Dr. Aomawa Shields, LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Dr. A. Mawa Shields is the author of Life on Other Planets, a memoir of finding my place
[1:09]in the universe.
[1:10]She is an astronomer and astrobiologist that Claire Booth's associate professor in the
[1:15]Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California Irvine and a classically
[1:19]trained actor.
[1:20]At UC Irvine, Dr. Shields leads a team of researchers and educators at the Shields Center
[1:25]for Exoplanet Climate and Interdisciplinary Education, S-C-E-C-I-E.
[1:31]Her research focuses on exploring the possible climates and potential habitability of
[1:35]planets orbiting stars other than the sun, called extra solar planets.
[1:40]She employs a hierarchy of computer models to carry out her research, including those
[1:44]traditionally used to predict climate and weather patterns on the earth.
[1:47]Her papers have been published in a range of peer-reviewed journals, including the astrophysical
[1:51]journal, Astrobiology and Astrophysical Journal Letters.
[1:55]Dr. Shields received her PhD in Astronomy and Astrobiology from the University of Washington
[1:59]in 2014.
[2:01]She also has an MFA in acting from UCLA in 2001 and an S-C-B in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary
[2:09]Sciences from MIT in 1997.
[2:13]She held an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship and a UC President's
[2:19]Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCLA and at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
[2:23]prior to joining the UCI faculty in 2017.
[2:26]She was awarded the prestigious NSF Career Award, and her research is also supported
[2:30]by the NASA Habitable Worlds and Exoplanets Research Program.
[2:35]As a 2015 TED Fellow, Dr. Shields uses her theater background to communicate science to the
[2:40]public in engaging innovative ways.
[2:42]Her TED Talk, How Will Find Life on Other Planets, has garnered over 1.8 million views.
[2:48]Dr. Shields also wrote a narrative of the popular TED Ed Talk, Should We Be Looking for
[2:52]Life Elsewhere in the Universe for Young Audiences?
[2:55]Dr. Shields is the founder and director of the educational program Rising Star Girls, which
[2:59]encourages middle school girls of all colors and backgrounds to explore and discover
[3:03]the universe using theater, writing and visual art, and trains educators around the world
[3:08]to conduct creative arts based astronomy workshops in their communities.
[3:12]Dr. Shields' unconventional career path has been featured in the book's Changing the Equation,
[3:16]50-plus US Black Women in STEM by Tanya Foldin and the Portfolio Life by Christina Wallace.
[3:23]She has appeared in numerous media outlets, including PBS' Nova, Glamr Magazine, Teen
[3:28]Vogue, the Discovery Channel, and History Channel.
[3:30]In life in other planets, Shields shares her personal and professional path as an astronomer,
[3:35]classically trained actor, mother, and black woman in STEM, searching for life in the
[3:38]universe while building a meaningful life here on Earth.
[3:41]She is the proud mother of five and a half-year-old Rising Star Girl, Garland Rose, who
[3:45]she and her husband, Steven, have deemed the most extraordinary life form in their universe.
[3:49]Welcome, Omelewa.
[3:50]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone of Time to read books to discuss life on other
[3:54]planets and memoir of finding my place in the universe.
[3:57]Thank you for having me.
[3:58]I'm really excited to be here.
[4:00]Oh, hey.
[4:01]Well, I loved learning all about your life and everything from education to random viruses
[4:07]to kids.
[4:08]I mean, it's amazing.
[4:09]I feel like I've gotten the whole spectrum here.
[4:12]So tell us, nurse, a little bit about what your book is about and why you decided to write
[4:16]a memoir at all.
[4:18]Yes.
[4:19]And I have to say that, like, I've been a fan of your, the title of your podcast sometime
[4:25]because that's exactly how I feel as a mom that I don't have time to read books.
[4:29]And which is of course ironic since I wrote one, I wrote this book because I've known
[4:34]for a while that my path was unique in that I had this love of astronomy and also loved
[4:42]acting.
[4:43]These two loves, and whenever I would talk to people about it, I frequently got a look
[4:47]of surprise, look of this quizzical look, like, how do you, how did that happen?
