Maya Shankar

I was studying at Juilliard.

I had big dreams of becoming a professional.

And then a hand injury ended my dreams overnight, and I had to give them up.

I remember Jason in that moment, not simply grieving the loss of the instrument, but also grieving the loss of myself in this deeper way.

I sometimes think that we don't realize how much something has come to define us until we lose that thing.

I had tethered my entire identity

to being a violinist, such that when I lost it, I felt like I was not fully intact, right?

Fast forward a few decades, I'm now confronting another challenge in my personal life.

My husband and I had spent six, seven years trying to start a family.

We're unsuccessful.

We encountered

heartbreaks and losses and disappointments.

And I remember on the night of the second miscarriage with our surrogate when we lost identical twin girls, I again felt in a much deeper way, though, this fundamental threat to my identity, right?

I remember thinking, this is the dream I've had.

This is the earliest identity I think I ever attached myself to.

From the time I was three, I assumed that one day I would become a mom and have a family of my own, right?

So one thought exercise we can all engage in, and I would urge your listeners to do this, whether they're in the throes of a change or not, is to learn to attach your identity, not simply to what you do, to the roles or labels you have, but to why you do those things or to why you want those things.

So let me make that more concrete.

When I asked myself what it was that I loved about the violin, sure, I loved the physicality of playing it, but at its core, I loved the fact that the violin

allowed me to foster deep emotional connections with people.