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Astronaut Christina Koch was about to go out on her first spacewalk, staring out into a “big gaping hole of blackness,” when her heart started racing. So she channeled that fear into focus – reminding herself of all the training she’s done to prepare her for this moment – and stepped out of the airlock. Christina tells Reshma all about the 328 days she spent in space (including the mundane chores astronauts have to do on board the International Space Station) and they discuss Christina’s next mission, Artemis II, which will venture around the moon in 2026. Plus, how NASA designed a training program for Christina that takes into account perimenopause.

Follow Christina @astro_christina on Instagram.

You can follow our host Reshma Saujani @reshmasaujani on Instagram.

Let us know how you’re doing in midlife! You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Reshma Saujani, Christina Koch

Reshma Saujani  00:26

Welcome to My So Called Midlife, a podcast where we figure out how to stop just getting through it and start actually living it. I’m Reshma Saujani.

 

Reshma Saujani  02:30

So today’s episode is really cool, because you get to meet my friend Christina Koch. She’s someone that I love to eat ice cream with, and who I got to meet a couple years ago and has just blown me away. Oh, and did I forget to mention she’s an astronaut. So Christine is an engineer and explorer who became a NASA astronaut in 2013 she spent most of 2019 aboard the International Space Station, and is now training for Artemis two, the upcoming mission around the moon. And here’s the thing that blew my mind about my conversation with Christina, even though she’s this woman who, from the time she was a little girl, had one goal to be an astronaut, and she’s worked harder than anybody I know to achieve her goal, when she had to come up with what she wanted to focus on while she was in space. It wasn’t just another thing that was tied to her ambition. It was something that was tied to her personal life, her marriage, her goal while she was in space was to come back a year later to a better marriage. I mean, that’s incredible. And she started this goal while she was training, and it continued throughout her time, while she was in space. And she made sure that when her and her husband were on their weekly video chats that they equally shared about what they were up to. Can you imagine that? Like, I don’t know if I was up in space doing all this cool stuff, and I called the hall. I don’t know if I couldn’t just talk about me and dominate the conversation, whether I would even have the discipline, the space, the humility to ask Nahal about what he ate for breakfast or what he was reading or how he was feeling that day. But Christina had all those things because she had this goal in mind. And let me tell you something about my friend Christina. When she sets out to achieve a goal, if she doesn’t just do it, she masters it. Christina has set a record for the longest single space flight by a woman with a total of 328 days in space, and participated in the first all female spacewalk. It’s so interesting to hear her talk about these achievements. On one hand, she’s so humble and wants to give kudos to all the people who helped her get where she is. But on the other hand, she knows like, how damn important it is to have someone like her setting those records. She knows. But all those girls that are just looking up to her, she tells this amazing story about meeting this little eight year old girl who looked at her a real life female astronaut, and her eyes were so big with awe and wonder, and just hearing her tell that story just brought tears to my eyes. So mid lifers be prepared to be inspired and to listen to a conversation that you may not have been expecting. Here’s the amazing Christina Koch.

 

Reshma Saujani  05:35

I always start Christina with asking people like a general question, which is on the show, obviously, because we’re called my so called midlife, we love to talk about our midlife.

 

Christina Koch  05:45

Yes.

 

Reshma Saujani  05:46

And different people have different feelings about how they’re feeling about this part of their life. Where are you at, like, are you having the best midlife of your life? Or are you like, missing your youth?

 

Christina Koch  06:01

Yeah, I am actually in the former category. I feel like life gets better every year. I am really enjoying myself. I feel super fortunate, because most of the reasons I can say that are things like, I have great job satisfaction. I love what I get to do. I love that I’m able to still do things. I love hobbies and community service, and I love my partner, and I think that every time I have a birthday, that number definitely, you know, means something new. And so what I sort of decided, maybe it was like 10 years ago now, was as long as there were something I could think of that year that I did that I’m proud of. I would never be sad about getting a year older. So I’ve really tried to stick with that, and it’s helped a lot.

 

Reshma Saujani  06:51

I love that I love because, you know, it’s interesting, because I felt, you know, I like you, like my dream. Your dream was to be national. My dream was to, like, be a public servant. And I remember when I was, like, 33 before I decided to take the plunge, I remember thinking like, oh, wait a minute. Like, I don’t have a lot of time left right to make this dream a reality, right? And so my age was always kind of crushing up against the dream, right? Do you think of it that way? Right? Because you’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, and I want to talk about, like, when that started, but like, or, and I’m sure you have dreams about where you want to go in space, and every year that goes by is like, one year that you’re Do you feel like closer or further from that dream. Maybe that’s the question.