[4:52]How do you figure that out?
[4:54]But it's only more recently that I've become aware of how not as much of a rare magical
[5:00]unicorn as I am as I once thought I was, you know, like I've been reached, people have
[5:05]reached out to me since the TED Talk I gave in 2015 and have told me that they relate
[5:11]that they have these, in some cases, it's more than two loves.
[5:15]These things that they've been taking about how to combine and they haven't known how
[5:19]to.
[5:20]And so what that told me a couple of several years ago is that sharing my story could be beneficial
[5:26]to others, you know, and helping other people feel less alone compared to how I felt.
[5:31]So talk about how you discovered your love for both things and the sort of like, you know,
[5:37]the pattern here.
[5:39]Yeah, yeah.
[5:40]What I was 12 years old, I was in seventh grade and we had these little teams that were
[5:46]like team A, team B, team C and groups of seventh graders and we were shown movies and
[5:51]our team team A was shown the movie Space Camp altogether and that movie like it rocked
[5:58]my world and I like it's funny because that movie is not like it's critically claimed
[6:03]or anything.
[6:04]I love that movie.
[6:05]I love that movie.
[6:06]Everybody around our age saw that movie.
[6:08]I don't know.
[6:10]Yeah, you know, like we get kids got to actually go to space at Space Camp and up until
[6:16]that point I had some moments where I felt like in awe of what I saw when I looked up,
[6:24]you know, like I write about how I was that kid that would look up and I was often like
[6:27]bumping into things, you know, on the street because I was looking up.
[6:31]And like as my grandmother worked at Miramar Air Force Base, which is what it was called
[6:36]back then.
[6:37]I think it's now called like Naval Station Miramar, but it was the place where top
[6:41]done, the original top done movies filmed and I remember seeing that movie and like that
[6:47]point when Kelly McGillis like whips her head around and her hair is like shining in the
[6:51]sunlight.
[6:52]She was like these like sheer black pantyhose and she's just like a badass and I was like,
[6:57]you know, hell yeah, astrophysics or that's what I want.
[7:00]So there was those moments.
[7:02]There were easier ways to get black pantyhose, but I'm just, you know, you did not have
[7:06]to go and get a PhD in on it, but okay, go ahead.
[7:10]Oh, but like, but when I saw the movie Space Camp, it like it all came together.
[7:15]You know, like the Blue Angel shows that our family would go to see at Miramar that this
[7:20]aerial flight team that did these like death-defying acts in the sky and the top gun
[7:24]movie like it all was like synthesized in this in the Space Camp movie and I, in my mind
[7:30]my little brain was like, that's it.
[7:33]That's what I want to be.
[7:34]And so I ran home to my world book encyclopedia set and pulled out a and looked up astronomer
[7:41]and astronaut and like I'm a planner and so I even back then I was like, all right, this
[7:47]is what I'm going to do.
[7:48]I'm going to go to MIT like that's the best science school I knew at the time and I'm
[7:53]going to major astronomy.
[7:54]I'm going to apply to NASA and that like that set my trajectory for quite some time.
[8:01]But what I realized I hadn't accounted for was like you can make all the plans in the world
[8:06]and then life happens and things come into a view that can divert us from those or those
[8:13]best laid plans and that's what happened for me like I was at a prestigious prep school
[8:19]called Phillips Exeter and I was roped into going to an audition with some of my girlfriends
[8:25]for this play called Steel Magnolia's which I've heard of it and everyone wanted to roll
[8:33]in that play you know and and I really didn't care that much about it and of course that's
[8:37]why I think I got cast you know I wasn't like I hadn't put much weight in how the audition
[8:43]would go.
[8:44]I was just like I'm here with some friends I'm taking a break from homework and then
[8:46]I got this role I got the role of Truby Dolly's part in his character like naturally
[8:50]right?
[8:51]I can't be sure but that changed I mean that changed the course of my life suddenly I
[8:57]had this other thing that I really love to do and I acted in play after play and became
[9:03]like the acting girl on campus and the astronomy girl like I got to I was a proctor at
[9:08]the observatory which meant I had my own key and I could take friends out and show them
[9:12]stuff in the sky and and boyfriends too like that was fun.
