WEBVTT

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For a long time,

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there was me, and my body.

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Me was composed of stories,

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of cravings, of strivings,

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of desires of the future.

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Me was trying

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not to be an outcome of my violent past,

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but the separation that had already occurred

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between me and my body

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was a pretty significant outcome.

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Me was always trying to become something, somebody.

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Me only existed in the trying.

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My body was often in the way.

NOTE Paragraph

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Me was a floating head.

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For years, I actually only wore hats.

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It was a way of keeping my head attached.

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It was a way of locating myself.

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I worried that [if] I took my hat off

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I wouldn't be here anymore.

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I actually had a therapist who once said to me,

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"Eve, you've been coming here for two years,

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and, to be honest, it never occurred to me that you had a body."

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All this time I lived in the city

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because, to be honest,

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I was afraid of trees.

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I never had babies

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because heads cannot give birth.

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Babies actually don't come out of your mouth.

NOTE Paragraph

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As I had no reference point for my body,

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I began to ask other women about their bodies --

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in particular, their vaginas,

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because I thought vaginas were kind of important.

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This led to me writing "The Vagina Monologues,"

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which led to me obsessively and incessantly

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talking about vaginas everywhere I could.

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I did this in front of many strangers.

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One night on stage,

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I actually entered my vagina.

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It was an ecstatic experience.

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It scared me, it energized me,

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and then I became a driven person,

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a driven vagina.

NOTE Paragraph

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I began to see my body like a thing,

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a thing that could move fast,

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like a thing that could accomplish other things,

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many things, all at once.

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I began to see my body like an iPad or a car.

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I would drive it and demand things from it.

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It had no limits. It was invincible.

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It was to be conquered and mastered like the Earth herself.

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I didn't heed it;

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no, I organized it and I directed it.

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I didn't have patience for my body;

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I snapped it into shape.

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I was greedy.

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I took more than my body had to offer.

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If I was tired, I drank more espressos.

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If I was afraid, I went to more dangerous places.

NOTE Paragraph

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Oh sure, sure, I had moments of appreciation of my body,

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the way an abusive parent

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can sometimes have a moment of kindness.

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My father was really kind to me

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on my 16th birthday, for example.

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I heard people murmur from time to time

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that I should love my body,

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so I learned how to do this.

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I was a vegetarian, I was sober, I didn't smoke.

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But all that was just a more sophisticated way

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to manipulate my body --

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a further disassociation,

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like planting a vegetable field on a freeway.

NOTE Paragraph

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As a result of me talking so much about my vagina,

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many women started to tell me about theirs --

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their stories about their bodies.

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Actually, these stories compelled me around the world,

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and I've been to over 60 countries.

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I heard thousands of stories,

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and I have to tell you, there was always this moment

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where the women shared with me

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that particular moment when she separated from her body --

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when she left home.

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I heard about women being molested in their beds,

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flogged in their burqas,

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left for dead in parking lots,

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acid burned in their kitchens.

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Some women became quiet and disappeared.

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Other women became mad, driven machines like me.

NOTE Paragraph

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In the middle of my traveling,

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I turned 40 and I began to hate my body,

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which was actually progress,

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because at least my body existed enough to hate it.

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Well my stomach -- it was my stomach I hated.

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It was proof that I had not measured up,

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that I was old and not fabulous and not perfect

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or able to fit into the predetermined corporate image in shape.

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My stomach was proof that I had failed,

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that it had failed me, that it was broken.

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My life became about getting rid of it and obsessing about getting rid of it.

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In fact, it became so extreme

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I wrote a play about it.

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But the more I talked about it,

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the more objectified and fragmented my body became.

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It became entertainment; it became a new kind of commodity,

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something I was selling.

NOTE Paragraph

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Then I went somewhere else.

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I went outside

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what I thought I knew.

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I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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And I heard stories

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that shattered all the other stories.

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I heard stories

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that got inside my body.

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I heard about a little girl

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who couldn't stop peeing on herself

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because so many grown soldiers

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had shoved themselves inside her.

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I heard an 80-year-old woman

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whose legs were broken and pulled out of her sockets

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and twisted up on her head

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as the soldiers raped her like that.

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There are thousands of these stories,

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and many of the women had holes in their bodies --

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holes, fistula --

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that were the violation of war --

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holes in the fabric of their souls.

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These stories saturated my cells and nerves,

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and to be honest,

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I stopped sleeping for three years.

NOTE Paragraph

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All the stories began to bleed together.

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The raping of the Earth,

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the pillaging of minerals,

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the destruction of vaginas --

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none of these were separate anymore

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from each other or me.

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Militias were raping six-month-old babies

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so that countries far away

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could get access to gold and coltan

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for their iPhones and computers.

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My body had not only become a driven machine,

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but it was responsible now

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for destroying other women's bodies

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in its mad quest to make more machines

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to support the speed and efficiency of my machine.

NOTE Paragraph

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Then I got cancer --

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or I found out I had cancer.

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It arrived like a speeding bird

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smashing into a windowpane.

