Carol Schulte

Transcript

caryl shelter I never thought I'd be here what are you afraid of when I was in theater school they had us do this exercise where they'd asked us to trigger our deepest fear in order to evoke emotion and tears the idea being that we would learn how to cry at the drop of a hat and mine was always the same ever since I was little my deepest fear was losing my mom you see my mom was my person she saw me she got me and then she got sick like really sick like losing your hair from chemo sick like skeleton sick and my deepest fear

became my reality I lost my mom and then I lost me so I went on a mad search to find me again my check didn't chang my volunteering an orphanage for HIV babies and children I combed through Calcutta ended up at Mother Teresa's home for the dying I rummaged through Russia kesh lived in an ashram practice intense yoga and meditation I shaved my head raise money for breast cancer research I spent three months apple-picking in New Zealand I may have met a man and moved into his van May's had something to do with it but was I being brave no I was running I was

hiding I was escaping I wasn't conquering anything at all see as soon as we're choosing and trying to actually conquer our fears it's actually our fears that are conquering us you know our fears are like that whack-a-mole game that I used to play at Chucky Cheese when I was younger as soon as you knock one down another one right on up and that's what happened to me my fear of losing my mom became my fear of not becoming a mom myself and being able to be the person for my child one day the way that my mom was for me and then I discovered something

fascinating about fear when you flip it over if you look carefully enough what you find is desire and the deeper the fear the greater the desire which leads me to my next question have you ever given yourself a subcutaneous injection so what happened what happens is you pinch the skin still a little tender and you take your syringe and you stick it in underneath all the way and slowly squeeze that syringe until there's no liquid left I did this for the first time on November 9th it was not fun and over the last 11 days I've done that twenty four more times injecting five different

types of drugs into my abdomen and my size popped a whole bunch of pills and rubbed hormonal gel on my shoulders every night before bed for one reason only I want babies and I don't have any and I am single and I am 38 years old which means it's egg freezing time which starts with egg harvesting which happens when they say go time which was actually this morning so at 10:30 I was in a hospital gown being put under twilight anaesthetic and rolled into the egg retrieval surgery room now I don't actually know exactly what went down in there all I know is that it

was the longest needle I have ever seen and it involved a whole lot of pain and discomfort and then squeezing out all the liquid from my follicles hoping to find some treasure inside and now after five months of no coffee no alcohol no highlighting up my hair no doing of my nails happy to reports that I have nine tiny little eggs that hopefully come tomorrow will be comfortably chilling in a freezer down the street I never thought I'd be here but I could have spent all that time and energy trying to conquer my fear but it would have been futile because our fears aren't going

in anywhere and so instead of being afraid of your fear or ashamed of your fear why not be brave enough to feel it to face it to embrace it and then expose it because then what you'll find is actually your fears and your desires are two sides of the same coin and it is far more powerful to be pulled by your desires than to be paralyzed for your fears so I could have sat in that sterile waiting room not making eye contact with anybody else for fear of being discovered exposed or I could take selfies with the nurses and I have to say I have

a few cute ones and I could shamelessly ask you to invite any eligible kind cute bachelors my way and I can bravely stand here totally crampy totally bloated and totally exposed and I am because when I look at my deepest fears now all I see are my greatest desires and so can you so what are you afraid of

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.

Transcript

there must have been well over 300 people there we were on the island of Naxos in Greece and somehow found ourselves at this massive pool party I was 21 years old young wild and free we were devouring watermelon and my girlfriend came up to me and asked me if I would go with her to talk to the guy running the bungee jump to see whether or not he would let her go for free if she went topless ha he said if I said yes to every girl who ever asked me that I would be out of business but if you go naked well that's another

story I started laughing as I looked at her and she got dead serious in the face and she looked at me straight in my eyes and said I wouldn't but you would I dare you and all of a sudden immediately my heart started pounding and for some reason I knew that this was gonna happen and before I had any idea to let it sink in or before I had a chance to have a drink for a little bit of Dutch courage all of a sudden my ankles were being bound together I was put on a chest harness safety comes first when you're going up a

crane and all of a sudden they were lifting me up and I was quivering in this tiny little towel that they reluctantly allowed me to wear only on the journey up that was the longest and the shortest journey of my life and as soon as I got to the top that massive pool was very small and that crowd was huge apparently word got around that there was gonna be some crazy Canadian about to go bungee jumping in her birthday suit in that moment I wasn't sure what I was more terrified of the fact I was about to be bungee jumping or the fact that I

was about to be making a friend of a whole lot of strangers well I realized that I was never gonna be found in a situation like this ever again so I decided to milk it for all it was worth I made the crane operator and give me a little countdown three two one I whipped off my towel I gave a little shimmy that I jumped and I'm not sure what my first thought was but something along the lines of oh my goodness I am jumping right now quickly followed by a thought of oh my goodness I am naked in front of hundreds of strangers get

me down now well they certainly took their time reaching out that pole slowly slowly bringing me back in so much for me inconspicuously thinking that I was going to just get through the crowd back to my friends home safe and sound oh no no no I had to get through the bar somehow around the pool was met with high-fives and shots and a whole lot of cheering now you might be thinking was that an act of courage or was that just being completely crazy I don't know maybe a bit of both but if I'm honest with you in that moment I was more concerned with

saying yes to the dare more concerned with being cool than actually being courageous it was a story of my life you see growing up I never felt cool enough I never felt good enough and I did whatever it took to fit in luckily there was one person who saw me who got me who always made me feel good enough my mom and then she got sick really sick and I moved home to look after her and for the first time in my life finally felt purpose didn't feel like I wasn't good enough or tall enough or pretty enough or blonde enough I was exactly where

I needed to be and then she passed away and in an instant I lost my number-one fan I lost my purpose and I lost me so I went on a mad search to find myself again I started off in Thailand volunteering at hiv-positive orphanages for babies and children to Calcutta with Mother Teresa's missions of charity I lived in an ashram practiced in tents yoga meditation shaved my head raised thousands of dollars with breast cancer I met a man I moved into his van I went apple picking in New Zealand for a year or why not I've done some crazy adventures climbed Kilimanjaro learned how to

surf sky dived but if I'm honest I wasn't actually being courageous you see I wasn't brave enough to face life without that one person who believed in me it's been 13 years since my mother passed and sometimes I still wonder if I'm trying to prove myself sometimes I still think that I am trying to prove that I'm good enough if you were braver what would you do this is a question or phrase I sometimes ask the people that I speak to and work with but I realized recently that I wasn't answering the question myself and so I created and if I were braver list if

I were braver I would create an online dating profile without being afraid of the fact that I'm 38 and single if I were braver I would freeze my eggs without being worried about the investment or thinking that I was tempting fate or not trusting the timing of my life if I were braver I would start medication and I wouldn't be ashamed to admit that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and suspected bipolar disorder if I were braver I would stop comparing myself to everyone else I would stop trying to prove myself by doing these outside acts of courage in fact I would stop trying to

prove myself at all maybe courage is an act of doing but an act of being of being brave enough to take on your life we brave enough to be you to be brave enough to be me in spite of all of our flaws our fears and foibles maybe the biggest act of courage has nothing to do with bungy jumping in your birthday suit or how many countries you visited or crazy adventures you've been on maybe the biggest act of courage is being brave enough to believe that you are good enough exactly as you are right here right now if you were braver what would you

do that you're not already doing who would you be that you're not already being go ahead I dare you

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.