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4 days agoI heard this once, and it’s stuck with me since: don’t speak for people that you don’t speak to. It helps me remember that I don’t really know the challenges a marginalized community faces if I’m not a part of it, and I should do the work of listening and understanding before inserting myself into a situation with perhaps well-intentioned, but misguided, attempts at helping.
Not particularly, at least not by anyone other than my wife. She thinks I’m pretty great, and I just don’t see it. I think I’m pretty average and unremarkable, and the world will just keep moving along without me once I’m gone. Takes the pressure off a bit, tbh, because it makes the stakes pretty low. If no one values what you provide, then it doesn’t really matter if you meet their expectations or not.