Who I Am
Speaking on the theme Body Beautiful at Speaker Slam® in Toronto on Apr 30, 2019, Christina Paruag took the stage with a five minute story.
Transcript
when I was 11 years old I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up I had this plastic briefcase these fake medical supplies in it that I would use on my younger cousin for fun at 11 I referred it I will be a doctor someday now I know what you're there's a brown girl on the stage saying that but I can promise you it was a force to my family but rather inspired by my experiences see I was diagnosed with a fractured hip even though I would tell my family doctor but I have stomach cramps and as early as the first period I was
having this pain that would drop me to my knees I always knew that I was just a little bit different from my female friends and family members years later I accepted an offer to start a program at Ryerson University called metal hip physics I was so excited envisioning myself going to medical school helping other people my first year of University the course of my entire life changed that little 11 year old girl was afraid eight years later those stomach pains were so daily excruciating sometimes worse than not experienced during childbirth I spent up to 21 days a month in fat relying solely on my family
to help me with daily accent base Paralyzed by the pain pain would go from my hips to my knees piercing through my stomach and striking right through my back sometimes I fall asleep hoping to escape the nightmare I was in only to awaken hours later with blood-filled mattress lonely I would scream and cry and beg for real to stop and I would wonder why me runs later the diagnosis came endometriosis a chronic pain tradition tissues similar to the lining of the uterus and deposits and growths in other areas of a woman's body I thought that sex was supposed to be awful and that going to
the bathroom was always going to feel like a knife was inside of me my other 19 year old friends were partying and dancing and here I was struggling just to make it out of bed I felt like no one really understood what I was going through and doctors would just prescribe negotiations as if they were candy and it's like morphine and Percocet I was told things like the pain is all in your head or it's just a bad period spending so much time visiting work in school I realized that being a doctor wasn't a reasonable option anymore I felt like a failure My ultimate goal
and purpose was unreachable I told myself horrible things like you're such a disappointment and you're worthless I believed every word that I said I felt like I was living just to be three years ago in a state of panic I rushed to the ER one night knowing that something else was wrong there was so much luck nothing like I had ever seen before and I knew that I made to listen to my body the staff said that if I hadn't made it there at night not right I would have died now I still that old deal week but I developed a much more holistic approach
to my healing I've switched my internal dialogue from I'm sick to I'm healing and that's drastically altered how I view and treat myself see my pain could have been the destruction of me when I saw it as an opportunity to listen to my body to work with it and be at sync with it rather than be against it the answer to why me suddenly became fear do you know my experiences I launched a platform and a publication called stem evolved which works to normalize conversations around these type of topics such as sex and menstruation women started reaching out to me from around the globe saying
that being resonated and felt connected to the women and the stories that lined our magazine pages my heart was warm hearing this finally made sense I had impacted everyone and I was getting to share my scoring it's a beautiful way I was so caught up on who I wanted to be a doctor that I didn't leave any room for the possibility of who I could become a writer a speaker an entrepreneur an advocate the possibilities were endless chose to use my king for something positive and to turn into something that could edit the people in a different way than being a doctor her experiences don't
exist to break us they exist to shape us into exactly true we're meant to become and when we can Embrace those challenges and those struggles and he'd get through them we could be pleasantly surprised of the person that comes through on the other side would you learned that instead of being disappointed that we're not only planned on being we can love and accept person that we actually are for we can love and accept who we are and where we are and what thank you
Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.