Introducing 15 Questions
Weekly Reporter's Notebook: My answers on the places that have changed me, the scents and sounds I carry with me, best books, my inner critic and the dream hair cut!
The reason I started Our Women in the World was to have these conversations. Conversations not timed to a news cycle. Conversations that can go deep, give you space to reminisce, reconsider and recommend.
I have had the privilege of speaking to so many women already who were generous with their time and their memories and their excellence: Christina Hardaway (link); Heera Kamboj (link); Taylor Cofield (link); Alexandria J. Maloney (link); Mahvash Siddiqui (link); Melinda Crowley (link); Lauren Baer (link); Olimar Maisonet-Guzmán (link) and many others.
As I told a friend and fellow “woman in the world” earlier today: When I had more time, I included these conversations in my newsletter. Well... I’m making time now. Returning to and expanding upon, revisiting and inviting into the conversation new voices moves me.
I want to talk to and introduce you to and be in community and conversation with women who follow their calling, in all its uncertainty — tenderly and boldly, stumbling, re-framing and then embracing the terror and triumph along the way.
So… I’m going to get us started. I interviewed myself, and I recorded it.
Below are the 15 questions (including a full recording), broken down into three parts. This is my offering. Enjoy!
And my request in return: Please reach out to me about answering these questions yourself if you haven’t already; please share them and invite your colleagues, former colleagues, friends, mentors and mentees to reach out [JENNIFER.KOONS@PROTONMAIL.COM].
Let’s create a collection together that is so magnificent and so far reaching in its scope that it becomes a living archive of this history being written and shared now.
Confession: Everyone has dreams, and mine is to be featured in By the Book (followed closely by making it onto Barack Obama’s summer reading list). But that’s fine. Does it feel “too much,” too “who-do-you-think-you-are”? I guess. But it’s acceptable. Understandable, certainly.
This is a confession though and so here goes: I love to devour almost any sort of series that routinely invites you inside someone’s world.
If I have been tossing and turning, will I watch those Vogue beauty tutorials where a famous person tapes themself getting ready “in the morning” in the most expensively sterile bathroom you’ve ever seen? Every time. Same with those British Vogue “What’s in my handbag” videos.
My favorite was Closet Visit with Jeana Sohn, which I don’t think is available online anymore.
Of course, the all-time best choice is simply to walk around any neighborhood and to look into windows, sigh over the built-in bookshelves or fire places or natural light… To imagine yourself in different worlds or project onto others in theirs is of course why Instagram, etc., endures and I suppose the robots will offer their version soon.
But god help us, for now, let’s talk to each other. And share photos and wisdom and our recordings of our actual voices and laughter and the regret that underlies sad stories and exhalations in our moments of respite or victory.
Second confession: If I’ve already spoken to you, be prepared for a follow-up message because I have at least five additional questions that are crying out for inclusion.
After all, we never even touched on our favorite authors (Jhumpa Lahiri, Toni Morrison, Danny Pearl, Tim O’Brien); best seat on a plane (aisle unless you’ll miss mountains!); Crisp, biting comeback you wish you could lob at that one person for that one thing (Mine is just an expression, really).
Part I: The Life
TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE CHILDHOOD BOOK OR SERIES OF BOOKS [TV SHOWS, MOVIES OR GAMES ALSO WORK!].
I did love TV shows and movies as a kid, but obviously I'm biased and wrote this question because childhood books meant everything to me and it is absolutely impossible to pick one.
In some ways these feel entirely predictable. All of the Ramona Quimby books and Amelia Bedelia and The Secret Garden and Little Women. Any book with a strong female protagonist, which is the most dry way that we use coul possibly describe it, isn’t it?
“My grandfather always says that’s what books are for…to travel without moving an inch.”
— The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
But girls, like boys, like kids of any gender or identity or race or ethnicity or creed, longed to see themselves reflected in the pages.
And so I was drawn toward young girls who were mischievous and thoughtful, sometimes to a fault, and adventurous and curious and fearless and and all of those things.
And I think there was also usually an undercurrent of exploration and wanderlust.
I loved the entire Wrinkle in Time series. I loved. Mildred Taylor's The Circle Be Unbroken. And I love Shiloh and Number the Stars. And I'm now just naming books, but, oh also The Chronicles of Prydain series. …
I'm basically hoping that I can entice some of you to remember some of your favorite books and speak about them in depth! And maybe we need to even branch off into a little book club here….
But I’m going to move us along. Move myself along!
