The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Shimmer: The Polka-Dot Zebra by Taraleigh SkywalkerRapha

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Shimmer: The Polka-Dot Zebra by Taraleigh SkywalkerRapha https://www.amazon.com/Shimmer-Polka-Dot-Zebra-Taraleigh-SkywalkerRapha-ebook/dp/B0F2VSS7SC Based on a true-life event, a polka-dot zebra was born in 2019 on the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Polka-dots being born into a world of stripes–an oddity that has never been seen before. Shimmer is about a zebra that doesn’t even know if she is a real zebra if she doesn’t have stripes like everyone else. She doesn’t fit in and is teased and bullied mercilessly until she eventually forgets her own name. One day a group of bullies push her off a cliff into a muddy bog, where she becomes stuck and comes face-to-face with Blamey, a gigantic crocodile. Blamey refuses to eat Shimmer because she “doesn’t have stripes,” which causes Shimmer to burst into tears that she is not even good enough to be eaten. Blamey, with the help of his flamingo and firefly friends, teaches Shimmer what she is really made of and what really counts. What was seemingly the worst day of Shimmer’s life transforms her. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. You are a star plucked from the heavens and wrapped in a mud suit. Your inner spirit star was created perfectly. The real you is not mud. You are pure light. Shine.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. And folks, Vos, here from thecrisvoss Show.com. I see him in the Ireland. It sings it for 2,800 episodes, 16 years to Chris Voss show. We've been bringing you the most amazing minds, the most amazing stories, and most amazing journeys, the most amazing authors.

People share all their wonderful journeys of life because stories are the fabric of life. And without our stories, we'd be nothing. And that's very true. have any stories to tell. I'd just be like, what'd you eat today, Chris? Burger? And that would be it. But that is the story, actually, in itself. Anyway, we're just setting that up to lead

into the asking and begging and pleading for you to refer your family, friends, and relatives. Full of a God, people. Tell other people about us, eating me of the world better. Go to Goodreason.com, which is Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, or just Chris Foss. Chris Fawn is one of the TikTok and all this crazy place. Yeah. Opinions expressed by guests

on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Faw show. the show, maybe by advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.com. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book success. Tammy, amazing young lady on the show, we're going to be talking about her wonderful book that she wrote for children, and I'm sure parents can learn from it as well, and adults as well,

too. The book is entitled, Shimmer, the polka. D-ZEbra out March 6, 2025 by Tara Lee Skywalker AFA. And we're going to get into the Dietz with her, as the kids call it. I don't know if that's what the kids call it, but something like that. We're going to doits with her and find out more about it and all that good stuff. Welcome the show. How are you, Tara Lee?

Oh, thank you, Chris. I'm very honored to be here. It's been an amazing journey and it's wonderful to be talking with you here today. It's wonderful to have you as well. Give us your dot-com social media, maybe emails, whatever you want people to find you on the interwebs in the sky. Oh, Shimmer, the Pocodzebra is available on any major retailer, Barnes & Nobles, Walmart, Target, anything.

Yeah, anything that's where they can find you on the winterwebs. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside the book and what it's about, roughly? Oh, Shimmer is about a zebra who is born with Pocodoobs. dots and not stripes. And so she was born completely different into a sea of same stripes. And she is bullied and eventually forgets even her own name, Shimmer. And she's just called Zadot, you know, like the dot.

And she's eventually pushed into a mud hole where she meets Blamey, a huge crocodile who takes her under his wing and talks. to her and about who she really is. And so she comes to a journey of enlightenment. So what happened with this book was one day I was desk scrolling on Facebook, you know, like it held the answers to my life. When I came across the picture of an actual Pocod zebra that was born in 2019 on the Messiah Mara Reserve. Oh, really?

Yes. It's an actual real life zebra. It's just ultra rare. It's very ultra rare. I don't think he lived very long a couple years. They haven't seen him in years. He probably got bullied by the striped, by the striped zebras. He fell into depression, got a drinking problem and pastor.

