5 Things / Pride Paradox
Happy Pride! I’m going to be honest here…to me, life as a gay person in America right now feels like whiplash. On one hand, we’re seeing rainbow everything and everywhere this year – from products at IKEA and Target to tweets like this from the Marines. It’s so extreme that I’ve seen posts decrying the commodification of pride. They’re not wrong. And also, I really love rainbows.
5 Things / No Words
I was recently asked how I can write “good vibes” when there’s so much garbage happening in the world. I’m paraphrasing, but it certainly feels that way sometimes. I replied that I look for the silver lining – which is often some kind of thoughtful corporate action or commitment.
5 Things / Day to Day
One of the key distinctions LaTonya described in our conversation is the distinction between a “remote work culture” and “work from home”. In a remote work culture, the organization takes a stand and leads with a framework for hybrid work with specific guidance and new norms for everyone including leadership.
5 Things / Getting It Wrong
This week my team and I made a few mistakes. Sometimes we get it wrong, and I appreciate the folks who took the time to help me get it right and hold me accountable. Keep it coming.
First, I received an email from a reader named Lucy regarding my use of the term “breast milk” and the headline with the word “moms” in the last newsletter. I know that not just moms give birth (because some trans and non-binary people do also, and may not use the word ‘mom’) and I knew another term for breast milk is expressed milk (and thanks to Lucy, ‘human milk’). Lucy also shared a resource on the topic of transgender fertility.
5 Things / Benefits Edition
This week I made some new friends, including a man who went undercover with Al Qaeda and wrote a book to tell the story. He’s a great guy, and like my other new friends, is very different from me. But one thing we all have in common is that we’re speakers. During the pandemic, I enrolled in Heroic Public Speaking (HPS) to level up my speaking game, and one of the unexpected benefits was meeting a bunch of new people with completely different lived experiences, stories, and perspectives than me. I loved it.