Dena Moes, THE BUDDHA SAT RIGHT HERE
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:12]This episode is brought to you by Boombox Gifts, Memory Boxes filled with personal messages
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[0:22]I'm excited to be here today with Dina Mose, who's the author of The Buddha Sat Right
[0:26]Here, a family honestly through India and Nepal.
[0:29]She has a BA in Literature and an MS in Nursing from Yale University, an SAS Storyteller
[0:34]and Songwriter.
[0:35]Dina is the mother of two girls and currently lives in California.
[0:38]Her book recently won First Place in the Indie Publishers Book Awards in Travel and also
[0:44]First Place in the next generation India Awards in Travel.
[0:47]So welcome to Dina.
[0:48]Thank you so much.
[0:49]I'm really glad to be here today.
[0:51]So Dina, can you tell listeners what The Buddha Sat Right Here is about and what inspired
[0:55]you to write it?
[0:57]Sure.
[0:58]So the shortest answer is that my book is a memoir of adventure, motherhood and
[1:03]love woven into a spiritual journey.
[1:07]And to expand on that a little, in 2014, I was a mother who had pretty much had it all.
[1:14]I was a busy, home birth midwife with a very successful practice.
[1:18]I had two amazing daughters who were thriving.
[1:21]I had a marriage, a house, a yard, a dog, a cat, etc., etc., and from the looks of
[1:29]it, it looks like everything was swell.
[1:32]But inside, something deep inside me was eroding and I felt hollow and a lot of feelings
[1:40]came up that were not joyful.
[1:42]I wasn't content and I got this crazy idea that we needed to just change it up completely.
[1:49]And so we rented out our house, we shuttered our businesses and my family took an eight
[1:54]month backpacking journey through India and Nepal, which was a wild thing to do.
[2:01]And it had always been my bucket list place to go.
[2:04]It had been my dream and I thought I almost went to India several times before.
[2:11]I had kids and each time something happened and I ended up not going.
[2:15]And so right in the middle of raising my kids, I thought, I don't want to wait until
[2:20]they're grown and do this at some point in the future.
[2:23]And when I realized that they could each carry their own belongings in their backpack,
[2:28]I decided we should just do this.
[2:30]That's amazing.
[2:31]I feel like I can't even get my son to pick up his backpack.
[2:33]He like wheels his backpack to like five feet to the car so that that the year kids
[2:38]are carrying their belongings on their back through India is like humbling.
[2:43]Well, you know, this didn't come out of thin air.
[2:46]We live in fairly rural California and we had done a lot of camping and backpacking and
[2:52]trucking into music festivals and places like that with them through their whole childhoods.
[2:57]So it wasn't completely out of thin air.
[3:00]They were used to fairly rugged travel.
[3:02]They were used to carrying their stuff in backpacks at times to get where they needed
[3:06]to go.
[3:07]And our enthusiasm for the trip was really contagious.
[3:10]They were very excited to embark on this adventure with us.
[3:13]Tell me a little more about why India and how also this became a pilgrimage and what
[3:18]pilgrimage means to you.
[3:20]Well, Dina suggested I ask her that question, which is a great question.
[3:24]So I just want to get her credit for that one.
[3:27]So I've always concerned myself a spiritual seeker.
[3:30]I grew up to a when I lived in New York in the 90s, I belong to a beautiful circle of
[3:35]sort of wickin practitioners.
[3:37]And then I began to study Buddhism about 18 years ago.
[3:41]And when I learned about Buddhism, it just really resonated with me as, you know, these
[3:47]principles of cultivating love and compassion in yourself and how that reflects out into
[3:53]the world, just rang so true to me.
[3:55]I just thought, where's this bin on my life and became sort of a student of Buddhism.
[4:02]And of course, the Buddha lived in India.
[4:04]And he he was actually born in Nepal, but then he lived in India.
[4:07]He sat under a tree in India and awakened to enlightenment.
[4:11]And there's still a place there where you can go where there's a tree that marks that spot.
[4:16]And it's a very holy pilgrimage site.
[4:19]We spend a good deal of time there in my book.
[4:23]And then also in India, there's large communities of Tibetan refugees, because in case
[4:28]people don't know, you know, Tibet is now in occupied China.
[4:32]It's now occupied by China and has been for many, many years.
[4:37]And so there's been a big erosion of Tibetan culture and Buddhist traditions there.