I think we need to look more into this. Maybe you got another book here. We really need to find the true story of the polka dot and the zebra in the serendiddy there. Exactly. So it was really striking. to me that here was this polka dot zebra standing and all this stripes all around him. And I was like, wow. And it just really brought into clarity what was happening in my life at that moment, which was I had two teenagers, 17 or 14. That's all you need to say right there. We know that.

We know where the troubles begin. No, I'm just teasing. Go ahead. And they had gone into drugs. And oh, the drugs. Drugs. Drugs are bad. You know, marijuana, LSD, cocaine, and it was traumatizing to me as a parent. Oh, yeah. Yeah, especially when they're young. You mean, you want the best for them, right?

We do that around the Chris Fosho on Fridays, but, you know, you know, I don't know, I'm not going to do the jokes. But, you know, when you're trying to raise some kids so they can get out of the house and leave you alone and you can enjoy some privacy and some sleep, you know, you don't want them doing things that are going to keep. them in the house any longer. I don't know. We want to be more independent, you know, drugs is not making independent.

That's true. That's true. As my dad said, get the fuck out of my house. You're 18. This is not helping the situation if you get now, you know, you're going to be dependent on me forever. And so I thought to myself, I was like, you know, one kid on drugs is an anomaly is a pattern. How am I contributing to, you know, their,

desire to want to be on drugs. So I was thinking late one night, just, you know, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, oh, I have it, you know, they are on drugs because I've been parenting them through fear, you know, I'm fearful that they'll, you know, they'll go on a bus to a camp and they'll die or they'll be crossing the railroad tracks, you know, and die, you know, just like this whole. And so the fear was letting in them to, you know, a doorway for this whole negative T to happen and getting on drugs. And so I was like, wow. So the fear just broke off my life in just that one moment.

I found a program for them to go to. It was called Onasazi. And it's a Native American program here in Phoenix, Arizona. And they take the kids and all they get is a backpack. And they can put whatever they want in the backpack of. They give them all these Ziploc ingredients, a tin cup and a fire starter kit. And they have to start their own fires, make their own food in a tin cup on a campfire as they are walking through the wilderness in Phoenix.

And they have to walk from destination to destination. If they make it to their destination in a week's time, wherever they're supposed to be going, then they get letters from their parents. And if they don't make it, they don't get the letters. And so they're pretty incentivized because they don't have cell phones. They don't have anything. They're just, they just got their hiking boots, you know, whatever clothes they can carry, a sleeping bag.

It's like hardcore camping. There's no tent, you know. So they're just out there in the wilderness becoming, you know, like learning that they can start their own fire. They can be self-sufficient. You know, they have to spend so much time with themselves. So a lot of times we're running from ourselves. And so they have to be with themselves in the wilderness and their team,

trying to help each other get to the next destination, you know, using filtered water bottles, you know, finding their own water sources. It's a pretty amazing program. And it's for seven weeks in a row. So when, so I'm only allowed to write them once a week. And with my son, champion, I could, you know, speak directly to him. But with my daughter, courage, I knew that there's, you can't speak directly to her. So then I started writing a, this, this story, Shimmer, the Pocodoo, to get through to her in a soft, more gentle way, you know, that's, you know, sure, there may have been people that have been speaking into her life that maybe were bullying her.

but she took those words, those sentences and put it inside herself. And now she was replaying those negative tracks over and over and over again. And she was now her own worst enemy, her own biggest bully. So that is the premise of this story is, you know, sometimes we're our own biggest bully. Yes. And that's how it plays out in the book or how you incorporate the less. of that in the book. Exactly.

There you go. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough with, you know, raising kids and everything they have access to nowadays, the Instagram generation. You know, I have, I think one of my friends who has three daughters, it's a constant battle. He's fairly religious, whatever that means. And so he tries to keep them virtuous and look out what's good for them.

