Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Annie McPhee, all the best. For today's episode, I'm going to start

out with a little story. It's a true story because it's about me. And this is me in about

September, maybe this past summer a few months ago in late 2024. I was starting my second year

of my PhD program and also still running the podcast

and running the YouTube channel and the social media. And I love all of those projects so much.

I'm also a mother of four and I'm married and have a bunch of relationships that are important

to me. And it got to be too much and I thought I'm going to have to cut something. But I very much did not want to because I love everything I'm doing

so much and it's so important to me. So I was talking with my husband one night and I said,

I think that I'm going to need to hire a writer. That's the only way I'm going to be able to manage

everything. And I was talking to my husband and saying, I just don't know who could be the writer to take that on. And I said, you know, who I would love to get like my dream person to collab with would be Celeste Davis. Celeste is a writer that I've been following for a long time. I'd seen her on a podcast episode also and just thought, this woman is brilliant.

And so had her on the podcast to do an episode and just thought, yeah, I so respect the way she thinks, the way she writes.

And so we have that conversation.

I went to bed.

And in the morning, I woke up with that top of mind.

Like, that was my first priority was to email Celeste.

We had not, like, really chatted except just to have her on the podcast.

And I was going to email and say, like, is there any way you would ever be interested in maybe

collabing with me?

And in my inbox was an email from Celeste

Davis to me. And here she is the fabulous amazing Celeste Davis to join me on a whole podcast episode,

but maybe we'll start by having you tell this story from your point of view, Celeste. It's such a

miraculous, happy story.

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