My life's work as an act of worship | Ashley Judd | TedxNashville

Ashley Judd speaks about creating our life's work as an act of worship and an integration of our activities on the soul level - and the wonders that occur when we have the courage to show up this way.

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.

Good afternoon.

(Audience) Good afternoon.

Let's like take two, okay?

(Laughter)

Good afternoon.

(Audience) Good afternoon.

It's really good to see y'all.

I heard they're running a little under,

so I'm just going to be greedy
and take the extra time.

And I apologize in advance
for my appearance.

You're catching me
on a disheveled travel day.

By sheer coincidence,

I accepted this engagement months ago,

before I knew that this week was actually
the week of publication for my new book.

So I've been trotting all over the place,
essentially putting out fires,

while talking, incidentally,
about the book,

and this is just
what I look like when I travel.

So the theme today was supposed
to be "a sense of wonder,"

and I really don't have any idea
what I'm going to say.

I prepared some remarks,
and they were solid.

You know, I could probably
have turned them in in graduate school

and gotten that A that I was always
so determined to get.

But I don't have
any interest in saying it.

For whatever reason,
the exercise was about writing it,

and I have a great woman in my life
named Tennie McCarty.

She is my grandmother of choice.

I have a family of chance.

God has a sense of humor.

And I also have, today,
a family of choice.

And Tennie McCarty, whom I call Mennie -

it's her grandmammy name -

has taught me many, many things,
one of which is,

"What comes from the head
goes straight over the head.

But what comes from the heart
goes straight to the heart."

So screw the remarks -
coming from the heart.

A lot of people, when they think
of me, Ashley Judd,

wonder, "What the hell happened to her?"

(Laughter)

I semi-retired in 2004.

I did a little picture now and then,

but then they'd see me in something
like "Tooth Fairy" and say,

"I wonder what happened to her -
she's gained a lot of weight."

Well, my financial planner wondered
about the decision that I made too

when I walked away from everything

when, it turns out, I was actually
one of the highest paid women

in the history of Hollywood -

probably not adjusting for inflation,
because Mary Pickford was a big star.

What happened was I was sick and tired
of being sick and tired.

I had no idea what was wrong with me,

but I knew it all looked
real good on the outside,

but on the inside, I hurt.

And I had really no "reason" to hurt,

but as it turns out,
as I've come to realize,

that I came from
a dysfunctional family system

which at times didn't work very well,

and the kinds of things that happened,

that happen in dysfunctional
family systems

happen to all of us.

But my symptoms,
if you will, looked different.

For example, I could be irritable
and unreasonable without even knowing it.

But fortunately,
some folks identified in me

that I had been affected
by alcoholism and other isms,

and they extended me
the same hope and help

that had been so freely given to them.

But what's so weird about all of this

is that in 2004, when I semi-retired
and I started traveling the world

doing feminist social justice work,

public health and human rights work,

I wanted so earnestly
to be useful to my fellows.

I wanted to be of service,

and yet I was trying to give away
something that I didn't yet have.

So I kind of had it backwards.

My first trip was to Cambodia.

I was very open-minded and very willing

yet wholly unprepared
for what I was about to witness.

The great Mu Sochua,

who has since that time
been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,

had pulled her colleague aside and said,

"Let's take this bright light,
this star from Hollywood,

into the darkest corner of hell,"

and that's exactly what those women did.

They took me to
the child brothels of Svay Pak.

And I didn't know what to do

except sit down

and open my mind

and open my heart and open my arms.

And when the first sex slave
came over to me, and I said,

"What would you like
for me to know about you?"

And he began to weep and cry
and tell me his story,

and then I said,

"How did you get
that crazy scar on your face?"

And he said, "Well, the pimps,
when they were breaking me in,

had a dog maul my face
while they were raping me."

And all of a sudden, however improbably,

I had been entrusted -

entrusted -

with this man's story

and of the other many things
that Mennie has taught me

is at the end of our lives,
all we have is our story.

And I've been given permission
by people all over the world -

in slums and refugee camps,

in hospices and makeshift schools,

in clinics in buildings

which in this country
would be condemned structures -

to share their stories with you.

In fact, they have insisted
that that's what I do.

And about that, I have a sense of wonder.

And they don't tell me their stories
because they know me from Hollywood.

They associate Hollywood
with archetypal words like "Mickey Mouse."

It's pretty irrelevant to them.

But I walk in the door
or through the little curtain

where a lot of the sex slaves
in their initial phase of being broken in

are brought in and kept and detained,

and something happens.

They know that they're being witnessed.

They know that they're being validated.

And even physics tell us

that something, when it perceives
it is being watched, it changes.

