I'd like to invite all of you to take part in a little exercise with me.

00:09
Don't worry, you don't have to get up.
00:13
Please close your eyes for a few moments and imagine yourself in a dark box.
00:19
A confined space with no light,
00:23
no sound, except that of your own breathing,
00:26
enough air that you can breathe,
00:29
but not enough that you can breathe freely.
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You feel trapped, suffocated and helpless.
00:39
Now imagine you're going to be in that box forever.
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That is what abuse feels like.
00:46
Now please open your eyes.
00:48
I'm Samra Zafar, and I'm a survivor of abuse.
00:53
I grew up in a small town in Abu Dhabi, in many ways a brash, rebellious teenager,
00:59
a girl who always liked to push the envelopes
01:02
and challenge the stereotypes.
01:04
While my friends dreamed of weddings and bangles,
01:06
I dreamed of going to Harvard or Stanford.
01:10
The founder of the girls' cricket team, editor of the school newspaper,
01:15
a straight-A student.
01:17
But I was also a girl who was growing up too fast.
01:21
My body developing into that of a young woman,
01:24
I was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
01:28
And one day, when I was 16 years old, I was told that in a few months,
01:34
I was going to be married to a man 12 years older than me,
01:38
who I'd never met before,
01:40
who lives in a faraway country called Canada.
01:44
A year later, I arrived in this country as a child bride in a forced marriage
01:50
with only one dream;
01:53
the dream of getting an education.
01:55
I became a mother right away.
01:57
I gave birth to my older daughter at 18 - I had no idea about birth control -
02:01
and that dream of education was snatched away from me.
02:04
I was told that now that I was a mother, I was someone's wife,
02:08
I was someone's daughter-in-law,
02:09
it was inappropriate for me to go to university,
02:13
or even go to high school.
02:16
I was not allowed to go out of the house, make any friends,
02:19
or have any independence whatsoever,
02:21
but it was for my own good.
02:23
I was being protected from the corrupt Western society.
02:28
I was humiliated every day, called bad words.
02:32
'You're useless.' 'You're worthless.'
02:34
'You don't deserve to be loved or respected.'
02:37
'You're not worthy of respect.'
02:39
And when I asked why, I was told, 'Because you deserve it.'
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When you hear that on a daily basis, you start believing it.
02:49
So when the first bruises appeared on my face and body,
02:53
I thought I deserved that too.
02:56
I spent years trying to fix myself, thinking,
02:59
'Maybe the secret to perfect wife-hood is somehow eluding me.
03:03
Maybe if I cooked better food, washed clothes better,
03:08
didn't express my opinions, didn't have opinions,
03:11
talked less, didn't watch cricket, this would change.'
03:16
But nothing changed.
03:18
I made mistakes ...
03:19
and I suffered the consequences.
03:22
Throughout this entire time, there was this tiny voice in my head
03:27
that just wouldn't be quiet.
03:29
The voice that said, 'Maybe I do deserve better.
03:33
Maybe there are options out there.
03:35
Maybe this is not the way that things are supposed to be.'
03:40
Education was something I was not willing to give up on,
03:43
so I finished all my high school through distance learning at home,
03:47
and after ten years of struggle and many, many hard-fought battles,
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I started university at the age of 26 as a mother of two children.
03:57
I still remember the day when I got my first mark
04:01
for my Economics 100 exam.
04:05
I got one-hundred percent.
04:08
(Applause)
04:09
And my professor announced my name
04:13
in front of the entire class of 300 students,
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and everybody turned to look at me.
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And I, instead of feeling proud and accomplished and excited,
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I was petrified.
04:29
I wanted to crawl into a dark hole and never come out.
04:32
I didn't want to be seen.
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I didn't want to be known.
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I wanted to be invisible.
04:38
And after the class ended,
04:41
a lot of these students came up to me and said,
04:43
'Oh, my gosh, you're amazing! Can we go for coffee tomorrow?'
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'Can we hang out at the pub and eat chicken wings?'
04:50
'Can you help me with this question?'
04:51
'Can you help me study?'
04:54
And I remember standing there and thinking to myself,
04:57
'Oh, my gosh. These people are not supposed to be talking to me.
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They don't know that I'm useless, worthless piece of scum
05:04
stuck at the bottom of someone's shoe.
05:06
In a few days, they're going to find that reality about me,
05:09
and they're not going to want to talk to me, anymore.'
05:11
But that didn't happen.
05:13
They still wanted to talk to me, they still wanted to be my friend.
05:18
So I started thinking, 'If I am this amazing,
05:23
why am I being treated so badly at home?
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And if I'm that bad, why do all these people
05:30
shower me with respect and admiration at school?'
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And one day, as I was in my dilemma
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and in my confusion of thoughts and everything,
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I was walking to the bookstore,
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and right beside the bookstore was the health and counselling centre.
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And there was a sign there that had a bunch of questions on it.
