SciChronicles

Struggle, Strikes, and Starting Over

• Kayla Burgher and Risa Schnebly

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This episode of SciChronicles, hosted by Kayla Burgher, features the inspiring stories of two scientists, Dr. Edauri Navarro-Perez and Dr. Xyonane Segovia, who share how their experiences and struggles have influenced who they are today and how they approach their science.

Dr. Edauri Navarro-Perez, a postdoctoral fellow for the Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene, explores how her experiences during university strikes and Hurricane Maria in her homeland of Puerto Rico showed her the importance of community and shaped the research she is doing today.  

Dr. Xyonane Segovia, an Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University, shares about her mental health journey getting back to school and throughout her Ph.D. Trigger Warning: This story contains explicit discussion of suicide, suicidal ideation, and other sensitive mental health topics. Please consider if you are in a place to listen.

If you have not already, please consider subscribing so you do not miss future episodes. Also, be sure to check out ASU's Ask a Biologist and its companion podcast, as well.

If you are interested in crafting a story to share on SciChronicles, please fill out this interest form to learn more and connect with the hosts, Risa and Kayla.

Kayla Burgher

Welcome to SciChronicles. My name is Kayla Burgher, and this is a podcast where scientists share stories about why they do science from the outside. Becoming a scientist might seem straightforward, right? You go to school for a long time, then start to work in a lab or the field, but as you listen to these stories from scientists at different stages of their careers, it becomes clear that pursuing this path is anything but straightforward. Our storytellers reveal pivotal moments in their lives that changed the course of their career. So whether you're considering pursuing science for yourself or just curious about who scientists are, take a listen. You might be surprised by what you discover.

Today's episode is going to get a little more serious. Our first storyteller is Dr. Edauri Navarro-Perez, a post-doctoral researcher with the Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene group here at ASU. Edauri spent her PhD studying soil science, but as a postdoc, she's focusing on doing community based research. In this story, she shares the ways her communities have shaped her and why her work feels so important now. 

Edauri Navarro-Perez

It was 1 am. My shift guarding the university gates during the strike was ending. This dark, warm summer night in the student encampment was calm, just like the other few times that I had guarded the gates so others could sleep. The University of Puerto Rico (UPR) went on a major strike in 2017 after the U.S.-imposed fiscal board demanded further significant budget cuts. These cuts would raise enrollment costs, making Puerto Rico’s only public university inaccessible to many. During the strike, students, as historically happens, said no to the budget cuts. We closed the university's gates, halting all institutional and academic activity until the negotiations with the fiscal board would meet our demands.  

During the few times that I guarded the gates, I often reflected on what I would be doing if this injustice weren’t happening. After all, I was a nerdy junior in my Environmental Sciences undergraduate department. So, I would probably have been studying for finals, or anxious and frustrated from the lack of sleep typical for students. While I wanted to finish the semester, the indignation and frustration of imagining Puerto Ricans without accessible education fueled my commitment to the fight. I thought about my mom, my sisters, and aunts--All these women in my family who had been able to study because of public institutions. While the dream of using education to secure a stable job doesn’t work as smoothly or quickly as it once did, it has worked for my family. I am privileged because of it.

When I joined the strike, I also thought about my younger cousins and future generations of Puerto Ricans. They deserve the same opportunities that I’ve had. This fight wasn’t just for me; it was for others too. It was my thank you note to the family members who were able to receive an education and instill in me the value of learning and curiosity. It was also my love letter to future generations. I couldn’t fight for public education without carrying my family and history in my heart-and not just my family, but the entire island. I love Puerto Rico (or Borikén as our Indigenous name), and my way of showing that love was to fight alongside my people.

During the months of the strike, people gathered at the university to envision a future where students’ and communities’ needs were met. We, students, took this fight to the streets, marching and shouting protest chants as a collective, and from time to time shut down major avenues to ensure our indignation was visible and felt. Negotiations between the fiscal board and the students’ representatives happened alongside student meetings where we discussed our lack of agency over our future. In my heart, the strike felt revolutionary and at the same time, all of us were exhausted. Our patience was running thin, and the frustration was visible in our bodies as we dealt with misunderstandings from citizens, students who didn’t support the strike, journalists who wrote against us, and other forms of oppression.

At the end of the strike, not all of our demands were met. However, some were addressed, and new projects emerged from the experience. Strikes, regardless of outcomes, help people reclaim their agency and voice. They remind us that some things are worth fighting for, especially for the greater good. Being part of the strikes showed me how important it feels to stand with other people, fight for something bigger, and be a part of a community. 

