Maya Shankar

speaker

1,518 appearances 8 recordings 7 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 5 Jul

Maya Shankar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 5.

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Fast forward a couple decades after almost six or seven years of trying to start a family, my husband and I were unsuccessful.

We had to deal with

many obstacles and disappointments and heartbreaks and pregnancy losses with our surrogate.

And it's been a really challenging experience to navigate that.

And again, I felt like I wasn't just grieving the pregnancy losses.

I was grieving the loss of this future identity that I had for so long aspired to hold, which was mom.

And what I've learned from these experiences really only in hindsight is that it can be more stabilizing to define yourself

not simply by what you do, but by why you do those things or why you have even the dreams you have.

So what do I mean by that?

Let's take the violin, for example.

I asked myself, well, what was it that I loved about the violin?

Human connection was at its core.

I loved that music was a vehicle for me to build

deep emotional connections with people, whether it was my fellow musicians or people in the audience.

Just because I lost the violin didn't mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place.

That part of me stayed firmly intact.

I am a person who thrives on emotional connection.

When you define yourself in those terms, then the exercise simply becomes,

where else can I find ways to express this part of myself, right?

How else can I feed this desire for human connection?

Showing 361–380 of 1,518 · page 19 of 76