So they don't destroy themselves, especially in a world that's, you know, I mean, Instagram just basically tells every young woman, here, put your naked body up and sell it for whatever, I don't know, likes. And then go be, you know, go to Dubai and be a fly girl. And so he constantly has to have these conversations

of the three daughters about how this is not reality, this is not healthy, this is not something everyone's doing, this is something a very, you know, whatever part of our society is doing that. And don't do that. But it's a constant battle because there's the pressure, you know,

You and I were growing up, we just had, I don't know, peer pressure in high school, you know, and our friends groups. I mean, they have a whole world up their ass. They got 100 million guys and 100 million people, you know, at them and telling them everything from one thing to another and all sorts of trinkets and offer and money and success. And then you've got all these fake bots that are fake coaches and fake successful people that, you know, pretend that, oh, I just easily. had success and you can too. And they're like, oh, this guy seems to know he's doing and I'll follow him. You know, and I've even fooled.

You know, there was two coaches that I knew as personal friends. They weren't personal friends. They were online social media friends, but you know, I interacted with them pretty regularly and I kind of respect them because they claim that they have these high ticket coach clients, coaching clients, and I'm like, geez, what am I doing

wrong? And it turns out they've been living their car behind a garage or gas station or whatever. with your families for years. Oh, wow. And they were just lying about everything. I mean, I constantly find that. The show flushes a lot of those out when our application will do research and won't be like,

you're not successful at all. Like, you don't get to be on the show. So anyway, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. What, on the book, it was written for this purpose and hope to achieve and helping other people maybe see these fallacies of humankind and some of the things your teenager is going through. Just to address what you were saying.

is, you know, as parents, we can try and make it so that our kids never make any mistakes at all. You know, I had a father that was standing in my kitchen one day is he was so proud of himself. He's that my daughter has just turned 18 and I told her, good luck to you. You can now move out of the house and make all your own choices. I've been making all your choices for you all these years. And his daughter just kind of looked at him all mortified and said, I have never made a single choice in my whole life. And I have no idea how to make a choice now. And so if we protect our kids too much from making mistakes, then and try and get them, if that's our goal line, get them to 18 with no mistakes, that, you know, they might just trash and burn their lives.

So it's good to allow some mistakes to be happening along the way when they're younger and it's not as catastrophic. Yeah. Now it's won several awards I can see here. I can see that it won the Evergreen Award in 2025. Three awards now, including Best Children's Book of 2025. That's pretty awesome. Thank you. It's been a huge honor to see the great awards that have come through in the reviews.

You know, people saying it's magical, it's anointed, you know, your children must read it. I have eight kids. I have more, actually. There's others that call me mom. but the traditional way I have, you know, for biological, two-step, and two-adopted. And so it's hard to find a storybook that would appeal to all the ages,

you know, if I'm going to sit down the couch and read to the children. So I wanted to, you know, make a new book that could appeal to all different ages of my children, even to any adult that's reading it, that they can get, you know, an enlightening message out of, of it too, because I just love self-help books and inspirational books, and I notice that there's

not really that genre in the children's. I want to start a whole new genre of an inspirational self-help book, basically, that is wrapped up in an acute children's story. And you have a lot of positive affirmations. You are a star plucked from the heavens. What role does spirituality or spiritual or personal philosophy playing in your writing for stuff like that. Oh, I think God is everywhere and everything inside us. He created us. He designed us. He didn't design us to be failures. He designed us to shine and to reach out to the people around us and lift them up. Yeah. And so positive affirmations are good because they give people, believe systems and axioms to work with. You know, I mean, one of the great things about

positive informations they've been around forever is they, It kind of helped keep us on path of positivity, maybe. There's, I have a theory that when we're born, we're given, it basically is kind of like an addictive, negative thing that we'll say about ourselves. Someone might be like, I am not worthy, I am not loved, you know, so just whatever your favorite flavor of not is. We're just, we have these glasses on that say, I am not good enough. you know, it says everyone seems to have some sort of negative thing that they say to themselves.