WHAT THREE WORDS WOULD YOUR CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND USE TO DESCRIBE YOU? YOUR CURRENT BEST FRIEND?
Our best friends see us in the way that we are, but as our very best version, in many ways. And it's really hard to see yourself sometimes with all of that love and tenderness like a dear friend can see you, but also a gift.
So three words… my childhood friend, best friend, Meredith (“Mer”) would probably say that I was … I’m trying to think of how to say “good writer” with one word because we really did just want to and write together, which feels very silly and ha ha, with what I'm doing now, you know?
But we would just pull up to her family's coffee table with our pencils and paper and we would sit next to each other and write all these stories or talk them out for hours and hours.
And we had these fully-formed characters we created. I remember mine were always named like Kate — or Sam was a big one. These kind of the grown-up versions of the book characters I loved, right? These badass woman who were doing impressive, fun things.
But what else would she say? She would say, maybe, “kind and comforting.”
And my current closest friends: I think it’s even harder to articulate, right? Because it's even more tender in some ways.
They would say that I am “loyal…. thoughtful, kind.” Maybe not though it’s funny how questions like this immediately route your brain toward a list of like top 10 acceptable words to describe other women! But it's also helpful, and I am glad I forced myself with this word limit so I don’t keep talking. I will let that answer stand!
WHAT MIGHT THE PERSON WHO INTIMIDATED YOU OR MADE YOU FEEL WEAK OR JEALOUS HAVE SAID ABOUT YOU IN YOUR MIND BACK THEN? WHAT ABOUT NOW? HOW DOES YOUR INNER CRITIC SPEAK ABOUT YOU?
Um, I should have kept this one to three words [laughs], right? This is quite a tonal shift in the questions!
It's so easy for us to summon the inner critic and all of our fears and worst thoughts about ourselves, which we're kind of looking to be confirmed.
But I think the one adjective I always feared the most, and consequently, the people I would get the most angry at in reaction — which, of course, was my own a reaction to feeling so hurt and vulnerable — was anyone who thought that I was weak.
I think that's been a through-line from childhood, although I don't really think I had any “enemies” or whatever you’d imagine them to be called at that age. I had a college roommate with whom I had a falling out and then a couple of coworkers and then even a friend or two (one close).
But being weak, weak-willed, weak in terms of just not being able to handle things, showing too many emotions…. At the end of the day, just the the very typical dichotomy of either being way too much, which meant for me being needy and having too many emotions, which undercuts being strong, right?
Because strong is this robotic person who doesn't need feelings or have wants or desires, which is still hard for me to try not to venerate even as I realize — logically — what I’m describing sounds awful!
And then not enough too, which to me means not talented, not smart, not lovable, not worthy. So the garden variety [laughs] internal criticism, right?
What about now? What does your inner critic speak to you about?
You know, mostly the same, except there is this element also of it’s too late, it’s too late. Time has passed! It’s too late for everything you want, you’ve run out the clock so don’t bother.
And that kind of gets at the not enough, right? But also because I’m too much. “Just be normal and do the shit that scares you. Everyone else does!”
And I think it’s good to talk about these things and say them out loud because saying things out loud really does demystify them, doesn’t it? And also with the dichotomy of anything, there is value and growth and learning to be had and examining the darkness, too, and even, you know, de-fanging it and challenging it.
But my my critic is such a know it all [laughs]! And the older I get, I’ve found that there are times when you just think to yourself, “Right. I heard you. Thank you, but I’m going to proceed now without your voice in my head.”
Liz Gilbert has this great line about allowing that voice in the car but not letting it drive… [here]. And I think that is a beautiful part of the aging or evolutionary process, for me at least, is to be able to (at least on many days) get to that point.
AND, MAYBE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, WHAT ARE THE THREE WORDS YOU WOULD USE TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF AT SIX OR 16? AND NOW?
I was curious.I was brave, and I was feeling. I loved me at six!
I just remember her (little me) wanting to spend all of her time in my grandparents backyard at the creek or just walking up and down the creek. I’d be climbing down the waterfall, running up and down these massive hills and just being out there, imagining worlds, feeling good in my head and body.
And then I’d spend time with my grandmother and force her to reenact the Wizard of Oz over and over again, probably confronting fears without knowing it at the time with the Wicked Witch and all of that. [Another wonderful dichotomy!]
At 16, I was driven, observant and hidden, I think is fair. I was still my six-year-old self too, but I had armored up certainly, and also had really found, cultivated and created and embodied an identity that I felt very comfortable with, very safe.
