At TEDxHalifax: creativity, bereavement, and parallel solitudes

I spoke at the TEDxHalifax event in March of this year. After some technical difficulties with the footage, it's up, which is nice, because I wasn't sure what I said or if it ever happened. Seeing it all summed up like that—my worst and my best and all the threads that connect the two—is a teary-eyed, wonderful thing for me.

Plus there's the still frame they've got right there before you hit play. ERRP. That's what my face looks like after a haul off a one-thirds-full bottle of wine that's been left open on the counter for five days so it's pretty much balsamic but I drink it anyway, after I finish making that face, because waste not want not.

Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the Halifax event such a great day. It was an honour to be a part of it and I only swore once or a few times but it was the same word all the times so I count that as once.

I called it parallelism: the phenomenon of communities of alone-ness that spring up around traumatic, aspirational, or creative epics. The existence of them is an old story, as far as the internet goes. What interests me is how similar they all are—no matter what their nature—in their effect. Do you have one? Tell me about it, even if you've graduated, so to speak. What did it leave with you?

Comments

[Jenn]

I feel incredibly honoured to have met you Kate. You spoke so beautifully, so eloquently...YOU are beautiful. And so talented...I hope you don't mind me sharing this over my wall.

[Jenn]

I often feel similarly about Alyssa, and wonder if she knows somehow that she almost didn't make it...if somehow her love of life, her energy and wonder for the world is so big because she knows what she overcame. I love seeing Ben's big beautiful eyes, he makes me smile everytime I see his picture.

[sweetsalty kate]

Absolutely, Jenn. I think we also see that energy and wonder with a sharpened clarity sometimes... maybe it's a bit of both. At the same time, though, it's hard to live up to the pressure/expectation of sharpened clarity or enlightenment when the kid's just being a normal kid (which is all the time) (which involves couch gymnastics that knock over someone's supper plate)... :)

[Jason Dufair]

Love TED. Thanks for sharing your story. I do have a parallel community that sprung up during my trauma, of which you and Thor and others emerged out of the ether. Having people who, adept with language, helped me build a mythology out of primordial grief is something I will be ever thankful for. Learning the let-go reflex is a gift.

[sweetsalty kate]

Jason, it's so good to hear from you. That's the word. Mythology.. yes. There's a labour and a tending to it.

[amiee]

oh, my kate, so presumptuousness to call you that but tears in my eyes and full is my heart after taking that in. i miss you, the way a person that sat with you then has not for a long while.. that way.

you are so facile with words, expression, delivery. it was so great to witness.

someday i would like to sit again. maybe someday here. the door is open. the wood stove we will soon stoke will be warm. or better yet, come in summer, so you can see glorious tahoe. or fall. or anytime really. miss you. xoxo

[Renel]

This was beautiful and amazing. I am so inspired by you. It was like a over the top vlog from over at still-life with circles. Thank you. You were eloquent.

[mama_k]

i know it probably wigs you out and further makes you feel like a fraud that there are so many of us that admire you from afar, especially having not met you...but count me in. you are as beautiful "in person" as you are to read. i loved hearing you speak (via the interwebs). i loved that your six year old self wanted to be an "auther," barring becoming a roller skater first. i had tears in my eyes at the end of your talk, and after i re-listened, i had more tears on my cheeks because again, you captured it. parallelism and intersection and grief and love and isolation and lone-ness. and given some of your recent blog entries i cried a bit more about how you - we - all of us - can appear one way yet feel so completely opposite.

and i'm sure it makes me a tad pervy but i might just have a whole lotta love for you in general that i'm sending eastwards from my stinky city in ontario. from one damaged heart to another, one mama to another, one solitary woman to another. because tonight? it helps me just knowing you are out there. thank you for that.

[Jada]

Man it was nice to hear your voice.

Being able to share grief plugs a hole. One I was never really aware of. And slowly it filled, but then what's left? that's what I juggled with. Who am I without it? Where do I go from there? It was like growing up, but different. Still is.

[Bethany]

What a beautiful speech--thank you for sharing it. I gave up on my own childhood idea of being an author a long time ago because I felt like a fraud--and this was tremendously inspiring.

[Cathy in Missouri]

It offers us a sideways glance from whatever solitary gauntlet we're running.

Nobody knows how to grieve. Everybody feels terribly lost, in grief.

