I am officially a TEDx speaker

Wow. What a journey!

I’m not even sure where to begin with telling THIS story…

Not the one I told on stage, but the one that got me to that point - because I don’t think I ever really imagined that it was truly possible.

I have never done any public speaking.
I have never stood on a stage - definitely not by myself.

I have wanted to be in the audience of a TEDx production for as long as I can remember but I never, ever had an ambition to actually speak.

It was my best friend, Debbie, who sent me the link to this year’s TEDxAberdeen page asking if I’d like to maybe go along with her to see it…

The theme was Identity.

I was actually living in Perthshire at the time and I guess the whole rest of THAT part of my story you’ll have to find out when you see my actual talk… but it really struck a chord with me for so many reasons.

I opened the application form - just to have a look.
At that point, I was just curious about how the application process worked and had no intentions whatsoever of actually filling out that form…

Then I don’t know what got into me but I thought ‘FUCK IT’ and started to fill it out anyway. It’s only an application form - nothing might even come of it.

I got almost all the way through the form when I realised that you had to submit a video of yourself speaking as part of your application. That was a HARD no from me. So away I went, thinking no more of it…

The deadline for applications to be submitted was extended to 12noon on Sunday 7th July. I submitted my application at 18:17 on Saturday 6th July with a video that I’d recorded from my sofa in my cute little Perthshire cottage with absolutely no consideration for what the process involved or how much this might have the potential to just change my life in ways that I couldn’t even imagine.

Flash forward almost a month to Saturday 3rd August - by which time I’d pretty much forgotten I’d even submitted an application - I was in the back of the car taking my wee girl to Codonas for our monthly outing as a Befriend a Child volunteer.

My phone rings. A number I don’t recognise.

It was Derrick - the curator of TEDx Aberdeen - asking if it was a good time to speak. I said no and asked if I could call him back in about half an hour because I knew that they only called you if you were going to be accepted and it was an email if you weren’t…

I hadn’t told ANYONE.
Not one single person knew that I’d applied for this process.

So I called Derrick back from the outside area of Codonas while my little girl was on the go karts and Garry was there to supervise.

He explained that almost 100 people had applied and that they’d already accepted 8 incredible speakers for this year’s event but they had two people that they couldn’t quite choose between. He wanted to know a bit more about my background and why I’d wanted to apply and he told me I was going to need to do another interview to answer a few more questions…

We had a slightly nerve wracking Zoom call where I tried to explain myself and the reasons I’d wanted to do this but I was also so genuinely grateful to have even gotten this far. I’d already been chosen out of almost one hundred people to be considered and I even told Derrick that that was a boost in itself.

He rang me the same day to say that we were BOTH chosen to be speakers. They’d decided that they just couldn’t choose between us and decided to keep us both.

That was my first ‘oh shit, this is really happening…’ moment!

I had absolutely no idea what to expect but Derrick reassured me that we would get some training and, again, I thought not much more of it…

Well, how little did I know.

I actually missed the first training session because it was on my birthday and I was neck deep (or mouth deep as Erin likes to call it) in boob casting sessions in the middle of Manchester. I attended a wee online catch up session with Jennifer and Catriona who also weren’t able to make it and that was the first time I even knew who else I was going to be speaking with.

There were still 7 other speakers whose names I didn’t know.

We’d been told we had to keep it secret.
We couldn’t tell anyone.
Now, if you know me, you’ll know how hard I find it to keep my mouth shut but shut it I did and not one single person - other than my Garry, seeing as he was in the car when I got THE call - knew that I’d even applied for this talk until our faces were plastered all over the TEDxAberdeen social media pages…

I guess the cat is out of the bag, I said.

My Instagram EXPLODED.

That was Wednesday 4th September and the day after I drove up to Aberdeen for my first ever in person TEDx training session.

I was delighted to meet Birgit (who I knew from years ago when we met volunteering at a conservation project, raking grass to plant wildflower seeds) and Chloe (who went to school with one of my good friends, Kiera and who I’d seen before in the gym we all went to). It was so lovely to see some familiar faces and I got to meet some of the other speakers too.

We were introduced to Eric Doyle - a 2022 TEDx legend - who was going to be supporting us along the journey and Erin - from Pink Sphynx Media - who would be filming the whole training process to create a beautifully curated documentary to present on the big day.

I was overwhelmed.

I had spent months alone in that little Perthshire cottage and I felt out of my depth. We had been told to bring the first few minutes of our talk to present to the group and I can’t tell you how scary that was.

My hands were shaking so much I could barely hold my paper and, because I speak so fast when I’m nervous, I remember Eric giving me feedback that it was like being shot by a machine gun.

And so I was dubbed ‘Machine Gun Laura’ for the next three months…

We were all encouraged to give constructive feedback to each other and it is UNBELIEVABLE how different my talk is now to the talk that I thought I was going to be presenting from that very first session.

