What Shapes You, Can't Break You | Powerful Speech | Goalcast - video Dailymotion

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Sarah Montana tells her heart-stopping true story about the unthinkable traumas she endured in her young life.  She's put herself back together more times than you would think possible...  Sarah Montana - Writer for Aha - Moments That Move

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00:00But when a high school boyfriend took my virginity without asking me first, I went a little crazy.

00:08I wish I could tell you now that it was a cool kind of crazy, like set fire to his car

00:13and waiting to exhale crazy, or even a cute crazy, like Carrie Underwood keying her boyfriend's

00:17car crazy.

00:19But it wasn't.

00:20Did I break up with him?

00:22No.

00:23No, of course not.

00:24Instead, I did Olympic gold medal-worthy backflips of logic to convince myself that I loved him.

00:32Because I had to stay near my pieces.

00:35I stayed with that dude for three years.

00:38I withered away in silent shame all the way down to 90 pounds until I finally came clean

00:44on our living room couch to my 17-year-old brother Jim and our best friend Joe.

00:49They leapt up off the couch and were like, please break up with him.

00:53Please break up with him.

00:54Please break up with this guy.

00:57And it had not occurred to me that I could do that.

01:01So we made a plan.

01:02Tomorrow, I would break up with him.

01:03And tonight, we would practice.

01:06Except three hours later, Jim found me curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor, heaving,

01:13sobbing.

01:14And he scooped me up like a baby and rocked me.

01:17And I just kept saying, how did I let this happen?

01:22I think I must be a bad person.

01:24I feel broken.

01:27I am so, so broken.

01:31And this 17-year-old boy sat me up, held me by the shoulders, and said, now you stop that.

01:37I don't ever want to hear you say anything like that again because you are the best person

01:40that I know.

01:41You saved my life like every day in a hundred ways you don't even think count.

01:46And anything you say bad about yourself cuts into me as if you said it about me.

01:50So stop crying, and I'm going to make you the best sandwich you've ever had in your

01:56life.

01:59That was the day that Jim taught me that words can save lives.

02:03Jim didn't see pieces when he looked at me.

02:05He saw all of me.

02:08Even when I was covered in bruises, he didn't think I should be thrown away like a bad piece

02:11of fruit.

02:13Somehow, my brother knew at 17 what most adults still don't.

02:19There are no pieces of me.

02:22I cannot be broken.

02:24I can be bruised, shaped, dented, sure, but I am always whole.

02:30My mom's life calling was very simple.

02:33She wanted to be Mama Smith.

02:35She was mom to every teenager and kid in our community.

02:38The front door was always open, the snack cabinet was always full, and you couldn't

02:42pass her in her van without her rolling down the window waving to you and saying, hey,

02:47I see you.

02:48I know you, and I love you sky big.

02:51Her wholeness was the sun, and kids just gravitated toward it.

02:55Even when I can't feel it or see it, the sun of my wholeness may be covered in clouds,

03:01but it is never gone.

03:02And it was with me when the police told me that my mom and Jim had been killed in a botched

03:09burglary in our home.

03:12In her killer's confession, he said that he killed her because he knew that she recognized

03:17him and she wouldn't stop screaming.

03:21She recognized him because she made it a point to wave to him every day, because he was a

03:26troubled kid.

03:27She wanted him to feel seen.

03:30It was with me when the media swarmed, when the national news picked up the story, and

03:36strangers everywhere started to whisper that my life was over.

03:39It would have been really easy to buy into the look in people's eyes when they looked

03:44at me and saw nothing but debris.

03:47It would have been really easy to believe the college professor who, two weeks after

03:51they died, looked at me and said, oh my god, you are never going to be okay again.

03:56Thankfully I'd had better teachers than him.

03:58I'd had Miss Graham.

03:59The first day of class, she didn't even introduce herself.

04:02She just launched into our first writing assignment.

04:04She said, who are you?

04:06What has shaped you?

04:08Who do you want to be?

04:10She took off her glasses.

04:12She rubbed her face.

04:14And then she very calmly walked us through the loss of her two sisters, her father, and

04:19her husband.

04:21The room started to spin, each of us drawn off balance by the magnetism of her trauma,

04:25but the wave of her hand had stopped, and she said, but I'm the happiest person I know.

04:31These things have shaped me, they have changed me, but they are not who I am because they

04:34are not who I have decided to be here.

04:37So who are you?

04:40And at that moment, I tethered my heart to this perfect woman.

04:45And because of that, she was there incanting to me all through my twenties that this would

04:49shape me, but it could not break me.

04:52That I couldn't control what happened to me, but I alone got to decide what it meant.

04:57Most importantly, Miss Graham taught me that I am always bigger than the parts that I play.

05:04Give yourself permission to heal your wounds.

05:07I promise you, after these past 10 years, it will take everything you've got.

05:13It will take every ounce of compassion, courage, talent, and skill you possess, and because

05:18it takes everything you've got, it will show you everything that you are.

05:22And once you've seen that, it's impossible not to show up fully to everything, to be

05:27whole.

05:28It's the bravest thing that we do.

05:30Because people who know how to do that know how to help other people without constantly

05:35abandoning themselves.

05:37They actually know how to form a pack of whole people who know how to stand in their

05:41goodness, who see people who are hurting and don't just walk by, but get down on the ground

05:46with them and say, hey, I know how much this hurts.

05:50I know that you're bleeding, but you are not broken and you cannot stay here because anything

05:55bad that happens to you happens to me too.

06:00So we're going to do this together.

06:07We're going to do this together.

06:08We're going to do this together.

06:09We're going to do this together.

06:10We're going to do this together.

06:11We're going to do this together.

06:12We're going to do this together.

06:13We're going to do this together.

06:14We're going to do this together.

06:15We're going to do this together.

06:16We're going to do this together.

06:17We're going to do this together.

06:18We're going to do this together.

06:19We're going to do this together.

06:20We're going to do this together.

06:21We're going to do this together.

06:22We're going to do this together.

06:23We're going to do this together.

06:24We're going to do this together.

06:25We're going to do this together.

06:26We're going to do this together.

06:27We're going to do this together.

06:28We're going to do this together.

What Shapes You, Can't Break You | Powerful Speech | Goalcast

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