Here is the full transcript of author and podcaster Kelly Corrigan’s talk titled “To Love Is to Be Brave” at TED 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
This is for my mom, even though when I called her to say, “Hey, have you heard of TED, T-E-D?” She said, “Oh my God, Kelly, it’s not another virus, is it?” As a 21-year-old, I was drawn to the word brave. I had a soft spot for ripping yarns and the people who could tell them.
Early Adventures
So, Odyssey on the brain, I went out adventure collecting. Without knowing how to spell starboard or which side it referred to, I got on a 46-foot boat and I sailed from Malta to Tunisia to Sicily. I traveled 11,000 miles over 13 months to seven different countries without a plan or a phone or a credit card. Just 3,800 dollars in traveler’s checks, which, if you’re under 30, it was like a little booklet of perforated, I don’t know. And some expired antibiotics my mom made me bring.
A Nanny’s Experience
And then, running out of money, I landed as a nanny for two kids, four and seven, who had just lost their mom. I moved into their house, so I could cover things on the three days a week their dad worked as a flight attendant for Qantas. I smeared sunblock on their noses and Vegemite on their toast. I read them to sleep at night, I cleaned the counters.
The heavy lifting was left for the truly brave, a man who organized his emotions and answered the hardest questions, such that his kids and hers could feel a modicum of safety in a patently unsafe world. Questions like “What is cremation?” And “What happens to us if you die?” And so it is that I stood witness to the unphotographable, unmeasurable bravery of some guy named Jim in Sydney, Australia.
Cataloging Bravery
And over the years since, I find I just can’t stop cataloging these Olympic achievements in family life. The really big things often come with a game plan and a team of experts and enough adrenaline to lift a school bus over your head. But inside every crisis you think you might be ready for are 100 dirty surprises that are not in the playbook. I had stage-3 cancer in my 30s, and I can tell you that following the chemo schedule didn’t take nearly as much courage as admitting to my husband that sex felt less sexy after my boobs, which were once a real strong suit for me, were made weird and uneven by a surgeon’s knife.
Here’s a surprise. My friend’s father, in his final days, addled by dementia, chased her around the second floor with a fork he hid in his pajamas. They tell you there will be loss. They don’t tell you you will be required to love your dad even as he’s coming for you with silverware.
Stories of Bravery
I’ve interviewed 228 people for my PBS show and my podcast, people with huge careers, Grammys and Pulitzers and NBA championships. And I listened to their stories and I’m duly impressed. But I’ll tell you the ones they know the best. The ones they can’t tell without choking up.
The moment when Bryan Stevenson’s grandmother, or Steve Kerr’s father, or Samantha Power’s stepfather, or Cecile Richards’ mom, was right there with the right words or the right silence at the right moment. This bravery I’m talking about might even be better understood if you look at the smaller moments of injury in family life when there’s not really an answer, or it might be your fault, or it might remind you of something you’d rather forget. Or because people are so suggestible and the wrong tone or expression or phrasing might somehow make things worse.
Everyday Challenges
Say your kid was dropped from a group text. They were in it, they mattered, they belonged, and then, poof. Or your husband blew the big deal at work, or your mom won’t wear the diapers that would really help her get through mahjong on Wednesdays. And how should we calibrate the exquisite bravery to respond productively when someone in our family looks at us and says, “Do I know you?”
“I weigh myself before and after every meal,” “I hear voices,” “I steal,” “I’m using again,” “He raped me,” “She says I raped her,” “I cut myself,” “I bought a gun,” “I stopped taking the medication,” “I can’t stop making online bets.” “Sometimes I wonder if more life is really worth all this effort.”
The Essence of Bravery
Bravery is the great guts to move closer to the wound, as composed as a war nurse holding eye contact and saying these seven words: Tell me more. What else? Go on. That’s how the brave shine, that’s all they do. They say, “Tell me more. What else? Go on.” Even if they’re scared of what might happen next, even if they have no training or experience to prepare them for this moment. Even if it’s late and they have an early flight.
Here’s two things the brave don’t do. They don’t take over and become the hero like it’s a battle and the moves are so obvious. You just pick up a weapon with your ripped pecs and ropey veins and start slaying. In families, bravery is mostly just sitting there. With a posture that communicates “I can hear anything you want to tell me.” And a nice warm face of love that says, “This is so hard, but you will figure it out.”
Personally, I thought love meant action. I had no idea it could be so still. When things get hairy for one of my people, everything in me wants to grab a clipboard, make a to-do list, and start calendaring appointments. Because where there’s love, there’s attachment. And I don’t care what the gurus say, what’s happening to them is also happening, at least at some level, to us.
Overcoming Self-Centeredness
And all that can accidentally put us center stage.