I stopped trying to be better than. I stopped trying to prove that I had the right answers, that I had figured something out that others had not. Instead, I started sitting across the table: not above; not below; across. I began to see that everyone was navigating something. Everyone had wounds, patterns, limitations that shaped how they showed up. And the people who told me to quiet down, to pull back, to not be so direct or honest, were not doing it because I was wrong.