[9:17]And so at Exeter there wasn't this there didn't seem to be a conflict with loving
[9:22]these two seemingly disparate things and then you know you get to the point where it's
[9:27]time to choose a school and it's like what do you want to study and it became clear
[9:31]that I needed to choose or at least that's how it seemed to me and so I stuck with what I
[9:36]had known for the longest time and but the things that kept coming up you know like one
[9:41]dream I would spend time doing that and then the acting would knock on my door and
[9:46]it's like hey you're forgetting about me so so I did you know I finished MIT I started
[9:51]a PhD program in astrophysics I did one year but I couldn't concentrate I mean in a nutshell
[9:57]I was like well my my classmates were doing problems.
[10:00]who said I was thinking about which movies
[10:03]were gonna get nominated for a best picture that year.
[10:05]And I think in many ways it wasn't a scape
[10:08]because I wasn't really focused when I wasn't doing well
[10:11]was like, but I can do this.
[10:13]But this is where I can put my mental energy.
[10:16]Like this is something that all of you,
[10:18]it's outside of this world, I have this.
[10:22]And so I saw it as that kind of pure untouched place
[10:27]I could go in my mind, where no one could touch me.
[10:30]No one could tell me that I wasn't good enough.
[10:33]And so, you know, I had an old white male professor
[10:36]in that PhD program tell me to consider up their career options
[10:39]and I thought that was like the final gavel of like,
[10:42]you don't belong.
[10:43]And so I did apply to acting schools.
[10:46]I had dabbled in this at MIT applying to some acting schools.
[10:51]But this time around I really went for it full force
[10:54]and I did get in and decided to leave and did acting.
[10:57]And got on my face doing that.
[10:59]But it's like that thing of one without the other
[11:02]never felt fully like me.
[11:06]I'm just like, yeah, I'm like a kept shifting.
[11:08]And I found my way back to, I did some awesome things
[11:11]as an actor.
[11:12]I mean, I got to act in films and even one
[11:14]that went to Sundance.
[11:15]And it was spectacular, you know.
[11:18]And I had a lot of like false starts
[11:21]like doing a science TV show and thinking like,
[11:25]this is it, like this life has been, you know,
[11:28]heading towards the science acting.
[11:29]It's coming together.
[11:31]And then like they recast the hosts, you know.
[11:34]So it was like, oh God, it's not like what am I supposed to do.
[11:37]You know, but all along there were these moments
[11:40]where I got help from outside.
[11:43]And like that was the thing that I hadn't
[11:46]availed myself of the first time around
[11:49]in the first PhD program.
[11:50]And it's like, as I struggled, I got smaller, I isolated.
[11:55]And what I learned was it's all about community.
[11:58]And this is what I have to remember too even now
[12:01]because I think my tendency is to like be in my own world,
[12:04]whether it's my own world as a parent and a wife.
[12:07]And you know, and like this is our family
[12:09]and like who needs other things outside.
[12:11]It's like, I still need friends and mentors and supporters.
[12:15]And I think many people feel that way, you know.
[12:19]Yeah, that's it.
[12:20]I ended up the second time around like seeing,
[12:22]even though I was acting, realizing that,
[12:26]oh, I missed astronomy, you know.
[12:27]And I didn't want to be on the outside of it learning
[12:31]about these amazing discoveries on the news.
[12:34]I wanted to be involved in that.
[12:35]And during this, at this point it was like 10 years.
[12:39]And eventually it became 11 between that first PhD program
[12:43]and when I became willing to apply again and go back
[12:47]and start over.
[12:48]and this world of extracellular planets
[12:51]had just exploded since I'd been away.
[12:54]And this field was, you know, really prominent.
[12:58]And that's what I really became interested in and wanted to do.
[13:02]Basically, you're wildly talented
[13:04]at two completely different things.
[13:06]And for everyone else who's like trying to find their thing,
[13:09]the answer is you can actually have two things.
[13:11]You could be like you or three or even four.
