This week we present two stories from people for whom science and their family crossed paths.
Part 1: After her mom's version of the sex talk confuses her, Khadija Aweis is determined to make sure her little brother has clarity.
Khadija Aweis is a Health Administration graduate student at the University of Washington. Indecisive by nature, Khadija has had the pleasure of bouncing around in several healthcare settings before landing on supporting the business needs of healthcare organizations with a desire to push forth strategic needs through an equitable lens. Khadija hails from the DMV metro area and is a Cancer through and through. She loves spending time with her makeshift Seattle family and going on internet research spirals inspired by late-night anxieties.
Part 2: When Leesha Maliakal takes on an ambitious research project designing an app for marathon spectators, her supportive dad tries to help.
Leesha is a Ph.D. student in the Technology and Social Behavior program at Northwestern. Inspired by the family and communities that raised her, she now explores systems that improve the ways in which we reflect, practice, learn, grow, and support one another in our communities. Read more about her work at leesha.io.
Episode Transcript
Part 1: Khadija Aweis
Somalis are really blunt when it comes to nicknames. We tend to give them based on physical traits in order to differentiate individuals based on what they look like, some personality traits. One, for example, that I get very frequently is ‘Khadija Small Nose’, because I have a small nose.
My parents and their friends have given me several nicknames over the years. ‘Wareegto’ I got because my mom considered me a wanderer when I was hanging out with my friends too frequently, or ‘Ibaatho’ that my mom would give me, which was worshipper as a backhanded compliment when I was not worshipping enough in her standards. But my favorite of all of them was when my dad called me ‘the scientist.’
I was very curious about bodies growing up and I was incredibly curious when it came to my own. This manifested itself in sticking a button in my nose as a kid when I wanted to hide it from my sister, or ripping up a piece of newspaper and tucking it into my ear because I thought it was a pocket. Lathering my entire body with Vaseline, including my hair, and using those tiny elastic bands at the end of your hair braid as bracelets and falling asleep, which almost cost me my hand. We were very frequent patrons of the Toronto General Hospital.
Learning more about my body made me more curious and learning what I should and shouldn’t do with my body made me more curious. So you can imagine how excited I was when at seven years old, my mom called us downstairs and wanted to talk to us about puberty.
Me and my older sister sat down with her in the dining room that we never used. She started with, “Girls, when a girl becomes a woman…”
And I’m like, “What?”
“She begins to bleed from down there.”
“Bleed down where?”
She pulls out a very tiny diaper, or an incredibly large bandage, and starts walking us through how you need to wrap up down there when you get your period. She goes off on tangents about when she got her first period in Somalia and how you had these baatis that we wear to sleep usually. These are like very casual dresses that they would rip up the pieces of cloth off of and then wrap around their underwear to use as a pad. And I’m thinking I'd prefer the tiny diaper.
She goes on and on about tangents and tells us about her life and she ends up on, “When you get your period and you become a woman, don’t let anyone touch down there because you'll get pregnant. And if you get pregnant, you're not allowed to do that until you get married.”
And that’s as much of a sex talk as we get growing up.
I walked through the house that day with my chest puffed. One day, I’m going to become a woman.
Khadija Aweis shares her story with the Story Collider audience at the Royal Room in Seattle, WA in March 2020. Photo by Elizar Mercado.
My sister gets her period maybe a month later, so in hindsight my mom knew something was up. And then I get it at around 12.
I’m a little bit more conscious of a person at that point and I look over to my younger brother and think, “Who’s going to have this conversation with him?”
My dad is not into talking about anything other than conspiracy theories and God and the afterlife. And my mom really doesn’t want to step on his toes when it comes to that regard and gender bend and have that conversation with her son. So I’m thinking in my family and in my community, these uncomfortable conversations don’t necessarily happen unless someone decides to step up. So no one is going to have this dining room conversation with my younger brother unless…
So I run downstairs into the living room which houses our dial-up computer at the time. And it’s conveniently facing the kitchen where my mom is usually hanging out and on the phone, as you guys recall, the dial-up phone internet situation back in the day.
So I look back and I’m trying to make sure that my mom is not there looking at what I’m looking up on the internet, and I type in ‘male puberty’.
At this point I’m like 11 or 12. I’m not very conscious of the female anatomy and so male anatomy is just completely outside of my realm of understanding. So I’m like reading these websites like what is a scrotum? And I finally stumble upon an article called The Science and Processes of Male Puberty. And I’m thinking, “Jackpot.”
So I write down all the things in my little girl diary and I start taking observation notes about my younger brother. So I’m walking through the house like a tuft of armpit hair. Check. Some acne? Check. Growth spurts. Check. And then finally one day his voice cracks and I’m like, “It’s go time.”
