Dear K—,
You are sixteen today. There is a thing about how to walk into a room that I have wanted to give you, in language, and have not been able to find the words for, and so I am writing it down. Forgive the form. I have written you letters since you were three weeks old. You have never read any of them. You can decide whether this one is for now.
What I want to give you is this: you are allowed to take up the space your body is in, and the space your voice is in, and the space your sentences are in, without subtracting any of it before someone asks you to. You will be asked. People will ask. The asking is not always loud, and it is rarely a person. It is sometimes a room. The room will tell you, in a hundred small ways, to step back six inches. I have stepped back six inches my whole life. I would like you to step back the inches that are required and no more.
I want to say what this is not. It is not the bullying caricature that people will hand you the word ‘bossy’ to describe. It is not loudness, or interruption, or refusing to listen. It is closer to its opposite. It is paying enough attention to the room to know exactly how much space is yours, and taking that, with a steady wrist, and giving the rest back. The men in your life will think this is aggressive at first. Some of them will adjust. The ones who do not adjust will tell you they are intimidated. ‘Intimidated’ is not always the word for what they are. Sometimes the word is ‘surprised.’ You will learn to tell the difference.
I want to tell you a thing about my own mother. She taught me to apologize before I made a request. ‘Sorry, can I—’ ‘Sorry, would you—’ I did not know I was doing it until I was thirty-one and a friend recorded a meeting I had run and we listened to it together. I opened seventeen of my twenty-three sentences with ‘sorry.’ The instruction to soften the air around a request had moved into my voice so deep I could not hear it anymore. I have spent the fifteen years since trying to take it back out. It is harder than learning a language. It is like trying to unlearn the way you breathe.
I would like you to skip that part. I do not know if it is possible. I think it might be. I have not asked you to apologize before a request since you were four. I have asked you to please, and to thank, and to look the person in the eye. I have not asked you to soften the request itself. I think — I hope — that this will save you the seventeen years I spent unsoftening.
There is a thing about asking for what you are worth that I will tell you about later, in person, when you have a paycheck. The short version is: the number you have rehearsed is rarely the number you should be asking for. The longer version takes a while. We will go to lunch.
There is a thing about being told to smile. I am going to be brief about this one because I have been brief about it your whole life and I want you to know that the brevity is on purpose. You are not required to smile at anyone. You can. It is, often, a kind thing. It is not, ever, a duty owed to a stranger on a street. The instruction to arrange your face for the comfort of the room is the room’s problem. Not yours. Practice the face you wear when you are thinking. It is a beautiful face. I have watched it your whole life.
I want to end with what scares me. It scares me that telling you to take the room will make you a target in rooms I cannot follow you into. I have thought about this for years. I have decided it scares me less than not telling you, and watching you learn to step back six inches without knowing you were learning. The cost of taking the room is real. The cost of not taking it is bigger. I am betting on the bigger one being the one we can both live with.
Take the room, K—. Notice your feet. Where are they. Where would they be if there were no one else in the room. That is the room you came for.
Love, your mother