[13:15]Yes. Yeah, that's I think the main message
[13:18]in the book is that it's not either or it can be both end
[13:22]or yes and and that if there are no role models
[13:26]for what we know we want to do, we can be our own role models.
[13:30]You know, and that's what I, I wish I'd known earlier,
[13:33]but I'm glad I eventually learned, you know,
[13:35]that it's like just because I haven't seen it done,
[13:37]doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
[13:39]Or maybe your whole thing is that you have to be
[13:42]in close proximity to stars.
[13:44]And I can.
[13:44]You know what I'm going to do with the sky?
[13:48]There you go.
[13:49]You know, an earlier version title of the book.
[13:51]I thought it could be like different stars.
[13:53]And I think I eventually, there's a chapter in there
[13:57]called Exploding Stars.
[13:58]But yeah, I think this was this was the way to go.
[14:02]We don't actually want the Hollywood stars exploding.
[14:04]So, you know, that would be good.
[14:05]Yeah, I know you talked about some of your roles,
[14:09]but do you want to share, you know, particularly exciting,
[14:13]acting moment, you don't have to.
[14:14]Yes, I, I mean, I, there, there are two come to mind.
[14:18]Of course, the one that, that got me my SAG card,
[14:21]which is that thing that every actor, like,
[14:23]that gives you your street cred.
[14:25]It's your end, the union.
[14:27]And it means besides the fact that you can earn more money,
[14:30]you know, your day rate is higher.
[14:33]It's that it's like a badge of like,
[14:36]I'm in the big leagues once you're a member
[14:38]of the screen actor's skill.
[14:39]At least it was at the time.
[14:40]And now it's combined with after us.
[14:43]So now it's, I guess, your SAG after card or something.
[14:45]But when I first got my SAG card,
[14:48]the way I got it was getting this role
[14:50]in a film called Nine Lives,
[14:52]which was directed by Rodrigo Garcia,
[14:55]or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's son.
[14:56]And, and I was working at the Scribal Cultural Center.
[15:00]That's one of my day jobs.
[15:01]He was on my podcast.
[15:02]He wrote a book, didn't he write?
[15:03]Yes.
[15:04]Yes, about parents, right?
[15:06]Yeah, I read that about his,
[15:08]but yeah, about his parents.
[15:09]I can't remember now what it was called,
[15:11]but I interviewed him and it was fascinating.
[15:13]Okay, anyway, sorry, go on.
[15:14]How do you have time to read books?
[15:16]Because you have like four kids, right?
[15:17]Or five?
[15:18]I have four kids.
[15:19]I do.
[15:20]I have four kids.
[15:21]That's not even why I don't have time.
[15:22]I don't have any publishing company and a store.
[15:26]I don't know.
[15:28]I skim, I can skim.
[15:30]I can't like sit around and read a book
[15:31]for like eight hours anymore,
[15:32]but I can skim and some I read slowly,
[15:35]but most I don't read slowly, unfortunately.
[15:37]So that might be the way to go,
[15:39]because at least you're getting most of a lot
[15:43]of different people's writings.
[15:45]Yeah.
[15:46]I mean, it's nice that they all get sent to me.
[15:48]I mean, if I was buying all these books,
[15:49]it would be an issue.
[15:51]But yes, it's working out.
[15:53]Well, I mean, it works.
[15:54]I love my job.
[15:55]I love what I do.
[15:55]It's like the most fun.
[15:57]And I don't know.
[15:58]Yeah, so Rodriguez, keep going, sorry.
[16:01]Yes.
[16:02]So I was Mulholland Drive,
[16:03]you know, is this like very snaky road
[16:07]through the Hollywood Hills of LA.
[16:09]And I was driving home and from the scribble job that day.
[16:13]And I got this call.
[16:15]I had done an audition like the producer, Julie Lynn,
[16:20]had was married to a history professor who taught at Exeter.
[16:25]So when I went to like an alumni function,
[16:27]I was like, by the way, I'm an actor.
[16:28]I love, and like that's how I got the audition.
[16:31]But I never nearly a near-thought it would pan out.
