To the People Who Kept Me Small
I have always been small. I stand at 5'0" on a good posture day and I have hands and feet smaller than some second graders. I was always younger than my peers — having been moved up a grade early on in school and then choosing, typically, to befriend people older than myself. Even in adulthood, smallness has prevailed as a theme in my life. In many ways, I have loved my stature, presence, and the space I take up both physically and soulfully. Through theater and music, humor, intellect, art, and fashion, I was always able to make myself feel bigger than I was. I have always worn my creativity as an armor.
I was rarely bullied for my size, though. I may have been nerdy, a ‘four-eyes,’ or even a bit strange — characteristics I now love and have built my brand around — but being petite had more perks than setbacks. It wasn’t until adulthood that I really saw and felt how people would diminish a small, young woman to the point that she was nearly nothing. It wasn’t until I entered college and, soon after, the “professional” world that I realized I felt small — and not in a good way.
While no adult acquaintance has ever bullied me for my height, the “smallness” I have often felt in my adult life has always come from the outside — from people I thought I could trust. My inner world is big, expansive, powerful and intuitive. My outer self is colorful, bold, and unbothered. I am smart, confident, and capable and I started my collegiate and professional lives with equal certainty. I know I can do what I do, and well. I know I am far from perfect, but I try hard and I have respect for my skills and my perspective. Despite this, I have sometimes been targeted by people I deemed “bigger,” who seemed to want to squash me. Former teachers, supervisors, bosses, and “big” personalities have often picked fights with me, and used words and actions to belittle me. I could blame my smallness, my femininity, my queerness, or even the confidence and capability that I thought all these people would embrace about me — but no. I will not blame myself.
This essay is about placing blame where it belongs and then, secondarily, about leaving the feeling of “smallness” on the page today, with the stories that fed it for far too long. I’ll address 8 of them by name, right now:
To Dr. P:
You were the first person to ever make me feel this type of small. I had shitty boyfriends and unfortunate relatives before you but unlike in those circumstances, I respected you. I took your class as a college freshman and I aced it — throughout, I saw you as a genius, if not a bit of a “mad scientist.”
It was an insult, the way you traded my intellect for my appearance — why do men do this? I was 17 when we met and I think I stayed emotionally 17 for ten years after that, because of what your actions insinuated about me. I didn’t want your poetry and I didn’t want your weird care packages, but what I wanted least of all was to quit doing something I loved, simply to avoid the threat of you. It was unacceptable for you to engage with me the way you did, each and every time. I will never be sorry for getting you fired because while I know you did the same to girls and women before me, I didn’t want to see it happen again. I have risen from the ashes of our interaction, though. You are no longer welcome to keep me small.
To Peter:
You know what you did. You know why you’re being mentioned. I hope the name Kayla makes you shudder until the day you die, if you haven’t yet. Every time I saw a white truck for the last ten years, I’ve panicked and for that, I blame you. Every time I’ve heard sirens for the last ten years, I’ve panicked and for that, I blame you. I blame you entirely for “ruining my life” — or at least, the first act. Your creepy comments on Facebook scared my friends and your appearance in the window of my mom’s business scared my family. You are not welcome to atone or apologize, not to me and not to the energetic shift you put in the world with your carelessness and your weird games. I can only hope you didn’t ruin your children’s childhoods in the process of sealing mine shut. Until I am gone from the Earth, I will spit your name into the dirt beneath my boot each time it comes up, and I hope you feel it every time. In this way, you are no longer welcome to keep me small.
To Brooke:
You have a special place on my personal list of nemeses and I will never be facetious about that, even in mixed company. You were one of my first supervisors in my professional life and you, personally and without flourish, crushed my dreams. You are the reason I’m GLAD I don’t teach kids anymore because I now know that most of the people who do, hate kids — like you do. Do you hate your own children, too? Is that why they seem so miserable? Since you are the kind of person who derives pleasure from stomping on flowers and saying no to surprises, that feels apt. Every vision I had for my career was crushed inside the fist that you used to lead with. No amount of public pomp and circumstance and hugs from your ill-informed mother will change where you sit inside my personal Rolodex of terrible people. I know there is absolutely nothing redeemable about you and so, you are no longer welcome to keep me small.