 

Christina Koch  07:42

Such a good question. I don’t it would. I’d have to think to answer that super directly, but I can speak about how I have thought about kind of my life arc and and this, I think, contributes to why I do have a overall really good vibe about my mid 40s and 46 and I think it’s that when I first got out of college, I’m an explorer, I’m an adventurer. So I love new things, and I do get bored easily. And I remember graduating be like, oh my gosh, I have to do a job for the next 40 years. And I remember being terrified and petrified. That just sounded like way too daunting and super boring. And so my goal kind of actually not, maybe not goal, but, like my plan to combat this came to be doing other things, kind of before I got there, so that I was never doing that was never just jumping into the rest of my life too early, and so I spent years, as you may know, working all over the planet, in really remote places, the Arctic, the Antarctic. And it’s not that I was putting off the inevitable, but I was just trying to diversify my experiences on the front end, so that I wouldn’t jump into something that I might get sick of before it was time to get sick of that thing. And yeah, and also just to find something that I could do for a long time and that I still felt fulfillment from.

 

Reshma Saujani  09:10

God so that this really fascinates me, because, on one hand, I really do understand it and relate. Because I always say I pray to God every night I say, don’t give me everything right now, yes, like, I don’t want it all right now, because I want to stretch it out right and stretch out the enjoyment and the seeking and and then in many ways, like the chase of a dream is also really what keeps me alive, and I think probably what keeps you alive. So I can relate to that. But that also means that you have to have a tremendous amount of faith and confidence that your dream is actually going to come true, because that’s what slows down the rush of trying to get there. So where did that come from? And I want to know like, When was the moment you decided. Excited when you were a little girl, like, I want to be an astronaut.

 

Christina Koch  10:02

That was when I was very young, before I can even remember. I don’t actually remember a moment that it happened. I just remember it becoming more and more real as I got older. So it adds to the question that you just mentioned. I think about this all the time, because I do think about time and life passing. And I think the first time that I came to this new way of thinking about life was this phrase that when it came to me, I go back to it all the time, and that is, life is long. People say all the time Life is short, and I think that has its value in certain situations, but life is long has really helped me to savor the moment and to not feel like I need to rush towards anything, even a dream, even a goal. And the first time I came upon that was when I decided to go to Antarctica to winter over at the South Pole, stay for a year of my young life. You actually quit your job to go. So tell us about that. Quit a dream job at NASA. I had been working at NASA out of college for a couple of years, had my dream job as an engineer at NASA totally quit to live at the South Pole for a year. And people thought I was crazy and had lost my mind. And I just had to tell myself and them, hey, life is long. A year I’m going to turn 26 somewhere, and it might as well be at the South Pole doing this thing that I’ve been dreaming of doing. And so this concept that life is long has really helped me to not run too quickly towards anything in a with I’ve always worked really hard for things, but I think that this idea that once you achieve one thing, then you should be done and happy and just live happily forever after that hasn’t resonated with me. And I think that instead, it is finding something I used to say, you know, find your passion. But I’ve kind of wanted to get to the nuances of that, where what I really mean is find the thing you can do the slowest and still be happy and fulfilled and find meaning every day. What can you do the slowest and still love it?

 

Reshma Saujani  12:04

I love it. First of all, for all my mid lifers, you’re saying something Christina, that ketanji Justice Jackson said too. She said, I’ve learned how to bloom where I’m planted. I love that. It’s very, very, very similar philosophy to what you’re saying, and I think it’s so powerful that, like an astronaut and a Supreme Court justice, have two very similar philosophies on how they live their life and how they pursue their dreams, which is slowly, not linearly, yeah, and that’s how you got there. Like, what I’m just, I’m like, meditating on this for a moment, because it’s really, it’s really a lesson that, until the two of you kind of express it this way, I’ve never heard from anyone else before.

 

Christina Koch  12:55

I also don’t think I’ve heard it before. And I love that you drew that connection, because in some ways, Supreme Court and becoming an astronaut are two goals that any sane person would assume they’re actually never going to get to. So what do you do in the meantime? Is unless you want to set yourself up for being pretty disappointed. You find things you love to do in the meantime, and you pursue those things. And if you were meant to become that, then those things will actually turn you into the person that can become that.