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Suddenly, I had a body,

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a body that was pricked

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and poked and punctured,

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a body that was cut wide open,

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a body that had organs removed

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and transported and rearranged and reconstructed,

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a body that was scanned

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and had tubes shoved down it,

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a body that was burning from chemicals.

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Cancer exploded

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the wall of my disconnection.

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I suddenly understood that the crisis in my body

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was the crisis in the world,

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and it wasn't happening later,

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it was happening now.

NOTE Paragraph

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Suddenly, my cancer was a cancer that was everywhere,

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the cancer of cruelty, the cancer of greed,

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the cancer that gets inside people

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who live down the streets from chemical plants -- and they're usually poor --

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the cancer inside the coal miner's lungs,

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the cancer of stress for not achieving enough,

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the cancer of buried trauma,

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the cancer in caged chickens and polluted fish,

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the cancer in women's uteruses from being raped,

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the cancer that is everywhere from our carelessness.

NOTE Paragraph

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In his new and visionary book,

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"New Self, New World,"

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the writer Philip Shepherd says,

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"If you are divided from your body,

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you are also divided from the body of the world,

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which then appears to be other than you

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or separate from you,

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rather than the living continuum

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to which you belong."

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Before cancer,

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the world was something other.

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It was as if I was living in a stagnant pool

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and cancer dynamited the boulder

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that was separating me from the larger sea.

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Now I am swimming in it.

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Now I lay down in the grass

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and I rub my body in it,

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and I love the mud on my legs and feet.

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Now I make a daily pilgrimage

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to visit a particular weeping willow by the Seine,

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and I hunger for the green fields

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in the bush outside Bukavu.

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And when it rains hard rain,

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I scream and I run in circles.

NOTE Paragraph

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I know that everything is connected,

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and the scar that runs the length of my torso

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is the markings of the earthquake.

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And I am there with the three million in the streets of Port-au-Prince.

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And the fire that burned in me

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on day three through six of chemo

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is the fire that is burning

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in the forests of the world.

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I know that the abscess

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that grew around my wound after the operation,

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the 16 ounces of puss,

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is the contaminated Gulf of Mexico,

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and there were oil-drenched pelicans inside me

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and dead floating fish.

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And the catheters they shoved into me without proper medication

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made me scream out

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the way the Earth cries out from the drilling.

NOTE Paragraph

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In my second chemo,

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my mother got very sick

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and I went to see her.

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And in the name of connectedness,

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the only thing she wanted before she died

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was to be brought home

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by her beloved Gulf of Mexico.

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So we brought her home,

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and I prayed that the oil wouldn't wash up on her beach

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before she died.

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And gratefully, it didn't.

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And she died quietly in her favorite place.

NOTE Paragraph

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And a few weeks later, I was in New Orleans,

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and this beautiful, spiritual friend

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told me she wanted to do a healing for me.

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And I was honored.

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And I went to her house, and it was morning,

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and the morning New Orleans sun was filtering through the curtains.

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And my friend was preparing this big bowl,

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and I said, "What is it?"

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And she said, "It's for you.

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The flowers make it beautiful,

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and the honey makes it sweet."

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And I said, "But what's the water part?"

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And in the name of connectedness,

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she said, "Oh, it's the Gulf of Mexico."

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And I said, "Of course it is."

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And the other women arrived and they sat in a circle,

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and Michaela bathed my head with the sacred water.

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And she sang -- I mean her whole body sang.

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And the other women sang

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and they prayed for me and my mother.

NOTE Paragraph

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And as the warm Gulf washed over my naked head,

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I realized that it held

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the best and the worst of us.

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It was the greed and recklessness

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that led to the drilling explosion.

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It was all the lies that got told

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before and after.

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It was the honey in the water that made it sweet,

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it was the oil that made it sick.

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It was my head that was bald --

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and comfortable now without a hat.

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It was my whole self

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melting into Michaela's lap.

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It was the tears that were indistinguishable from the Gulf

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that were falling down my cheek.

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It was finally being in my body.

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It was the sorrow

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that's taken so long.

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It was finding my place

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and the huge responsibility

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that comes with connection.

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It was the continuing devastating war in the Congo

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and the indifference of the world.

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It was the Congolese women

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who are now rising up.

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It was my mother leaving,

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just at the moment

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that I was being born.

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It was the realization

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that I had come very close to dying --

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in the same way that the Earth, our mother,

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is barely holding on,

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in the same way that 75 percent of the planet

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are hardly scraping by,

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in the same way

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that there is a recipe for survival.

NOTE Paragraph

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What I learned

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is it has to do with attention and resources

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that everybody deserves.

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It was advocating friends

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and a doting sister.

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It was wise doctors and advanced medicine

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and surgeons who knew what to do with their hands.

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It was underpaid and really loving nurses.

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It was magic healers and aromatic oils.

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It was people who came with spells and rituals.

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It was having a vision of the future

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and something to fight for,

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because I know this struggle isn't my own.

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It was a million prayers.

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It was a thousand hallelujahs

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and a million oms.

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It was a lot of anger,

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insane humor,

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a lot of attention, outrage.

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It was energy, love and joy.

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It was all these things.

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It was all these things.

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It was all these things

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in the water, in the world, in my body.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)