[4:42]So there's a lot of refugees in Nepal and India and they're building monasteries and keeping
[4:47]the traditions alive, keeping the spiritual path alive that is from Tibet.
[4:52]And so it is, and my husband Adam had spent a year in India when he was in his 20s.
[4:58]So we had all these connections.
[5:00]It had always been my bucket list place, even though I knew it was going to be hard travels
[5:05]and confronting at times and really challenge us.
[5:08]The idea of a pilgrimage is that it's a journey that changes you.
[5:13]That's transformative.
[5:14]So it's not a vacation and you don't come back the same.
[5:18]And so with that intention, we set out on this trip.
[5:21]It's amazing.
[5:22]And boy, did it change us in so many ways.
[5:27]So in the opening section of your book, you have yourself trekking through a storm, basically
[5:31]and reflecting what a difference from the life I left behind, I think, as I tread along.
[5:36]Our American life was a juggling act and I was constantly dropping balls here and you
[5:40]itemized all the balls you were dropping.
[5:42]Here I have one task, walk, no schedule to keep, no to do list, nobody paging me or pulling
[5:47]at my attention, just walk, one foot in front of the other, wiping the snow from my eyes,
[5:52]a revel in the simplicity, the focus.
[5:55]Just great.
[5:56]So take me back to that moment right there.
[5:57]Yeah, I call that my Anna Purna epiphany.
[6:00]The beginning of the book sort of drops you into the middle of the story.
[6:04]So this was about halfway through our trip and we were in Nepal on a trek.
[6:09]And that moment was really about my family kind of got ahead of me and then it started
[6:14]to snow and suddenly I was all alone.
[6:18]I knew they were just ahead, you know, just out of sight.
[6:21]I'm always the slowest hiker.
[6:22]I'm not an athlete myself and I like to be behind.
[6:25]So I'm not feeling like I'm holding people back behind me.
[6:28]So I was just going along at my own pace and then as the snow got really thick and suddenly
[6:33]I realized I was in a blizzard at first all these emotions of fear and worry for my kids
[6:39]and all these things arose.
[6:41]It's almost like panic that, oh my gosh, it's snowing and I'm out here and we're so high
[6:45]up and blah, blah, blah.
[6:47]And then I just told myself to stop those thoughts and just settle.
[6:54]Just give that some space and what happened was I had this total release of surrendering
[7:02]responsibility for my entire family.
[7:06]And I just realized how much as a woman and a mother, I'm always trying to control everybody's
[7:12]experiences somehow like, oh, it's snowing does everyone have their coats on, is everyone
[7:19]walking safely, does everyone have their water bottle, you know, how far ahead?
[7:25]Because Sophia is so small, always thinking of everybody else and in that moment because
[7:32]I couldn't even see my kids.
[7:33]I didn't know exactly where anybody was.
[7:37]I just let go and I just felt this utter incomplete freedom and it was so joyful.
[7:45]I just started crying tears of joy.
[7:47]I just, I felt here fully present in the moment without any worries or thoughts of the past
[7:55]or the future.
[7:56]So it was sort of a spiritual epiphany, wow.
[7:59]And it allowed me to break some patterns in my parenting and think differently about my
[8:06]children who were at that point old enough, you know, transitioning from child to teenage
[8:11]children.
[8:12]They were 10 and 14 that permission to no longer be responsible for their experiences.
[8:19]So it's like I can bring the family to places, but the experiences that they have is up
[8:25]to them.
[8:26]I need to be aware of my experience.
[8:29]It's beautiful.
[8:30]Can they tell that you changed in that regard or is it more just a shift in mindset for
[8:35]you?
[8:36]Are there things that you actually do differently now with M. E. Thank you?
[8:39]Well, naturally because they're just keep getting older and older, I mean, one went
[8:43]off to college, that's, you know, really let it go of control.
[8:48]It was more an interesting for myself and a relaxing of a certain amount of anxiety and
[8:55]worry that I was always sort of holding about them and my own ability to trust them
[9:02]more and trust reality more to hold them that, you know, I'm, as my husband says, the
[9:08]sun will rise even if I'm not thinking about it.
[9:11]Oh, I like that.
[9:13]This is great.
[9:14]This is going to be like help for anxiety this I'm now realizing this is my added perk
[9:19]of this session here.
[9:21]Well, I will say that my overall motto for India travel is relax because absolutely nothing
[9:29]is under control.
[9:30]I feel sometimes so when people tell me to relax, it does not help me relax at all.