 

Reshma Saujani  13:33

Yeah, and I think that takes a tremendous amount of discipline and acceptance, right? That I will say, as an ambitious person I don’t always have. There are times while I’m praying that I’m like, all right, come on you. I mean, I said yeah, I don’t want it all right now, but I kind of do, like, let’s hurry. Let’s hurry it up, right? Or, when something you think is like supposed to happen as a next step doesn’t happen, you’re like, wait, is this all not gonna be you’ve accomplished a lot, and it’s so badass. You set the record for the longest single space flight by a woman with a total of 328, days in space. You were part of the first female space walk, I think. And tell me if I’m getting this wrong. 259, people have walked space, of which 16 have been women.

 

Christina Koch  14:18

That sounds about right. I don’t know what the number is right now, but that would be close or not far off for where we are right now.

 

Reshma Saujani  14:24

In the ballpark. Like, how does it feel to set such monumental records?

 

Christina Koch  14:32

Well, it I think, for me, I try to focus on this, the system and the people that allowed those records to be set and those firsts to be done. And it’s not necessarily my personal achievement. Yes, I love to work hard and contribute. It’s more about the fact that we now live in a world where those things can happen. And I, that our leadership, the people are setting our direction, have decided that they’re worth doing. They’ve decided that, yes, we want an astronaut corps that looks like the people we represent. We want to take contributions from anyone who’s really good and has a dream that the we’re willing to work really hard to achieve. We’re willing to put a team together with people that want to contribute from a lot of different backgrounds. We know that that makes us better and that makes us more likely to accomplish our missions. And that, to me, is what all those records and firsts mean it they mean that we’ve made this collective decision to be better by doing it together.

 

Reshma Saujani  15:39

Yeah, and you meet little girls all the time you meet probably a lot of my students are Girls Who Code. I Girls Who Code a lot of time. And how do you what do you think that record means to them? And how do you feel like it impacts right many barriers that young women in STEM feel they’re facing?

 

Christina Koch  15:53

You know, I have thought about that a lot, and as a person that tries to downplay personal and individual records, I sometimes have to step back because I’ve been schooled by good people that have told me, Hey, these milestones mean something to people, and I’ve had to learn to accept that. I remember the day I met Sally Ride, and I remember when I shook her hand, she just looked directly into my eyes, and she smiled and was happy to meet me. And I mean, I will never forget that was a formative memory, and so sometimes I have to remember maybe that’s what someone feels when they meet me, or when they read about something that I’ve been able to do, and it just allows me to give back to them what she gave to me. And I do this all the time. When I meet little girls, look them in the eye and say, with my eyes, you can do this. You can do what I’m doing, or whatever you want to do.

 

Reshma Saujani  16:54

Is that what you feel like when Sally looked at you that way, deeply in your eyes that she was saying to you, like Christina, you can do this.

 

Christina Koch  17:00

100% and maybe even more generally, she was saying, I value you and I see you. Actually, yesterday I did an MBL run, which is a spacewalk training in our MBL, which stands for neutral buoyancy lab. It’s a gigantic pool. An entire mock up of the International Space Station is in the pool. You spend six hours inside a space suit doing your training. And I came out at the end of the day, you’re lifted up by a crane out of this pool. And there was a family of three girls there, and they came up onto the stand that the crane had lifted out of the water. And I was still completely in my space suit, full on spacewalking spacesuit, and I reached my hand out, and this little girl shook my hand and looked up with looked up at me through my visor with the most amazing eyes, and just smiled this like, you know, your standard eight year old grin, where like half the teeth, or kid teeth and half just the sweetest thing. And I just remember, I just smiled back at her, and I remember thinking like, you can do this. And we cry. It was amazing.

 

Reshma Saujani  18:07

Yeah, it’s like those moments where, and I remember being that little girl who needed those moments, right where you saw somebody who looked like you were having the dreams that you want you had, and you felt like, oh gosh, I can do this too.

 

Reshma Saujani  24:12

I want to talk a little bit about the first time you walked on space. Can you take me there? Like, take me there? Like, absolutely, walk out. What does it look like? What are you feeling? Is your heart beating like? What’s happening?

