The days are shorter and colder, and like you, we’re looking for inspiration to sustain us through winter. For our last episode of the season we talk with two authors who are passing on the wisdom of the great icons Bruce Lee and Frida Kahlo to teach us what we’re capable of. Arianna Davis is the author of “What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly,” the digital director of Oprah Magazine and a self-proclaimed Friducha. Images of Frida Kahlo have been heavily commercialized, but Davis believes there is much to learn from her that can inspire us in 2020.

“The book is not meant to be a blueprint of how to live your life,” Davis says. “There’s definitely a lot of decisions that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but I think we can read about her story, the decisions she made, the way she lived her life so fiercely for inspiration on how we can also live our own lives boldly and fiercely.”

Kahlo is considered to be one of Mexico’s greatest artists. She contracted polio at the age of 6, which caused her right leg and foot to grow much thinner than her left one. As a result, she wore long skirts her entire life. In high school, she suffered a trolley accident that fractured her spine and pelvis. She was hospitalized for weeks and had to wear a full-body cast for months. Later, she would not be able to bear children with her husband and painter, Diego Rivera. She and Diego had a tumultuous marriage that, coupled with ongoing physical ailments, caused her depression. One week after her 47th birthday, Frida died of a pulmonary embolism.

Davis was hesitant in writing a book about such a big icon. “Even though I am Latina, I’m Puerto Rican and Black — I’m not Mexican. And so I had that moment of asking myself, ‘Are you really the right person to tell the story? Should this be a Mexican writer that writes it instead, especially after all the ‘American Dirt’ drama?’ ”

But for Davis, Frida is a shared icon for all Latinx people, and so she made sure to do as much research when writing the book, including traveling to Mexico City where Frida was born and raised.

“I’m Black and Puerto Rican and growing up as a Latina, I think Frida is one of those icons, one of those faces that you just know of. She overcame so many obstacles while being proudly feminist, being proudly Mexican, being proudly queer. And this was all in the 1920s and ’30s. So for me, seeing the Frida movie and learning more about her story really sparked this fascination that kind of eventually became an obsession.”

The biggest lesson Davis has walked away with is one of Frida’s famous phrases, “Viva la Vida,” which means live your life or long live life. Davis feels Frida knew the end was near after Frida’s leg was amputated. Then Frida painted watermelons with a message — Viva la Vida. Davis gets goosebumps every time she remembers this phrase.

“The fact that she had every obstacle you could possibly think of in the end, she still had this positive outlook of you need to live your life and live it to the fullest,” says Davis.