Just Keep Going.

I picked my first jury when 8 months pregnant with my eldest child, 31 years ago. That presiding judge admonished me to ‘sit down’ in ‘my condition’; I politely told him that I felt fine. I did not really embrace the full nature of his comment and all it telegraphed about his worldview to the empaneled jury.

I just kept going.

Several years later, in a bench trial, the presiding judge justified his evidentiary rulings to the seasoned male counsel (and one other less seasoned than I ) with the following comment: “I am sorry but she’s right”.  Again, I did not verbally and presently identify the ways in which I was an outsider to a club that I could never belong to.

I just kept going.

Not too long ago, a seasoned mediator was supposed to have reported our lack of success after a multi-day attempt to both counsel. They chose to reply to one counsel (and not me) only, with direction that he contact me. He failed to.  Again, I only privately remarked on the lack of respect for my role in the process and did not publicly decry the failure, potentially but not certainly inadvertent.

I just kept going.

It has been a lifetime of events such as these.

At least the gradient is not as severe today as it once was.  

Today, I am often more circumspect, particularly in the company of the generation ‘next’ that is willing to call out macro and micro aggressions in ways that I am not. Where they would say ‘hey’, I say ‘but I can’. They call out the inequities that I have learned over a life time to work around, to be, in the parlance of one pop-culture icon with the initials TS, strategic rather than calculating.

May we all find our paths.

May the future provide more routes that are direct, equitable, and kind.