[9:35]But a story like yours about how you did it, that's something right that you can take
[9:40]that in your back bucket.
[9:41]You had a passage, another passage about how things were before you left just to contrast.
[9:47]You said this whole American approach to parenting is whack and then you tell your kids,
[9:51]63.
[9:52]Do you know what that number is?
[9:53]That is the number of times I feed you each week.
[9:56]Can you even believe it?
[9:57]60 friggin' three.
[9:58]That is three meals a day for three.
[10:00]Three people, seven days a week,
[10:01]and it is not even counted as a job.
[10:03]So talk to me about where you were,
[10:05]and then where you came back,
[10:08]and then I'll talk about the middle journey after that.
[10:09]Yes, well, so here's one piece in my story.
[10:13]So my sister lives in India,
[10:15]and she has a foreign correspondent,
[10:17]and she had a baby.
[10:19]And before I took my whole family,
[10:21]I went to visit her after she had a baby,
[10:23]and she's a single mother in India,
[10:25]and I went to India with this idea
[10:27]that, oh, I was gonna cook for her,
[10:29]and I was gonna tidy the apartment
[10:30]while she rests after giving birth,
[10:33]and I got there,
[10:35]and she has a cook who's in the kitchen all day making food.
[10:39]She is made who's tidying the house.
[10:42]She is a driver who takes her where she needs to go,
[10:45]and this is normal in Asian culture
[10:48]for working women or women without extended family,
[10:51]without relatives who live in the home,
[10:53]and it just hit me how in America,
[10:57]mothers are so isolated and are expected to do
[11:01]so many people's jobs all by themselves,
[11:05]and how just wrong that is on so many levels,
[11:08]how unsustainable that is,
[11:09]and seeing how families operate in Asia,
[11:13]I saw that in America,
[11:15]the way we do it is really just to drop in the bucket
[11:18]of global humanity,
[11:19]like women are not so isolated all over the world,
[11:23]and it just broke open this perspective,
[11:26]and a lot of people are talking now about emotional labor
[11:28]and the mental load of motherhood,
[11:30]and how much women juggle,
[11:32]and I came back from visiting my sister,
[11:35]and I just thought,
[11:37]this just doesn't work.
[11:39]It's not meant to work.
[11:40]One person was not meant to do so many things,
[11:43]and I just started realizing all the jobs that I do
[11:47]that aren't even considered a job.
[11:49]It's just completely taken for granted
[11:51]that mom knows where everything is,
[11:52]mom knows where everyone's going,
[11:54]mom knows what's going to be for dinner.
[11:56]Oh, mom works full-time,
[11:58]yep, because it's equality.
[12:00]It's equality between the sexes now,
[12:02]men and women are equal,
[12:04]but not really.
[12:05]It's really hard to make that true in the home.
[12:07]So what can we do about it?
[12:09]Well, that's a great question.
[12:11]I'm not sure I have the answer.
[12:13]That's amazing.
[12:14]I mean, I'm not sure anyone has anything to do with this.
[12:17]Yeah, I think, well, when I look at my husband and I,
[12:20]I mean, we're a little older than you maybe.
[12:22]We grew up in the 70s and feminism was brand new.
[12:26]My husband's mother was a stay-at-home mom who cooked
[12:31]and had a nice dinner on the table every night
[12:33]with lipstick on for her husband when he came home
[12:35]and took her kids for ice cream Sundays after school.
[12:40]And that's his memory of mom in the house.
[12:44]So change comes slowly.
[12:46]My husband and I have,
[12:47]we've been working on it within our home
[12:49]really intensively since our India trip
[12:52]when all the issues about this really bubbled up for us.
[12:56]And I think talking about it is really helpful
[12:59]because I didn't even have the language to describe
[13:03]what the problem was until I went to India
[13:05]and saw that all moms all over the world
[13:08]are not being these super moms, you know,
[13:11]juggling six different jobs.
[13:14]Prior to that, I didn't even have the vocabulary
[13:17]and I thought the problem was really just me and Adam.
[13:20]You know, the problem was in my marriage.
[13:21]The problem was with me.
[13:23]So getting the perspective and having people talk about it
[13:27]and talking about it men and women amongst themselves
[13:30]and with the next generations,
[13:31]I mean, I think it is changing.
[13:33]I know it's changed a lot in my family too.
[13:36]Yeah.
[13:36]Well, I've also interviewed a number of authors
[13:39]who are working on this and changing gender stereotypes
[13:42]and responsibility of who does what.
[13:44]And it's definitely a focus.
[13:47]It's in the cultural conversation right now,
[13:49]which is what I'm asking.
[13:50]I'm not sure and I don't want to get off track
[13:52]because I want to hear more about your trip
[13:53]and talk about your book.
[13:54]But it's not like even if the dads did just as much,
[13:58]like I'm not sure that's the answer either.
[13:59]I think it's this extended community situation.
[14:02]It's not like, oh, if my husband took on 20
[14:05]of those 63 meals our life would be so easy.
[14:08]Like, do you know what I mean?
[14:09]Right.
[14:10]And I say that in my book at one point
[14:12]where I feel this forgiveness towards us.
[14:14]It's like, it's not Adam.
[14:15]It's not me.
[14:16]All of this was never meant to be done by even just two people.
[14:20]A huge home, a yard, the kids, all the activities
[14:25]of community and society were expected to perform and provide.
[14:29]And I do think the answer is creating more of a village
[14:33]and a community.
[14:34]And that, when we came back from India,
[14:37]that's something that we really invested in,
[14:39]is our neighbors, creating a network of sharing
[14:42]and helping and support with our kids.
[14:45]And that's been really wonderful.
[14:47]Probably better for the kids, too.
[14:49]Definitely.
[14:50]Yes.
[14:51]Speaking of the kids, so when you were traveling all over,
[14:55]a couple times I started getting really nervous.
[14:57]Like, as I mentioned, I was reading this alongside my son
[15:00]as he was reading, which is sweet.
[15:01]And I would read different passages.
[15:02]And I'm like, oh my gosh, her daughter is throwing up
[15:05]against a window.
[15:06]Something really bad is about to happen.
[15:07]Like, what if the daughter doesn't get better?
[15:09]What is that, what's going to happen next?
[15:11]So you keep adding all these things where you would get sick
[15:14]or Adam would get sick or a daughter of yours would get sick.
[15:16]And I was like, should she be over there?
[15:18]What's she going to do?
[15:19]Like, I started worrying.
[15:21]Did you start worrying?
[15:22]Like, did you ever feel?
[15:23]And like, when you were climbing down the mountain
[15:25]and you were so sick and it was just you and the curls
[15:28]and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, is she going to make it?
[15:31]Like, she makes it.
[15:32]She's great.
[15:32]I mean, she's stronger than she thought.
[15:35]Well, here's the thing.
[15:37]So if we had just stayed home in the course of a school year,
[15:41]do your kids ever get sick?
[15:42]No, I know.
[15:43]I know.
[15:43]So here's the course, of course.
[15:45]So when you're traveling, they are going to get sick.
[15:47]And here's the thing.
[15:49]And because I had my sister in Delhi,
[15:51]she's lived in India for 15 years.
[15:53]She is healthy as anything.
[15:55]And we got a lot of advice from her about staying healthy.
[16:00]The bottom line is if you're traveling in the developing world,
[16:04]there are times when you're going to get sick
[16:06]and then you're going to get better.
[16:08]And that's just a reality.
[16:10]And we just kind of accepted that.
[16:12]Like, everyone gets tummy upset in India
[16:15]if you're there for a while.
[16:16]I mean, even if you're there for a couple of weeks,
[16:18]you probably will.
[16:19]And most of the time, you just get better on your own.
[16:22]And because, I mean, I am a nurse.
[16:24]And my husband's a doctor of Chinese medicine.
[16:25]I mean, we always knew that if one of us got really sick,
[16:30]we'd go in for help.
[16:31]But we never needed to.
[16:32]I mean, we were never in the hospital or anything like that.
[16:35]Nothing was ever that serious.
[16:36]The closest we came was little Sophia in that beach resort.
[16:40]But the problem solved.
[16:42]And she was better.
[16:44]So I wasn't afraid of getting sick.
[16:48]Also, I mean, honestly, health care in India
[16:51]is there's quite good health care.
[16:53]It's not like, oh, there's no doctors.
[16:55]You know, we're not somewhere where there's no doctors.
[16:57]There's no medicines.
[16:58]It's very, very high quality.
[17:01]And yeah, there was a couple of times,
[17:02]I mean, they didn't go in the book like Sophia.
[17:04]And she got something in her ear.
[17:06]And we went to the doctor and he gave her these drops.
[17:09]And even now, it's such a little magical experience
[17:11]going and meeting the doctor and getting the care.
[17:15]And it's just being so smooth.
