I’m 6’1″, dark-skinned, and I grew up feeling like an ink blot dropped into a bowl of milk.

Huge. Impossible not to notice. So naturally, I learned to shrink. Not physically, but spiritually, emotionally, and in my personality. I learned to make myself smaller so I wouldn’t feel too strong, too big, too loud, too much. That became my comfort zone. I knew I was going to be seen. I couldn’t hide my height, and I couldn’t hide my skin. So if people were going to look anyway, I wanted what they saw to be easy to digest. Pleasant. Agreeable. Non-threatening. I became skilled at softening my edges before anyone else had the chance to. But shrinking has a cost. It muted my feelings and emotions until I started believing they were too much too. When you spend enough years making yourself more comfortable for everyone else, you eventually become uncomfortable in your own fullness. You forget what your voice sounds like at its natural volume. You question whether your confidence is arrogance, whether your presence takes up too much space, whether your gifts are somehow overwhelming. The truth is, I was never too much. I was just taught that visibility required an apology. Now I’m learning something different. Maybe I was never meant to shrink. Maybe I was meant to stand fully in the space God already gave me, without making myself smaller just to make everyone else more comfortable.