TEDx Blog #3: “The Email That Changed Everything”
🌀 TEDxTruth #3: Sometimes the biggest “YES” arrives quietly and it changes your whole trajectory.
The day after my pitch, an email landed in my inbox.
Subject line: “Decision on your Idea pitch to TEDxNorthwich.”
Wait… what?!
Already?
I was still in bed, not even obsessively refreshing my Inbox yet, when I saw it.
The signature red TEDx font popped up a few times as I anxiously scanned for The Decision… but I couldn’t find it. My eyes darted everywhere like they could somehow decode the outcome from whitespace alone.
So I tried reading from the top.
"Thank you for pitching... we're grateful to you for making the journey on a very cold Sunday evening... as you can imagine... difficult task..."
And then I saw it. The words I was desperate to find:
“I am honoured, on behalf of TEDxNorthwich and the Curation team, to offer you a place on our Speaker programme for 2025. Congratulations.”
EEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!!
I did it. I was in.
My butterflies were now doing somersaults. My eyes went misty.
I really, really wanted this.
And now… it was happening!!
For a split second, I was back in the car after pitch night — grinning in the dark, replaying my 2-minute slot in my head, wondering was that enough? did it land?
Turns out, yes. Yes it did.
Then comes that question:
How long do you wait before texting your friend to ask them about their news?
I waited a respectable 30 minutes before sending Ije the selfie we took the night before.
A chill, casual: “So good to bump into you ❤️”
She replied a few hours later.
"Did you get in?"
I told her yes.
She said: “Me too.”
And just like that, the next 6 months were officially ON.
It’s one thing to get that coveted TEDx email.
It’s another to know you’ll be walking the road with someone who gets it - the nerves, the self-doubt, the caffeine-fuelled script edits at midnight. And what I didn’t know then was that I may have joined the program with one friend, I left it with 9 more.
Because from that moment on, I wasn’t just part of a program.
I was part of a family.
Click here to read the previous blog about my red pants and 2-min pitch night.
Click here to read the next blog talking about the wrestle with my script.
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
