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Lauren Long (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

There are a lot of things that I’m afraid of. Spiders, snakes and sharks are just some of my fears, but my biggest fear is public speaking, and today I am going to tell you the story of how I overcame it. 

All through my school years, from my elementary school days to university, I hated public speaking. I dreaded giving presentations in class because I would wake up in the morning with a knot in my stomach the size of Texas, which would later be accompanied by sweaty hands, stumbling over my words and avoiding eye contact with my peers. I would rush through my presentation so I could be done more quickly and sit back down. I was bullied a lot because I was the shy kid at school, the nice one, and I was not very good at standing up for myself. The few times that I tried, I would be laughed at by my classmates, which resulted in me having lower self-esteem and hating class presentations even more.

It was not until I got to university that my self-esteem improved, and instead of being nervous about oral presentations, I became more comfortable each time I did a presentation. Even if I fumbled or made a mistake, I was able to make a comeback with humor. Of course, it helped that I was presenting to a room full of adults, and not a room of judgmental kids. By the time I left university, I not only had more self-esteem, but I had begun to take back the power that had been taken from me. Little did I know that my newfound confidence in being a public speaker would be tested in a completely different way in the form of giving a speech as the maid of honour at my sister’s wedding last summer. 

My sister and her now-husband got engaged in 2019, with plans to marry in August 2020. Of course, as it did with all things, the COVID-19 pandemic shook up their plans and they decided to have a small, immediate-family-only wedding on their original date, with plans to have the big wedding a year later. I was relieved because it gave me more time to write and edit my speech, even though I already had a draft written on my computer that I was happy with.

With the vaccine rollout in 2021, it was decided that the big wedding would be pushed back to summer 2022 so that everyone had the chance to get vaccinated.

Flash forward to 2022: as the wedding date crept nearer, it hit me like a freight train going 100 miles per hour that I was going to be in front of a lot of people, the majority of whom I didn’t know. I had a lot of sleepless nights as I laid awake with my fear of public speaking as my bedfellow. I remember sitting at the dinner table with my parents and them asking if I wanted to practice my speech with them because they could see how nervous I was about it, but the months of June and July were a whirlwind of activity as we entered the hair-straight-back phase of final preparations for the wedding and I never got the chance.

Of course, as if the stress of completing the final preparations for the wedding and my fear over my speech weren’t enough, my parents and I all tested positive for COVID in the month of July. My dad tested positive just before I left for my sister’s bachelorette weekend, my mom got it the next week and then I got it the week before the wedding. A domino effect. After staying in bed for five days, I was thrust headfirst into the downhill run to the wedding along with my parents, which were made worse by the fact that we were all still recovering from COVID and having to deal with the opinions of certain people who kept trying to take over every little aspect, even though it was my sister’s wedding day and not theirs or their children’s.

Finally, the big day arrived, and as we finished the last-minute details, I could feel the knot of anxiety growing tighter and tighter. The moment I’d been agonizing about for months was drawing nearer with every passing minute. Two years previously, I hadn’t had to give my speech, but I was so overcome with emotion that I cried through part of the ceremony and afterwards, and I was worried I would start crying hard enough that no one would be able to understand me.

My youngest cousin, who was also a bridesmaid and giving a speech that evening, took me into a quiet room and closed the door behind us. She held my hand and calmed me down as I read through my speech, and after I finished, she told me I was going to be amazing.

After the ceremony, photos of the wedding party and dinner had taken place, it was time. I began to speak, looking at my sister and her husband for the majority of the speech, but also periodically looking at the audience to make sure I was engaging with them.

When I was done speaking, my brother-in-law and sister both got up and embraced me at the same time, with my brother-in-law saying, “You were so confident up there, I’m so proud of you.” After the speeches were done and the evening moved towards the dancing part of the wedding, my parents both came up to me and told me how proud they were, with people I hadn’t even met until that day following closely behind. One of my great uncles told me it was worth coming all the way from Alberta just to hear that speech.

Although July 30, 2022 was a day steeped in grief, it was also a happy one. Happiness and sorrow can exist side by side, and that’s what that day was like. I may have been terrified to speak publicly at my sister’s wedding, but I know now that I have the confidence to stand up in front of a room full of people, and I have my sister to thank for that. If she hadn’t asked me to be her maid of honour, I may have never overcome my fear of public speaking.

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