I print out some sheets about the process of male puberty. I tuck them underneath my shirt so that my mom doesn’t see that I’m having this conversation with my brother because she doesn’t even want me to talk about my period in front of him, let alone his own puberty.
I run up to my room, I lay out the things for him, and then I channel my inner hooyo, or mom in Somali, and I’m like, “Idiris, come into my room.”
He follows me into my room and we talk about male puberty. And I start, “Idiris, when a boy becomes a man…” and he looks incredibly uncomfortable, but curious.
And I see like my 7-year-old self in him and the curiosity in my eye that I had when my mom was having that conversation with me. We start going through as much of male puberty as my pre‑teen mind can comprehend.
At the end of that conversation, I’m like, “Idiris, when a boy becomes a man, don’t let anyone touch down there, because you could get pregnant and mom says you're not allowed to do that until marriage.”
So we fast forward and I’m in my undergrad and I’m going through the very difficult process of letting go of a very large part of my life in growing up, which was Islam. It was something that I had grown up with. All my family was Muslim. I thought I was Muslim. My friends were Muslim. As I begin to kind of let go of that identity, I am kind of awestruck by the fact that I lost a really huge community.
I was often getting messages from my friends’ parents and extended family members who I was not very comfortable with telling me, “Put it back on.” Or getting messages from young women who also wanted to take it off and kind of shut themselves of that religious identity and not being able to come to them with any advice because I’m young and figuring it out as well.
So I did what most millennials with healthcare access do, and I went to therapy. Thank you.
Khadija Aweis shares her story with the Story Collider audience at the Royal Room in Seattle, WA in March 2020. Photo by Elizar Mercado.
I start going to therapy and I go in once a week with this amazing black woman, Monica. We go through an hour of me crying and then her helping me get closer and closer to who I am outside of this religious identity that I'd grown up with.
Then one day, as I’m walking out of the health center, I stumble upon a poster on the wall that’s calling for peer educators. One of them was sex and reproductive education. As you know, my sex education at that point was don’t have sex or you're going to get pregnant and die.
So I sign up and I interview and I meet this amazing woman, Jenna who talks to me about the different sexualities there are and how this community or peer education program brings about like a family existence or nature. I realized that I was missing that after kind of letting go of my religious identity.
So I sign up and share sexual health and reproductive education kind of becomes my home. I remember at some point I was walking down the mall of my undergrad and was carrying a basketful of condoms and a very large purple dildo so that I could go and provide a workshop for some group.
I ran into my Muslim classmate who I hadn’t seen for a really long time. And she's picking up these condoms off the floor with me and I’m like, “This is why I’m carrying these condoms. I just don’t carry all these condoms regularly.”
And she's like, “You know, the Muslim Student Association kind of needs that kind of education. It’s taboo but it’s an important thing for individuals to kind of learn.”
So I kind of took the role at that point of being like not-a-licensed sex educator for the Muslim community at that time, which was amazing, and brought me closer to a community that I thought I kind of like shut myself off of.
So when you need an 11-year-old boy who needs to be walking through the processes of puberty or when there's a 22-year-old woman who wants to have a conversation about where she should get her STD testing, I'll be there, printouts in hand, not tucked in shirt anymore, and possibly a purple dildo. Thank you.
Part 2: Leesha Maliakal
So January of this past year, I was laying in my bed and I was staring at the ceiling. I was thinking to myself, “How am I going to get my shit together in life?”
I was thinking about my financial goals and I was thinking about how I was going to balance that with wanting to be a productive grad student and also take care of myself and my mental and physical health. I was thinking about how was I supposed to carve out time to spend time with family and friends at home amid all of my goals.
And I wasn't just thinking about the next couple of years. I was thinking about the future. I was thinking about how one day I want to be a kick-ass faculty at an R1 institution. How am I going to balance that with also wanting to be a kick-ass mom, like my parents were for me growing up when I was a kid?
Growing up, calling my dad a helicopter parent would have been the understatement of the year. He did everything for us. I remember when we were kids, we would get home from high school and he would clear the dining room table and he would set it up as this little study table because education was a huge priority in our family.
Leesha Maliakal shares her story with the Story Collider audience at The Cards Against Humanity Theater in Chicago, IL in July 2019. Photo by Elias Rios.
In between studying, he would make time and gather us all for these little exercise drills where we would go up and use his weights upstairs. In between the exercise and after we finished that, we would go back and we would have dinner together as a family. And he would make time at the end of dinner for all of us to say the rosary together, because spending time with family and praying together it was a huge priority growing up. Somehow, he managed to magically balance all of these things every night.
It didn't change when I got to college. I did my undergrad maybe 20 minutes away from home. And during my undergrad, I actually started this research that I continued into grad school that was about runners and spectators and being able to support spectators in cheering for runners at races.