About five months after the strike, I felt the same mix of love, frustration, and pride for my community in the wake of another pressing situation: Hurricane Maria.

*sounds of a hurricane*

The days after a hurricane are always so dry and hot. There is no breeze. The world is eerily quiet. You don’t hear birds in the morning. You don’t hear cars in the streets. It’s as if everybody knows: even if your house was okay, there is a collective grief. Someone lost someone. People are always missing. Maybe your friend lost their house. 

Hurricane Maria was a category-five cyclone that hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. As a Boricua raised on the island and used to hurricanes, the massive scale of the destruction Maria caused was new to me. It marked one of the most profound periods of eco-grief in my life. The hurricane was estimated to have claimed over 4,000 lives. It destroyed countless homes, left thousands without access to power and water, and rendered public institutions nearly unusable. During this time, many Puerto Ricans were in survival mode—depressed, highly stressed, and anxious. Even now, in 2025, the island continues to grapple with the hurricane’s infrastructural, educational, and psychological impacts.

I want to pause here to recognize how painful this experience was and still is for the people on the island – something that is impossible to fully capture with words.

*Taking a second for silence*

I also want to emphasize that the following reflections are not meant to romanticize this pain. There is no way to, quote, “find the positive” in a disaster of this magnitude. What I will share are lessons born out of the beauty and how communal are my people. We, as a community, saved ourselves—not the government, and certainly not Trump, who disrespected us by throwing paper towels at people when we needed water and food. We survived despite the political disaster that followed Maria, not because of it.

After hurricanes, there are only a few ways to know if people are safe. Power is out, most phones don’t have reception, and streets are blocked. Connecting with others often means walking to nearby neighborhoods and relying on word of mouth. In these situations, you pray, or for the non-religious, at least hope that everyone is okay.

During the aftermath, I focused on helping my community, as well as the community I worked with for research. At this time, I was working with the Juana Matos community in Cataño--a low-income, historically racialized neighborhood near a mangrove forest. This area is particularly vulnerable to flooding, which means that hurricanes often leave residents without essential resources and damage their homes. 

Through collaboration with my research lab, we help the community by distributing food and material supplies donated by people with greater access to resources. We went house by house, identifying each family’s needs and consulting with community leaders to determine the best course of action. In addition, several organizations joined forces to clear debris from mangroves, ensuring the area’s ecological health. 

I admit that I coped with the aftermath of the hurricane by overworking myself. I threw myself into tasks avoiding the overwhelming grief of my new reality, which is not healthy. I also disregarded the ways the hurricane-affected my emotions; I compared my pain to others, feeling like I didn’t deserve help. How could I ask for support when so many others were struggling? I felt selfish for even thinking about my grief. 

But the communal events I participated in began to reshape that mindset. Talking with neighbors, delivering water and food, and working to restore the mangroves helped transform my pain into action. These actions didn’t erase the grief but reminded me of the power of togetherness. Being with my community during those times reminded me that none of us were alone in our struggles. These acts reminded me that healing is a communal process.

During the aftermath of Maria, when I wasn't working with my community, I cope and avoided my pain and anxiety at home by throwing myself into more work. I spent several nights without power working by candlelight to write my applications for fellowships to pursue a PhD in environmental life sciences at Arizona State University, specifically studying soils and plant roots. Looking back, I can't admit now that applying to grad school was my way to escape what I was currently living. It felt that I needed a new place to experience science and life. It felt that this was my ticket to building a new future for myself and escaping the lack of resources that Maria made even more visible in Puerto Rico, I overwork myself in many aspects, especially because I was experiencing a major eco grief, a grief that I still feel in waves every time I go to the island. 

This doesn't mean I don't miss Puerto Rico, that I don't think that Puerto Rico has magic or that my community isn't worth staying in. My island is beautiful, valuable and one of my favorite places, but I needed to leave and start my PhD somewhere else, mostly for my mental health. Sometimes I still grieve my decision to leave. I still grieve the state of Boriquen and not being surrounded by my loved ones constantly at the same time, that decision helped me grow so much as a person and professionally shaping me into who I am today. Experiencing the political disasters during and after the strike and hurricane Maria in 2017 shaped my perspective on who I want to serve with my science, it grounded me to be more critical of my surroundings, including my environment and people. While my PhD didn't import direct community work, it taught me valuable skills and lessons that I can now use to develop solutions with the communities I care about. 