[16:33]And I got this call from Julie.
[16:36]And she was like, want to be in nine lives.
[16:38]And I was just so grateful that I didn't like drive off the street
[16:43]and the road on to intellect, the basin of LA.
[16:47]But and then I said, well, I'm not in sag.
[16:49]And she was like, in Taftardley U,
[16:52]which means that you don't have to jump through the hoops
[16:54]that you normally do to get your sag card
[16:57]or like be on a bunch of as an extra out of a bunch of sets.
[16:59]You just get it.
[17:01]The movie producers decide that you have something
[17:04]that they can't get within the union, I guess,
[17:08]the population and that they need to bring you into it.
[17:11]And so that will always be a moment in my heart
[17:14]of like arriving in many ways.
[17:17]And then the experience of filming it
[17:19]was fun because that film in particular
[17:22]has a unique quality in that it's shot with a steady cam.
[17:26]And what that means is that there's no internal cuts
[17:29]to a scene.
[17:29]So it's called Nine Lives.
[17:32]It focuses on nine different women and about 15 minutes
[17:35]in their lives.
[17:36]And these women are like played by Sissy Spacek,
[17:39]Amy Brennanman, Glenn Close to Code of Fanning,
[17:43]and Robin Wright, Robin Wright.
[17:45]And I was a prison guard with Miguel Sandoval,
[17:49]who is, I knew from Clear and Present Danger,
[17:53]which I was totally into the Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan type films
[17:57]back then and like seeing him.
[17:58]And now, of course, he went on to be in medium and stuff.
[18:00]And like, but we were both the prison guards
[18:03]wrangling a pediatric who was the woman
[18:06]whose life was featured and she was in prison
[18:09]and like her daughter was on the other side of the glass.
[18:13]And she was trying to have a conversation with her daughter
[18:15]and the freaking phone wouldn't work, you know?
[18:19]And it's like this moment that I now finally,
[18:21]as a mother, I can have an inkling of like understanding
[18:25]of how frustrating and like despair in that moment would be.
[18:29]And the whole circumstances of why she was in prison
[18:32]were, you know, very, very sad and traumatic as it was,
[18:35]but like she couldn't have a phone call
[18:37]with her like eight-year-old daughter.
[18:39]And she just freaks out and we're trying to wrangle her
[18:43]and, you know, and she just loses it naturally.
[18:45]And so that moment and shooting that
[18:47]and how they're, we did maybe like three or four takes.
[18:52]And it was done and the camera follows the whole action.
[18:56]There's no cuss.
[18:57]And I had 14 lines and they all stayed in the film,
[19:01]which is a big deal.
[19:02]That's a big deal.
[19:03]And the other role that sticks out to me
[19:05]is it was just classical theater.
[19:07]I was in a play called The Trojan Women by Euripides.
[19:11]And I played Andromeda key and there's a scene
[19:13]where I have to say goodbye to my son
[19:15]who's gonna be flung off a cliff
[19:17]because that's what happens in Greek tragedy.
[19:19]And again, I had, I wasn't a parent at this point.
[19:22]So I had to, you know, use all my training
[19:25]and try to imagine and put it in me
[19:27]as if I were that person.
[19:30]And my method acting teacher came to the performance.
[19:33]And I mean, she told me after she was like,
[19:36]you were, you went there for you to tell me.
[19:40]All salamations and she's an informative person.
[19:43]And, you know, she was like, you were there,
[19:46]you went there and that was this moment.
[19:47]And I felt like she was right.
[19:49]Like, I knew I had, I had completely committed
[19:52]to that moment of what that would be like.
[19:54]And, you know, and everything.
[19:56]And it's like, yeah, it's very powerful.
[19:58]That's amazing.
[19:59]You talked later in the...
[20:00]book that you completely believed that you were immortal.
[20:04]And so you started getting sick.
[20:05]Tell me about that.
[20:07]And did you actually?
[20:09]I mean, obviously, you didn't really believe that.
[20:11]But I know that what you mean by that feeling.
[20:13]Can you talk a little bit about that?
[20:15]Yes.
