070
What I was looking for, of course,

00:02:37.070 --> 00:02:39.980
was something to make sense of the past,

00:02:39.980 --> 00:02:44.060
some equal, yet completely
opposite reaction

00:02:44.060 --> 00:02:47.520
that could bring
a traumatic story to an end.

00:02:48.257 --> 00:02:52.857
I had the idea that maybe
this phase of tragedy could be over

00:02:52.857 --> 00:02:55.917
if only some happily
ever after came along.

00:02:57.433 --> 00:03:00.443
This is the structure
of the stories we're raised on,

00:03:00.443 --> 00:03:03.583
the cinematic sweep of epic films,

00:03:03.668 --> 00:03:06.608
the narratives that take a person
from rock bottom

00:03:06.608 --> 00:03:10.298
to glorious heights of success and love

00:03:10.298 --> 00:03:12.588
and all in less than two hours.

00:03:13.334 --> 00:03:17.664
This is what happens in movies
I like to call "misfortune porn."

00:03:17.821 --> 00:03:19.671
Don't Google that by the way.


00:03:19.790 --> 00:03:22.130
(Laughter)

00:03:22.177 --> 00:03:23.087
No.

00:03:23.732 --> 00:03:29.022
Misfortune porn is a movie
where you have this sad lead character,

00:03:29.022 --> 00:03:33.572
and they get screwed non-stop 
for at least an hour and 45 minutes.

00:03:33.572 --> 00:03:36.822
And then at the end they get their reward.

00:03:37.683 --> 00:03:41.823
The cinematic reward for tragedy
is having your dream come true

00:03:42.298 --> 00:03:43.898
or making a big play

00:03:43.898 --> 00:03:47.238
and getting carried off the field
on the shoulders of your teammates,

00:03:47.757 --> 00:03:50.677
getting carried out of the factory
by the leading man,

00:03:51.166 --> 00:03:53.226
someone starts a slow clap,

00:03:53.226 --> 00:03:54.806
everyone cheers,

00:03:54.806 --> 00:03:56.046
credits roll.


00:03:56.533 --> 00:03:57.453
The End.

00:03:58.792 --> 00:04:04.858
We want the cinematic climax to be
the structure of our own difficult stories

00:04:06.168 --> 00:04:07.258
(Sighs)

00:04:07.858 --> 00:04:12.445
So I entertained fantasies
about things that could save me

00:04:12.445 --> 00:04:15.335
because I felt I needed saving,

00:04:15.994 --> 00:04:19.304
cinematic happy-ending saving.

00:04:19.952 --> 00:04:24.714
I wanted the things people promised me
in their messages of condolence,

00:04:25.094 --> 00:04:28.624
the things we say
when we don't know what to say:

00:04:28.634 --> 00:04:30.654
"This happened for a reason."

00:04:31.123 --> 00:04:33.023
"You will find happiness again."

00:04:33.849 --> 00:04:36.699
"You deserve something wonderful."

00:04:37.948 --> 00:04:39.615
But the terrible truth is

00:04:39.615 --> 00:04:42.615
that even the biggest thing
you can dream up

00:04:42.615 --> 00:04:45.765
is not the secret to healing your grief.

00:04:46.526 --> 00:04:52.116
What arrived for me, for a while,
was a case of chronic disappointment,

00:04:52.665 --> 00:04:55.765
a certainty that I must be
doing something wrong,

00:04:55.765 --> 00:04:58.085
I was failing to learn my lesson.

00:04:58.582 --> 00:04:59.782
I needed answers,

00:04:59.782 --> 00:05:03.112
and I made looking for answers
my full-time job.

00:05:03.831 --> 00:05:06.551
I looked for answers in the suicide note

00:05:06.551 --> 00:05:10.861
my ex-husband had written
only moments before we were in the garage.

00:05:11.331 --> 00:05:14.761
And it didn't give me
the answers I needed or wanted.

00:05:15.536 --> 00:05:17.866
Notes like these rarely do.

00:05:18.368 --> 00:05:20.248
He had written seven words:

00:05:20.690 --> 00:05:24.040
"I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

00:05:26.597 --> 00:05:28.687
One winter day a few years ago,

00:05:28.687 --> 00:05:32.497
I was sitting at my kitchen table
writing about what had happened.

00:05:33.790 --> 00:05:36.810
I was looking out the window
past the bare trees

00:05:36.810 --> 00:05:41.360
toward this vast expanse
of peaks and valleys in the distance.

00:05:41.561 --> 00:05:42.871
It's this amazing view

00:05:42.871 --> 00:05:46.681
that I forget about completely
when everything is in bloom.

