Closing the TED Conference in Vancouver this year, author Andrew Solomon (a 2012 Out100 honoree) spoke about the hardships that he, and others he's talked to while writing his books, had to endure while growing up. Solomon said that, rather than finding meaning in your struggle, you should forget it. He spoke openly about being bullied and ridiculed for being a strange, gay child.
In Far From the Tree, Solomon wrote about parents who raise children that face specific difficulties, and his book about depression, The Noonday Demon, won the National Book Award for non-fiction.
The crazy-popular TED event--which began as a conference for technology, entertainment, and design in the 1980s has evolved to cover numerous topics in more than 100 languages--focuses on the spreading of ideas, and its short talks have made many a person a pop culture sensation (such as Amanda Palmer's polemic about crowdsourcing artistic endeavors). Solomon, one of our greatest writers and intellectuals, delivered one of the most moving, emotinally charged talks of this year's conference.