And all of a sudden, orphans
who are hungry and lethargic

and maybe have diarrheal disease
from unsafe drinking water

and have parasites,

they sit up a little straighter.

And however shyly, they begin to smile.

And they even reach out their hands,

and they begin to trust.

And about that, I have a sense of wonder.

The first orphan I met
was a precious girl named Ook Shraylock,

and she was unlike other orphans
in that she was really exuberant.

I think - the story at least
I've made up in my head -

is that she had her parents long enough
to have experienced some nurturing,

and so she had that template,

she had that feeling in her body
of what it's like to be held

and to be mirthful and to have fun
and to really love somebody.

And she gave me the greatest gift
I have ever been given

because she let me love her.

And I held her in my arms,

and when it was about time for me to go
and she clung a little tighter,

and she'd let me know,

she'd just give me
these subtle signals in her body

when she wanted me to rock her.

I realized that the night before,
the very night before I had met her,

I had had a dream
about my mamaw and my papaw,

my beloved paternal grandparents.

And in that dream, my mamaw,
who was always my safe person

and is the reason,

God as my witness,

I am alive today,

had come to me,

and she was so real in the dream,

it was as she was in life.

Every little hair in her eyebrows,

the sweet, little - just everything.

You know those dreams
where they're so real?

And she had held me, and she had said,

"The answer is in the book."

What a beautifully enigmatic
and highly suggestive thing

for this wonderful woman
to have told me in my dream.

And so holding this girl,
I told her about my dream

and suggested that it's possible
for us to renurture ourselves,

that when we have been loved,

we can, through our imagination,
vicariously conjure those sensations

and remind ourselves
of our very preciousness,

our intrinsic sense of worth

and remember that to somebody,
at some time, we mattered.

And then I told her
I would never forget her.

I did not give her false hope.

I said, "I don't know
if I'll ever see you again,

but I will tell your story."

And that I have this strange platform,

given to me in a culture and in a media
that I don't even pretend to understand,

in which I could bring to you her story

is something about which I wonder a lot.

And when I get too caught up in my head,

I remember what Mennie said:

"What comes from the head
goes over the head."

And I make that recommitment to take
the most difficult journey I ever take,

the one that is more harrowing
as the roads in Congo,

the one to here, my heart.

I do a lot of horizontal travel,
and it takes planning.

There's the passports
and the visa and the bureaucracy,

all the inoculations,

making sure that everything
is set up on the ground, that it's safe.

But there's nothing more important
than the vertical journey,

and it is this one here

that enables all the other traveling
to happen and to have meaning,

for it is from this place, ultimately,

that meaning is constructed
and that change happens.

Where's the timer?

How am I doing?

(Man) Great.

Well, I know I'm doing great,
but how much time do I have?

(Laughter)

You walked right into that, pal.

I have seven more minutes?

Wooh! I'm just getting started.

(Laughter)

So that first day, when I was in Svay Pak,

for my next trip

I went to the Genocide Museum
in Phnom Penh,

and I saw, briefly

and only to the level which a person
of privilege like I can absorb it,

what it would have been like
to live in a genocidal and murderous time

under the lunatic Pol Pot.

And a man who had survived that era,
who was a doctor, told me

that for the duration of the Khmer Rouge,
he pretended to be an illiterate peasant

because the educated classes
were all massacred.

And he talked about what
an anguishing choice that was for him

because he could be sitting or standing

alongside one whose life
he could have saved,

but it would have potentially
cost him his own

if he had betrayed his education.

And I said, "What ... did you ..."

I mean, what do you say to someone

who's describing going through
a regime like that?

And he said, "I used to take rocks

and on the ground spell out S-O-S

and hope that the Americans
flying overhead would see the SOS

and help us."

We were busy bombing Laos [inaudible].

So when I went that night
to the American ambassador's residence

to make the remarks and meet
the high-ranking ministers of government,

I said to him, "Where were we?

Why did the United States allow,
at times even contribute to this?"

And he was a really lovely guy,

rather honest fellow and diplomatic.

He said, "We were in rectal defilade."

(Laughter)

When I got back to my hotel room,
I was so astounded and shattered.

I didn't have anywhere in my brain
to put this information;

I was so flooded.

And my heart was just absolutely broken.

I mean, remember, I came into the work
with kind of a broken heart to begin with.

There was a reason
why I was attracted to trauma.

There was a reason why I intuited

I had a very strange capacity
for emotional extremes.

How many of you want to go
to refugee camps for your next vacation?

It is my idea of fun in a perverse way.

So back at my hotel room,

I remember being like -

spinning in these little circles,
not even knowing where to turn,

so I did what I do best

because I'm compulsive about the internet,

and I checked my email.

