Well, hello, everyone. It's Morgan Harper-Nichols here and welcome back to the podcast. It has been a very

long time since I last recorded an episode. And since my last episode, I have since graduated with my

master's degree, which I was working on. And I've started my PhD program. And it is a full-time

in-person PhD program. So all that to say,

my time has been very occupied as of late. However, it is now summertime when I'm recording this

summer, summer 2025 and I finally have some time to record some episodes. But before we begin, I just wanted to take a moment to let you know about an upcoming event that I have on July 26, Saturday, July 26th in the Metro Atlanta, Georgia area, where I will be teaching a writing workshop.

And this particular kind of workshop is something that I started

doing in 2019, 2020. And my very last one was like February 2020 and then once shelter in place

started and everything, obviously those further events got canceled. And my next spot was my next stop

was supposed to be Atlanta and

that's where I'm from I'm from Georgia and I'm coming back I'm picking up from where I left off

five years later so really looking forward to that event it's for all levels whether you're

someone who is just looking to work with words as a way to express, to process, to have conversation, or you're

someone who is creatively curious, you're creative, you're a professional writer. I really try to

make these workshops very interactive and friendly to the process and the experience of working

with words as materials.

And I really look forward to sharing that with you if you decide to come.

So Morganharpennycles.com slash events.

That's where you can find tickets for that.

And now, without any further ado, on to today's episode.

The Cost of Transformation and Daring to Sing Anyway.

Last year, I was about an inch away from stepping on a cicada on the pavement beneath me

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