We may as well work devotedly inside of that isolation.

Everybody is alone - and desperately lonely being alone.

*****

Until you said it, I did not think, particularly, about the internet as a search engine for communities of alone-ness.

Reminds me of things Bon puts a face to - "context collapse" - that shadowed, un-named, prior.

Of course, though, you are (both) right.

For which I thank you, again ~

the Ambassadors,

CiM

[Elizabeth]

What a wonderful talk -- your gentle yet powerful voice is an inspiration both in "real" life and here, on the screen and page. I think I continue to live in my parallel community -- caring for, grieving for, exulting in and despairing over my daughter with severe disabilities -- we are legion, I imagine -- and know.

[Kristie]

Well done Kate. I always find your various forms of expressions insightful, enlightening, visceral, touching and thought provoking. I'm usually left feeling like I've gained a better grasp of the concepts explored...and most importantly I suppose, I find some comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my own quest for a deeper knowledge and understanding of human nature, the notion of spirit, community, suffering, empathy, etc. and that there is meaning and purpose in our shared experience and existence. Keep up the creativity crusade...you are a natural wonder.

[Catherine W]

Oh Kate. This is just wonderful. I will never forget that absolute sigh of relief, the tension in my shoulders that just dropped, when I found you and Jenn. I cried for Liam and for Jessica. And my heart just pounded for Alyssa and Ben. Although I suppose they were safe by then. But, back then, nobody seemed safe.

Those days with the hiss and thump of oxygen concentrator, anxious peering at a baby who I didn't realise expect to live. The result of my attempt at motherhood. Cold, cold British nights. Upstairs in our spare room with the fan of the computer whirring and plastic tubes coiled around my house. Like a crime scene.

I'm so glad that I have a search engine. And I'm even glad that I typed 'my baby died and I don't know what to do' into one. A desperate act that took me a place I never dreamt existed.

The first mothers I ever found who had seen their children and felt so much love and horror. Because I was alone. Because nobody I knew had given birth to a child whose eyes were still fused, who couldn't make a sound, who loved to see them fight and get mad. Because that was the only way I thought that she would live, to get ever-so cross. To go bright red and twist and writhe. To attempt to pull the ventilator out, to rip the feeding tube away. To live, live, live. Live like I never really have been able to.

I can never really describe how utterly alone I felt. Just as I can never describe how I felt when I saw that glow in those awfully dark, dark woods.

And I am, still, utterly alone. But I can glance to the side and see a flicker of others. Parallel. Of the honourable and more articulate. Of the struggling limbs. Of beings equally alone. Flailing. Graceful. Thank the stars for that.

And thank you Kate.

[Ava]

Eloquent. Terrific speech.

[sweetsalty kate]

From stinky Ontario cities to Missouri to the very same damned and blessed NICU parent rooms.. thank you all so much. Elizabeth, I love the word exulting. There's an exultation in grief, yes, whether a grief at the loss of the expected 'normal' or a bereaved loss. It's a fantastical, hard-to-pin thing. But there were exultant aspects of being Liam's mother that were different than the 'normal' exultation of mothering Ben and Evan. It's an interesting choice of words that made me smile. Catherine W, you flattened me this morning. What a comment. Thank you.

The glow-in-the-woods folks out there... you're making me miss it. I still read, every time, and I'm still so grateful for everyone in-parallel.

Bethany: that's the untold secret, the constant fraudulence. The people who end up with books or albums or some other kind of creative result aren't people who didn't feel that way—they're the ones who noticed that feeling, grappled with it, and gave it a shot anyway. So give it a shot. :)

Amiee, a California wood stove? I'd love that. Yours? Even better.

[Jacinta]

Thanks for this Kate. I enjoyed it. I'm shy and timid and feel like a hermit who write a blog because I'm terrible with social media - the connecting part. But then, I like writing, and then, there are lots of people who blog even as they wonder why they bother.

[Lara]

I will never forget the night I found your piece on glow titled avalanche. Wow I'm home I said to myself.
Six years out and I still wonder if I am really the mother to a dead baby. Parallel it is..... the wonder and joy in
every moment of teaming boisterous life that erupts when my girls laugh so hard they fall to the ground and in the next breath the little one says..." there's my baby" looking into the sky at the baby taz star.