During my PhD, I studied planned development, particularly routes in the context of dry land and soil restoration. Studying plant roots gave me a deeper appreciation of how light works for entities other than humans. However, I miss working with communities now as a post doc, I am working collaboratively with human communities and how they restore their relationship to the river more from a psychological perspective, this opportunity has connected me with a group of people who care deeply about science, equity and justice. It has been life changing, giving me something my experience was craving. Beyond this, I see this post doc as embedding myself in communities of Arizona and experiencing restoration from a relational perspective. Restoration from many perspectives is so important. Historically, a lot of ecological restoration has focused on ecological resources or benefits, while others neglect the spiritual and relational aspects. This lack of seeing nature as a spiritual entity comes from the Western mindset. 

In the research that I'm doing, we position the river as an equal to us humans, and we incorporate ways of knowledge other than Western ones to understand how we relate to water. We strongly believe that addressing this spiritual aspect will allow us to understand human behavior towards rivers and maybe help us understand how we can improve it. Both my PhD and postdoc has shown me the importance and necessity of symbiosis and connections for successful growth. I think this understanding of community has been embedded in me since I was a little girl, and was further embodied during the striking hurricane Maria experiences. Now I am celebrating the importance of community. Part of this celebration is that hopefully my current and future work will allow me to align my values community and science, while using the tools that I have been lucky enough to learn over the years. These actions and care are my love letters to my family Puerto Rico and all the communities and places that I inhabit, belho said that love is an action, I hope to show evidence that healing is too and there is no better way to practice these actions that's surrounded by people who mean something to you.

Kayla Burgher

Our second story is from Dr Xyonane Segovia, an assistant professor at ASU. Shonene recently received her PhD from ASU, where she studied resistance evolution of malaria parasites. In this story, she shares about her mental health journey getting back to school and throughout her PhD, we want to issue a trigger warning here. This story contains explicit discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation, among other sensitive mental health topics. Please consider whether you're in a place to listen to this story before you proceed.

 Xyonane Segovia

While I was writing this story, my younger sister Allyson committed suicide. She is the second person in my family that I've lost this way. But losing her has hurt the most. It is as if the world is no longer as vibrant as it used to be. Foods don’t taste the same, songs don’t sound the same, everything has lost its excitement. Laughing is the worst…I don’t feel like I should be laughing or even smiling. Her laugh and smile is what I loved most.

This story was meant to be about my mental health journey, but now I feel like I don’t have the right to tell this story. How can I tell this story, when my own sister didn’t contact me to let me know she wasn’t feeling like she could go on. I obviously don’t have it all figured out. My mental health is just that, a journey and this journey has a lot of ups and downs. 

I don’t know  if I can honor her by telling my story, but I do know that I want mental health to stop being taboo. I want us to stop feeling shame for having these issues. I wanted that so badly for my sister, she never got that. She was a trans-female that served in the army. I know her experience has been inherently more difficult than my own. I wish I could speak for her and share her experiences, but I can’t. 

Instead, I’m hoping my story can just begin a conversation. I just want people to talk about this more. I am tired of feeling ashamed or less than because of my mental health. 

When I was 18, I got a full ride scholarship to ASU. It was 2007, I was only 5ft tall, and my eyebrows were plucked to the max.I  looked like a child. People thought I was 12 years old when I walked into lecture halls. I was so excited, I always sat in the front ( which was in part because of my shortness) and was always eager to answer questions (I was definitely a know-it-all).Remember how Hermoine Granger shot her hand up during class to answer every question…that was me, except I would have totally been in ravenclaw. Gryffindor sucks.  I didn’t have a car, so I rode the bus all the way to the ASU polytechnic campus. The bus ride was about 2 hours long, so in that time I read all my textbooks ( yes, I was a nerd, but also in my defense I didn’t have a smartphone). I crushed my first year at school, and got straight As -I LOVED learning. I was in my element. School was my Jam

But, life got the best of me. Well… a boy got the best of me. I hate telling this story. During my second semester at ASU, I met a boy who liked me and wanted to marry me (I’m just that irresistible). I tutored him because I was a boss ass bitch at biology. We hit it off,and the rest is history. While we were engaged, he told me that I should drop out of school and put him through dental school because a degree in Biology would never get me anywhere. GUESS WHAT I DID?! Yup, I ended up dropping out of school for him.Then a few months after I dropped out, he broke off the engagement. Oh man, I became so depressed. His rejection felt terrible. I felt as if I was imploding. Every bad thought I’d ever had about myself became true, it's like his rejection was proof that I was horrible, stupid, ugly, and unworthy of love. Plus, I had dropped out of school, the  one thing I was amazing at. The thing that gave me purpose. At this point. I thought all was lost…and a few weeks later, I had my first suicide attempt.

