Grace Riza Ti Kieng

Transcript

Three car accidents in just 6 years. But somehow, none of them broke me. The thing that almost did, going to work every day. Every morning, I sat in my car before I even turned the key, my body hurt. The worst part when I'm stuck in traffic, gripping the steering wheel. You know why? Fibromyalgia is invisible. No braces or crutches. PTSD leaves no visible marks. So, I did most people with invisible disabilities like me learn to do. I put on my I'm fine mask, fix my hair, and smile.

I walk into my office pretending I was okay. From the outside, I look fine. Stylish, thanks to my fashion sense. But beneath the makeup, I was fighting a battle nobody could see. Then came the day when my boss called me for a meeting to tell me that someone complained about me. I could feel my world around me collapsing inside. My body tensed. I didn't argue, I didn't complain, I didn't yell. I simply asked, "What do you mean?" Then I just decided to walk away unapologetically.

It's not because I feel defeated. It's because my boundaries matter. I chose dignity. Day after day, I searched for solutions, resources, or people who would have my back. But when my body start speaking, my mind could no longer carry the weight. My nervous system became exhausted. And the pain became louder. Then guess what? Something else happened. My car broke down in the highway. Seriously? Haven't I been through enough? Because of that breakdown, I avoided another collision just in time. Maybe it wasn't a breakdown.

Maybe it was a redirection towards a healthier lifestyle. The hardest road I ever walked wasn't the road after my accident. It was the road I had spent years believing that I had to stay on. That means to keep showing up no matter what. Then unfortunately, I got sick. I needed to send a message to my boss. You know, simply just send an email that I needed to take a medical leave until further notice. I read it, sent, done. No shame, no excuses, just reality.

And that's when I learned reinvention doesn't begin when life changes. It begins when we stop abandoning ourselves. Because I had chose the road that protected the person I was becoming. Today, I live with fibromyalgia, PTSD, and scoliosis because chronic pain doesn't simply disappear. The fact that healing is not linear, some days I could still feel a battlefield, but the greatest reinvention is not what happened to my body. It's what happened to my voice. I became involved with the Fibromyalgia Association of Canada to raise awareness and advocate for others.

Through creativity, entrepreneurship, and now this stage, I finally found ways to turn my experience into something meaningful. And perhaps that's where my story becomes our story because every one of us will eventually come to a crossroads, a moment when what we've always done no longer lead us to where we need to go. We can keep proving, we can keep enduring, we can keep abandoning ourselves, or we can choose a different road. I almost didn't walk onto this stage. I told myself people like me don't belong here.

But reinvention doesn't ask whether we're ready. It asks whether we're willing. Because sometimes the high road isn't the easiest road. It isn't even the road we planned. It's simply the road that finally lead us back to ourselves. Thank you.

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