 

Christina Koch  24:53

It is a big moment, because, yes, you’ve trained your whole life to go into space, but more. So it’s, it’s like, everything you’ve ever done in your life comes together when you’re in that airlock. And the one and only time where my heart rate raced on my entire space mission wasn’t launched. It wasn’t landing. It was the moment I was in that airlock, about to go out on a spacewalk, and my spacewalk buddy had just opened the hatch, and where there had been, like, normal stuff, we’ve got a panel of equipment and the hatch, I looked down and there was just this big gaping hole of blackness, wow. And my heart rate shot through the roof. And, you know, it took a few seconds for me to calm back down, but that was the moment where I was like, I have to go out there and this.

 

Reshma Saujani  25:43

Are you thinking? Are you thinking, I’m gonna die? Are you thinking, oh, like, what are you thinking?

 

Christina Koch  25:51

I was thinking, I can do this. I’ve been trained for this, and something that I do when I am scared, or when those feelings of fear or nervousness do come up is I try to channel them into focus, which I learned through way back when, even before I became an astronaut, doing things like lead rock climbing. But turning that fear into focus really helps. And another thing that I think about.

 

Reshma Saujani  26:18

What does that mean? Can you tell me what that means? Like, how do that?

 

Christina Koch  26:20

It means that you channel any nervousness into thinking about what you are about to do. And specifically, what does that mean? Because focusing too much on anything can actually just make you more nervous. But so for me, that looks like I think about the training that I’ve had, and I think about what’s the worst thing that could happen right now, and what are the first two things I would do if I know the first two things I would do from then on, I know my training will take over, and I’ll just do it and and just, you know, spending that nervous energy on something that will benefit me rather than detract from what I’m doing. And sometimes, actually, that’s something like wiggle your toes. You’re alive. You know what you’re doing. Yes, you’re about to go on a spacewalk, and you know what you’re doing, it’s going to be fine.

 

Reshma Saujani  27:09

I love it’s so funny. You say that I remember when I was running for office, and I would be going on a train going like a senior center, and I would just be getting scared, right? Because I’d never done this before, and I did exactly what you did. I was like, Okay, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Gonna happen to me? What’s the worst? Okay, I’ll run, I’ll trip, I’ll lose people will laugh at me. And it’s almost like, once you play out the worst thing, your fears really do dissipate.

 

Christina Koch  27:36

A  100% and even one if you make a mistake. Sometimes, I don’t want to say on purpose, but if you make a point to do something that might not be perfect and everything is still okay, that’s another technique to diffuse a lot of that nervous energy. I was joking going into a something high stakes. I forget what it was with my husband and I said, Honestly, I hope I trip on my way up in front of everyone, because then I’ll just it will be out there straight away that I am not trying to, you know, over anybody with an ego. I am just here to contribute and be a part of this and and almost like a best case scenario, yeah.

 

Reshma Saujani  28:17

Okay. So how long was the space walk?

 

Christina Koch  28:19

The first one that I did was, I think around seven hours, maybe seven and a half.

 

Reshma Saujani  28:23

Seven hours, you get to walk around for seven hours.

 

Christina Koch  28:25

Oh, you’re moving, yep, you’re moving yourself around with your hands, mostly because you’re just kind of out there floating. There’s handrails, and you’re just moving around on the space station, on the outside of the space station, yep.

 

Reshma Saujani  28:35

So after you did your first one, how did you celebrate? Because I think one of the things we fail to do, especially as women, is we don’t celebrate our wits.

 

Christina Koch  28:44

Well after I ate a lot, which is very important, after you spent 12 hours inside the suit, which is the total time we did celebrate, I think we celebrated. That weekend, we got together with all the people on the space station, all six of us, including our Russian counterparts, and we had a dinner together, and we said, hey, we did our spacewalk. It happened. And I talked to my partner, my husband, right afterwards, and he was to see him, was really exciting. But I do think you’re right. I think that there’s a lot of downplaying our accomplishments, not taking the time to actually be proud of them as individuals. And I know I just spent a lot of time talking about, you know, taking the focus off of the individual, but there are times where I think that is super important to celebrate the fact that they worked hard, obviously. And I do do that for sure, usually in more private moments, but absolutely.

 

Reshma Saujani  29:38

So for those of you, Christina and I met because she called me from space.

 

Christina Koch  29:42

That’s right.

 

Reshma Saujani  29:43

Tell me if this is right. But you get to pick, like, while you’re up there, you got things you want to do, and you get to pick, like, a book that you’re reading and an author that is you we’re reading brave, not perfect. And you’re like, right? I’d love to talk to restaurant. I got, like, an email from NASA. I was like, Is this spam? I can’t be answered. It. Are you kidding? Yeah, I was like, where and when. And in a conference room, our Girls Who Code office, like you called me from the Space Center, right?