My memories of that day are blurry, but the feelings aren’t. I was in my room on my knees bawling my eyes out. The room seemed blurry- sounds were muffled. Why was I so stupid? Why couldn't I be normal? My upbringing never instilled confidence in me – it did the opposite. Childhood abuse stole the backbone that I never had a chance to develop. So I became my own worst critic, my worst abuser. I truly felt that people around me would be better off without me, that I was like a plague- infecting and ruining everything I touched. I convinced myself that I would never amount to anything, and that I didn’t deserve happiness, and that I didn’t deserve a family or success. I believed I was inherently bad and unlovable. At that moment I hated myself. 

Of course, none of this was true, but it felt 100% real to me. After the tears subsided, there was a deafening silence. That was my queue. It was time, no second guessing myself. Just end it.

SPOILER ALERT- the attempt did not work. I’m still here today.

I was hospitalized for about two weeks. I tried to start over after getting out of the hospital. I married a new man and became pregnant at 19 ( I know, great start, right?). By 22 I had two kids, no degree, no career and a lot of mental health issues.  At 27, I got a divorce, and had to be the main breadwinner for me and my kids. I started out excited about my newfound independence. But without a degree or valid work experience, I struggled to provide. I worked as a teller at banks, daycare and front desk at gyms, a 911 operator for flights with medical emergencies, and also helped with after school programs. I changed jobs constantly.  I either couldn’t deal with the night hours or I was not making enough money to provide for myself and my kids.

Once again, I felt like I had failed, like I couldn’t make it on my own. All the feelings of unworthiness felt validated. There were nights where I just drank zzquil because I didn’t have enough food for all of us and I was so depressed and overwhelmed that all I wanted to do was sleep. My mental health plummeted. I started not showing up to work and lost my jobs. I ended up in the hospital again (my 4th time). No attempt, just suicidal thoughts... but I still felt like an embarrassment to myself and my family. I lied to the Drs and nurses and said I was feeling better and no longer felt suicidal… but the truth is I didn’t want to be hospitalized...I couldn’t afford to be.  

When I got out, I applied for unemployment. They didn’t offer much, but at least I got to be on food stamps.By this time, my apartment was mostly empty. I had sold all of our furniture to try to pay bills. My kids and I  ate  and hung out on the floor. Sometimes we could watch things on my old laptop, because I had to sell the tv. The only thing left was the queen bed that the three of us slept in together, but I was even thinking about selling that – maybe we could use sleeping bags.  I started falling behind on rent, then got evicted from my apartment. I felt complete despair. I felt like an unfit parent, and unfit human. I was failing.  I wanted to turn this around. I didn’t ever want to be in this position again. I didn’t want to beg others for help with groceries, I didn’t want to take money out of my kids piggy bank just to do laundry or eat food. I wanted a better life for us, and I was determined to get it.

I knew that in order to get a good paying job, I would have to get a degree. I wanted to go back to school, but I didn’t have the money. At that point, I had been in a 2 year battle with financial aid and ASU finance. I kept getting denied for various reasons. But financial aid was the only way I could make school happen.  After what felt like an eternity, I finally got accepted by FAFSA. Yay! I got Student loans! Am I in extreme debt now? ABSOLUTELY! But I have an education and that means the world to me. I won’t ever have to dig in my children’s piggy bank again.

Now remember, I was always a boss ass bitch at biology, so of course, I chose to go back and study that. After returning to school in 2017, I had the opportunity of working in a lab doing research and wet lab work and I fell in love with it.  And as I neared the end of my bachelor’s, I realized that if I wanted a strong career in science where I could actually make a decent living, I should pursue a PhD. And okay, I have to admit I also wanted it because a PhD sounds so coool. I grew up watching X-files and loved Agent Scully. She was badass... she was a medical Dr. But still close enough. So part of it was because I wanted to be Dr. Segovia... it's funny now that I am Dr. Segovia- I really don’t like anyone calling me that. It doesn’t feel right. But at least it's there just in case. 

Anyways, I applied to grad school and was accepted to work in Dr. Huijben's lab where my research focused on resistance evolution of malaria parasites. I mean it was an absolute dream! I was being paid to do science! I was stoked. 