And I had an email from a friend
here in town, Cathy Lewis.

She's a remarkable chef,
and she was asking me about the food.

Very innocent, travel-type questions,

and, you know, she had some concern

about American franchising
pushing out local, cultural institutions,

and she said, "Oh, gosh.
Is there any Starbucks yet?"

And I was just aggressive.

(Laughter)

And I said, "No,
there's not any Starbucks yet.

There's just intergenerational trauma,

sexual exploitation,

agonizing deaths of children
through starvation,

some really screwed up
immigration policies

from the United States

where we're sending survivors
of the Khmer Rouge's children -

we're deporting them back
to a country that they don't know,

because of little, stupid
immigration things.

And the next thing I knew,
she wrote me back, and she said,

"I am praying for you."

And she asked my permission to send
that diary to other friends and family

who would support me spiritually

while I continued to take
this improbable journey.

And the next day and the next week

and the next country -

And all of a sudden

I'd been to 13 countries around the world,

I'd been to Congo
and Rwanda multiple times,

and I had written 650 pages
of those diaries.

And that is the book
that was published this week.

And in those diaries,
I tell many stories -

because that's really all that they are

is a way for me to have received,

like a sacrament,

an exploited and disempowered
person's story

and celebrate with you

not only their narrative of trauma

but to tell you how beautiful they are

and how resilient, how creative,

and the ingenuity of the poor
is mind-blowing.

Such a woman is Kika.

I met Kika recently
when I was in eastern Congo.

She had crawled
to the Panzi Clinic in Bukavu.

She sat very straight.

She was a fierce kind of a tender woman.

She would often dissociate,

but when she was present, she was magical.

And I said, "How did you get here?"

And she said, "Well, I crawled."

I didn't think
I was hearing her correctly,

so I said, "What would you
like for me to know about your story?"

And she said, "Well,
I was fetching water one day,

and I was attacked by armed militia

who rove the area exploiting
my country's vast mineral wealth."

Minerals, by the way,

in the very computer that I used
to type up my remarks for today.

She said,

"When they attacked me, I screamed,

and I screamed loudly enough
that my brother heard me and came running.

And when he got there,
they heckled him and said,

"Oh, ha. Now that you're here,
rape your sister."

And he said, "I will not."

And they said, "Oh yes, you will.

Rape your sister."

And he said, "I cannot.

She is like my mother."

So they stabbed him to death
with their bayonets in front of Kika,

gang-raped her multiple times.

And when the villagers came
after it was over,

they carried their bodies -
his dead and hers broken -

back to the hut.

But after two weeks,

Kika smelled so bad
from her internal injuries

that they said,

"We're sorry, Kika, but you've got to go."

And that was when she,
with her 11-year-old son,

began to crawl to the Panzi Clinic.

It took her a month.

And I said, "Crawl?"

And she said,

pedaling the air,
showing me how she crawled.

And I when I said, "Kika,
how have you done this?

How have you done this?"

she would just bend
imperceptibly at the waist

when she talked about her brother

and used her cloth from the kitchen
to silently mop her tears.

And she said,

"When I arrived at Panzi
and I was nearly dead,

they did not abandon me.

And when I did not get well,
they did not abandon me.

And when I could not go home

because my area is instable
and my trauma too bad,

they did not abandon me.

And when I did get a little better,
they found me a job in the kitchen,

and they did not abandon me."

And I told her that day,

"Kika, in my own way, however small,

with God as my witness,

I will not abandon you."

There are simple, cost-effective,
grassroots programs

operated within local contexts
by survivors like Kika

that disrupt cycles
of poverty and violence.

They make a difference,

and I have an enormous sense
of awe and wonder

about the people who persevere
when the world seems so senseless.

It is hard work; it is grueling.

And there have been times
when I was debilitated with grief.

But when I remember
Kika and Ook Shreylock,

and I connect between my head and my heart

and take my own vertical journey

and show up at places like this
on sunny spring days

with people like you,

who could be out enjoying

everything that middle Tennessee
has to offer on the ninth of May

but instead share with me
in the sacred narratives of these people.

I feel a sense of wonder about that too.

And now you know,

and with knowing comes responsibility.

When you walk out of here,
you have a choice:

Will you abandon Kika?

Or will you allow yourself
to be vulnerable enough

to have witnessed,
to have seen, to have validated?

It is the birthright of every child
to be listened to.

Will you allow yourself
to be recruited to her welfare?

Because that's the risk that comes
with having a sense of wonder

and being willing
to witness and to validate.

Thanks for letting me share
with you today.

I appreciate your time.

(Applause)