 

Christina Koch  30:07

That’s right from the space station, from Space Station, and literally in space.

 

Reshma Saujani  30:11

And I had Sean and his little friend Walter join us. They were like, had no they’re like, three or something. Like, they had no idea what was going on, but that it was, like, one of the coolest moments, like of my life. But how so how do you entertain yourself while you’re there?

 

Christina Koch  30:28

You know, it’s like a lot of things. People think you are going to be really bored, but actually, we do stay really busy. 12 hour work days we we also clean up. Saturday morning is our cleanup time. So when you think about it, we have a day and a half off ish every week. And by then, you’re just, you know, trying to keep up with your life. Just also, like on Earth, there’s, like, housekeeping things you have to do around space station. So, like, your to do list builds up. I know this sounds ridiculous, but you’re like, oh, I really need to change out all the batteries in the headlamps this weekend. You know, I mean, stuff is just, it just is regular life. A lot of keeping in touch with people, and a lot of doing things for people, taking trying to find a picture of someone’s house or something that’ll be meaningful to someone. There’s a lot of just trying to maximize your time up there. Very rarely were we bored. In fact, list, I listened to your book when I would exercise, because we do have to exercise every day. That’s amazing, yeah? So just like we out, we do movie nights as a group, a lot of, you know, team stuff.

 

Reshma Saujani  31:31

Yeah, so were you sad to come back to Earth? Because I do find sometimes, like when I’m working on something huge, and especially like for like, decades of your life, and then it happens, and then I come back and I’m kind of depressed, or, like, I have a little bit of list, like, did you feel that way?

 

Christina Koch  31:48

I was not necessarily. You know, I could have stayed on board for longer. I loved it in space, but I also after that long, because I was there for a while. I was ready to come home, but I still experienced that malaise when I got back. And, you know, for astronauts, it’s a little hard to pick apart what part of it is actual, just readaptation and all of the things that happen to your body and mind versus the psychological part, like you’re saying, of I accomplished this big goal. What next? And how do I define my for my self worth? And I think that’s a big one for me. You know, I mentioned things I feel really good right now in life, but I recognize that’s a huge place of privilege for me, because I am doing my dream job. And I think the thing I don’t want to leave here without saying that I do and did struggle with what am I doing with my life, even when I’m out there trying to find the things I’m passionate about, trying to find the things that I find fulfilling, it is not always easy to define your own self worth apart from your accomplishments, and I think that’s the thing I’ve really tried to work on in my midlife because I won’t be doing this job forever, and I did come back from the space station and have to deal with not having a systematic schedule that I could check off everything I did every five minute increment to tell me I’m worth something, accomplishing something and doing a good job, and that really taught me that the real challenge is to find that self worth on your own and to not let your accomplishments define that.

 

Reshma Saujani  33:31

I want to unpack that more, because that’s that’s interesting to me, because I so, because what you’re saying is like part of your struggle is to not just be defined as an astronaut, and to make sure, right, that you’ve lived this fulfilling life outside of your professional accomplishments. And that is like, that’s really hard. Christina, for me, I’ll say, right? I’m a workaholic. I love my work. I define myself in many ways by my work and it and I, and again, I feel very grateful, right, that I’ve gotten to do something I really love. And so oftentimes, like, if I’m at a temple or I’m making a birthday wish, you know, most of it is oftentimes related to, like, what I’m trying to do, right? Like, professionally, and I do feel it’s really interesting, right? Like, I do feel like the older I’ve gotten, I just don’t get as honestly. One of the things that inspired me started this podcast, like, I just don’t get the same rush out of the success. And I’m kind of, like, searching for, like, other things that I can get that same sense of accomplishment. So, like, for a while, like, I tennis did that for me, right? Like, I am, I am that I was in, I was playing the other day with like, this 80 year old woman she used to be, I mean, she was phenomenal, right? And, like, and, and I said to her, I’m like, gosh, I hope I am happy. As athletic as you, right, like by the time I’m your age, but you could tell that she made a real commitment. She said something so beautiful to me, Christina. She said, You know, I now play for my friends who can’t play.

 

Christina Koch  35:11

Wow, that’s amazing.

 

Reshma Saujani  35:14

That gave her purpose.

