How I reclaimed my body after trauma | Rupi Kaur | TEDxKC

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

Using a mix of poetry and narrative, Rupi Kaur weaves together a powerful and cathartic story - which in spite of great trauma, ends where it begins - by restoring the feeling of home within your body.

Warning: this talk contains descriptions of sexual violence which may be triggering to survivors.

Rupi Kaur is a celebrated photographer, illustrator, author, and spoken word artists. Her latest work, "Milk and Honey" is a powerful exploration of femininity, love, loss, trauma, and healing.

[The following talk contains
descriptions of sexual violence

[which may be triggering to survivors.]

[Can you help me?]

[Can you help change the world

[with more meaningful questions?]

[Question everything better.]

(Reciting) It began as a typical Thursday:

sunlight kissed my eyelids good morning.

I remember climbing out of bed,

making coffee to the sound
of children playing outside,

putting music on,

loading the dishwasher,

putting roses in a vase
in the middle of the kitchen table.

Only when my apartment was spotless
would I step into the bathtub,

wash yesterday out of my hair,

like the walls of my home were decorated

with frames, bookshelves,
photos I'd decorate myself.

Hang a necklace on my chest,
hook earrings in,

apply lipstick like paint,
sweep my hair back.

Just your typical Thursday.

We ended up better
get together with friends.

At the end, you asked
if I need a ride home and I said yes

because our dads
work for the same company,

and you'd been to my place
for dinner many times,

but I should have known

when you began to confuse
kind conversation with flirtation,

when you told me to let my hair down,

when instead of driving me home

toward the bright intersection
of lights and life,

you took a left
to the road that led nowhere.

I asked where we were going,
you asked was I afraid,

and that's when my voice
jumped over the edge of my throat,

landed at the bottom of my belly
and hid for months.

All the different parts in me
turned the lights off,

shut the blinds, locked the doors,

I hid at the back
of some upstairs closet of my mind

while someone came and broke the windows.

You, someone, kicked the front door in,

you took everything,

you, someone, took me.

It was you who dove to me
with a fork and a knife,

eyes glinting with starvation
like you hadn't eaten in weeks.

I was 110 pounds of fresh meat

you'd skin and gut with your fingers

like you were scraping
the inside of a cantaloupe clean.

I screamed for my mother
as you nail my wrist to the ground,

turned my breast to bruised fruit.

This home is empty now.

No gas, no electricity, no running water.

The food is rotten from head to foot.

I am layered in dust;
fruit flies, webs, bugs.

Someone call the plumber,

the stomach is backed up,
I've been vomiting since!

Call the electrician
these eyes won't light up.

Call the cleaners
to wash me up and hang me to dry.

When you broke into my home,
it never felt like mine again.

I can't even let a lover in
without being sick.

I lose sleep after the first date,
lose my appetite,

become more bone and less skin,
forget to breathe.

Every night, my bedroom
becomes a psych ward

where panic attacks wake
men playing doctors to keep me calm.

Every lover who touches me
ends up feeling like you.

Their fingers - you, mouths - you,

until they're not even the ones
on top of me anymore; it's you.

And I am so tired
of doing things your way.

It isn't working.

I've spent years trying to figure out
how I could have stopped it.

But the sun can't stop
the storm from coming,

the tree can't stop the axe.

I can't blame me for having
a hole the size of your manhood

in my chest anymore.

It's too heavy to carry your guilt.

I'm setting it down.

I'm tired of decorating
this place with your shame

as if it belongs to me.

It's too much to walk around
with what your hands have done

if it's not my hands that have done it.

The truth comes to me.

Suddenly, after years of rain,
the truth comes

like sunlight pouring
through that open window.

It takes a long time to get here,
but it all comes full circle.

It takes a broken, twisted person

to come searching for meaning
between my legs,

but it takes a whole, complete,
perfectly designed person to survive it.

It takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them.

This home is
what I came into this world with;

was the first home, will be the last home.

You can't take it.

There is no space for you,

no welcome mat, no extra bedrooms.

I'm opening all the windows,
airing it out,

putting roses in a vase
in the middle of that kitchen table,

lighting a candle,

loading the dishwasher with my thoughts
until they're spotless,

and then, I plan to step into the bathtub,

wash yesterday out of my hair,

put music on, sit back, put my feet up,

and enjoy this typical Thursday.

(Applause)

(Speaking) So when I first started
writing years ago,

it was a private hobby,

and then years after that,
it became a public one

that I shared with
some family and some friends.

And then years after that,
I began to share it with the Internet,

and today, I'm lucky enough to say
that it's become my full-time job.

So when I first started to travel

to perform spoken word poetry
like you saw here today

and to do readings
of my book "milk and honey,"

family and friends always asked me,
"Don't you ever get homesick?"

And on the plane rides to and from,
I ponder that question

because the truth was
I never really got homesick.

I mean, of course I'd lie to my mom
and tell her that I did,

because what was I really going to say?

"Hi, mom. Yeah. No.

No, I'm actually completely fine,
I don't miss being home at all."

Trust me, I did it once last year,

and I am still hearing
about it a year later.

But the truth was

the fact that I never felt homesick
made me feel bad.

"Was there something
wrong with me?", I thought.

"Was I cold?"