And, you know, this book is about flipping that to understand who we are on the inside is that star and that we can be the I am, I am loved, you know, I am worthy, I can do this. So it's not just positive affirmations. It's becoming, you know, that whole state of being that we are, that internal. light that God has made us. And we're just pretending to be less than what we are. Yeah. And do you think a lot of people do that? They pretend to be less than what they are because I don't know, maybe they don't want to do the work or maybe they don't want to. What do you think? Oh, so many reasons why we, you know, say those negative things to ourselves, you know, could be

from, you know, parenting or, you know, friends that are not really friends, you know, trying to bring us down or they want us to stay at their same level so that they don't feel challenged. So, so many reasons why we are so negative towards ourselves and just some of it is from just identifying with this outer meat suit that we have this, you know, like, shimmer had a furry outer, you know, polka dot seat, you know, and some of us might be different in other ways, you know, but, you know, it's about not identifying

with the outer meat suit, but understanding the inner star that's on the inside of us, the pure light that, you know, shines out of us. We can have, you know, fractures, you know, from where we've been hurt or this or that. It's kind of like that. Japanese art where they, you know, if you break a teacup, there's a story about the emperor that broke his favorite teacup. Well, yeah.

And they tried to put it back together with staples. He didn't like it. So then they did it with a gold kind of glue. And it actually made the teacup more beautiful. So they were, it had been tracked. It was now all this beautiful gold jagged lines. And so we can be broken, but still shine brightly. through the breaks in our, you know, exterior.

Oh. Yeah. We can, you know, I think we all go through life being broken a few times, but it helps us build to be more resilient and better people, hopefully. Right. Some people just makes worse, but I want to speak for myself. Exactly. But now, I mean, that's the beauty of these stories that we have on the show and everything we tell

is that, you know, the phoenix rising from the ashes, the renewability of life, you know, hope is, probably the one most enduring thing of human nature that, I don't know, it keeps people from getting sick of it. I think the Earth is sick of humans and maybe the universe is at this point. They're like, we're really over these people. But we're not over us, evidently. So we just keep doing it. But, you know, it's a thing where we all, you know, life throws challenges. You know, you can be the most, I think one of the biggest fallacies I see in life is people think that people who is successful at any given thing, that there's an easy way there. You know, I mean, with the podcast that people go, I want to be a successful

podcaster like you. And, you know, there's a high failure rate to that. And they think it's easy just picking up a mic and talking into it or I'll just talk to my phone. And yeah, it's really easy to do this. Anything of value in life. And I don't know why I have to keep explaining this over 58 years. But anything of, and it seems like I do it more now, anything of value in life worth

having is going to take work. If you want true love, it's going to take work. You're going to have to do a lot of dating. You're going to have to do a lot of heartbreaking and heartbrokenness and whatever. It's going to take work. And then even when you get love keeping it, you're going to have to work really hard to keep it. And that's why people love loves because it's so hard to get and it's so valuable and it feels great when you get it. And when you lose it, it really sucks. But if it didn't have that value, If it was just common where you're just like, I'll just, I'll take a packet of love and some gum and a Coke. You know, you treat like a Coke. You'd just be like, yeah, whatever, man.

There's another one coming up. And like you're saying, anything takes work. It also takes the right philosophy, you know. I mean, I have eight kids. And I was talking to a lady. She only had one kid. And I asked her, are you planning on having a second kid, you know? And she's, no, I can't possibly love another kid as much.

as I love this one, you know? And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. So what are you saying about me? You know, because... Oh, that you can't possibly love your... Oh, wow. That was a backhanded comment, wasn't it? So I was like, you know, your philosophy is that you're, you have, you know, a heart, and all of your love goes into that one child. And you think if you have another child, it'll split your heart into you. And so now each kid gets half of your, you know, your heart of love. I said, but that's not how it works. I said, each child that's born, you know, to me, it seems like I get a whole new heart, and I love that child with my whole heart of this new heart. The love multiplies. It's not divided, you know, so it's not like my

heart's divided into eight pieces. No, each kid has a whole heart, and you love them with that whole heart. And children are a reward from the Lord, and they're just, they bring so much more joy to your life. But if you don't have that philosophy, that children are reward, that they bring joy, you know, even with all the hard work, you know, I'd say you just won't have, you know, more children because they're like, oh, they're inconvenient or they take up too much space or they're too noisy or, you know, I don't know if I can be a parent to more than one kid or I don't want them to outnumber me, you know? My problem is that they always become teenagers.

