Volume 3, Issue 17: On Advocating for Ourselves
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Hi friends! I am the type of person who will readily speak up on behalf of others but still struggles with advocating for myself. I know I am not alone and that there are many, many folks who are like me. If a server came to our table (back when we would eat in restaurants) and asked how my food was I would immediately say, “Good!” even if it wasn’t. If a cashier at Trader Joe’s asks if I found everything I needed I would say, “Yep!” even if I didn’t. The lies would come so easily because I was terrified of making someone uncomfortable on my behalf. I was the personification of the phrase, “If not, no worries!”
In 2020 there was a big cultural reckoning, as we know. The time for letting things slide was over. The time for marginalized folks doing unpaid labor and education was over. The time for being passive was over. It was probably in 2020 when I started taking my first big step, which doesn’t seem big but had become big because it was something I’d let slide for 40 years from strangers to coworkers to family members.
I started correcting people, immediately and consistently, on the spelling of my name.
In some circles, mostly my day job and in my family, I go by a form of my middle name, Suzi. It is four letters. It has been spelled this way my entire life of over four decades. It is in my email signatures.
Yet people constantly write it as “Suzie.”
“It’s an easy mistake,” I would tell myself. “Spelling it with an ‘e’ at the end is common, so it’s not wrong. And my last name begins and ends with an ‘e’ so it totally makes sense that someone would think it’s spelled that way.”
For 4+ decades I have just been low-key seething while making excuses for other people and not advocating for myself. It’s my name. Spelling a person’s name right and pronouncing their name correctly are the lowest bar for showing a person decency and respect. But the longer I let it slide, the harder it became to speak up until finally I had some real talk with myself and realized I can’t possibly advocate for bigger things for myself and others if I can’t even ask people to spell my name right.
It seems like a really simple thing to do but it’s important to know that I was raised to be accommodating. I was raised to think I was in service to other people or that it was my duty to make other people comfortable or proud or entertained and definitely to make sure that I was careful to tiptoe around and not trigger any strong emotions from the adults around me who had neither the tools (nor inclination?) to regulate their emotions. I was to be accommodating, agreeable, and compliant. I never imagined that I was worth being accommodated as well. I have spent so much of my life, especially my professional life, meeting people where they are without recognizing that it goes both ways and sometimes people need to meet Me where I am.
So the time for letting things slide is over.
No, I’m sorry I will not be attending your baby shower around unmasked, unvaccinated people. No, I cannot make it to the meeting you scheduled after my work hours or during a time slot I already have booked. And a gentle reminder: Suzi does not have an ‘e’ at the end.
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