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'Do you feel intimidated?' 'Do you feel like you've lost your voice?'
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'Do you feel you're always living in fear, walking on eggshells?'
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'Do you feel that you cannot express your opinions, thoughts and feelings?
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And I answered 'yes' to each and every one of those questions.
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'Come in and make an appointment', it said.
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So I walk in, make an appointment, and a few days later,
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I'm sitting across from my counsellor and the floodgates opened.
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I started pouring my heart out and saying,
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'This is happening to me. I don't know what's going on.
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Can you please help me figure this out?
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Can you please help me
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and shut that voice up that goes on inside my head all the time?
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Can you tell me how to fix this?
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I don't know, am I going crazy?'
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And my counsellor, after listening to me for an hour,
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said the one sentence that shifted my entire world.
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She said, 'It's not your fault.'
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It was the first time anyone had ever said that to me.
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'It's not your fault.
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No matter what you do, you do not deserve to be treated
06:59
with disrespect and abuse and humiliation.'
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That was the first time I heard the word 'abuse'.
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I said, 'What? Am I being abused?'
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'Yes, you are', she said.
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The next few months, I spent researching all I could find on abusive behaviours -
07:19
reading articles, journals, looking at charts of abuse,
07:24
the cycles of abuse, the types of abuse -
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and that's when I realised, 'Oh, my God. It's not me.
07:30
It's something bigger than me. It's something that's out of my control.
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It's something that I cannot fix, and I only have two choices:
07:37
either stay and accept it, or stand up for myself and walk away.'
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But somehow I thought,
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'You know, if my abuser only knew that this was abusive,
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what he's doing is wrong, maybe he'll change himself.
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Maybe he'll fix things.'
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So I started standing up for myself at home.
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And then guess what happened?
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The abuse got worse.
07:57
Because at the end of the day, abuse is just about power and control.
08:01
It's someone's need to feel powerful and good about themselves
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by controlling another person and making them feel bad.
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That's all it is about.
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So when I started speaking up, my abuser was losing control
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and the abuse got worse.
08:19
It took me another two years of gathering knowledge, awareness,
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realising my internal strength and power,
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and then, finally, being able to walk away.
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At the age of 28, with two girls in tow, I moved to U of T campus housing,
08:38
finished my education as a single mother working multiple jobs,
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and achieved more success than I ever imagined was possible.
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That's when I knew that I had to do something with this.
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I had a purpose.
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So I started sharing my story
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because I knew that my story was not just mine.
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It was the story of millions of people around the world
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who continue to suffer in silence
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because they feel they don't deserve any better.
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They feel they don't have choices, they don't have options,
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and they don't have rights, and it infuriated me.
09:12
For the past five years,
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I've been sharing my story everywhere that I possibly can.
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Every day, I wake up to hundreds of messages
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from people all over the world.
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I get hate messages.
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I even receive death threats.
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But for every one of those negative messages,
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I receive thousands of messages filled with love, support and encouragement.
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My biggest award so far came to me three months ago,
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when a man in Pakistan wrote an email to me and said,
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'I have a 17-year-old daughter who's supposed to get married next month,
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and I've decided to turn down that marriage proposal
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and send her to university instead,
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after reading your article on Toronto Life.'
09:59
(Cheers) (Applause)
10:04
That's when I knew that I had my purpose.
10:08
Today, I consider myself
10:10
to be a strong, successful, independent woman, in my own right,
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and I very pompously thought,
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'You know what?
10:17
I know all there is to know about abuse.
10:20
It cannot possibly happen to me again.'
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But I was wrong.
10:25
Very recently, a few months ago, in fact,
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I found myself in another abusive relationship.
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It was not physical this time.
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It was emotional.
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It was psychological.
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It was verbal.
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And it was filled with love and affection.
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But when I was vulnerable, when I was weak,
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that mask dropped,
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and I was shocked at the onslaught of humiliation and insults coming at me.
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And I thought to myself, 'Oh, my God. How did I end up here again?'
11:05
Again, knowledge is what gave me the power
11:09
to be able to stand up for myself and walk out.
11:12
I educated myself on the types of emotional abuse
11:15
and learned what was happening to me was beyond my control and not my fault.
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Physical abuse is easy to detect, right?
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There's bruises.
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Someone slaps you or kicks you, you're like, 'Game over. I'm walking out.'
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But emotional and psychological abuse, verbal abuse, is insidious.
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It's hidden. It creeps up on you.
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And before you know it, you're looking back and thinking,
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'Oh, my God. How on Earth did I get here?'
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The stats are staggering.
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One in three women every year, one in three women in North America,
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and ten percent of men, which, by the way, is a hugely under-reported stat
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because, as we all know, it's very 'unmanly'
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to admit that you're being abused,
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one in three women and ten percent of men in North America
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will have faced intimate partner violence at some point in their lives.
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That's a lot of people.
