Speaking at TEDx After Losing my Mom

By Shabnam Najafov, 28

I had a huge fear of public speaking. What scared me the most was that my speech would be widely publicized, be available on Internet and anyone that I knew or didn’t know could just write whatever they wanted about me.

I had lost my mom a month before my talk. Life was pointless, every second awake was so painful that I wanted to die. And my speech was supposed to be about happiness.

I was hesitating up until the night before, but finally I decided that I will never know the outcome unless I try. And my mom wanted me to give that speech so badly!

So I did. I gave a TEDx talk in 2011. It felt great to share a piece of my life adventure with the world.

To this day, my talk is the most watched TEDx talk in Azerbaijan and I went on to create a blog/movement called Hello Kishi that empowers Azerbaijani women. Today I have 24k followers. All because I took my shields down and poured my heart out in front of hundreds of people.

Watch my talk below (turn on the closed captions in English):

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