TEDx Blog #5: When Moving Forward Means Taking a Step Back
🌀 TEDxTruth #5: Progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes you have to unravel before you can rebuild.
January left me buzzing.
I took the feedback from my first rehearsal and poured myself into reshaping my script.
I was excited to finetune and found symbolism everywhere.
The four phases of the menstrual cycle, the seasons of the year, the stages of a woman’s life — menarche, menstruation, fertility, menopause; I laced them together like poetry, weaving metaphors with stories, convinced I had created something elegant.
It wasn’t finished, sure - It was still way too long- but for the first time, I could feel the potential of my talk. The red thread was there, and I was excited to share it with the TEDxNorthwich team.
By the February rehearsal, I was ready to keep building and hearing their feedback.
The butterflies were back, I was excited. Hopeful.
It was all part of the journey: test, improve and test again.
But as soon as I started reading my script out loud, something shifted.
Instead of clarity, there was clutter.
Instead of strength, there was confusion.
Instead of the fire in my belly, I felt a wobble of doubt.
Was this too complicated?
Had I drowned my message under too many layers?
Was I trying too hard to be clever?
I kept going, hoping momentum would carry me through.
But when I finished, the silence lingered.
A little too long.
You know that kind of silence where everyone’s thinking, how do we say this kindly?
And then came the feedback.
Warm. Honest. Direct. (Almost Dutch, which I secretly appreciated.)
They told me what I already knew deep down:
I had lost my message.
I had overdone it.
It was too hard to follow.
And just like that, my building confidence nosedived.
I closed my Zoom at the end of the call and just sat there.
Deflated.
Frustrated.
Asking myself: How did I go from building momentum to feeling like I’d slid backwards?
And here’s the thing; this is the part no one tells you about when you see someone standing on a TEDx stage, confident and polished under the spotlight.
The behind-the-scenes truth is that the journey is messy.
You build, you break, you rebuild.
You write and rewrite and then scrap whole sections.
You ride the highs of “I’m onto something!” and the lows of “I’ve completely lost the plot.”
That’s what February was for me.
A low.
A step backward.
A moment where my confidence cracked.
But here’s what I’ve learned: this stage, the unraveling, is not a failure. It’s part of the process.
You can’t find the core of your message without stripping away everything that’s distracting from it.
You can’t reach clarity without first wandering through confusion.
It hurt. It slowed me down.
But it was necessary.
And because of how brilliantly the TEDxNorthwich program is built; I had time.
So I took a deep breath.
I shut my laptop.
And I promised myself I’d come back stronger, clearer, sharper.
Because this isn’t just about writing a talk.
It’s about learning how to tell the story only you can tell.
And sometimes, that means stepping back before you can leap forward.
Click here to read the previous blog about how I ‘stumbled through’ my first rehearsal.
Stay tuned for the next blog talking about following rehearsals.
Find all the blogs on the Period Reality TEDx page.
This talk was never just about me.
It’s about a global call for gender equity through Cycle Awareness.
It’s about system change that starts with understanding our bodies.
It’s about bringing that conversation to the TEDx stage - and far, far beyond.
Because the TEDx stage wasn’t the destination.
It was just the beginning.
#NotDesignedForTheGrind
#TEDxTruths
#TEDxNorthwich
