In 2014, I was honored to be invited to talk at the TEDxPort-of-Spain conference in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The theme of the conference was "Doing, Undoing, Redoing". Earlier that year I'd spoken at a TEDxPOS "salon" called "Firestarters" where I gave a shorter speech, but unfortunately that one couldn't be posted, due to the corporate logos on the wall behind the talk. I was given the opportunity to give a longer version of my speech for the main conference that year. I was definitely the youngest person speaking, and I wasn't 100% certain of what message I wanted to deliver. What I did know was that, at the time, I was thinking a great deal about an article I'd read on a blog I loved, called Black Girl Dangerous. It was by activist Ngọc Loan Trần and was called: "Calling IN: a Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable". The unforgiving way in which people treated each other, often within social justice circles, was bothering me a great deal. To be perfectly honest, perhaps my own lack of forgivingness in relation to my parents was heavy on my mind. This talk was my attempt to deal with this issue in the world I was living in from my understanding at the time.
My thoughts have transformed and developed a lot since those days. But I still think there are glimmers of truth within the passionate words of myself at 23.