Maya Shankar

And the slate is wiped clear.

And she is now, as her memories are returning, revisiting those stories with a new lens, because...

the memory of the stories returns before the memory that she was ashamed of the stories returned.

So it's this fascinating tale of her seeing her stories anew before she has the shame lens imposed on it.

And by the time the memory of the shame comes back, it's too late.

She's already developed this beautiful, rich relationship with those stories.

And...

The reason I included Ingrid's story is it's a good reminder that our beliefs are not these sacred, immutable truths, right?

There are flimsy entities that don't always have a strong basis.

It turns out that for Ingrid, when she was a little kid, her mom had cautioned her about sharing these stories, not because...

She was ashamed of them.

Her mom was very proud of the stories, but because she didn't want Ingrid to face discrimination or violence from people who didn't understand.

The little Ingrid's mind had interpreted that as, well, if I'm being told I can't share this, it probably means this thing is bad.

And so that's an example of how we can just take messages in and not really evaluate them.

And for me, what I realized is...

I had been taught for whatever reason from the time I was little, you know, maybe it was growing up in an Indian American family and hearing the conversations between my aunties and other influences that most of my worth as a woman in this society would come from becoming a parent.

Like that is where I was told that my life's meaning would come from.

And if I didn't achieve that goal, I would never live a full, satisfying life.

And obviously, that's a problematic message in a lot of ways.

But I had internalized that.