She was definitely a strong girl, was not a weak girl, and consequently I think was not really a free girl in many ways.
But I loved her so much. She was my safe place, right? Because she showed up as my best self who just knew she was going to be a journalist. She was going to move to D.C. and, like fuck it all, she was going to have this life.
And it was probably going to be lonely. But you know, she was going to do all these things, and I needed that fuel to get here and to make certain choices and to leave. So even though she’d sort of decided not to tell the guy she had a crush on that she liked him or not to let herself dream too big beyond just doing well in school, she was who I needed to be.
I love her, too.
And the three words that describe me now… I would say feeling, to go back to six-year-old me because now it feels very accurate again also. I have come home to the fact that I am deeply feeling.
And I am also smokey, a reference that if you get I will love and be very excited about and if you don't, that's okay — It kind of makes it sweeter for me as well [Editor’s note: I’m going to ruin this part by just linking to it because I can’t help myself]. And it's cheating because it’s actually four for the price of one.
And I am [long pause]…I’m still here. I’m thinking, and I hope that this awkward silence gives everyone permission to be silent as well when our conversation is happening so that you can give this as much thought as you want. The right word, you know [smiles]?
My third word is… [long pause again] If I said that I am, Feeling and Smoky and… Present. I feel very present in my life.
HOW DID YOUR EARLY YEARS AND UPBRINGING IMPACT YOUR DREAMS AND DESIRES?
I mean, they shape you completely in some ways, right? I did not particularly come from a family that traveled or was able to travel or really had a desire to travel.
We went to the same place in Florida every year, and there was such beauty and privilege in that. It’s a place that truly feels like home, and there are so many memories there that evoke pure safety and such sweetness. My family was happiest on that island.
But sometimes I think the absence of things becomes our fuel in its own way.
Of course, the books and National Geographic's and all of these things that my grandfather used to, my grandpa used to travel for work and pleasure and we would always do Sunday dinner and he would get out the slide projector so we could see all these photos [on this huge screen by the fish tank next to the fireplace!] of where he went.
And we’d all be sitting on the couch and I felt like I was the only one who was just riveted and could have watched it forever and just thought, “oh,” there’s the soul's recognition, right?
I'll leave it there and leave the journalism part of it, which is related, out. All of that can be for another time.
DO YOU REMEMBER THE SCENT, SMELL, SOUNDS OR OTHER VISCERAL IMPRESSIONS FROM THE FIRST TIME YOU LEFT THE UNITED STATES?
Um, the first time I left the U.S. was to go to the U.K. So I arrived in London, which feels very traditional or generic but was a huge deal for me.
My first thought was more internal, which was just like this: “Oh my God, this…. all of this,” right? I loved planes and any form of transportation, really. I love trains. And I grabbed my giant bag and walked out to the curb and hailed a cab and couldn't believe that you just almost walk right into the back. It was massive. And I could nearly stand with my head slightly bowed.
The driver was very sweet and talkative and once again I felt like “Oh,” it’s this recognition: “It’s good to be here because we’ve been waiting for you,” except it was an entire place.
But the visceral impressions were much stronger when I arrived in Doha and when I arrived in Moshi.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and I never knew that the earth could be that color. I never wanted to leave.
I remember being in the back of a car in Beirut for the first time and feeling like I never knew that the Earth could look so fertile. And I just thought, “oh, this is what it means to be in a holy place.”
The sea with the lemons and the limes and the crush of the city and the food and the movement…. and the mountains and just every thing, I mean, it was unbelievable.
And I think I felt alive in a way that matched — that was mirroring —how alive everything around me felt.
TELL ME ABOUT A MISTAKE OR FAILURE THAT CHANGED THE COURSE OF YOUR LIFE IN SOME WAY.
I would say that the central mistake that I have made over and over again throughout my life is a combination of not showing up and hiding.
It's kind of all related.
I will be afraid of something, afraid that I won’t be able to do something the right way or be in the right way, and the fear kind of festers because I don’t want to share what’s plaguing me with anyone, because that’s a weakness, and life could always be worse, you know?
And then just before facing the thing — and this could be, for example, my best friend as a kid asking me to join the after-school basketball team or one of my best friends, Taryn, who in our 20s, would ask me to go out to bars with her friends. Nice things!
Both are strangely similar because they were invitations to connect and be in community.