I wish everyone on glow could have seen me on baby taz's 6th birthday. Of course swimmy our gold fish had to die that day. Brilliant idea.....we will eat cake then tie swimmy to balloons and send him up to our little boy. Beautiful as we all looked into the sunset -a little misty eyed as the balloons and swimmy slowly drifted up. Then the comedy..... the balloons didn't have enough loft and tangled in the big aspen out front. Kids and friends all laughed. Yes you can laugh after 6 years. Actually laugh allot and then Crazy with
grief at 2 in the morning you can be a half naked crazy person shaking the tree trying to get the ballons and swimmy free. Alas I stumbled back to bed to have the balloons and swimmy hanging outside for days.

Your Ted talk is a beauty. Thank God for frauds and imposters like you!

[N]

This is...something Miss Kate. Something big, something good and something sad. All at once. Very well done, especially for a fraud...'*)

Parallel gauntlets unite people in a way that I never thought possible. Understanding and nodding and tipping my coffee in your direction from NB.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

xo

[S]

This was really important for me to hear today. Thank you.

[krista]

i'm often awestruck by the ways in which we can relate to one another - even in our inherent aloneness. i've watched your talk a handful of times now and i get something new each time. perhaps it is because you have this ability to include the rest of us, should we listen. i have not lost a child. i can't say i know how hard that must be. i know how hard some other things are. and maybe you don't know them. or maybe you do. regardless, there is something tangible about the way in which you express yourself. it means something to others, it means something to me. i don't even know you and yet your words inspire me. help me. validate me, at times. and hearing you talk here just helped more.
so, while we are alone, parallel, there is so much taffy-like tenacity in the desire to connect.
gah. i'm all circles right now. with sharp, slippery edges.
just...
thanks. for sharing.

[Leeann]

This is a beautiful video. And I'm glad you were given such a great platform to talk about it. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

[Jessica]

So well done, what a great speaker you are. After I lost my daughter I closed myself off from the world for a bit and it wasn't until I opened myself back up again and sought out others who had been through the same on the internet that I started finding the support I needed.

[Cathy in Missouri]

What makes you stuck?

Starting

And what gets you unstuck?



Starting

*****

"Ah, the wisdom is more profound than she knows..." {Holly}

Sweet Reflections,

CiM

[Robin]

Damn.

Not a "like" or an "um" or a stutter the ENTIRE TIME. That alone is enough to impress.

I had to take a day to let the whole talk settle, and what stood out to me was the part about you and Sydney Smith taking turns fessing up to your suckiness (or at least, your doubts and suspicions). I thought WHAT? These people? These beautiful successful people? With talent bursting out of them at every turn?

If talented beautiful successful people think they suck, then I am DOOMED. Because that's exactly what I think every time I sit down to paint and I'M neither talented nor beautiful nor succ--- oh. Ahhh. Oh.

OH.

And suddenly it was clear. A glimpse of it, anyway. It's one of those lessons that dawns on the head early and often, but only dawns on the heart sporadically and in moments of unscripted grace.

Thanks for that moment.

[Emily of Deutschland]

Kate, I get stuck - and unstuck - by starting, too.

But you know what else?

Oftentimes, it is reading something you wrote that gets me started again. My engine clunks, clunks, clunks... then your words fill up some trapped air bubble, and that rusty bastard, it turns over and roars to life.

Did I just compare you to high-octane petrol? Oh dear God.

You are a catalyst of creativity for me, and I thank you for that.

[rachel]

Brave and beautiful. You are as good a speaker as you are a writer. And The Dread Crew sits on my son's bookshelf, waiting for him to get just a year or two older. Blessings.

[jen]

Thanks for sharing this. I cant wait to show it to my son. Your words inspire me allthetime.
Your book is snuggly stuck in the very tippy top of my sons Christmas stocking, waiting to be read.

[Hazel]

I've just been sent this link by my niece in England. I still have tears streaming down my face caused by both her comment and your talk. I really don't know the Internet, (am nearly sixty) and have never even tried to look for kindred spirits on it. I've enjoyed facebook (because it's easy to do), and have known how to use a computer because I do layout and subbing. But I've never even thought of googling anything important, only just fact checking. It just never occurred to me to look for people on it. I suddenly feel like I'm standing at the top of a very high cliff and I just need to take a step, and I will fly. But I'm also scared because I'm a bit afraid of falling in love, perhaps, or finding people that will supplant my real husband and friends in my heart.