But the reality soon set in. Grad school in itself can trigger a lot of mental health issues, anxiety, imposter syndrome, depression, feeling like a failure and so on. So if you ALREADY have mental health issues before grad school... oh man...everything just gets amplified. It feels so lonely. I was drowning, but I couldn’t ask anyone for help…because I wasn’t aware anyone else felt as hopeless and lost as I did. No one talks about mentals health, it's like a dirty little secret. Most students I encountered seemed to have a solid sense of self, so I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there. I was not strong enough to sustain the many blows that crush you during grad school. They crush you over and over into the ground in hopes of creating a strong, self-sufficient scientist. Like a diamond that needs high temp and high pressure to truly shine. But not all of us are diamonds, some of us are pearls, some of us opals, some of us are emeralds, some of us are amber. Some of us don’t shine after this amount of pressure, some of us are destroyed.

My mental health declined dramatically. Suicidal thoughts were so strong, even though I had gotten to a place in my life where I felt and knew that taking my life wasn’t the answer. But I started self-harm- whatever I could do to soothe the overwhelming HATE I felt for myself. Self-harm is deceiving. It feels like it helps, but it doesn’t. It made me feel things when I was numb.It gave me a sense of control when I felt like I was drowning. I was finally directing how I felt and what I felt. My children noticed the cuts, and I had to make up stories: “Oh I got in a fight with a cat” or “I was doing yard worK”. Lying to them made me realize how unhealthy it all was.  Would I ever want my children to cope like this? Of course not. Then I can’t cope like this. I deserve the same love and compassion that my children deserve. I don’t deserve to be punished just for being human.

Regardless of the state of my mental health, I made it through grad school.  I got my PhD and I am now a assistant teaching professor at ASU. I accomplished something I’ve always dreamed of . I was able to keep moving forward regardless of how dark times got for me. I learned how strong and resourceful I actually am. But I am here to emphasize (and this is important so listen up), the suicidal and self-critical part of me still exists today. I thought that once I got my PhD and accomplished my dream, that maybe my depression and disdain for myself would finally disappear. But it didn’t, because that’s not how mental health works. Depression will always find a way in no matter how much evidence there is of your own strength or worth. 

But It does get better.  I’ve learned to accept these parts of me and not be ashamed of them. What does that mean though, accepting it? In the past, I always tried to “fix” myself. I said things like “I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, I need to be nicer. I shouldn’t be critical,” Of course, I inevitably failed at that, too, and felt even more ashamed.  Instead, I’ve learned to say “I am very self-critical”, or “I recognize that I would not hold someone else to these standards”. That lets me acknowledge that  what I think and say about myself is harsh and I deserve the grace and love that I give to others. I am not trying to correct it right now, but I am recognizing that it's very mean, highly critical, and most of the time completely untrue.

I am also acknowledging that the critical part of myself can be useful. It's not all bad – no part of me is. I know this critical part of me pushes me. It’s why I am ambitious, why I love learning, why I love science, why I am meticulous. I’ve learned that I am not all bad, and not all good, and that’s ok. I am human and other humans are like that too. We are all just trying to figure life out as we go, so I am giving all of the parts of myself more grace and compassion.

The point of me telling you this story isn’t to say “if I can do it, you can do it”. I hate that saying. It's so ignorant. It completely ignores that everyone is different and comes from different circumstances. My life has been tough, but I also recognize that I have had an insane amount of privilege that  allowed me to get to where I am today. 

No, I don’t have a greater message or advice that can help you get through tough times. I wish I did. But I’m sharing this story as a Dr. now, as someone who got through graduate school, because I’m tired of pretending that I’m not struggling, and I’m tired of everyone else pretending too. The truth is sharing this stuff is scary for me, it puts me in a super vulnerable position. I know some people will be super uncomfortable with a story like this. But I know that being vulnerable helps people connect. I wish there was more vulnerability among scientists, I wish grad school encouraged vulnerability,  I wish I had been more vulnerable with my sister and my step-dad. I’m done with wishing though. Wishing isn’t enough. It is my mission to be a woman of action. I am going to be more vulnerable and I hope others will follow. You never know who might need to hear it.  

Kayla Burgher 

Thanks for tuning in to SciChronicles. This podcast is recorded at Arizona State University, which sits on the ancestral homelands of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh peoples without whose care in keeping we would not be here today. We would like to thank the School of Life Sciences, the Center for Biology and Society, and Ask A Biologist for helping us make these stories into a podcast.

This podcast was developed by Kayla Burgher and Risa Aria Schnebly. Thank you for listening, and if you have not already, please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes.