EPISODE 3 - Shereen Marisol Meraji
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
As a woman, there's this expectation you procreate, it's easy-peasy. So there's something about it that makes you feel like you're not living up to what you're supposed to do. This thing, it's very natural. It's very easy. Why isn't it working for you?
Tyler Greene:
Hi, there, welcome to This Is My Family, a podcast about building a life with the people you love. I'm your host, Tyler Greene and I'm so glad that you're here. On today's show, I talked to one of my favorite podcasts personalities of all time, Shereen Marisol Meraji. She hosts NPR's Code Switch and today we're talking about what it's like to grow up in a mixed-identity household. In her case, Iranian and Puerto Rican. Later in the interview, she opens up about her struggles to have children of her own. For those who haven't heard our podcast before, welcome.
A little bit about me and why we're here. I am a gay man living in California. My husband is from China and we're raising a baby. I started this podcast as a celebration and exploration of the beautifully, messy ways we make our families and the ways our families make us. I first met our guests Shereen when I produced a live taping of her show Code Switch. It was a sold-out show for over 1,000 of her fans on a cold Friday night in Chicago. She's created a brilliant show that tells stories about race, identity, and belonging. Her last names, Marisol and Meraji, highlight her mixed race upbringing.
The daughter of Puerto Rican mother and an Iranian father, Shereen has always had to navigate between multiple cultures. A few weeks ago, Shereen posted an image on Instagram from a doctor's office. The caption read, to all the women out there battling in fertility, I see you and I know personally how much this sucks. And to all of you with painful endometriosis and fibroids, I see you too. You're holding it down like nothing is wrong and you're suffering. We so often talk about the happy and beautiful parts of having children, but it's not often that we make space to learn about the difficult moments. I asked Shereen if she would be gamed to talk about her fertility journey, and I'm so grateful that she said yes.
Before we get to that, though, I did have a lot of questions for her about how she navigated her multiple identities growing up. I myself was born in the Midwest, good old US of A. My husband was born and raised in China, as I said before and our baby is a product of IVF and surrogacy, with my sister's egg and my husband's sperm. So we are raising a mixed race baby. I started by asking Shereen to tell me more about her parents and what it was like growing up.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
My mom is Puerto Rican and she grew up both in Puerto and the United States, going back and forth a lot because my grandfather was in the military, like a lot of Puerto Ricans. She came to the United States. She was in Puerto Rico at the university of Puerto Rico, and she was in her early twenties. I think she was about 20 when my grandfather got stationed in Sacramento on McClellan Air Force Base and so she decided, and my aunt decided to leave Puerto Rico where they were going to university and come so that they could live closer to their four brothers, four younger brothers and my grandparents in Sacramento. That's really where my family stayed. So my mom ended up going to UC Davis. She was an undergrad at UC Davis and that's where she met my father. My father was in graduate school.
He was studying agriculture and studying on a visa and they met at the international student center. My mom would spend a lot of time at the international student center. My dad did too. From what I understand my dad's visa expired and he was going to have to go back to Iran. They had been dating for a little while and they decided to get married. So they did. My dad became a citizen because my mom was a citizen, because Puerto Ricans are citizens. Not long after my mom got pregnant with me and at that time, my parents were living in Fresno, California.
My dad was working on a dairy farm. My mom wasn't working at all. My dad was getting paid $2 an hour. It was really difficult for them to make ends meet, pay for their apartment. So they decided to move back in with my grandparents, my Puerto Rican grandparents and they lived with my Puerto Rican grandparents for a while. So my grandmother always says that she's my real mom, because she was really helping my mom take care of me and when my parents ended up getting their own home in Sacramento, a few years later, my grandmother was like ... Threw a fit, I guess, that my mom was taking her daughter away from her.
So all that to say, I have an incredibly close relationship with my grandparents who are Puerto Rican, who speak Spanish. Spanish was the first language that I heard all around me. I just grew up speaking back to them in English, but they were much more comfortable speaking Spanish. So Spanish was everywhere. That was a part of my life. My grandparents were like my parents. They cooked dinner for us every night. My grandmother cooked dinner for us and we would go there for dinner. Like, this is how I grew up. I was surrounded by my Puerto Rican family.