[20:15]I think I still had that 20s and my 20s
[20:19]and maybe other people relate to this.
[20:21]It's like I felt like I was invincible.
[20:24]Like I'm never going to die.
[20:25]And I had always been healthy.
[20:27]And I had known people who had health issues.
[20:30]And that was never me.
[20:31]And this was the year of going up for 10
[20:34]year at my institution.
[20:36]And it was incredibly stressful.
[20:38]I had thought that it was, I had been told, oh,
[20:40]this is a slam dunk.
[20:42]And it very much wasn't.
[20:44]And that fall, I went in for some tests.
[20:48]I think it was just routine labs.
[20:51]And oh, I had had some weird couple of days
[20:54]where I felt flu-like symptoms.
[20:55]And then it went away.
[20:56]And I went in for some routine blood work.
[20:58]And my liver enzyme scores were like off the charts.
[21:02]And they were like, well, that's going on.
[21:03]And they had more blood work.
[21:04]And at one point, I think I had their 15 files of blood
[21:07]that I did not just have one particular patient.
[21:09]And it turns out I had a hyperthyroid condition
[21:12]called Graves Disease and had to start taking medication.
[21:15]And the weird thing was that the liver enzymes,
[21:18]like that thing I had, that flu-like,
[21:20]it was just some almost like a mono-type virus
[21:23]called CMV, cytomegalovirus.
[21:26]And it's just this random thing that people can get.
[21:28]And so the liver enzymes calmed down.
[21:31]But the one thing that didn't after all this blood work.
[21:34]And I write about how the great thing
[21:36]about this vigilance that the medical system has
[21:38]is that, yes, they will catch things.
[21:41]And they're going to catch something.
[21:43]It's great that nothing's going to fall through the cracks,
[21:45]but they're going to find something.
[21:47]But that moment, thankfully, I've been treated for that.
[21:51]And that seems to be not an issue anymore.
[21:53]But I think what that told me, I'm glad you asked this,
[21:56]because I'm in a phase now where I'm
[21:58]recognizing how much, how internal the pressure is to do
[22:03]and to work and to produce.
[22:05]And I just finished reading the book,
[22:07]Trisha Rest Is Resistance by Trisha Hersey.
[22:10]And she talks about this grind culture that is like a legacy
[22:15]in our country and it dates back to slavery
[22:19]and right white supremacy and capitalism.
[22:22]And it's like all of the structures that are in place
[22:24]in this country to encourage people to believe
[22:28]that if they're not doing, then they don't have value.
[22:32]And what that's told me now, post-inear,
[22:35]is that slowing down is what I have to remember more,
[22:39]because that allows me to be my best healthiest self.
[22:44]That whole idea you can't take it with you when it comes
[22:46]to money is also very present when it comes to work.
[22:49]It's like all that work that I do
[22:51]and whatever I'm producing.
[22:53]I can't take that with me.
[22:55]And it's all that I, what's most important for me
[22:59]is my relationship with myself and others
[23:03]and the quality of life.
[23:05]So yeah, I'm a little bit more aware now
[23:07]of the fact that I'm not immortal.
[23:09]And I think the gift in that is like,
[23:12]how do I want to live each day?
[23:13]That sense of presence and letting my body be my guide
[23:17]rather than the to-do list.
[23:21]You know, I can hear this like a million times, you know,
[23:23]but it takes often something to happen
[23:26]to get you to actually slow down.
[23:28]And we can know that it's important,
[23:29]but it's hard to just do it, is I?
[23:31]I feel like really true.
[23:35]In terms of the writing of your book,
[23:36]what was the experience of sort of going through
[23:39]your entire life like and what advice do you have
[23:42]for aspiring authors?
[23:43]It was very healing and I think affirming too.
[23:47]At one point, there were those moments where I was like,
[23:50]gosh, there was so much random stuff that happened to me.
[23:53]Like, is anyone going to want to read this, you know?
[23:56]And of course, what is the most important to include?
[23:59]Because there are a lot of stuff I could have said
[24:01]and it's like thank goodness for editors.