We were under strict instructions, from that day, that we were not allowed to miss a single training session. We were also advised that we probably wouldn’t have much of a life for the next wee while. How right they were.

TEDx is (still!) currently my entire personality but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I have met the most INCREDIBLE people - from the other speakers to the whole team who have been involved in supporting us throughout the process - and I genuinely can’t even begin to express my gratitude for what we have been through in the last few weeks and months.

Derrick and Bob have been pivotal in helping us to mould our stories from an ugly lump of clay into something beautiful. We had eight group sessions and individual sessions in between. We met for co-working and we very quickly became friends, meeting for sea swims and sauna chats too.

The topic of Identity - as you can probably imagine - is a particularly vulnerable one so I realised very quickly that these people were going to know more about me than probably most of the other people in my life. Some of us were reluctant, at first, to break down those walls and barriers that we have all built around ourselves… but we eventually stripped back every inch of protection and exposed ourselves - sometimes literally - to each other.

I have never felt so safe, so supported, so respected and so SEEN by a group of people. I have been able to be 100% myself in every single stupid moment - whether it’s been laughing, crying or making inappropriate comments and jokes - I have been every little bit my weird and wonderful self.

The first time I presented my full 12 minute talk from script, I knew that I was onto something special. The room was silent. I remember Sarah saying ‘just WOW’, Eric gave me a high five and Derrick didn’t really say very much at all but I remember him catching my eye and giving me that knowing smile which told me everything I needed to know.

However, writing your story down is one thing. Speaking it out loud is something else entirely.

I don’t write the way that I talk so I had to spend a LONG time getting my words to sound the way that I would speak them if I was just telling someone my story when they asked.

We moved our scripts to storyboards but I found that I was relying too much on the pictures and ‘monotone’ was the feedback I got that week.

So the storyboard got shoved into the corner.

I learned my talk from memory only.

I didn’t even have my storyboard on stage for the final talk - something which I don’t think has ever been done in the whole of TEDxAberdeen history - but which felt completely natural to me because that’s just the way that I learn.

Don’t get me wrong, I fucked up A LOT.

Every second training rehearsal, I made a big bloody mess. I stormed out of the room. I cried. I ranted.

I was frustrated with myself because I KNEW that I wanted to do this. I wanted to do it so badly and I was putting so much pressure on myself to get it right that I was so often getting it wrong.

I became completely disconnected from my talk. I was doing a talk on IDENTITY and I didn’t feel like myself. I wasn’t an actor, I wasn’t a performer. I was angry and I was ready to quit. I didn’t want to stand up on that stage and deliver a talk that didn’t resonate with who I really am. That’s the whole point of my talk after all… to just be yourself, always.

I sought some advice from our coaching team. There’s a whole squad of people behind the scenes of the TEDxAberdeen production but the coaches are people who I genuinely could not have gotten through this without. My talk is especially raw and vulnerable and emotional - something I usually suppress and hide myself away from - and going over it again and again and again was really fucking difficult.

Judith, especially, has coached me for so many hours - most often late on a Friday night - to help me work through everything that was coming up for me and to get me to the point where I could express the emotion that my talk evokes without letting it overwhelm me. She was there to help me breathe when I was crying with fear before standing up in front of even a small audience in the Marcliffe and I literally would not have been able to get up on that stage this past Saturday if she wasn’t there to calm me down.

TEDx has been like therapy. To the point that I was supposed to be getting transferred back up to Aberdeen psychological services for the CBT, that I’d started in Perthshire, to be continued. I don’t honestly think that I need it anymore.

The last coaching session I had with Judith I remember saying ‘even if I don’t get up on the stage, even if I don’t do my talk and it doesn’t end up on YouTube, even if I mess it up - it doesn’t matter because what this process has given me has already changed my life'.

It has brought me back to myself again.
I have laughed again.
I have remembered who I am and let myself BE that person.

I have found a group of people who probably would never have been brought together in any other capacity but who have embraced each other and accepted each other in a way that is really fucking rare in this shallow, surface level life.

But I did get up on that stage.

It has taken me hours and hours of practice and preparation and I cannot express my gratitude to the people who have been there to support me and believe in me and listen to my talk and listen to me talk about my talk. It has taken LITERALLY blood, sweat and tears to get me through this gruelling process.

It has been HARD - the hardest, most intense thing I have ever done - but oh my god has it been worth it!

Erin asked me what I would say to someone who wanted to be a TEDx speaker and my reply to her was that it’s a bit like the reality of childbirth… you can’t tell someone what it’s really like or they probably wouldn’t do it!

It has genuinely been worth it though, it really has. Regardless of what happens from here on out, TEDx has already changed my life.

I faced my fears.
I got up on that stage and I absolutely SMASHED it!

In the words of Judith Stephen:
’Feel the fear and do it anyway!’

I can’t wait for you all to hear my final talk.

If I can do this, I can do anything.