“I would have told you anything you wanted.
All you had to do was ask.

My life, my heart, is an open book for you.

I love and adore you. You deserve nothing less than unflinching truth, and in doing so I can only hope to give you a safe space to be all of you.

I am not afraid of my past. Each choice, each loss, each scar has built me into someone I still want to share with the world.

I would have told you anything you wanted.
All you had to do was ask.“

Soon, I will sit in a room where people will decide what they believe about me.

Not through authentic conversation or healthy communication – but rather through their own lens, their own interpretation of me – judging my ability to perform.

Some will be looking for weakness.
Some will be looking for confirmation of what they already think they know.
Some will simply be watching.

And the advice I have been given – the advice repeated most often – is this:

Be smaller.

Speak carefully.
Contain your emotions.
Do not react too strongly.
Do not say too much.

In other words – disappear just enough to not ruffle the room.

It feels like a strange thing to be practicing on International Women’s Day.

A day meant to celebrate women who refused to be quiet.
Women who refused to disappear.
Women who insisted on taking up space in a world that constantly asked them to shrink.

Yet here I am, learning how to fold parts of myself inward.

Not because I want to.

But sometimes perseverance requires strategy.

Because at the end of the day, to them, I am “different.” I always have been. And I have learned it is easier for me to get back into the box rather than try to make someone see the real me.

I am an easy target.

“It’s easier to believe a narrative about me that fits your thinking, rather than question if your thinking is right.”

I never want to assume that I’m right- cause well I have been wrong far too often. No, I want- maybe even now- NEED to hear what is happening in someone’s heart and mind.

“The ability to offer empathy to people in stressful situations can defuse potential violence.”
Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Tell me what is going on. I know this isn’t the whole story. It just can’t be. It doesn’t make any sense. I want to know the WHY. Not the fake one, but the ‘you are too afraid to be this honest’ – WHY. I want to forgive you. I want to know I wasn’t wrong about you. I want to believe in that soul again.”

I cannot deny that my tendency toward empathy is the chink in my armor. While I can come in hot, emotions threatening to leave me vulnerable – at the end of the day where I cave, where I put others over myself and my own needs – is when I know empathy is the better answer.

Because people just need to be heard.

Heard in their pain.
Heard in their fear.
Heard in their frustration.

We all live lives that are deeply private… until suddenly they are not.

Sometimes that exposure happens because someone betrays you.
Sometimes it happens because truth finally finds its voice.

Either way, empathy becomes one of the few bridges that can keep people from turning completely against one another.

“Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other.”
— Marshall B. Rosenberg

This is the thread that keeps appearing in the stories that stay with me – in books, in television, in the moments when life forces people to confront each other’s humanity. Again and again, the lesson is the same: most conflict is born not from cruelty alone, but from pain that has gone unseen, stories that were never asked about, and truths that were never given the space to breathe.

There is a moment in Ted Lasso where Roy Kent tells a story about a teammate who beat the hell out of him after a stupid joke. At the time, everyone believed the man was simply angry and unstable.

Later Roy learns the truth.

The man and his wife had lost their baby a month before.

No one knew.
No one had asked.

And suddenly the entire story changes.

None of us truly know what is happening inside someone else’s life.

“Be curious, not judgmental.”
– Walt Whitman

That line hit me the same way it hits Ted Lasso in the show.

Because the people who underestimated me throughout my life were rarely curious.

They had already decided who I was.

Curiosity requires humility.
It requires asking questions.
It requires admitting that we might not already know the whole story.

Judgment is easier.

Judgment allows certainty.

But certainty is rarely where truth lives.

Truth is messier than that.

Truth requires patience.
Truth requires listening.
Truth requires empathy.

There is another moment that has stayed with me for years, from the film A Time to Kill. In the courtroom, the young lawyer realizes that somewhere in all the legal maneuvering something essential has been lost.

The truth.

He asks a question that feels painfully relevant in moments like this:

What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?

Because facts alone cannot deliver truth if the people hearing them have already decided what they believe.

He reminds the jury that the eyes of the law are human eyes – yours and mine – and until we are willing to see each other as equals, the law will only reflect our fears, our assumptions, and our prejudices.

That is the danger of judgment without curiosity.

When people stop seeking truth, they start protecting narratives.

Narratives are comfortable.
Narratives are easy.

And I’ll be honest, if you have to misinterpret someone’s seven year old past just to fit your narrative….maybe you’re telling the wrong story!

Maybe you should try to for the truth.

Truth is harder.

“With every choice you make, be conscious of what it needs to serve.”
Marshall B. Rosenberg

Right now I am trying to be conscious of what my choices serve.

Do they serve fear?
Do they serve anger?
Do they serve the instinct to protect myself at all costs?

Or do they serve something harder.

Something more honest.

Truth.

Because if there is one thing I still believe – even on the days when my heart feels exhausted and broken -it is that finding truth is paramount. And I KNOW there is a truth out there waiting for me to discover it!

Not the version shaped by fear.
Not the version shaped by judgment.
Not the version that protects the story someone already wants to believe.

The real truth.

The one that requires curiosity.
The one that requires empathy.
The one that asks us to see each other fully.

Soon, I will walk into that room.

I cannot control what people believe when they look at me.

But I can control what I carry with me when I walk in.

I will carry my scars.
I will carry my empathy.
And I will carry the quiet belief that truth – real truth – is still worth seeking.

Even when the world is asking you to become smaller.

Because in the end, truth does not belong to the loudest voice in the room – it belongs to those who are brave enough to keep searching for it.

with all my love, xoxo J