And after months of wondering,

I realize that the reason
I never felt homesick

was because, for me,
home was wherever I was.

So let me explain.

I'd moved over a dozen times
in my short life,

so this concept that home
is some physical structure

just stopped making sense a long time ago.

How could I place the idea of home

on places that kept on changing,
on temporary roofs?

Houses were structures. Home was here.

When I was three, home was
on that two-wheeler scooter

rocketing around my village in Punjab.

When my father left India as a refugee,

he went to search for a home
in far-off countries

while my mother tried to maintain
our crumbling one there.

And years after that,

mum and I found home

on an airplane hurdling
towards a Canadian tarmac.

And then,

in the dozen plus moves
that followed that,

the only constant I had
under each of those roofs

was my art,

it was my writing and my expression.

So naturally, writing became like a limb.

It became an extension of my being.

So then, what happens

when your home,
when your body is attacked?

What happens, say, when you thrust

something as dark as sexual abuse,

molestation, a rape, onto a person?

It makes you feel robbed
like you don't even own your body.

They own it,
and you're living in it on rent.

And this feeling
of homelessness within the body

isn't restricted to only sexual violence.

Domestic violence can make you feel
just as far away from yourself.

Navigating this world
with a physical or a mental disability.

That first treatment of chemotherapy

will make you feel like
your body's turned on you,

and you're living someplace foreign.

The sensation of being trapped,

being born into the wrong body altogether

is terrifying.

The boy or girl mercilessly bullied
at school and battered at home,

the refugee, unwanted on the old shore

and deemed
a scavenging vulture in the new.

So many of us are trying
to reclaim our bodies from something.

At my lowest point -

this was right before I began
to take writing seriously

and make it into an everyday practice -

thoughts of ending my life were constant,

and attempts weren't far off.

I could not stand myself.

I'd walk into the bathroom,
and I would seriously turn the lights off,

I would shower in complete darkness,

so I wouldn't have to stand there,
under the water,

have to look down and see my body

because this thing
had brought me so much pain

that seeing it filled me with disgust.

I honestly avoided mirrors
like one would avoid an ex at a party.

I refused to acknowledge it,
look at it, appreciate it.

I craved physical pain
to manage the emotional pain.

And so I began to break the body down,

refused to nurture it
with good food and good sleep,

abused it through language
and vandalized it through self-harm.

But there was one day,

where I was crying upstairs in my room -

and it was always Niagara Falls in my room
at that point in my life -

but this day was different.

This day the tears suddenly stopped,
it was like the taps went dry,

and like a robot, I got up,

I walked to the closet,
I found some charcoal,

I found some paper,
and I sat, and I drew for hours.

What I ended up with
was a picture of a woman,

and in the corner of the page,
I'd written a poem.

And little did I know
that sitting there in grade 10 or 11

that this combination
of picture and poetry

would one day lead

to a New York Times
bestselling collection of poems.

The writing was
a guttural response to my trauma.

I wrote, and I wrote,
and I wrote, and I wrote

with the intention to survive.

The poetry in the books, all of that,
was just the side effect.

And it was this writing
that led me to reclaim my body.

You see, I come from
a tradition of poetry.

Being raised in a Sikh household,

every instance of my life from birth
has been informed by poetry.

Sikh scriptures are written
in poetic verse.

It was on the lips of my mother
as she rocked me to sleep,

it was on the lips of her mother
whose own mother rocked her to sleep

as they traveled an ox cart

through the carnage and pillage
of the South Asian partition.

The poetry is Punjabi,
and Persian, Braj, and Sanskrit.

It is how millions
viewed life, in concert,

constructed by the languages
of nomads, and warriors, and mystics.

Even our names are picked from poems
written hundreds of years ago.

When I'll decide to marry,

it will be poetry
that will bond that marriage.

And even when I pass,

it will be poetry
that will mark my departure.

And so, it comes as no surprise, I think,

that I would use writing poetry
as a means to reclaim this body,

to find home here again.

It was this writing of poetry

that led me to find love for myself,

and with that love, a path lit up.

I took that love, walked back into myself,

to that five-year-old girl,

to that 10-15-year old girl who was
still sitting inside of me scared,

the one who had no one.

I walked over to her,

picked her up, and told her
it was going to be OK.

We all sat in this body that day,
joined together as one.

And I said to all
the younger versions of me,

I said, "You are welcome here.
You have always been welcome here.

This place belongs to you.

Nothing was your fault, and I love you."

The truth comes after years of rain,

the truth comes like sunlight
pouring through that open window.

It takes a long time to get here,
but it all comes full circle.

It takes a broken, twisted person

to come searching for meaning
between my legs,

but it takes a whole, complete,

perfectly designed person to survive it.

It takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them.

This home is
what I came into this world with,

it was the first home,
will be the last home.

You can't take it.

There is no space for you,

no welcome mat, no extra bedrooms.

I'm opening all the windows,
airing it out,

putting roses in a vase
in the middle of that kitchen table,

lighting a candle,

loading the dishwasher with my thoughts
until they're spotless,

and then, I plan to step
into that bathtub,

wash yesterday out of my hair,

decorate my body in gold,

put music on, sit back, put my feet up,

and enjoy this typical Thursday.

(Applause)