Jennifer Aniston's speech on what she would tell her younger self

Jennifer Aniston make a speech (2019) at the Beverly Wilshire as one of Variety’s six Power of Women honourees. 

She began the speech, "It’s not that often we’re surrounded by people who have found their voice and who are using it – and using it to hold people up and to bring people together. That, to me, is true power".

"It’s funny because I’ve never actually thought of myself as ‘powerful.’ Strong, yes. But powerful, not [really]. It’s a distinction I’ve actually been thinking about a lot lately because that word —‘power’ and its counterpart, ‘abuse of power’ — keeps coming up in light of what is happening in our country and in our industry, a rebalancing of the scales, I guess you could say."

"I’ve been thinking about my relationship with that word – power – which got me thinking about my earliest sense of power. Something that I believe comes with using our voice. And I remember a parental figure saying to me, at the rather critical age of around 11, that after the dinner party I was excused from the table because I didn’t have anything interesting to add to the conversation. Ouch. It stuck with me like painfully worded sentences can".

"I always felt incredibly comfortable giving a voice to the words of others. But put me at a dinner party table with strangers or put me on a podium like this, and I go right back to being 11 years old".

"The last two years have really made me think a lot about the messages we send young kids — little girls especially. How the things that we say and do can either build them up — or tear them down and make them feel like maybe their voices don’t matter."

"I started meeting all of these people who expressed to me how much the show meant to them — how it lifted their spirits during a bad breakup or got them through an illness. I was just so incredibly moved by that. And I began to change the way I thought about my own voice, and what it meant to have a platform to use it."

"And that is what every child deserves to know. That they are seen, that they are powerful and that they are loved. That they deserve a seat at the table. That anything they have to say — or any question they have to ask — is of value, even if we don’t have all the answers for it."