[17:17]None of this paperwork, like in the United States,
[17:19]you go to a doctor.
[17:20]You have to fill out 20 pages of paperwork
[17:22]and insurance and ID.
[17:24]In India, you just go in and hand them a few dollars
[17:27]worth of rupees and sit and have chai with the doctor.
[17:31]And he looks at the problem and gives you
[17:32]a little medicine packet.
[17:33]It's lovely.
[17:35]And maybe I should go there just for that.
[17:41]Let's go back to your nursing and the fact
[17:43]that you're a midwife.
[17:44]I found, as I mentioned to you before,
[17:46]in the book, those were some of my favorite parts.
[17:48]Because I haven't read that much about women who worked as,
[17:52]I mean, actually, I read the midwife forever ago
[17:54]by Chris Magellan, did you give my wife's room?
[17:57]Anyway, but that was a long time ago.
[17:58]And I found it so interesting.
[18:00]The situations in which you found yourself
[18:02]like going down these country roads and horrible storms
[18:06]and then to the delivery and even all the detail,
[18:08]I just found it so interesting.
[18:10]And yet, you end up sort of in trouble
[18:13]and that is a theme that stays with you throughout this book.
[18:15]So tell me a little more about that.
[18:17]Yes, so I'm a certified nurse midwife,
[18:20]which means I'm a registered nurse
[18:22]and I have a master's degree also in nurse midwifery.
[18:26]And most nurse midwives in the United States
[18:28]work in hospital settings,
[18:30]but we are trained in license to work
[18:32]in home hospital or birth center.
[18:35]I became a midwife because I was very drawn to home birth.
[18:40]I read the book's spiritual midwifery
[18:42]by Anna McAskin as a young woman
[18:44]and it just sort of set me on the path of midwifery.
[18:48]And I was very blessed to serve as a home birth midwife
[18:52]in my rural Northern California community
[18:54]based out of Chico for a dozen years
[18:58]while my kids were growing up.
[18:59]And it was just a beautiful experience.
[19:01]I got to be the town midwife, the community midwife
[19:05]and so many of our friends.
[19:07]I got to attend the birth of their children
[19:10]and just be such a part of the community.
[19:13]And I love home birth because I love giving women
[19:18]the opportunity to listen to their own bodies
[19:21]and do what they need to do.
[19:23]I mean, birth is a physiologic process.
[19:25]Mammals all give birth in privacy, in darkness,
[19:29]squatting on the floor.
[19:31]And when you give a woman the freedom to find her way,
[19:36]that's usually how she will give birth in the home setting.
[19:39]And so then, of course,
[19:42]there's the whole political side of midwifery.
[19:44]It's very politicized because it's territorial.
[19:47]The obstetricians are very threatened
[19:49]by autonomous home birth midwives.
[19:52]And also, obstetricians don't really understand natural birth
[19:55]because the way they were trained
[19:57]is looking for complications.
[20:00]So many births in hospital settings are not normal.
[20:03]They, because of the positions and the medications and the monitoring and the IVs.
[20:08]So most obstetricians can't even really imagine what a home birth is like.
[20:12]So there's a lot of political and who has the power of the doctors.
[20:16]So what happened in my community is vaginal births after caesarean sections were banned.
[20:22]The same year I opened my home birth practice due to politics and insurance and bureaucracy.
[20:29]Okay. So that right there was a really infringement on the rights of women.
[20:34]I mean, only in obstetrics can a patient not refuse surgery?
[20:40]Like she is forced to have surgery. Think about that.
[20:43]You can't do that in any other branch or medicine. Like that's, oh, your neck hurts.
[20:47]I'm sorry. You may not refuse surgery. So I and most home birth midwives,
[20:53]when the vaginal births after caesarean started getting banned,
[20:56]we continue to provide them in the home setting.
[20:59]And I will always stand by the fact that the most outrageously gorgeous births that I ever attended
[21:05]were Vbacks because a woman who's given birth by a C-section with her first birth,
[21:10]who then goes on to have a natural birth at home and get to just hold her baby in her arms and
[21:16]land in her bed and be totally supported and respected and feel every sensation of that baby coming
[21:24]through the birth canal. There is nothing more powerful than that rite of passage.
