William Greenblatt

Transcript

17 months ago I became a dad thank you my daughter was born October 26 2022 and after 40 hours of excruciating labor for my wife our baby got stuck and everyone started yelling and I got elbowed out of the way and I watched as doctors jumped in the air and punched down on my wife's stomach to save her and the baby they got her out they presented her to us and I looked at her and I felt nothing but I'd always known two things with complete certainty when I was growing up I wanted to be a dad one day and I was going to be

an actor cuz my whole family were actors except my little brother Luke I started at age seven and I remember walking into audition rooms and morphing into whoever they needed me to be to get the heart and even when I wasn't in character I was still performing I was smiling and cracking jokes to get the validation of the adults in the room which helped me get roles but it didn't really help me make friends with kids of my own age I had a couple growing up but I was always so worried about what they thought of me that I could never relax around them then

in high school friendship got easier not because I stopped performing to get people to like me I just got better at it and then some kids thought it was cool that I was an actor on TV girls started noticing me life was pretty good this summer before I graduated I was on a canoe trip in the Northwest Territories and a float plane found my group on the river and I watched my father walk towards me on the rocky Beach and tell me that my younger brother Luke had drowned everything changed and my grief destroyed me I turned to drugs and alcohol and friends and girls

to try to forget how much pain I was in and I went to theater school but I was so [ __ ] up I could barely graduate and I got Praise And Lead roles but I realized I didn't even want to be an actor anymore but how was I supposed to give up my main source of validation and identity so I ran away I went to Spain and then China and I discovered teaching and Entrepreneurship traveling taught me so much but I was still performing and self-medicating punishing myself it ended up with a herniated disc in my lower back and I came crawling home for

the next seven months uh I was on my mom's living room couch in downtown Toronto I would wake up I would take my pills and I would would watch The Sopranos or the office until I fell asleep I was up to seven perco setes a day I wasn't getting better I had no job no purpose no hope and then one day a doctor told me something that changed my life he said if you want to heal you got to go to therapy I've been avoiding it since my brother died but it was way past time so I went and I learned that pain in the

mind affects pain in the body and I opened up and I started connecting with people for the first time not performing but being real and sharing stories of grief and pain and fear and resilience and I found purpose I became a speaking coach which means I get to connect with people and hear their stories for a living and I discovered what I want to share with you all tonight validation is a drug but connection is medicine when we seek validation which is needing to be declared Good Enough by other people it's addictive and it's destructive and it's never enough but human connection heals us when

we see and feel seen by others not for the [ __ ] that we talk about but for who we really are the scared soft lonely and vulnerable people it nourishes the mind and the body and the high lasts so 17 months ago when I looked at my daughter and I felt nothing I was guilty and ashamed I didn't I wanted so badly that moment where everyone talks about when you look at your child and you instantly fall in love and I didn't want to admit that it wasn't happening for me but everything I'd been through told me I had to tell my wife what

I was going through and she calls the Midwife over who said are we having some feelings and I saides we are and I told her and she said lots of dads feel this way you are normal and then they brought the baby to me and I sat in a hard Hospital chair and I held my newborn daughter to my chest and she looked up at me through swollen eyes and a rush went through my body the highest most loving form of human connection that I would have ever thought possible and I finally learned the difference between getting validated and finding true love thank

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