And maybe it was partly because I was shy but there was a big part of me that wanted to do both and was so scared — about trying something and being publicly bad at it (sports!) or going out in my 20s, about having fun and maybe even meeting a guy (because was I lovable enough to risk that?) and it would have been OK, not ideal for my happiness, but OK to just say “nah” in both cases, but I … got all ostrich-y instead, you know?
I would be intimidated by something and psych myself out, but I’m not sure that I was intimidated for a right reason, if it was silly or if it was justifiable. And the stakes increased the older I got.
And then at the very end it would become way too much and I would cut and run and leave everyone kind of flabbergasted as a result.
And I think that that has shown up professionally as well. It’s tricky because a lot of the things that come easily to me are not things that maybe come easily to other people.
So I often get, I mean, it’s confusing but I often get, “you’re so brave” and “you moved to X country” and “you do all these things!” And I always want to say, “you’re so brave, You went on a blind date!” or “you had a baby even though childbirth could kill you (like it almost did my mom) or you risked your heart again after the man you loved left.”
The very act of doing certain things like that, the fear of doing it wrong and not being enough shows up in a way that it just doesn’t for (what seems like) most “normal” people, as my inner critic would say.
When I do other things that I guess look impressive on the outside and to me just feel like breathing in the best way…. it’s interesting. Because I wouldn’t change what I love but I long for the bravery to fall in love again and to have a family.
WHAT IS THE SONG YOU PRESS PLAY ON WHEN YOU WANT TO HYPE YOURSELF UP? WHY DOES IT WORK? IF THERE ISN’T A HYPE-SONG, IS THERE ONE THAT GIVES YOU THE MOST LUXURIOUS NOSTALGIA?
I do have a hype song, it’s Formation by Beyoncé, which feels like it needs no explanation.
But I just will add that while it’s a given that she is the most talented artist alive, I also think that there is something that to me, as a creator, sees in her. There’s this effort if you look at this expertise, this craft, this attention and integrity and the value she places on her craft when she could still be the most successful impressive artist in the world doing probably 80% less of what she does.
And she does that 80% for reasons that don’t feel like they have anything to do with anyone else. It’s about her and her sense of work-ethic and self and legacy.
And that’s just a really powerful, incredible thing to have that sense of ownership and devotion to this moment in this life. And what the “verse,” as Whitman says, she will leave behind is going to look like.
OK, we’re making progress! We have made it to the work section.
Part II. The Work
TALK TO ME ABOUT YOUR CAREER TRAJECTORY AND YOUR PERSONAL METHOD/PREFERENCE FOR PLOTTING YOUR NEXT STEPS. FOR EXAMPLE, DO YOU PLAN OR ARE YOU GUIDED BY INTUITION (OR BOTH/NEITHER).
Both! I would say this is a weird question that doesn’t feel like it was written by me. It was [laughs].
It’s hard because I’m always thinking about next steps and what it would look like and what would be perfect because I frequently put myself in less than perfect work situations and the dreaming is the easier action, right?
And then I go deep and granular, and I try to break that down and think, what can I do in the next six months to the next six days for then the next six years? The hardest part, obviously, is not imagining it but taking the actual risks.
But I think the plotting does also look like really giving yourself over to a feeling of “it’s time” or like following the breadcrumbs of curiosity.
I really liked when I read this idea years ago of letting jealousy be a little bit of a guide as well because there have always been other journalists and people whose lives I’ve admired and they’ve annoyed the shit out of me [laughs] because I’m so obviously jealous.
And sometimes it IS obvious because it’ll be someone who gets a story and you just want to die because you wish you had the story and, you know, other times it’s because they’re dating this person who is so amazing and all of that.
But on a deeper level, if you look at the people who you go back to again and again, who’s Instagram pages you stalk, who kind of gets under your skin, then there is meaning there and an invitation there.
But my trajectory has kind of been defined as this knowing that there is this one thing I do that makes me settle, settle in a really good way, settle into something, settle into my body and my life.
And there is this other part of me that, again, it’s the shadow side, but that does things that are adjacent to what I want to do. Lower risk, lower reward.
I think we have our ghost ships in our lives, those lives in parallel. But there’s also a side of me that makes choices about my career because it felt like it was the right thing to do or the smart thing to do and it said something good about me.
To be “good” is easier than to be “happy,” because isn’t good sort of the “just right,” neither too much or not enough?
And maybe most and worst of all, I’ve taken jobs that the people there really wanted me to take it and they really thought I could do a good job. And there is something about that external validation, right?
