In 2017, I teetered on the edge of life, just a moment from death. My upper body took a huge impact. A force so overwhelming, I collapsed, struggling to breathe.Darkness swallowed me thick and suffocating. And then something extraordinary happened. This pure blinding white light appeared all around me.I had no idea at the time, but I was on the verge of being thrust into the unknown. Uncharted territory. And then I woke up in hospital, machines beeping and tubes and needles running from my arms.And I began ...

My comeback didn't begin in a stadium or at a life-changing conference. It began in aisle 5 of a Walgreens. It was a cold January day. I was picking up toothpaste, nursing a hangover again, clutching a coffee, and feeling the pain rock my brain from back to front. I studied myself. Shopping basket on my arm. The fluorescent lights a little too bright for me. Valentine's Day was around the corner, but I was worried about my friend Steve. He'd been acting erratically the night before, and I'd stepped in to ta ...

I was 17 when I lost my sister. Now, usually when telling this story, I'd say something along the lines of, "We fought long and hard to get her the medication she needed, to get access to the drugs, to change the landscape of South African organ donation, to get her the lung transplant she needed to save her life. But that would be a lie because we didn't do those things. My mother did, my father did.But me, I was a child. 13 when Jenna was diagnosed, 15 when the campaign started, and 17 when she died. I wa ...

[applause] When I'm out in nature, I often ask myself, [music] what kind of future are we healing towards. And the next time you're out, whether you're in a green countryside space or a local urban space, I encourage you to do the same. Because when we think about healing, we usually look backwards to what's been broken, what's been lost, what's hurt us the most. So what I invite us to do is when we think about healing and nature, I invite you to just think about yourselves now.What seeds have you planted s ...

What is it? I asked. I'd just given birth and it seemed like everyone in the delivery room had forgotten that I didn't know what I was having. I'd gone through a very long IVF process that resulted in four embryos, two boys, two girls. My doctor asked me if I wanted to choose the gender and I said no, just go with the strongest one. God's will be done. It's a girl. Someone shouted a girl. And it was at that moment I wish I had a mirror, not to watch the baby as it came out, but to see the look on my face an ...

[applause] [applause] I jolted awake, lifting my head off the crunchy plastic pillow covered by a pillowcase. Black and tan smudges of my makeup smearing the white fabric. My tears making a mess of someone who was supposed to have it all together.the room. It smelled of rubbing alcohol and vomit, and I tried to shield myself from the cold with just a small sheet. As the events from the night before seeped back into my memory, the most overwhelming sense of dread filled my being.What had I done. I froze with ...

It all started with a headache. A headache that turned into pain in every part of my body. A pain that has stayed with me since I was 9 years old for every second of my life. I was always known as the girl who always missed school. Every time my friends would come and sleep over, they would joke that my room was built more like a pharmacy than anything else. For 11 years, I didn't know what was wrong with me. My disease remained undiagnosed. How do you fight something you can't see? How do you fight somethi ...

Modern medicine has reached heights once thought impossible. From helping repair brains, creating prosthetic limbs controlled by thought, and restoring movement after injury. These breakthroughs heal the body in incredible ways, but often miss one crucial unseen part of recovery.Before we begin, I encourage you to think about what healing means to you. Is it recovering from physical illness, weekly therapy sessions, a new environment, or something else entirely. We're often taught that healing comes in big ...

It's December 17th, 2019. I'm standing in front of the judge in a Colorado Springs courtroom. He holds the next decade of my life in his hands. I'm there because I meticulously planned and for a short while pulled off a $600,000 jewel heist. I tracked my victim's cars with GPS units linked to burner phones, accessed their security feeds, blocked embedded trackers that might be in the jewelry, and even convinced a Denver broker they were family heirlooms. I didn't do this because I wanted diamonds. I was dro ...

[Music] [Applause] All right. Good evening, everyone. >> I remember the night my parents got all dressed up for Charlie's Bar and Grill. They left laughing and pretending that everything was fine. But by the end of that night, my mother lay bleeding on the floor of that bar. Humiliated, alone, and abandoned by every single witness. She came home bruised, swollen, and wrapped in silence. And then she sat before her Buddhist altar and she began chanting namo heno so powerful as if her voice could carve a door ...