not just our culture, I think many cultures--

that family is everything, that it's

the first tribe and the last tribe,

that family is alpha and omega.

And you said something in an interview

that I was really struck by its power,

and this is for everybody in the room who's watching

and anybody who's watching who needs to hear it.

You said, "You can love someone and still

choose to say goodbye to them."

[APPLAUSE]

You said, "You can miss a person every day

and still be glad that they're no longer in your life."

[APPLAUSE]

I think y'all are clapping because y'all know

that's the truth, right? AUDIENCE: Yes.

And I think that for a lot of people that's a contradiction,

that if you love, then you're supposed to put up with it

no matter what and that if you, you know, are missing them,

then you can't also be glad that they're gone.

But, I mean, I think there's such power and wisdom in that.

I think there was a long time for me I thought because I

loved him that meant maybe I'd made the wrong decision

or because I miss them, then I would second guess

myself and think, oh, because I miss them it

must mean that I've made a mistake.

And it took me a really long time to figure out

that, yeah, love is just love.

One of the last things that happened between me

and my father the last time I saw him, he came over

and he gave me this really awkward side hug.

And he said to me, "I love you.

You know that?"

And I said, "I do.

That has never been the issue."

And I always knew my father loved me.

Of course I knew he loved me, and I

don't think my dad did anything that he

did from a lack of love.

And I think we do love a real disservice when we make it

about control and power and changing people,

and that's not what it is.

You love people.

You give them that for free, and then you

decide whether that's something that you

want to have in your life.

And the alternative is to say, well, I'm going to change them,

and then I'll have them in my life, and that's not love.

That's not what love is.

That's not what it does, and that's

not the power that it has.

So I would say with my own family, I love them now.

I'm estranged from half my family.

I love them very much, but I've accepted the fact

that I need them to change to have them in my life,

and whether or not they change is something

I have no control over.

And you write that every time you return

to your father's house, in your mind you were still kind

of that 16-year-old girl and that your final transformation,

you say, it was the one that allowed you to actually break

free from your family occurred when inside your mind you

stopped being the daughter your father raised

and became your own self.

I think for me, it comes down to being

able to conceive of a different thing

than the life you have in front of you.

There's a scripture that I really like.

It's about faith.

It's my favorite scripture.

I loved it when I was Mormon, and I love

it and I'm not Mormon still.

I still love it.

And it's Hebrews.

I think it's 11:1.

And it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for--

--things hoped for.

--the evidence of things not seen.

[APPLAUSE]

Church people!

Church people.

Church people in here!

And I think for me there was one of the things that made it

hard for me to let go of my family

was not being able to imagine any kind of future life

that didn't have them in it, and I think

that's what everybody does.

We grow up in these families, and we learn certain patterns.

And we think that we're all liberated and changed,

and then as soon as we get back in that situation,

we repeat those patterns.

Or worse, very often we have dysfunctional family

relationships, and then we go out into the world

and we find people who will repeat that pattern with us.

Yeah, some people never leave it.

Yeah. - We attract those people.

And I think I love this idea of faith

as a belief in a better world and a different world

and a different life than you've experienced,

love that you may not have experienced yet.

But to let go of what is and try to see what things could be I

think of as a really amazing intersection

between faith and education because it's

those two things together.

It's the ability to see your life as it is

and imagine a different life.