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And that's under-reported, and that's only physical abuse,
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so the real number is much higher.
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All the support that exists out there,
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whether it's police, shelters, therapy, counselling, crisis lines,
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it's all reactive.
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It all happens after the abuse has already happened,
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and it does little or nothing
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to bring that one-in-three or ten-percent number down.
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But how can we prevent abuse from happening
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rather than curing it after it has already happened?
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The answer lies in education and awareness,
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because, remember, knowledge is power.
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We need to start educating our children and youth about healthy relationships,
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healthy boundaries, and early signs of abusive behaviours and tendencies.
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We spend so much time on making our children book smart
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but not enough on making them life smart and relationship smart.
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We talk to our kids about physical health, sexual health, even mental health, now.
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Why don't we talk to them about relationship health
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and emotional health?
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It's important for us to teach our children from a very young age
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the importance of empathy, compassion, giving back, paying it forward,
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asking and receiving help, being yourself truly and unapologetically,
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asking and receiving connection, authentic connection,
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because that's what we're here in this world for;
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love, connection and relationships.
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As Brené Brown so beautifully says
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in her TED talk, 'The Power of Vulnerability',
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it's not our job to hold our kids and say you're perfect,
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it's our job to hold them and say,
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'You're imperfect and you're beautiful, and you're absolutely worthy
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of love, respect, connection and belonging.'
14:02
It gets trickier, though, as kids get older.
14:05
We live in a world
14:07
where children are starting to date at younger and younger ages.
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16, 15, sometimes even 14.
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They're starting to have feelings, date, form romantic connections,
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and abuse is not something you want to talk to them about, right?
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It's better if you just brush it under the rug,
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keep it behind closed doors, bury your head in the sand,
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and pretend it doesn't happen, because, obviously, it cannot happen to our child.
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But guess what?
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We live in a messy world,
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and abuse is hidden, but a harsh and cruel reality.
14:41
It can happen to anyone, anywhere and anytime.
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Last year, my 15-year-old daughter came up to me and said,
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'Mum, I think my friend is in an abusive relationship.'
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And I said, 'What? What do you mean?'
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And she said, 'You know what? Her boyfriend, he seems so perfect,
15:00
showers her with crazy amounts of love and affection,
15:03
buys her flowers and chocolates and gifts,
15:06
but then, when they're having a fight, he calls her crazy,
15:10
he calls her bad words, and he says she's useless and worthless,
15:14
he treats her badly, and he makes her cry,
15:16
and I think that's abusive, mum.'
15:19
While my heart went out to that girl,
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I was so proud of my daughter
15:23
for being able to recognise abuse for what it was,
15:25
and stand up for her friend.
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And I know that she was able to do that
15:28
because I've had those conversations with her on a daily basis.
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There are many, many signs
15:36
of abusive behaviour and tendencies that we can talk about,
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because, remember, abuse doesn't happen in good times.
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Just because someone buys you flowers and chocolates,
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showers you with love and affection and gifts,
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does not mean that they have the right to disrespect you and humiliate you
15:53
and treat you with any less than a hundred percent respect
15:56
when times are bad,
15:57
because that's when abuse happens;
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when times are bad, in times of disagreement.
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There are many early signs that we can talk about.
16:07
If someone's rushing you into commitment, into having sex,
16:11
into doing anything that you're not ready for,
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that's not a good sign.
16:16
If someone's showering you
16:18
with insane amounts of love and affection and romance
16:22
without even taking the time to get to know you first,
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that's often a cover
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for underlying behaviours of jealousy and control
16:32
that you don't even see coming your way until it's too late.
16:36
Jealousy's a natural human emotion, right?
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All of us want to have an element of possession and jealousy in us.
16:43
You know, we like it when our partner is jealous of the people we hang out with
16:47
to a certain degree.
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But there's a very fine line between healthy jealousy
16:52
and unhealthy, controlling behaviour, and it's so important to be aware of that.
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When you're constantly thinking,
17:00
'I want to say something but I don't know how to phrase it;
17:04
if I should say it this way or that way,
17:06
use this word instead of that word to get the message across,
17:10
because if I say it in the wrong way, I'll be judged, I'll be misunderstood,
17:14
and I will be disrespected and humiliated',
17:18
that's not a healthy sign.
17:20
If you feel you always have to be perfect in order to be loved and respected,
17:25
you always have to be up on some kind of a pedestal,
17:28
and the moment you fall down you'll lose that love and respect,
17:31
that's a sign of abusive behaviour.
17:33
Because guess what? We're humans.
17:35
We're imperfect.
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We're meant to be imperfect.
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We're meant to have flaws.
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But that does not mean that we deserve any less than one hundred percent respect
17:44
when we are flawed, when we make mistakes.
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No one has the right to do that to us.
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Being imperfect and having flaws
17:52
is what makes us beautifully and unapologetically human beings.
17:56
(Cheers) (Applause)
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