 

Christina Koch  35:17

Yes, wow. That’s phenomenal

 

Reshma Saujani  35:20

As again, purpose that was not related to her job.

 

Christina Koch  35:23

Yep, I love that so much. And to me, it also points towards something that I think is so important about purpose and about like you’re saying, maybe finding the satisfaction, not necessarily from almost the dopamine rush of achievement, but something more enduring, and really to me, that’s helping others or doing something for others, whether that’s community service, whether that’s being an activist for a cause that you believe in, whether that’s mentoring, I think that has become the new primary source for me of just a fundamental meaning and fulfillment.

 

Reshma Saujani  36:36

So, you’re part of the crew for the Artemis two flight. Which is, if successful, which it will be, you will be the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit and fly around the moon. That’s true. That’s amazing. You’re supposed to go in 2025 is it coming up?

 

Christina Koch  41:29

It is? Well, we’re hoping that it’ll be right after the turn of the year. So the current public date is no later than next April, but we’re hoping to do it as soon as possible. And some of those launch windows open up as early as February, so it’s no later than next April. So we’re really at about the year mark, which I say in aerospace, is like a millisecond. So I feel very close.

 

Reshma Saujani  41:50

I’m coming. So save my ticket. You’ve got an invite, but when you do this, you’re going to be 46 or 47 Oh, probably be 47 Okay, so now you’re either in perimenopause, about to be in perimenopause. How has your training changed?

 

Christina Koch  42:06

It has changed. I actually am very proud of the fact that our trainers that are specifically astronaut trainers, they’re astronaut strength and conditioning and rehab trainers. They have a program that they’ve designed for me at my request, that really takes into account the changes for perimenopause. So things like being more careful with a really, really long endurance cardio so they’re breaking my heart, but I know it’s the right thing for me.

 

Reshma Saujani  42:32

Um, lifting heavier. But what does that mean? So did you use How much did you just run? Or, like, big runner?

 

Christina Koch  42:38

Yes. So typical race. I’m not an ultra marathoner by any means, but a typical race length of about four hours or so, I love, I love mountain trail. Trail running was my deal. I love it, so I but I don’t really do it too much anymore, variety reasons. But you know, one of the things is that for you know, to make sure that you don’t encounter bone and muscle loss. You really have to do heavy weight lifting, and you also have to do what I’ve heard this is all just, you know, from from what they and I have researched. So I’m certainly not an expert, but changing to do more interval based training, some sort of Sprint type workouts. So I think the really, the bottom line there is to just stay educated as to how it can change, because I probably over trained and did not train as my body changed and needed different things. Another thing is that a lot of the really sort of new things, or maybe they’re not News New at this point, but things that people do in addition to training, things like intermittent fasting, yeah, women have to be a little bit they have to apply that a little differently. I love intermittent fasting, but as a woman who’s in my perimenopause, I am never going to do it for like 18 hours at a time. I’m getting awful. It doesn’t work. It’s different right now. Yep, I, for me, it works if I keep it to 10 to 12 hours, and I actually really like it for that, I’m not always disciplined about it, but I’m not going to listen to the folks that are saying to do it for extreme things, because that’s that’s not made for the body that I’m working with.

 

Reshma Saujani  44:16

Yeah okay. What about the mind? Because I do also, for me, my anxiety levels have gone up as and I know it’s because of the hormone drops, and so I would be scared shitless, big in this confined space and then, like, open, I don’t know if I could do it at this I’m just being honest, right?

 

Christina Koch  44:37

Well, I think that is so true. I think as we get older, we also are much more aware of our own mortality. I think that’s a completely normal. If I weren’t more aware of my own mortality, I think that would be more of an issue. So absolutely, I definitely see that I have I am faced more with thinking about that in this mission than my four. First one, and probably not only because it’s about 1000 times farther to the moon than it is to low Earth orbit. I do think that that’s something to come up against. So again, I go back to relying on my training, relying on the teams, trust in the teams. And there’s something else there. Going back to anxiety, but also feeding into this pressure to perform. There’s something else there that helps me a lot, and that is whole self. And what are my values, and if I’m living out my values and I make a couple technical mistakes, I forgive myself a lot quicker and easier than if I’m so focused on being perfect, and I don’t have that whole self mentality of who am I really what’s the most important thing here? I don’t know if we talked about this before, but even on my first mission to the ISS, I experimented with this, and my number one goal in my year in space was to have a better marriage when I got home. Wow, number one goal, and since I made it my number one goal, I could prioritize around it.