So some spectators when they go to these races, like half marathons, they have different goals that they actually care about. They're not just there to cheer for their own runner. They're actually interested in supporting other people in the community. But it can be really difficult to make decisions about when do I cheer for who when a lot of the technology is geared to helping you cheer for your runner.
So a lot of my research was about building this app and taking it out to actual races and testing it and seeing if we could help spectators with these two goals. My dad knew this was a huge priority for me in undergrad and grad school and he did whatever he could to protect that time so that I could focus on my research and took care of everything else for me.
I remember in undergrad he would show up at the back door of my apartment with a little takeout container of the curry that he made that morning, and another little takeout container of a pomegranate that he peeled just hours before to drop it off so I wouldn't have to cook.
And I remember if he couldn't be there physically, he would call me on the phone and he would ask, “Is there anything that I could do to help you out?”
In particular, I remember this one call where he was just asking me if I could come home for the weekend and spend time with the family.
I remember telling him, “Daddy, I really don't have time this weekend. I have this huge race I've been preparing for it for like three or four weeks now. It's a big deal and I don't know if I can make the time.”
And very sneakily, he would ask all of these little questions trying to figure out where was this race, what time is it at, when do you have to get there.
And I told him, “Well, you know, the race starts at 7:00. I'm probably going to have to get there like an hour-and-a-half before because I've got to recruit users. I mean, if I think about the travel time, I'm probably going to have to get up at like 4:00 or 4:30, leave. I'll just take a Lyft, because that's going to be reimbursed by the lab because that's part of the transportation. So that's my plan so far.”
He paused and he said with such certainty, “Okay, Leesha. I'm going to be there at 4:30 tomorrow morning to pick you up. Be ready outside.”
And I just thought, “What? Like I literally just had a conversation with you talking to you about how I have everything set up. You don't need to go out of your way to make these ridiculous sacrifices to protect me, because I've got this.”
I tried to fight with him over the phone and let him know he didn't have to do this but this was non‑negotiable. He was going to be there at 4:30 the next morning.
Sure enough, I went downstairs that morning and he was there waiting outside in his Jeep. I got into the car and I sat next to him.
I was getting ready for this race, so I was sitting there and I had these two phones in my hand. I was trying to set up one as a spectator and one is a runner so that I could test to see if everything was working that morning, if the notifications were going through. And in between, as we're driving to the race, he's interjecting and asking me these questions, because that's the time we have to catch up that weekend.
And he's asking me, “Well, Leesha, how are you doing? Is everything okay? Are you managing the stress? How's this project going? Do you feel good about the race?”
And I'm just thinking, “No, I absolutely do not. I was up till 2:00 a.m. debugging to make sure that I had a deployable app that I could take to this race. No, I am not okay.”
But of course I don't tell him any of this. I tell him, “Well, yeah. Things are fine. I mean, things are hard, whatever. It's okay.” And I'm just mumbling trying to set these apps up.
In between, he asked me, “Should, do you want to pray the rosary on the way there. Maybe that'll help you relax?”
And I'm just thinking, “Hell, no. That is the last thing that I want to spend my time doing. If I don't get these apps working, if something's wrong I need to fix it before this race,” but of course don't tell him that either.
I turn to him and I say, “Well, you know, maybe not right now. I have to set up these apps. Maybe we could pray on the way home.”
So we approached the race and we're getting to Grant Park. We get to the parking lot and we see that the lot is full. I panic and I look at my phone and I see 60 minutes left to start recruiting participants.
I turn to him and I say, “Daddy, I've got to go. I'm just going to hop out right here. I'll walk. I'll meet you somewhere, okay? Don't worry about it.”
And I grab the door handle and I'm about to crack open the door when he stops me and he says, “Leesha, you just need to relax, okay? We'll get there when we get there. Everything is going to be fine.”
I'm just thinking, “There's no way in hell everything's going to be fine. What are you talking about?”
I, of course, don't say that to him either. I'm just sitting in the passenger seat, staring outside the passenger window, fuming, and waiting till we get to the next parking garage.
Another 10 minutes pass and we get there and we park the car. I'm looking at the clock and now we're a 10-minute walk away from the start area of this race. And I'm thinking I have 40, maybe 30 minutes left to recruit participants. I'm screwed. I just beeline through the crowds trying to get to that start area.
I notice when I look behind me that my dad's falling behind. He's trying his best to keep up but he has bad knees and he can't.
I go back and I rush to him and I say, “Daddy, I've got to go. I will meet you at the end of the race at that Starbucks, okay?”
I go do my thing and I go test the app and I watch it at the race and see everything happening.
He goes and he waits at that Starbucks on Michigan Avenue that he always waited at whenever he would take me to a race. He waited from maybe 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. just sitting there, drinking coffee and staring out the window people-watching.
And I would go do my thing and I'd come back at the end of the race and I'd sit down. He's already waited till 10:00, and I crack open my laptop. I start to pull up my database and I'm looking at all the data to see what happened at the race. Did people cheer? What happened? Did everything go okay?