And, of course, none of those jobs have ever been ones that provided that feeling, that settled feeling, that beautifully settled feeling.
WHICH JOB OR ASSIGNMENT HAS LIT YOU UP, CHALLENGED YOU, SURPRISED YOU OR ALL THREE?
Any time I’m working on this newsletter, any time that I’ve…[pause] I’ve had some beautiful moments, but I don’t feel like anything has ever [pause] I’ve ever seen a story through from A to Z, actually, in the way I really wanted.
And I’m very good at going up the hill on the roller coaster, and then it’s either get scared or I don’t want it to end, so why go down right? Jump off before the drop!
But then you’ve jumped off before you get to the most fun part, which is going downhill and then getting all the way around.
But I went to Niger, to Niamey, and then to the border area with Mali in 2014. And it was all the things that I aspire to be and feel, which is just deeply present.
And every person I met changed me in a way that I had never experienced before, simply by being so generous with their selves and their stories.
And it made me rethink everything: the way that we as storytellers move through the world and the way in which people share their stories with us. And what duty do we have to those people and to their stories and what we leave behind and what we should leave behind.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE A MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT TRULY “IN THE ZONE” IN TERMS OF YOUR IDEAS OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS? CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT RUSH OR EXHILARATION OF KNOWING YOU WERE THE EXACT PERSON TO HANDLE A GIVEN SITUATION OR RESOLVE A TOUGH PROBLEM?
This is challenging for me because I would say that I feel most in the zone when I'm teaching. It doesn't always happen. I’ve had some times when that was absolutely not the case.
But I didn't plan on becoming a teacher so early. Even though I come from a family of teachers, I did not plan on becoming a formal teacher in so many ways and so many times. And I wrestled with it too, because of course, those who can't do teach, right, and I've also hidden behind it for so long too, because, well, oh man, teaching comes naturally to me. …
I do it so well. I feel so good so screw doing the thing that opens up my entire heart. I’m just going to teach and derive value from that. It’s enough.
But I do think that teaching about journalism, teaching about storytelling and narrative nonfiction and interviewing is, yeah, there’s nothing like it when you’re responding to each other.
And so it’s a dance and you and the students are engaged and they’re asking questions and you’re making jokes that they get it and you remember why you love this maddening profession too, and then you see them write something and they’re doing it …and it…\ there’s no better feeling.
THIS IS A COMBINATION OF PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TOUCH ON BOTH, AS THEY’RE INEXTRICABLY INTERTWINED FOR SO MANY OF US.
TELL ME ABOUT YOU IN FIVE YEARS. WHAT’S SHE DOING? HOW’S SHE FEELING? WHAT DOES HER HAIR LOOK LIKE?
I included that last part because imagining my hair really gets me in the zone [laughs; but true!].
So what hair cut for future Jen? I have had long hair now for, I mean, maybe almost a decade, which is stunning because I had a very short and unflattering cut for most of my childhood (sorry, mom!) and then a haircut made for just blending into the nearest wall in my teen years.
I feel like I had a sweet spot in my twenties. I like the shoulder length, but then I really grew it, I think, to hide again behind it. And it’s a lot of hair!
But that is all to say that five years from now, Jen has a really great chic short haircut [laughs]. Depending on how happy she is, it might be actually closer to chin-ish length, my God [laughs], or just above the shoulder.
But for whatever reason, it just feels like freedom in a way to me. And it feels like if it’s done at the right time, it becomes a way to tap into this true sense of peace and contentment within yourself. …
What else is five-years-from-now Jen doing besides having a wonderful haircut?
I hope that she is married or partnered with a wonderful Sam Seaborn-y man and that she has a kid or two and that they are at home in the world. But I still travel for work all the time and we spend our summers somewhere else, including a month with my family in the Midwest, and that we always have a home in D.C. but are living in London or truly outside the country [I sort of what to be surprised!].
Hopefully I'm teaching as well and that I feel this true tender connection with my friends and people in my life that and I have mentors and that this community of women and the larger community of women in diplomacy and journalism and national security, that that community is robust and that I feel welcome. And that's because I've allowed myself to show up in it.
So I like to think of her as a grown up version of who little Jen imagined Jo March or Meg Murry to be…I mean, I loved the Anne Shirley books, but Anne of Avonlea was my favorite for a reason.
I did not touch on this earlier, but I loved, of course, these strong, inquisitive women, writerly women in these childhood books. But I also, again, very cliche: But I loved Gilbert Blythe and Teddy and the orange-haired kid from A Wrinkle in Time, Calvin?
