Part personal story, part universal truth: Fred’s own reckoning with a difficult past, and the harder work of taking ownership of what came after it. A story of self-acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion, told so audiences can find their own way through a similar reckoning.
Masks
- Format
- keynote
- Runtime range
- 30–45 min (45–60 with Q&A) · 10-min version available
Related
Related talks & storiesmore speaking on this theme
Growing up as the only kid who looked like him in a small, unkind town — and the unlikely place an escape route showed up.
Written for a parent worried about their own child — about a family that went quiet after a loss, and the long process of learning to speak again.
Story
My 9th Birthday
Why he stopped celebrating his birthday, and what nearly thirty years of strange, sudden loss taught him about staying alive.
Related essaysthe written companion
Essay
Notes on a Play
Notes on a Play – fred chong rutherford
Essay
Curses
When Mom was angry at me from the ages of 7 to 9, she’d say a phrase, 야메노새끼야. Yameno-seikiya. It means, “Yameno little bastard.” Yameno isn’t a Korean word as far as I can translate. A lot of her language was hangul, but some of it was different. Some from North Korea. Some from other […]
The shame I held for so long, that came from being a child who believed if something was wrong it was always my fault, goes beyond the feeling. When you have CPTSD, and it develops that young, it becomes neurological. It becomes biomechanical. It becomes part of how you see the world, and times of […]
Book this talk
Ask about this talk for your event.
Opens the contact form on the homepage — mention this talk and I'll take it from there.