[24:04]I don't know that, but like,
[24:07]I think what the affirming part was, yes,
[24:10]this is important, yes, the story needs to be told.
[24:12]And I feel like, if I can be of service
[24:16]to someone out there who has a non-traditional
[24:21]background or a non-traditional story
[24:24]and that person reads the book and feels comforted
[24:28]and inspired, then like that's the job, my job is done.
[24:32]The book's job is done.
[24:34]The, I've been writing Natalie Goldberg
[24:36]is my writing teacher and so she taught me how to,
[24:40]how to write and how to keep the hand moving
[24:42]even when the mind was saying, oh, that's dumb,
[24:45]oh, that's stupid.
[24:46]No one's going to want to read that,
[24:47]like to keep the pen moving through all of that.
[24:51]And I think that helped stab me in good stead
[24:54]when I was rereading, when I was just siding
[24:57]because that inner critic, that inner editor,
[24:59]whatever you call it, a monkey mind,
[25:01]it's always going to be there,
[25:02]the imposter syndrome that I write about a lot in the book.
[25:05]It's always there, but like the knob gets turned down,
[25:09]the volume knob gets turned down.
[25:11]The more and more I go and as she says,
[25:13]continue under all circumstances, you know,
[25:16]like when I was at a retreat of hers
[25:19]and I was freaked out about feeling my qualifying exam
[25:21]as I write, you know, and I told her about it
[25:24]and she basically said, two sentences on a paper,
[25:28]I'm not sure if I can swear on the podcast.
[25:30]I'm sorry, go for it, go for it.
[25:33]She wrote, you're on the horse, now fucking write it,
[25:36]you know, and it's like, all that stuff in our head
[25:39]and my head.
[25:41]That I was just, I was hearing someone recently say,
[25:43]they call it the shitty committee, now I've sworn twice.
[25:46]Oh, the head, you know, it's like my head will tell me,
[25:49]it'll justify anything.
[25:50]I write it, like my own mind was my biggest racist
[25:53]back in those days, you know, telling me,
[25:55]like you shouldn't do that, there are no black women
[25:58]who care about their looks and are astronomers, you know,
[26:01]that same mind can tell me, you're not a good writer,
[26:04]you why write this stuff?
[26:06]Or you, you know, you still think you can be in astronomy
[26:10]right now, but it's, that mind is always gonna go,
[26:13]but what I do with those thoughts is different now, you know,
[26:18]I can recognize those thoughts as those old tapes
[26:21]that will play when I'm trying to meditate
[26:24]and feeling, you know, freaked out by the silence,
[26:27]then I'll like revert to old tapes,
[26:29]because then that's something that I can listen to.
[26:31]And instead, I can tell myself, okay, old tapes,
[26:35]go back to breathing or have somewhat some other way
[26:38]I can take care of myself.
[26:39]So I think the process of writing the book allowed me
[26:42]to accept myself on an even greater level.
[26:46]And I encourage people who are thinking about their stories
[26:49]and questioning whether they have a story to tell.
[26:52]Usually the people that are asking that question
[26:54]always have a story to tell.
[26:56]And so like just tell it, just one sentence
[27:01]after another is like Hemingway said, right?
[27:04]One word after another, and eventually those sentences
[27:07]add up to something that can really inspire others
[27:11]and maybe even the whole world.
[27:14]Wow, beautiful.
[27:15]Thank you so much.
[27:16]Thank you for sharing your whole world
[27:18]and many other worlds perhaps with our listeners here.
[27:22]Thank you so much.
[27:23]I'm glad that it's a good reminder
[27:26]that our place in the universe does not have to be
[27:28]one specific place.
[27:30]It can be an all-encompassing thing
[27:34]and that that's important, that's important too.
[27:37]So thanks so much to you.
[27:38]Thank you.
[27:39]Thanks for coming on and take care.
[27:41]You too.
[27:42]Okay, bye bye.
[27:44]Thanks for listening to this episode
[27:46]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:48]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[27:50]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:53]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[27:55]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:57]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:00]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[28:02]for the Sound Editing.
[28:04]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[28:05]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.