00:05:47.035 --> 00:05:49.275
Now by this time,
I'd written thousands of words

00:05:49.275 --> 00:05:50.964
in journals, and blog posts,

00:05:50.964 --> 00:05:54.454
and in letters to people
who could never read them -

00:05:54.454 --> 00:05:58.094
all in this attempt
to understand devastation.

00:05:58.604 --> 00:06:01.004
And when you got down to it,

00:06:02.105 --> 00:06:05.025
really, what I'd written
was just a longer version

00:06:05.025 --> 00:06:09.765
of "I'm so sorry. This is very hard."

00:06:10.354 --> 00:06:12.904
And on this day it struck me

00:06:12.904 --> 00:06:17.426
that we cannot wait for the universe
to bring us some amazing thing,

00:06:17.426 --> 00:06:21.546
some equal yet opposite event
that will make up for tragedies.

00:06:22.300 --> 00:06:25.067
And we cannot wait for a grand reckoning

00:06:25.067 --> 00:06:28.747
that will explain what is unexplainable.

00:06:29.732 --> 00:06:36.292
Because no good thing can be big enough
to erase loss from who we are now,

00:06:36.798 --> 00:06:38.378
not even George Clooney,

00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:43.460
who, I don't know if you heard,
but he got married, not to me ...

00:06:43.661 --> 00:06:45.721
(Laughter)

00:06:46.501 --> 00:06:48.601
I don't know why.

00:06:48.922 --> 00:06:51.702
So I decided to stop saying,

00:06:51.892 --> 00:06:54.052
"This happened for a reason."

00:06:54.453 --> 00:06:57.463
"The next thing that happens
has to be great."

00:06:57.849 --> 00:07:00.719
"Something or someone will save me."

00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:05.080
I decided to allow myself
to say what is true:

00:07:05.709 --> 00:07:08.609
"This is very hard."

00:07:10.101 --> 00:07:12.901
While "Once upon a time"
and "Happily ever after"

00:07:12.901 --> 00:07:15.121
are the structure of so many movies,

00:07:15.581 --> 00:07:18.831
"sorry" and "hard" and "okay"

00:07:18.831 --> 00:07:21.920
are more akin to the structure of life.

00:07:22.970 --> 00:07:24.910
So this is the ending,

00:07:24.910 --> 00:07:26.790
but it's not really the ending.

00:07:27.534 --> 00:07:29.684
Everything is going to be okay.

00:07:29.867 --> 00:07:31.577
I know this now.

00:07:31.826 --> 00:07:34.656
And it's going to be hard again too,


00:07:34.656 --> 00:07:36.256
and then it'll be okay again.

00:07:36.763 --> 00:07:40.023
Good and wonderful things will come along,

00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:43.190
and difficult things
will find their way in too.

00:07:44.314 --> 00:07:46.224
At the heart of any story,

00:07:46.224 --> 00:07:51.984
what you find beyond
the attention-grabbing highs and lows

00:07:51.984 --> 00:07:56.149
is this battle for balance
between hard and okay.

00:07:56.573 --> 00:07:58.223
This is where we live.

00:07:58.487 --> 00:08:00.157
It's not cinematic.

00:08:00.339 --> 00:08:03.739
It doesn't come with a dramatic score
or cheering crowd,

00:08:04.021 --> 00:08:07.861
but there is something beautiful
about how we survive it.

00:08:09.314 --> 00:08:14.004
We begin to heal when we give up the idea
that a tragedy is a beginning

00:08:14.364 --> 00:08:18.454
and if we're good enough,
we'll be rewarded with an ending.

00:08:18.827 --> 00:08:21.417
We don't need a Hollywood ending.

00:08:21.627 --> 00:08:26.167
We only need to regain our equilibrium
as often as necessary.

00:08:27.470 --> 00:08:29.914
When we stop asking "What next,"

00:08:29.914 --> 00:08:33.504
we can find our way
toward accepting "What is."

00:08:33.863 --> 00:08:38.443
We do this by acknowledging
our struggle and our regrets,

00:08:38.706 --> 00:08:42.246
and we allow these things
to have a place in our lives,

00:08:42.896 --> 00:08:45.536
not as roadblocks to something better,

00:08:46.010 --> 00:08:49.710
but as essential elements
of life structure.

00:08:50.175 --> 00:08:54.045
In this way, in tiny increments every day,

00:08:54.367 --> 00:08:57.137
we can make peace with our own stories.

00:08:57.642 --> 00:08:58.702
Thank you.

00:08:59.005 --> 00:09:03.545
(Applause)