Earlier today, I went to LinkedIn to see if a potential partner had responded. He had. 🙌🏾 While there, I scrolled through the most recent stories as one does on social media platforms. There were two stories that captured by attention. They came one right after the other. Two ladies holding certificates. Two different images with essentially the same message.
One was a recently sworn in attorney. Her story was about a college counselor who once told her that she would never get into law school. She clearly did. The other story was about a judge who told a former foster child that she would be back in court in handcuffs soon after she leaves the system. The certificate she was holding? Proof of human ability to overcome. In her case, she was being inducted into an international honor society in her profession.
Both stories begin way before people started putting limitations on what these ladies can do. Somewhere in between, those limitations were expressed by people who should have been encouraging. There is no doubt that those negative words made the ladies even more determined than they would have been otherwise. More importantly, I am willing to bet that they had others along the way speaking life into them. People who encouraged them, showed compassion, let them cry when needed, and supported them after they picked themselves back up again.
I always aim to be the person who speaks life. I know how it feels to be doubted. A former supervisor once told me that I would never amount to anything. I just laughed, of course, because she did not know my life. If she had known, she would have seen that my life had already amounted to a lot more than I could have imagined - even back then. But I know how much of an impact those words can have when people are already doubting themselves.
So, speak life. Be the light. Do your best not to inflict any wounds. People are suffering enough as it is. The fact that these stories of women who don’t know each other came to my stories within moments of each other is proof. We don’t need any more negativity in the world. We need compassion and support, even for those we don’t know.