[21:30]And so I provided Vbacks, not even that often. Just a few here and there women had to find me
[21:36]and ask for them. It's not like I was advertising, but I had one that became a very complicated
[21:43]situation that actually had nothing to do with the V back, but there were other medical
[21:47]complications. And when I went into the hospital with that patient, the obstetricians were
[21:52]livid and they wrote a letter and they turned me into the board of nursing, who then came
[21:57]after me. As a result, I am not doing home birth at this time. Still. Well, I'm working in a women's
[22:04]clinic, which I absolutely love. And we just also extremely important in these times right now.
[22:10]Yeah, because I will reproductive health care. Yes. No, that's amazing that you're doing that.
[22:14]Oh my gosh, that's amazing. I just feel bad because I know you loved it. Yeah, it was,
[22:19]it's good. I'm enjoying not waking up in the middle of the night.
[22:25]So now that you're back, just to close this chapter, you have this amazing journey, which you
[22:31]wrote about in a great way, like, including letters from your daughter and like her diary,
[22:36]not letters, like her diary entries and like just such a great way of showing it from a lot of
[22:41]perspectives. You came home. Now you're trying to leverage your neighbors, anything else that you
[22:47]took away from the trip. Now that you're back, that maybe we all can benefit from without having
[22:51]to take the trip. Yes, I developed my most theory of parenting, most theorem of parenting,
[22:57]which is that when the adults in the home are being creative and thriving, the children will naturally
[23:04]thrive as well. And so what I saw in families in India is that the focus is not as much on the
[23:12]kids and the kids' activities as it is in American families. And there's just more trust
[23:18]that if the kids are orbiting parents who are doing interesting things, the kids will also develop
[23:24]and be creative. So one of the things I did was just dial down all the expectations. And part of
[23:32]that was this forgiveness of myself and forgiveness to my husband for the difficulties that we'd
[23:37]had in the years leading up to that, where I had these extremely high expectations. His parenting
[23:44]style was naturally a lot more low key and go with the flow. And we weren't very good at communicating
[23:49]between those two styles and how to find that middle ground. So for giving ourselves and for giving
[23:56]myself or not being perfect and that there wouldn't be a homemade stew every night. And some nights,
[24:03]the kids could just make themselves spaghetti and a salad and call it good. And so dialing back
[24:10]expectations, reaching out more into the community. And I mean, one thing that was so wonderful
[24:17]about our trips that we were all together for this long period of time, whereas in so much of
[24:22]American life each day, everybody's going in a different direction. You know, you have school,
[24:27]you have work, you have this activity. Well, I'll meet for 20 minutes here, and then we'll all go
[24:32]to bed and do it again tomorrow. Well, when you're traveling, your days are loose, you're all
[24:37]together. And how precious that was. I think we all appreciated each other more. And we all have
[24:44]grown so much closer through that experience. And just setting aside time to just be as a family
[24:51]with our plans, without activities is something that we started doing and we still do.
[24:57]And that I would really recommend families do. That's like fun. Even if I mean saying no to
[25:02]birthday parties, no to this, no to that, it's really precious to hang out with the people that you
[25:08]love in an unscheduled way. And so what is coming next for you? Well, I'm probably going to start a
[25:17]book about my life as a midwife, my career and as a home birth midwife. It's tentatively titled
[25:24]Rebel Midwife. And it's sort of in a development stage at this time. Excellent. Can I have to read
[25:30]that one? Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? Yes. If you are inspired to write, just write,
[25:38]stories are powerful medicine. And they are what hold our culture, the stories that we put out
[25:45]into the world shape and effect how we think as a community and a society. And it also can be
[25:53]very powerful for your own healing and your own transformation. Anais Nin wrote that we write to
[26:00]taste life twice once in the moment. And then again, in the retrospect. And I certainly found
[26:07]that true in the writing of this memoir. I got to relive my journey through India and pouring
[26:14]through my journals and my daughter's diary and piecing it together. I learned so much more about
[26:19]what that trip was about through the process of writing. Because when you're traveling or living
[26:25]your life, everything's happening in real time. It's all happening so quickly. So writing is
[26:30]naturally a time for introspection and processing and integrating the experiences. So just write.
[26:36]And don't worry about how will it get published and so forth if you're feeling like writing
[26:43]just write as a practice. Write for the joy of it. Aw, thank you. That was great. Thank you so
[26:49]much for coming on mom's time to read books. Thank you for having me. Of course. This episode has
[26:54]been brought to you by Boombox Gifts. Memory boxes filled with personal messages and photos from
[26:59]friends and family for your next special occasion. BoomboxGifts.com. Thanks to Ryan and Steve at
[27:05]Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing. Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read
[27:09]books.