To Rich and Sean:
You hired me on my 24th birthday. You made me drive you to a restaurant for our interview and made it weird the whole time. I replaced a woman who left the office crying and warning me. I should have taken her messy exit as a red flag but I needed the money and wanted to succeed in a job that kinda matched my future goals in marketing at the time. You tried to make jokes about her after she was gone, and they weren’t funny. It wasn’t funny when you introduced me to clients as the “hot front desk girl” even though I had a real title and a NAME. It wasn’t funny when you paid Nate more and gave him better clients and more respect. It wasn’t funny when you joked about getting sexual favors during a mid-day massage “just to see what I would say.” These things made me feel so small and so insignificant but worse, they made me believe this is what a working environment looks like. I knew from that point forward that I did not want to work in closed quarters with men as the majority of my coworkers. And sure, I could thank you for being the first catalyst to make me choose remote work but instead I’ll just say this: When I left, and you were mad at me for choosing a better future, I apologized. I take that apology back and let me add, you are no longer welcome to make me feel small.
To Keren:
While you may have been in over your head as a young CEO with limited skills in a less than ideal (read: scammy) company, your choices were your own. You turned the entire atmosphere of the company into a popularity contest, a gossip rag, and a frat party. I had a very inflated version of the work we would be doing, based on the stature of the company and the umbrella company that birthed it. Once I stepped inside the walls, I realized it was all a front — a piece of bit-comedy for our parent company, a little tax write-off, a lil spot to birth a cash-cow in the name of scamming people. You know this is true because not long after I left, you had to rebrand yourselves to bury the bad reputation. In fact, I was assigned work during my tenure with you that effectively worked to hide the bad reviews and honest critiques of what you all were doing.
You held your approval over my head, assigning me to spy on other employees before you fired them and sending me off on to various locations to schmooze with people who didn’t deserve my time. Your company preyed on the political discourse of the time (in both directions), made a mockery of real content development, and then had the gall to get rid of me for being too ethically motivated to fit in? You are no longer welcome to keep me small — and tell your creepy ex-boss to stop making out with random blondes on video calls with his employees.
To Mitch:
Nobody in my professional life was ever a bigger dick to me than you. You called me on the phone in the middle of my day and told me I was bad at my job when I know the truth: not only was I a good leader and have maintained relationships with my coworkers from your company, but you were projecting your failure onto me. You were a bad salesperson and an even worse CEO. You had no respect for a young team of people working tirelessly to make you more money, building up your agency and getting it ready to sell off without realizing it. You kept the company’s acquisition a tight-lipped secret until the last possible second, with no regard for the livelihood of a dozen employees who were all under 35 and depending on you.
Before us, you were a low-stakes, four-person reseller of another agency’s shitty services, preying on small and mid-sized businesses that needed to recoup costs in a way that your “services” would never empower them to do. You forced us to perform the dumbest version of marketing, though we were all equipped to perform at a high level — confusing us with inconsistent scopes of work and promises to clients that we would have to keep. You never checked in with any of us on how anything was going and offered no guidance or support. By the end of everything, you gave me an ultimatum — quit or stay on with the new acquisition as a freelancer taking a pay cut. I knew before a lot of the others that we were being acquired, I did my research, and I knew the new company was toxic — so I quit. You tried SO hard to make me accountable for your bullshit and even at 25 and 26 years old, I stood strong. You do NOT have my permission to make me small.
To Anthony.
We were pleasant acquaintances and former colleagues. You brought me onto a project and I completed my end of the project. You never paid me even one dollar for that project and it’s been 8 months. You know this and I know this. Though we had a disagreement over the terms, I should have been paid the minimum amount that we both agreed to and it hasn’t happened. The lack of payment and the dragging-over-coals that happened subsequently, are only part of what made me feel small. Your handling of the project was only part of what made me feel small. Your DM suggesting blackmail and bringing up my past was the final straw. While I am still working to acquire the money I’m owed through more advanced means, I will be revoking your power to make me feel small.
To Rahier and Brian.
You’re not good people, let’s start there. You’re angry, volatile, mean spirited, judgemental, and uncouth — both of you. That’s probably why Brian reminds you, Rahier, of your older brother who was always mean to you, right? So, your company is a copy-cat that thrives on plagiarism and taking advantage of smart people who are scared of you. You hired me and my esteemed, smart, capable supervisor around the same time. We worked HARD and SMART to create a strong marketing strategy, content plan, and brand for you. You spoke to us, and the other women in the company, with such extreme disrespect and such disdain that I honestly questioned my own integrity just for working for you both. Every interaction with either of you was uncomfortable and unpleasant and even at 32 years old, you made me feel so small just by being so cold and patronizing to me and to T. We didn’t deserve any minute of the treatment we got there and I honestly hope every woman in the company has quit and moved on to someplace better. You can keep your boy’s club all you want, but you can no longer make me feel small.
This list is non-exhaustive. I have been lied to, insulted, wronged, and messed with by lots of other people but on the topic of becoming less small — I have said my piece on those above. I’d like to pivot my focus.