 

Reshma Saujani  46:10

So what did you do there to come back and have that like, what? What did you What were the things that you worked on?

 

Christina Koch  46:15

Throughout training? I made sure to prioritize time with my husband, making sure I understood his love languages and what meant the most to him. Because I couldn’t do it all. I had to be very efficient with how, you know, we grew together and kept our relationship up. So it was really important to understand, like, what was the most bang for the buck for him, what meant the most to him? Because it isn’t always what’s easiest for me to do or what is less time consuming. That was a big one. And then even in orbit, just making sure we had, we had one video call a week, and just making sure that it wasn’t, you know, we talked equally about what we were doing. It wasn’t just, let me tell you about space and just a lot of things. I also tried to stay relevant. Tried to stay relevant his life. I pranked him a lot through his friends, so knowing his friends and, like, you know, stuff like that.

 

Reshma Saujani  47:05

Christina, that’s amazing, because I don’t know if I could do would be you like, I think I immediately be like, hey, nah, I’m in space, dude, and I’m freaked out. And like, let me tell you what’s going on here, or this is amazing and, and this is my moment, my time I’m in space. And so that’s pretty, really remarkable, that like even in what could be seen as your moment, you were focused on him and your relationship.

 

Christina Koch  47:30

That was my number one priority, yes, and it’s not. It didn’t mean that I didn’t focus on other things. Of course I did. But basically, it helped me know where to draw that line. It helped me know when my trainee had gone too far, or my time, or be having that mentality of like, it’s all about me, this is my moment right now, when that I knew where to draw the line, because if it started to negatively affect my marriage, that’s when it had gone too far.

 

Reshma Saujani  47:54

Yeah, it’s funny. You It’s as I’m hearing you. One of the things I’m thinking about is, you know, for for as much as long as I’ve been in the public eye, a big goal of mine is to be low ego, right? And so there are times where I don’t read the comment section. I wouldn’t watch myself on video. I don’t really read my articles. I’d get uncomfortable if somebody comes up to me and says, Mr. Johnny, thank you so much for your work. And it took time with my coach to be like, no no. Take in that love that is actually thank you that yes, say thank you. That is a good that is not going to mess with your own ego. You can still be humble, yes, by taking in other people’s love. And it’s really something I’ve had, I’ve had to really learn. So this, it’s I hear what you’re saying is, again, such a incredible way to practice that low ego humbleness, by not making about you, but making it about something else that is important to the both of you and your husband, who I know you love so much.

 

Christina Koch  48:51

Absolutely and I agree with you, it is such a hard line to walk, and I think especially as a woman, because I want To model humility, but I also want to model not being self deprecating. I want to model being proud of my accomplishments. I want to model owning the fact that I’m really good at what I do, and so that balance is so tough, and I think that that’s what maybe worked about that goal for me. And like I said, I kind of considered it an experiment, because I didn’t know if it was gonna work out, but because it was, it prioritized something that was still important to me, and I still it actually meant that I could receive maybe more love from my husband. It hopefully worked so it wasn’t about not it wasn’t about dimming my own light for the world. It was actually about making it brighter by having my whole self be able to approach the situations I was in.

 

Reshma Saujani  49:52

Have you picked your thing for your next light, then you’re gonna work.

 

Christina Koch  49:57

My number one goal. Oh, my goodness. I. I have thought about that. I’m like, I mean, it should just be the same one, right? The number one goal to have a stronger marriage. I feel like that has just become like the background goal that’s always there now. But I have thought about that a lot. I have thought about it.

 

Reshma Saujani  50:19

No, you don’t have to tell you. Don’t have to tell me that, but it’s something that you’re thinking of, because it feels like, and this is the thing I think that blows me away about midlife. It’s like, it like it gets better with age, like, meaning like this. So it feels like this mission could even be better than the last one, even though you have more things kind of, physically, potentially up against you, right.

 

Christina Koch  50:44

Right, I mean, that’s what I would certainly hope, and that’s what I think, like I mentioned, has kept me feeling really good at this point in my life. But if I’m only thinking about the next one’s better, the next one’s better. I worry that I might be setting myself up if after this mission, things aren’t necessarily from the outside, appearing to be so grandiose to others. So that’s where I come back to defining success and self worth myself and making sure that things that I find meaningful are held in just as much high regard as things that the media or others might find worthy of celebrating.