And I think it’s interesting because in all of those cases, these cute men were kind of the supporting character, they showed up to support and join the adventure and just to worship these accomplished, opinionated women with agency and desires, spoken out loud, demanded from their lives. They loved it too, obviously. There’s nothing less attractive than not having your own passion too and clearly I’ve given this a of thought [laughs].
And so, yeah, it’d be great to be with my “Gilbert” and our two children, one child, a healthy child, and be in the world. Okay. And writing And creating.
All right, this has been going on for a while. And it’s at that point where you wonder if anyone’s going to read beyond your mom. [I love you so much, Mom. So much.]
PART III. THE WORLD:
WORDS, PEOPLE, SNAPSHOTS OF PLACES OFTEN JOIN US EVEN AFTER WE LEAVE OR TRAVEL TO SOME PLACE NEW.
THEY ARE INTERNAL KEEPSAKES AND DEMARCATIONS, AND I’M WONDERING IF YOU COULD SHARE WITH ME WHO AND WHAT YOU CARRY WITH YOU?
I carry with me “the girls” as I still think of them. This group of women in Doha who I met who I [smiling] can’t talk about them without smiling.
They are my family. They’re my students, my forever little sisters. My hearts. And I carry their smiling faces and their jokes and their audacity [as the highest form of compliment].
I physically carry a child’s palm-sized rock from a waterfall, which I almost lost on the plane ride back from Arusha, but found again.
I carry the sound of chairs creaking at little bistro tables and the scratchy bedding in tiny hotel rooms. And the physical heaviness of the heat.
Just the sense of being welcomed — to a life that demands that you show up and do so with care.
WHAT IS A PRESSING FOREIGN POLICY OR NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE THAT YOU THINK IS TOO OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD, OVERLOOKED OR IGNORED?
Every single topic or idea or story touched on in this newsletter. The central thesis of my work is that we completely mischaracterize women’s choices, agency, roles in the world as being of help, a bonus, a nice side table issue.
I keep picturing it like a side dish at Thanksgiving. Everything about it is a side to the side to the side. “But look, we included you over there to the side.”
“Are you so happy we found time for your honorary inclusion?” “Look, we gave you a front page story on your topic, and you can speak at panel discussions about it too!”
Really, it’s the absolute opposite, isn’t it?
And I think it goes to the power of language and framing, which I feel myself awakening to every day. And of course, this is nothing new. But the problem, which I assume has plagued you too, is that once you wake up and try to wake the person up beside you, you realize they don’t want to hear it or see it or acknowledge it. And so it becomes easier to unsee it.
But the people in any story that are covered in any place that gets focus, that draws attention, that draws policymakers and diplomats, where there are victims “to protect people” who need to be “given voices.” And there are sob stories and violence and horror being inflicted on those communities…. Those are the people who hold the key to solving everything and who understand that intensively.
They’re the whole meal, at the very least, they’re the main course.
Of course, to be really specific in my mind, I feel that way most passionately about Afghan women and girls who I think truly hold the key and lessons to rethink and re-understand every major decision being made today.
WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU’D BE AT HOME IN THE WORLD, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU?
I don’t know if it was books or my grandfather’s slideshows or reading about things in school or hearing speakers [long pause]. It’s strange because I didn’t have the opportunity to travel really at all when I was a kid or as a young adult.
But I knew that this was what I was meant to do. And so it came from the inside out and as time went by, I just kept accumulating evidence.
But, and London was wonderful, but Doha was actually the second country that I ever visited. And in Qatar, I felt like, “This is it, this is what you want and this is what you want it to be: alive and showing up for your life.”
Like, “let’s begin!”
And I don’t mean that about the specific country, about the specific anything really, except to say it was this internal knowing, which I eventually ran away from again (twice!) by the way.
But I got there and the invitation becomes “you’ve arrived at your life.”
“Well, what do you want to say about it? What do you want to do about it?” And it feels like that’s the invitation again and again every time for as long as we get to be here.
Thank you so much for listening.
And, should anyone listen beyond Mom [Mom, Thank you for listening. My lifelong supporter and champion and heart], I am so grateful. If you have chatted with me before, I want to chat with you again to get your voice on here, I think that matters and changes something.
And if you haven’t yet, I can’t wait to speak to you too. If this is all I get to do for the rest of my life, I will feel rich beyond measure.
Know a Woman Who Should Join Our Conversation?
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