Episode 69: About worthiness (and being a plaintiff in the USC case), with Elissa

When I was 18 years old I was a freshman at the University of Southern California and I went to get my very first STD test. The doctor I saw was George Tyndall, and I had an interaction with him that I never forgot.

In 2018, news broke that Dr. Tyndall was accused of a decades-long string of misconduct. I tentatively entered the legal case against him, unsure if my story was worthy of being included. The lawyers assured me they wanted every story and every voice.

The case has now reached a settlement, and USC will pay $1.1 billion in total to the thousands of people whom Dr. Tyndall harassed and abused during his tenure at the USC Health Center. Through this all, I’ve learned an enormous lesson about worthiness...

Society transforms when we share our stories and speak our truth. 

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Show Notes:   

Recap

• 0:00 - Elissa reintroduces herself.
• 2:46 - Elissa shares a quote from Guru Dev, and also the story behind it: “You deserve the best. Never feel unworthy or not justified in having the best. I tell you, this is your heritage; but you have to accept it. You have to expect it; you have to claim it. To do so is not demanding too much.”
• 9:01 - Elissa shares the story of what happened when she was 18 and a freshman at USC that caused her to become a plaintiff in the case with Dr. George Tyndall.
• 15:06 - In 2018, the news broke that Dr. Tyndall had been accused repeatedly of misconduct in his years as a gynecologist at the USC Health Center. It took Elissa months before she contacted lawyers to share her story and join the case as a plaintiff.
• 18:50 - A pause for the Voice Body Connection Process check in. Elissa feels shaky and sad.
• 21:55 - We don’t owe anyone our story. Sometimes it’s time to speak our truth. But when we don’t feel safe, we can’t. We only need share what we’re willing to share. 
• 24:11 - Permission. No one else can give it to you. Elissa describes interactions she’s had around her participation in the case, where friends and acquaintances told her what she should be doing differently.
• 28:44 - Our worthiness is not derived from our fellow humans on planet earth. Our worthiness is given to us implicitly, and can be found in our horizontal relationship with that which is bigger than us. 
• 32:05 - The top five regrets of the dying from Bronnie Ware.
• 34:05 - Sharing is about being true to ourselves. And when voices come together, it’s astonishing what they can accomplish. This settlement is the largest of its kind in history: $1.1 billion, with 710 plaintiffs in the case and many more who have already settled. This is voices raised for justice. This is reparations.
• 37:50 - We don’t need to make a living. We are living. We don’t need to do anything to be worthy, we just are.
• 39:27 - One week after the original recording: So many people seem to have stories about something that happened to her that was “not that bad” but left an impact. It’s important we tell these stories and acknowledge the worthiness of our feelings. 

Show Notes 

Here are the episodes referred to with Jeff Kober and Chocolako.

Here's last month’s coverage from the NY Times about the settlement in the case with USC and Dr. George Tyndall.

I came across Bronnie Ware’s Top Five Regrets of the Dying in Kate Northrup’s book Do Less.

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Production Credits:

Our Editor is Sean Brennan

Our Photographer and Graphic Designer is Laura Sills

Our Videographer is Miguel Garzón Martínez

And our theme song is “Waters of Body” by Strange Weather

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