 

Reshma Saujani  51:33

Hmm, like, what like, I guess, I guess kind of what you’re saying is, like, what’s your third act right after you kind of kick up, put your astronaut shoes. Do you have shoes just like, up on the rack, right? Like, yeah. What’s the thing?

 

Christina Koch  51:47

Yeah, I think that’s a big part of it. What’s next for sure, and maybe I’m not defining exactly what that is right now, but I’m allowing myself to accept that it could be something that is fulfilling to me but doesn’t necessarily look as impressive on paper. And that is not only Okay, that’s actually what I should be doing.

 

Reshma Saujani  52:13

Absolutely I mean, listen, every article I read about like the happiest people, right? Or at the end of life, say, one, it was their relationships, right? It wasn’t the job that they had, it wasn’t the title that they had. It was like, it was like the joy they found from their relationships, or from gardening or from, you know, I mean, it’s like the things that we in society don’t deem to be you know, prestigious.

 

Christina Koch  52:39

Yep, exactly.

 

Reshma Saujani  52:40

Would you do it differently, though, because you you spent your life, you’ve had a fulfilling life, but you chase this, it doesn’t get more prestigious, right, or more more incredible. Like, would you do it differently?

 

Christina Koch  52:53

I think about that a lot, and it’s hard. I’ve never been someone to say I would do something differently, because I feel like at every crossroads and every choice along the way, oh, believe me, I’ve definitely made some bad choices and failures. Definitely plenty of choices I think about and I regret. But it’s kind of like the question of someone that says, if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? My answer to that is always, I can live anywhere in the world, and I this is where I picked, you know, because I always think about it holistically, like every factor is a part of that decision, and that’s where I ended up. And so kind of holistically looking back, I can’t imagine making changing anything, maybe, except to be kinder to myself and to have figured out the whole value relationships a little earlier, but in general, no, I I feel like, like I said, I successfully put off the rest of my life for long enough that I’m not bored with it yet, and I’ve got some time after this to do something that I also find meaningful and hopefully to put to good use. Like you mentioned the fact that people, people look to what we do for inspiration well.

 

Reshma Saujani  54:06

As someone who’s like, proud to call you a friend, you are incredibly kind and incredibly humble and incredibly generous, and it’s really I’m so excited for people to like, learn more about you, but you’re role model for me and how you show up, right? Because you could be an asshole.

 

Reshma Saujani  54:30

Well, I feel you like saying, like you.

 

Reshma Saujani  54:36

[…] You’re like the opposite. And I just think, I think it’s just remarkable. So Well, thank you. So I hope you feel very proud of yourself, because it’s almost like those are the people that I love. It’s like I feel about how I feel about ketanji, who’s also a friend. It’s like those are the people who I love seeing succeed. Because it is like you lead with kindness. And I think that is why God has gifted you and graced you. It’s so much blessing so.

 

Christina Koch  54:58

Thank you so much that. That that’s the highest compliment I could ever hope for. So I appreciate that, and the feeling is mutual. I definitely look to you in everything that you do, and especially everything that you fight for in the world and making it a better place, it’s extremely inspiring.

 

Reshma Saujani  55:14

Thank you for this wonderful conversation. I can’t wait to see you lift off.

 

Christina Koch  55:19

Thank you so much.

 

Reshma Saujani  55:34

Thank you so much, Christina for joining us today. You can keep up with the progress of Artemis two mission on NASA’s website. One last thing, thank you so much for listening to My So Called Midlife, if you haven’t yet, now’s a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get bonus content like Zarna Garg talking about what her kids think of her viral stand up comedy career. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple podcast, or for all other podcast apps, head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonadapremium.com Thanks, and we’ll be back next week.

 

CREDITS  56:16

I’m your host, Reshma Saujani. Our associate producer is Isaura Aceves, and our senior producer is Kryssy Pease.   This series is Sound Design by Ivan Kuraev. Ivan also composed our theme music and performed it with Ryan Jewell and Karen Waltuck.   Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel.   Special thanks to our development team, Hoja Lopez, Jamela Zarha Williams and Alex McOwen. Executive Producers include me, Reshma Saujani, Stephanie Whittle Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Series consulting and production support from Katie Cordova. Help others find our show by leaving a rating and writing a review and let us know how you’re doing in midlife. You can submit your story to be included in this show at speakpipe.com/midlife. Follow My So Called Midlife, wherever you get your podcast, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.