And he's sitting there waiting on this third cup of coffee, maybe, people-watching.
By the time I'm done, another hour passes and I close my laptop. I tell him, “We can go now,”
And he wasn't complaining the entire time. He was just there.
We get up and we walk back to the Jeep, back to that parking garage. I get in the car and I can tell you on the car ride home we did not pray the rosary because I had passed out in the passenger seat while he drove us home, even though he probably got less sleep than I did that night.
I remember the Friday morning after that race, I was walking to lab and I got a call from home. I picked up as I'm walking and I hear my sister's voice on the other line. Her voice sounds broken in a way that I have never heard her voice before. And I'm sitting there trying to process what she's saying.
I feel my breath quicken in a way that I've never felt. And I do that thing that you see in the movies where you try and put your head between your knees to relax, and that didn't help either. I couldn't focus on my breath in that moment.
I felt my entire body collapse as I was listening to what my sister was telling me. I grabbed the nearest thing that I could to support my weight, a light pole, and I just fell into the grass and I put my head on my knees. That morning I had found out that my dad passed away in his sleep.
I took about a month off from research and I tried to spend that time just wrapping our heads around the financial and legal mess that was at home now. We barely had enough time to recover as a family emotionally.
And I remember coming back to lab and just trying to make some sort of progress and go through the motions. I would crack open my laptop at 9:00 a.m. and I would load up all my data analysis documents on my monitors and then my phone would light up. Then the corner of my laptop would start to explode with notifications. Shit was going down at home.
Leesha Maliakal shares her story with the Story Collider audience at The Cards Against Humanity Theater in Chicago, IL in July 2019. Photo by Elias Rios.
I got a text saying, “What's going on with the Sprint bill? Did anyone pay it? Because now, my text and my calls aren't working.”
My sister would message me and say, “Hey, did anybody check to see if Mommy's paycheck came through, because we're not going to be able to make rent if that's not in the bank account.”
“Is anyone free to come home this weekend to spend time with her? Because she has to pack up the house. She has to sign her will and prepare her will. She has to move.”
And I just felt so overwhelmed in those moments.
I remember sitting at my desk and feeling the tears well up in my eyes and I didn't know how to explain myself to my peers next to me. I got up and I rushed down the hall hoping no one would see me and I found the nearest stairwell. I waited till the door closed behind me and I would sit on the radiator and I would take a sharp breath and just weep silently, hoping that no one would find me.
It wasn't just the sadness. I was experiencing anger. I was so pissed at my dad. I was pissed at him for dying when he did, for leaving us with all of this shit to deal with without his help. I was pissed at him for tearing me from my research and the things that I felt like I needed to focus on at that time in my life so that I could take care of all of this stuff at home.
And at the same time I realized my dad had been doing all of this for us. He had been holding my family together and helping us balance all the goals that we wanted in our lives. Maybe in a way similar to how my app was trying to help spectators do what they wanted, he was there taking care of us.
It was like this for a year-and-a-half, day after day, until this past January when I was laying in bed and I realized this is not sustainable. I need to find a way to not feel pulled between everything that I need to do and ask myself what do I actually want and how am I going to give myself and commit myself in the ways that I want towards the goals that I care about.
And I'm standing here seven months later after that January. Yesterday marked two years after my dad passed. I could say that things are a little bit better. I am entering my fourth year of my PhD and I kept testing that app. I took it to a race and I saw the glorious outcome that spectators were able to cheer for both their runners and other runners.
I turned that into my first, first author-paper submission, which was a huge milestone for me not only in my PhD but just personally, because I felt like I wasn't making any movement over the past two years.
And it wasn't just my research. I was able to do that because I was balancing my research with taking care of myself. I was protecting my Mondays and Wednesdays so that I could cook at home and eat in a way that I wasn't ordering takeout every night. I protected my Tuesday and Thursday nights where I would go to my yoga studio and try and do something about my lower back pain and also learn to take care of my mental and physical health a little bit more. And I made time every couple of weekends to go home and spend time with my family, with my mom, my sisters, my new nephew.
And I want to make it clear that this didn't happen overnight. I didn't just wake up and everything was okay. It wasn't magic. It took a lot of really deep focusing and reflecting on what do I actually want for myself and how am I going to honor everything that I want and value in the ways that I choose to act and spend my time.
To be totally fair, things are not perfect today. Shit still hits the fan. You should have seen me try and plan my July 4th weekend with guests a couple weeks ago when I was trying to figure out how am I going to get this research done but also spend time with my family and also spend time with my boyfriend's friends. Stuff is still messy.
But here's the thing. Over these past seven months, I've been really trying to practice. I've been trying to honor myself and all that I value and that takes focus and dedication and practice and things might not be perfect today but that gives me hope. Thank you.