To those who feel small at work:
Be big. If you feel small, expand your body and your voice and your presence as far as you can. Stretch! Apply for jobs or gigs that scare you. Pitch yourself to opportunities that feel 10 miles above you. Communicate your goals without an “if” behind them, and communicate your successes without a “but” after them. Be everything that you are, and do it without apology. Use a megaphone and a microphone to sing off key and loudly. Pump yourself up with music you love, people who “get” you, and ideas that set your brain ablaze. Celebrate what you do well and work to improve on the areas that matter to you. Be bad at stuff that you’re bad at, and don’t let it be a testament to anything you’re good at. Be mad when you’re mad. Be creative when you feel creative. Be helpful when you got it and ask for help when you don’t got it. Be. Be. Be.
There is no prize for the person who is the most agreeable, palatable, or praised by their previous bosses. You don’t have to leave every opportunity with everyone happy with you — if you don’t piss people off sometimes, you’re settling, you’re sabotaging your individuality, and you are likely a functional accessory to a shitty person’s bad idea. When someone criticizes you, balance your humility with your hubris. Make sure you know whose criticisms you will and won’t take seriously. Get clear on which projects you will be welcoming external feedback (versus those that belong entirely to you.)
If you feel small, don’t hesitate to investigate. Let’s figure out who or what is making you feel that way and 100% eliminate them. No mercy. I know this is difficult with romantic partners, parents, or yourself — those issues are beyond my expertise. However, if you feel small at work — do not delay in finding the next, better opportunity and know this: The people who want to belittle you are feeling tiny, themselves. This is not an excuse for them, but it IS a reminder to you: Opinions are not facts and insults are rarely anything but opinion. You’re not stuck anywhere. You don’t deserve to be pressured or disrespected at work. You don’t deserve to have your ideas disregarded, mocked, or stolen. You don’t deserve to have your efforts degraded before your eyes just to make someone else feel okay about themselves. You ESPECIALLY do not deserve to be discriminated against, underpaid, undervalued, or sexually harassed — not at work, and not in life.
To every reader:
The phenomenon of feeling small at work disproportionately affects women, Black people and other people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, those under 30 and over 60, those with disabilities, and those who have everything to lose. It is easy to make a person small when the world has already labeled them that way, somehow. It is easy to belittle someone when you have a perceived, societal “leg up” over them.
The phenomenon of belittling people at work is also disproportionately perpetrated by privileged individuals: men, white people, rich people, people in their mid-career and up, and those who have nothing to lose from being unpleasant. These types measure their influence by how much they invoke fear or reverence and in lieu of earning your respect, will take it by force. They are not who you want to impress. They are not who you want to fit in with. They are not who you want to help succeed.
So, as a neurodivergent, queer woman with known and private disabilities and a chronic illness, I’ve been here many times. The difference is, I’m stepping into the privilege I do have — not as a white woman or a member of the “middle class,” but as a person who knows herself. Self worth is a privilege but it’s also something I’ve worked fucking hard to have — and that’s what this article is really about: Your worth as a human is innate and cannot be lost or won. Feeling it, though, starts and ends inside of you. Period.
This is not a takedown of a few of the shitty men and women who did me dirty . This is an invitation to every person who has ever felt like I have. This is a call to arms for every person who has been made to feel like shit while they were trying their best. You’re not small — you’re a mirror for the smallness in others. By being expansive, creative, different, interesting, unique, smart, savvy, secure, funny, warm, kind, considerate, sincere…YOU are being a leader, YOU are the one in power, YOU are the driver and the navigator. Lock that in.
To everyone I ever meet for the rest of time:
Do not expect a diluted version of me. If you invite me to show up, I’m going to show in full. If you need my help, I’ll give it with as much accuracy and assurance as I have to give. If you take interest in my work, I have an interest in you, too. You want me for my wild ideas and my off-path perspective and so you must take me for my feral behaviors, my chaotic ramblings, and the vision you’re paying me to conjure. It is an extreme drain of energy and an extreme vulnerability to show up every day as a creator, to publish and present my ideas, to offer insight to people and hope they take it. It is raw, and difficult, and the entire process deserves respect.
And in the reverse, If you criticize my work, be prepared to back up your opinions. If we contract to work together, you’ll be paying in advance and you’ll be respectful of my processes. You will not be getting a discount from me because I’m a creative type, a woman, or any other thing that makes you think I’m easy to bend. You thought I was clay but I’m water. I flow. I bend when I want to bend, but I’ll also tsunami your city.
If you want to get nasty, you have chosen the absolute wrong bitch.
I am planning more of this honest and irreverent content to share with Medium and post around elsewhere. Stay tuned here, follow, and if you want to get involved with everything else I do:
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Bye.
