When Toni Powell's husband asked her to marry him, she learned an important lesson
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00:00And said, oh f**k off, don't be ridiculous.
00:06Now my man and I, we'd met unintentionally.
00:08I'd been visiting his parents' house and I was limping across the front lawn
00:12when his dad came out toward me and inquired,
00:15oh my dear, what happened to you?
00:18And I said, I got drunk and fell in a hole.
00:24They were not impressed.
00:26But somebody was.
00:28He'd been under his V-Dub station wagon working when he first heard my voice
00:33and he came out quite quickly because he wanted to see who'd spoken to his conservative parents like that.
00:38And as he stood up, our eyes met and something happened.
00:44His parents, they just saw in me a hippie, a slut, a druggie and a danger to their son.
00:53He saw in me an honest answer, courage and integrity.
00:57At the time, all I saw in him was a hot guy, a passing fancy and pass our fancy we did.
01:05Quite often, sometimes in the back of the station wagon.
01:11And in time, as certain things became apparent, he dropped sweetly to his knee and proposed to me.
01:21And I answered, he probably wasn't thrilled, oh f**k, don't be ridiculous.
01:30See, I wasn't interested in long term.
01:33I'd been betrayed by boys again and again.
01:36Heartbreak, rejection, incest to really violent rapes.
01:43I didn't have any trust.
01:45And my heart was so broken that the pieces were everywhere.
01:50I didn't even bother trying to clean them up anymore.
01:53So marriage, I couldn't even imagine it, it was the weirdest idea.
01:58So I decided to take my dilemma to my girlfriend.
02:01That idiot asked me to marry him.
02:04I complained to her.
02:07I think I was hoping for a bit of sympathy, comfort, support, something.
02:11I should have known better because she was like me.
02:14She didn't mince her words either.
02:16And this was her advice.
02:18You're the idiot.
02:20You're stupid if you don't marry him.
02:23You'll never get another offer like this one.
02:26He would look after you every day of your life.
02:29And Tony, you've got to face it, you're not much of a catch.
02:35It was really brutal, brutal advice.
02:41But somehow, even at 19, I understood that she said something really important to me.
02:46And so we married against everyone's, just their cries of dismay.
02:52His parents, she's not coming into this house.
02:56My parents, he's too good for you.
02:59When we married, we lived in public housing.
03:02When we married, we lived in public housing, this very one in Canberra.
03:06He earned $75 a week and he came home from work each day to my chaos, inner and outer.
03:12I wanted to pick fights.
03:14This was crazy.
03:15What did we think we were doing?
03:18He'd just laugh and kiss me till I smiled.
03:22And it's hard to fight with that.
03:25And he overlooked all the rest.
03:27And over the years, these kind, generous, optimistic words kept coming,
03:34piecing me back together.
03:36You're special, you're beautiful.
03:38You take action, you do what's right, you speak the truth, you help people.
03:41Yet still it took a full 15 years before I finally understood or began to understand
03:50that he'd married me not because I was pregnant and he had to.
03:55He married me because, unbelievably, he loved me.
04:01And this lovely man, he's not stupid.
04:03He's not blind.
04:05He knows all my faults.
04:07And if he were to want to criticize me, he could have a field day every day.
04:11There's so much to criticize.
04:13Yet he has never battered me with his words.
04:17He has instead repaired me with them.
04:21True love doesn't come from finding the perfect person,
04:23but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
04:27Now, I have a little secret.
04:29He's not perfect either.
04:32He can be all sorts of annoying.
04:35Though generally, you wouldn't hear that from me.
04:38For the most part, all I say about him is this.
04:42I married an angel.
04:45And if you're looking for an angel, you'll find one.
04:49Our trouble is that we're human.
04:51For angels, we love looking for shit.
04:54Something about us that just loves to notice what people do wrong,
04:59what our friends, our family, our partners, our children, our parents don't do.
05:03And all the many, many, many, many ways they let us down.
05:07And while we're doing that, we're blind to that glimpse of white feather.
05:12If we decide to use words that repair,
05:16to look for good, to overlook some of the shit in each other,
05:21then we get a chance to create angels.