Closets
One of my favorite things about working at @degreed is that I am reminded to learn and grow daily, and am given the resources to do it. Not just at it relates to my direct job, either
I recently watched the @TED TED@work recording of @AshBeckham talking about how we are all hiding something, and what she said resonated with me. I have been in the closet. Not the sexual orientation closet, but as she says, everyone has their closet. Mine is Spencer.
Just as she doesn’t go around blurting out that she is gay to any and all, I do not go blurting out that I had a son who died. But eventually, as I get to know new people I hit a line, a line in our relationship where it starts to feel like Spencer is some dark secret I am hiding.
Not at all, just not a part of daily conversation and not something, just like revealing your sexual orientation, or that you are getting a divorce, or you are closing a business, etc, that can be seamlessly introduced to daily conversation.
I have told 2 people at my new company. The conversations we were having felt like if I didn’t say something now, it would seem like I had actively made the decision to hide it or not say something. But that first deep breath before I began, felt like stepping out of my dark, safe closet.
The part where Ash talks about her older parents friends trying to relate to her being gay, by asking about Will and Grace, and the their husband wears pink, is relatable. I have had those reactions.
…My cousin had a miscarriage, I know someone who knows someone who lost a child, I have a child. ….
And there were times I would grit my teeth. Those needs to relate made me angry. They are not the same, at all.
But in Ash’s speech she mentioned that in trying to relate, her parents friends had made a difficult choice for themselves. I hadn’t seen it that way. While I think it works better in her scenario of coming out as gay, I can still relate it to myself too.
People were not trying to connect to be hurtful or to nullify or negate my experience. They were and are trying to connect to make me feel like they are there for me, that they, as much as they can, want to understand.
Closets, are hard. I am still in one very much, at my job because, especially in this remote work world, the standard visual cues that people use to start getting to know you conversations -conversations that can open closet doors, are no longer.
No one is walking by my desk and asking about the picture of my kids. Zoom doesn’t clearly show my necklace with 3 kids names on it, it doesn’t show much below my shoulders so certainly no one is asking about the memorial tattoo on my ankle. So the space we are in is making closets harder to exit from, we have to make conscious decisions and exert effort to leave them.
But I have to remind myself-no one put me in the closet, it is simply a piece of myself that isn’t out in the world. I am sure many of my colleagues have pieces of themselves in closets that may take me months, years or that I never learn about.
That is ok, and it is ok that I haven’t shouted from the proverbial rooftops my own closeted pieces. But when I do tell people, that is also ok and I will eventually no longer feel the existence of the closet. Until then, to my fellow closet dwellers, I am here, and my closet has space if you want to just be in it together.