You know, it was, you have to accept the whole journey. So yes, those two went off the rails for a while and were on drugs and this and that. But without them doing that, I would not have written this book. You know, I would have not gone on that whole journey. So you have to accept their journey that they're on, which also, you know, dovetails into your own journey, and accept all parts of that journey. And because my son had done all those drugs and whatever,

and when he went to that Onisazi program and everything, a couple years later, he met a girl who had also went to that same program. And, you know, they got married because of that common background that they had. So without that whole journey, he wouldn't have the wife that he has today, the child that he has, and he's on such an amazing track right now. He's a private pilot. Then he also went and got his private helicopter pilot, and he's studying for his instruments and commercial pilots. He's 18. He just needed a lot more challenge in his life. So he got married young, and he's doing all this pilot stuff. So I'm so proud of him. And my daughter is off at Bible school in Oklahoma. I'm so proud of both of them. And I wouldn't have changed the journey at all as much as painful as it was.

It had to get me without them doing that. I would have not had that opportunity to break that fear off my life. And so now some of my friends, they're telling me, how can you parent your children with, you parent them without fear? You know, you're not concerned at all. You just, I mean, I tell them safety things and this and that, but I let it go. and I'm enjoying parenting. It's not a fear-based thing.

It's such a joy. Yeah. You know with eight kids, that's quite a, that's quite, you better enjoy parenting. I think that was the joke I was looking for. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or you torture yourself.

I mean, some people, you know, some people are masochists. I don't know. That's your thing. But yeah, that's, I mean, I didn't have any kids, but I'm selfish. Really? No kids. No kids. Everyone, I mean, you had eight. The average Pearson has two or two point five or something like that. So you filled in for me. So thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. Even my illustrator and now calls me mom, you know, and he did such an amazing job. I just want to show some of the illustrations. He did like 40 illustrations. You know, he lives over in Indonesia or whatever. And he's just, he just did amazing. You know, I put all the illustrations on the left-hand side of the page that when you're sitting with your child, you know, reading it, they're sitting here next to your heart and all the illustrations are on the same side. So they don't have to be, you know, so the illustrations are right next to them so they can, you know, see it.

Fun is fun. The, and I have an upcoming book I think you're working on. You want to tease that out to us a little bit? Yeah, I have. So the three main characters in here were Shimmer, the Pocod Zebra, and Blaney the crocodile. And then there's also a silent character in this book, a squirrel. He, like, followed them all around. And he's, like, doing various things in the, in the illustrations. And so kids can, like, track him doing whatever. See, here, he's running, you know, as Sharr's getting kicked off. And, you know, eventually he gets married to a female squirrel. the end of the book. So I did I'm doing an alphabet book where you know it has you know where they can trace the letter and so there's a sport. So there's three sports per letter of them all trying to do these sports and it's a pretty hilarious illustrations of them trying to figure out different new sports. So it's going to be called the Shimmers the book for the brave and daring.

That's like a fun book to take and have. Yeah. Yeah. So any, offerings that you do on your website, any coaching, consulting, readings, speaking, anything coming up that you want to promote? This is out in audiobook as well, but happy to do any sort of, you know, speaking engagements that someone would like to do on, you know, parenting or writing or anything like that. We've gotten a hold of it, wisdom and abundance at gmail.com. It's in the back of the book, the email address.

All right. Thank you very much, Tara, for coming on the show, Terley. we certainly appreciate it. Thank you. It's been such an honor. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. It's been an honor to have you as well.

And hopefully maybe we can make better teenagers with your book or at least help kids so they learn more. It's interesting how we learn through stories. I mean, it's so great. Yeah. The story we tell about ourselves is the most important, you know. Yeah. Sometimes if you tell people directly, hey, you should be better and stop doing that. They don't listen.

But if they hear a story of where it's a story of where it's, embodied in a third person scenario, they can kind of see the fallacies of sometimes their own nature or sometimes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I love stories. They're lucky to learn from stories.

Yeah. Give us any.com's websites, emails, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yes. Thank you. Any major retailer or books by dot shimmer. All right. Sounds good. Thanks for coming by the show.

Thanks for tuning in. Order up the book where refined books are. old. It's called Shimmer, the polka dot zebra out March 6, 2025. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, Terry Lee.

This should have us out.