Tyler Greene:
So when it came to things like food and holiday traditions, which side of the family ended up winning out on things like that?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
My Puerto Rican side went out all the time every time, for a lot of reasons. My aunts and uncles and my cousins and my grandparents were in Sacramento too. My grandfather was in the military. So he was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base. He was in the air force. So everybody kind of followed him from Puerto Rico to Sacramento. So I had a lot of Puerto Rican families surrounding me. Really loving, very open. We did Puerto Rican traditional things, and Christmas Eve was a really big deal. We had huge parties all the time and I went to Catholic school. I just grew up surrounded by [Latinidad 00:06:28].
Tyler Greene:
So how does your dad fit into this very Puerto Rican picture you were growing up in?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
My dad, like I said, is from Iran. He came out here to study. He ended up marrying a woman who was not from his culture. A different religion. My father is Muslim, Shia Muslim, and his family is very, very, very religious. In fact, my great-grandfather was an Ayatollah from Qom. So the religious center of Iran and my father's family disowned him when he married my mother. They were very upset. They had another plan for him, another woman, more suitable for him to marry who was the same religious background and somebody that the family approved of and picked, and my mom is Catholic. She's Puerto Rican.
They had never met her. This was just not their plan for him. So he distanced himself from them and they distanced themselves from him, and I really had absolutely no connection with my Iranian side of the family growing up at all. So none of those traditions ... And my dad, I think he was so bitter and resentful about what went down, that he did not speak Farsi in the home. He did not talk about growing up, any of his traditions. He really was a stranger to me in that respect my entire life.
Tyler Greene:
How did you bond with your dad when you were younger?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I was a real sporty kid, and he loves soccer and I was really good at it. So we bonded over soccer and we both love the outdoors. My mom is ... My mom really likes to be inside cooking and reading and those types of things and my dad loves to be outside in nature. He's obsessed with nature. So we would go on hikes and we would go camping and I loved camping and my brother didn't. So it was like my dad and I, this was the thing that we did together, and he taught me about the trees in the forest and which one's a Douglas fir, which one's are redwood, all of those things.
God, don't make me ... Every time I talk about my dad, I cry. So we bonded over those types of things. It wasn't necessarily over culture, but it was cultural, because Iranians, like they have this really deep connection to the outdoors and all of those things. So I think he was trying to share his culture in the way that he could with me. So, that's how we bonded.
Tyler Greene:
You still had his last name, but the absence of any traditions or any ... Really anything, and Shereen. So I guess I just have a curiosity around how that played out in you, but also in him.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Well, for me, it was really confusing to be surrounded by a family of Puerto Ricans where Spanish was their first language and pronouncing my name was really difficult. So it was ... My grandmother called me [Chereenga 00:09:50] and [Chereen 00:09:51] and I was always like ... And my middle name is Marisol. I was always like, why couldn't I have been Marisol? It would've made my life so much easier.
Tyler Greene:
It's a beautiful name.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Right? Shereen is a beautiful name too, but nobody could appreciate it. It means sweet in Farsi, all of these things that I know my parents wanted to give some sort of gift of my father's ancestry and heritage to me. So they were like, yes, Shereen, it makes sense and it makes sense for a few reasons. It makes sense because it's easy for Americans to pronounce, much easier than Marisol. My mom didn't want me to be called Marisol, like aerosol. She just couldn't deal with that. So, they gave me Shereen, but then it was also connected to my heritage.
So I think that they were doing something really beautiful by giving me that name, but then there wasn't much follow through in terms of raising me in a household that had Iranian traditions, or that was at all grounded or steeped in anything Persian. For me, that was really complicated and hard and it got harder to explain when kids were really starting to understand differences, starting to ask questions and not really understanding, well, wait, so your dad doesn't speak Spanish, so he's not Latino. Well, what is he and what is this language and do you speak it?
All of these questions started coming up for me, which just made me honestly, and this is around junior high when it really started, honestly, made me want to distance myself from that part of who I was. Basically saying, "You pronounce my last name Meraji and I'm basically Mexican. You don't understand what a Puerto Rican is because I grew up in California. I'm basically Mexican, same difference," doing that whole thing to just make it easier so that I didn't have to answer a million questions all the time about who are you, what you, where you come from? This is so weird. You're not like any of us, that kind of thing. So for my dad, I think it was hard for my dad.
Now that I look back, I think he probably did feel a little bit isolated and alienated. Because ... First of all, he's a very ... And I don't think this is cultural, but my dad is just a very private person. He's a very quiet sort of introspective person, and my Puerto Rican side, all of them are boisterous and loud. I don't mean to make stereotypes here, but they're those kinds of people and they love a party and my dad just didn't have that same kind of personality that meshed with what was going on in my Puerto Rican family. So I think it would have been nice for him to have a connection to an identity that he grew up with and a place of comfort and he did not have that. I think his place of comfort was our nuclear family, the four of us. My brother, who, by the way, they named Mark Anthony.
Which is like, so Puerto Rican, Marco Antonio. My mom and me, I think that was his comfort zone. Then when it came to the broader link to my Puerto Rican family, I think, he always ... I could tell he was always on the margins. Getting back to Christmas, he was kind of shy. He was in the corner. He doesn't really drink. That was never a part of his upbringing. When we would open presents during Christmas, he always just seemed a little bit awkward with the whole thing. So, I think it was hard for my dad and, my dad has Parkinson's now and he's not doing well at all. I haven't ... I really want to have deeper conversations with him about how he feels about that, because I think that he does regret not ... I'm so sorry.
Tyler Greene:
It's okay.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I think he does regret not sharing his culture with us, and I think that he sees how it's really left us wanting and left a hole in my brother and I not really understanding who we are and having to piece it together. I think he's realizing now because his life is coming to an end, I think he's realizing now that it wasn't good for him ... It wasn't good for him either to keep that from us. So I don't even know if that answers your question. It's like so complicated.
Tyler Greene:
Yeah, it does. Something that I was ... Thank you for sharing that and I think I'm thinking ... I question that I was thinking of while you were talking is that, it's not the same situation at all, but my dad has chronic lymphoma leukemia and is also at the end of his life. You just start looking at things in a much more crystallized and immediate way, and these conversations that we really need to have for ourselves and for them obviously don't become any easier, but they become like-
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Urgent-
Tyler Greene:
Much more urgent. As you're talking, I'm thinking about like, my husband's mom is supposed to be here, but because of the pandemic and racism, she's still in China, and she made all this Chinese food for us when she was here. She took care of Sam for the first six months of his birth. Now I'm finding myself getting emotional, and now she's stuck there and she sees him every day on FaceTime and it's beautiful, but she's not here. So then I've taken to learning how to cook Chinese food and then started taking Mandarin classes.
Every Monday, I'm so fucking tired by the time I get to Mandarin class that I'm like Niihau, that's all I can do and still ... So the question I have for you is, as you're thinking about, and building your own family and having your own kids, how are you going to approach some of these things, language, traditions, and helping them understand the story that we just outlined?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
My husband and I are trying to have kids, and we've talked about this. It's really important to make sure that our kids are going to school where it's either bilingual education or they're going to school after school to learn Farsi, to learn Spanish. That we make sure that that's a priority for them, and that we learn right alongside of them. They're probably going to surpass us. Very fast-
Tyler Greene:
Sam already speaks more Spanish than I do. Day care is Spanish-speaking only. So I'm like, I know he's saying words. I just don't know what they are right now.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
We're just going to have to be okay with that, but what I want to do is be able to provide my children with something that I didn't have and felt like a real loss for me. So I have an opportunity to give that to my kids. I also don't blame my parents at all for not doing that. I'm sure it was really difficult, where English is the common language in the home and they were working all the time and they were young parents trying to raise two kids in a country that wasn't their home country. There was a lot going on and they thought that the best thing for us would be to make sure that we were really good students and we got our English down perfect and we went to college. Those were the things that they were really focused on and they weren't as focused on passing down their own cultures or traditions or language. I don't blame them for that. I get it
Tyler Greene:
Still ahead, I talk with Shereen about her struggles to grow her own family through IVF. If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple podcasts, follow on Spotify or add us on any of the other great podcast apps out there. Stay with us. More Shereen up next.
Hey friends, one of the first podcasts that featured this story of how my family began to take shape was the one and only RISK!, hosted by Kevin Alison. RISK! is the show where people tell true stories they never thought they dare to share in public. Since 2009, RISK! has been featuring some of the most intimate, most radically honest, first-person storytelling you'll find anywhere. People of all walks of life have come out about hilarious, moving and sometimes extremely challenging and experiences they'd lived through and transcended.
The kinds of jaw-dropping stories people normally share with their therapists, and the kind of show that listeners say changed their lives. So be sure to listen to RISK! at risk-show.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the show. Shereen is building her own family now. She got married two years ago. I asked her to tell me more about her husband.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
My husband's name is Nicholas Espiritu, and he is from California, like me, he's from Northern California, San Jose. We met playing Capoeira, which is an Afro-Brazilian martial art. We met in Los Angeles doing that, and we just became friends. I was much better than him at Capoeira, so I didn't pay him that much mind at that time, but he was a civil rights attorney and I worked for NPR and we had a lot of things in common in terms of the subject matter that we were interested in.
So we were friends for years and years, like eight years. Then when we were both ... Found ourselves single, and in our late thirties, he was like, "Hey, what do you think?" I was like, "What? You're my friend. I don't know about this." but we started dating and then the courtship was very, very fast. We got married and then we were older and we were like, oh, we want to have kids. Okay. This might be more difficult at 38 and 39 years old. Then we embarked really fast on trying to get pregnant and trying to make a family in that way.
Tyler Greene:
Did you both always know that you wanted?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I love kids. I just assumed I would have them, and my husband was in a long relationship with someone who didn't want kids and I think that solidified his understanding of how much he did want them.
Tyler Greene:
I saw a photo you posted recently on Instagram, where you opened up about the struggles to have a baby and your fertility journey. First of all, why did you decide to post that specifically?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I think that I decided to post it because ... When Code Switch really started becoming popular, all these people started following me. All of a sudden there was a couple thousand people following me, and I thought this is an opportunity to be a little bit of an example, like a good example, and just put out there that not everything is hunky-dory, and by the way, I'm struggling with infertility while holding down a really hard job.
My personal infertility stems from the fact that I have endometriosis and I have it very severely. I was diagnosed with it about a decade ago. I just wanted to put that out there, like that ... I think it was maybe a little bit therapeutic for me too, and people do talk about IVF. There's a lot of groups. There's a lot of virtual groups. There's a lot of in-person groups. There are a lot of forums where people are talking about IVF, but I feel like when it comes to the public and how we're having these conversations in public in a broad way, it's not happening. So it was a little bit of an entree into saying, "Hey, I'm going through this too."
Tyler Greene:
Why do you think it is that it feels so sort of taboo to talk about infertility.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
There's just the fact that as a woman, there's this expectation you procreate. It's easy-peasy. So there's something about it that makes you feel like you're not living up to what you're supposed to do. This thing, it's very natural. It's very easy. Why isn't it working for you? There's that part of it. I think there's the part of it too, that there's plenty of kids out there that need homes and who need to be adopted.
So why are you going through all of this hell and spending all of this money on something where ... Just so that you can get pregnant with your own egg and sperm or whatever. I think there's a conversation happening around that, that I'm also having in my head, like, is this ... Why are we doing this? Why are we putting ourselves through this? I don't know. I don't want to put myself out there to be criticized by people who don't understand my situation or what I'm going through.
Tyler Greene:
So where are you at right now in the process?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So we started trying and this was without science, without Western medicine. We were just trying before we got married in June, of 2016 on our own and trying for months and months and nothing was happening. I knew I had endometriosis, I knew it might be difficult. So I thought, okay, well maybe we should talk to a doctor and see what's going on. So I went to Kaiser around 2016 and I started the process then, and with Kaiser, they have you do an intrauterine insemination first before they have you do IVF. I wasn't covered for any of this. So an intrauterine insemination, IUI is cheaper than IVF. So I was ... But it was still not cheap, let me tell you. So I'm spending ... At that time I was spending thousands of dollars out of pocket to do these IUIs, which weren't working and they have you on Clomid, they have you on all kinds of hormones.
So we were doing that process. I was feeling like incredibly resentful. I'm also ... We launched a podcast at the same time, Code Switch. Things were getting really stressful in my life and I was just like, oh my God, I felt all kinds of pressure. I have to do this now, I'm getting old. Oh my gosh, I have this job. I'm super stressed, but I'm not supposed to be stressed because you can't be stressed if you're going to get pregnant. They tell you that all the time. "You've got to be calm, you can't be stressed."
So anyway, I was doing all these IUIs. It was really expensive. It was really affecting our marriage, and I was just like, "We need to stop. I can't do this anymore. If we're going to stay married, I'm very resentful. I'm very angry. I feel so much pressure. I need to put the pause button on this," and I did. We were trying naturally. I was doing acupuncture. I was not drinking. I was trying to eat all of the right things, all of that stuff, and we did that for a while.
Then NPR decided that they were going to have health insurance that covered IVF for the first time and that was kicking in, in 2020. So when that happened, I thought, well, that huge pressure and stress of the money will be off our shoulders. So maybe this is the right time to just go in hardcore IVF, let's do this. We made that decision and then COVID happened.
Tyler Greene:
Jesus Christ.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So that was like, we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know if the clinics were going to stay open. We didn't know if we should be going to the clinic and whether we were going to be exposing ourselves to all of these things. Finally in May, when we realized, okay, this is what we need to do. We need to wear masks. We need to wash our hands. We need to stay far away from each other. When it was really clear that there were protocols around COVID we did the first round of IVF for real, for real, and that was in May and I've just been on that journey hardcore since may. So not that long for the hardcore part of it.
Tyler Greene:
Most people, actually, to your point earlier, don't know. So part of why people act so stupid is that they don't know until they make shit up and assume things. I'm also curious about the physical and emotional toll it takes, and I think those two things are probably intertwined. The process and results, I guess.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So in our case, it was like the sperm looks good enough for a man his age. Your egg reserves look good enough for women your age. Yeah, you're good candidates for IVF. Let's see how this happens. We don't quite know how endometriosis and your endometriosis is going to play into this. We just don't have that information. So let's go hardcore IVF, pump you full of the drugs. Then it comes to, I'm putting hormones into myself three in the morning, two in the evening. Toward the end, I'm taking this human growth hormone, which is not FDA approved and not actually covered by my insurance and very expensive. So you're bloated, you're tired. You're hormonal, you're up and down and then you go to get retrieved and you're hoping, hoping that you have enough eggs to do something with, because the odds are not great.
So you get 10 eggs. Well, maybe seven of those eggs fertilize. Well, then maybe two of them get to the stage that you want them to be, but really there's only one that's viable in the end and for a woman my age, they're saying that it takes like five rounds of IVF to get that one healthy egg that you can transfer into your womb. Then you're like, well, is my womb in good enough shape to actually grow this baby? I haven't even gotten to that stage yet because we haven't yet gotten an egg that has been healthy enough in the last four rounds that we've done to be transferred. So throughout the whole process, there's just like all of these ways that you can be super disappointed.
Tyler Greene:
So foUr, I guess they call them, is it four cycles or four ... Is that right? Four cycles of IVF that you've gone through or done-
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So I guess these are cycles, but I haven't gone through the entire cycle. So I haven't had a transfer yet because I have yet to have a good enough embryo come out of all of this, to transfer into my uterus.
Tyler Greene:
I have a question. I want to acknowledge that it's possibly none of my fucking business, but I'm just going to ask it. Tell me it's not my fucking business if it isn't, but are there thresholds for you emotionally or actually not even emotionally, like literally where you're like, I'm not going to do this anymore? Then if you're not going to do this anymore, is it ... Are there other options? Is there other egg donors ... Or adoption or whatever options out there?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
So I've been talking to Nico about this because we're still positive. We're still trying to be positive. We're going to do this a couple more times and see if we can get that embryo, but he has seen what a toll it's taken on me and he's like, "It doesn't matter. We want to be parents and so let's talk about adoption." I have always been really open to adoption. He really wanted to have ... Wanted to see me pregnant, wanted to have a baby. That was really important to him and have it be our baby and our genetics and all of that stuff, but I think now that he's seen how difficult the process has been and what a toll it has taken on me physically, mentally, everything, we're now having a much more open conversation about alternatives, adoption being one that's really high on the list.
We're having little discussions about donor eggs. Should we do that? Then surrogacy has always been something that was on the table just because I had endometriosis and because I had fibroids. So if we do get this beautiful, healthy embryo, that makes it to the blastocyst stage, we are very open to having a surrogate carry because it's just been such a journey to get that far. If we do get that far that, gosh, I don't want to ... And waste is such a weird word, but I wouldn't want to waste that embryo on a sub par uterus, which could be what we're looking at with my uterus and my doctor ... We haven't been focused on that yet because we've been really super hyper-focused on getting that embryo and getting that healthy embryo. The next stage is like, is my uterus ... Can it handle this? Is it in good shape? So, surrogacy has been a conversation that we've had and I think we're feeling pretty comfortable with.
Tyler Greene:
What have you learned about yourself and maybe your partnership with your husband by going through this journey so far?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
I knew this was going to be hard, but this has been, especially the early stages of this, just coming to terms with how difficult things were going to be. It was harder than I imagined and it's really, we ... It tested us and it tested our relationship a lot. What we've been able to do is have better communication. I didn't realize that we just didn't have great communication skills, and there was a lot of resentment that I was feeling, and it was coming out in just really fiery anger and being incredibly accusatory, not using I statements, all of those things. I was in therapy trying to figure that out, my husband wasn't. So he actually ended up doing some therapy, which really helped our communication. So he could analyze his side of things, like where was he going wrong and how was he feeling?
He was very much feeling like, I would say that I was going to do this, and then I would back out and he was feeling like, hey, you're not following through on something that we had decided together. My feeling was, you're not the one getting shots of hormones, feeling hormonal, basically almost getting fired at work because you're being such a raging bitch to everyone. That's not true. That's ... I'm going a little bit overboard there, but seriously, I was worried that I was going to get fired from this career that I had worked so hard for.
I couldn't do all of this stuff at the same time. I needed a break. So every time I asked for a break, he was like, "Hey, we had a plan and you're going against the plan." So he was resentful to me and it just ... We had to get to a place where we could communicate without blaming one another and without being really harsh to one another, to see where each other was coming from. It's really strengthened our relationship, I think.
Tyler Greene:
Is there anything else you want to talk about, as it pertains to this journey specifically in building your family?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
The one thing that has really helped me is to develop relationships with my friends' kids. I know that for some women it's really, really hard when other people get pregnant around them, and when they're trying to get pregnant, in my case, it just gave me hope because first of all, a lot of my friends are the same age as I am, and also were struggling with some infertility issues. So when they were able to get pregnant and have their children, it just felt like, okay, there's hope here. Also making sure that I'm a part of their children's lives, not their lives, but their children's lives.
I have children around me and they feel very much like my family and it's been so helpful, and it's really brought me a lot of happiness to forge these relationships with my dear friends who have young children. It's been awesome and made me also realize that I can have a family in different ways and I can have children in different ways and have children be a part of my life, even if they're not my own children in my own home. So that's been great.
Tyler Greene:
Any other advice like that, for people who are listening, who are going through something similar?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Be kind to yourself because this ain't easy and there are not that many people in your life who are going to totally understand what's happening. So seek out people who do and talk to them.
Tyler Greene:
So when you picture your family, maybe five years from now or 10, I'm curious, what does it look like, and maybe what are you doing on a Sunday afternoon together?
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
See, my therapist always says that. She's like, "You've got to really picture this, to help you get excited about it." There's a part of me that feels scared to picture these things because I'm like, "Oh my gosh, then I don't want to get really disappointed if it doesn't happen," but I would love ... In my mind, I see twin girls and I see my husband and I playing with them and our dog in the park with other children, and just speaking to them in Spanish, which I don't know if that'll happen because both of us are really still trying to learn Spanish, but that's like a part of this image that I have, and we're all happy and we're smiling.
Tyler Greene:
It's a beautiful image.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Now that's going to be out there, and what if it doesn't happen, Tyler?
Tyler Greene:
I think what happens will be beautiful because it's you, and I think that, I'm really grateful that you have taken this timeout and created the space with me specifically on this show, because this is literally the point is expanding the definition of what family means, because it does mean something different to everybody yet the emotion is very similar, the raw human emotion of it. So thank you.
Shereen Marisol Meraji:
Oh, thank you. This was great. How much do I owe you for this session?
Tyler Greene:
That is so funny. As I listened to Shereen talking about her IVF journey, it occurred to me that we just don't know what's going on with people, especially in the days of pandemic isolation, and when someone like Shereen shares this with such honesty, it's a real gift. I was also struck by Shereen's stories of her father and how moved she is when speaking of him. When our elders are near the end of their lives, it starts to sharpen our focus on the history and traditions they linked us to.
I loved that she's digging in and making those commitments to learn languages, fill her home with food and have the necessary, but uncomfortable conversations she needs to have with her loved ones. Shereen's story for me is really universal. We grow by moving through things that make us uncomfortable and connect as much as possible with the people who matter to us. Even if you didn't grow up in a mixed-identity household, I know there's something about your background that you don't yet know judging from all the 23andMe and ancestry.com ads, I'm guessing more of you have the details of your upbringing than ever before.
So dig in, then find a recipe or track down a relative you haven't talked to you in forever, and learn something new about the people who came before you. Your homework for this week is to email me and share your family story. It's tyler@T-I-M-Fshow.com. If it's easier, feel free to DM us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram @T-I-M-F show in each spot. We want to know who's out there, and if you're saying, "Gee, I have a story to tell," I especially want you to send me a note.
Go ahead, pause this, do it now. On next week's episode, we talked to someone about how to stay afloat during these tumultuous times, especially as it comes to engaging with difficult family members. It's the legendary meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg.
Sharon Salzberg:
We get to know our motives more the more mindful we are. Why don't you just ask yourself, what do I want to see more than anything to come out of this conversation? Do I want to be seen as right? Do I want a resolution? Do I want to just convey my interest? Do I want to grind them into dust?
Tyler Greene:
Thanks for listening to This Is My Family. You can find Shereen on Twitter and Instagram @RadioMirage, that's M-I-R-A-G-E. She hosts NPR's Code Switch, which you can and should find wherever you get your podcasts. Again, you can find this show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @timfshow. Our website is timfshow.com. This show is a production of the storyproducer.com and it's produced by me, Tricia Bobeda and Jackie Ball. It's edited and mixed by Adam Yoffe. Our music is by Andrew Edwards. Our community manager is Anika Exum and last, but certainly not least our art director is my handsome husband, Ziwu Zhou.
If you're digging the show, I'd love for you to write us a thoughtful review and shoot us those five stars on Apple podcasts. Be sure to hit subscribe or follow on your favorite app. If you're on Spotify, don't forget to hit follow, and also be sure to switch on notifications to get informed of new episodes as soon as they come out. Thanks for listening. I'm Tyler Greene, and until next time stay beautiful and messy.
Sam:
Is the podcast all done, Sam?