Sometimes You Get to See the Ripple

I was talking to a friend the other day, one I completely respect and adore.

She recently moved out of state, and she never calls out of the blue. She prefers her calls the way people used to prefer dinner reservations: scheduled. Intentional. Usually. We were trying to set up a weekly or bi-weekly check-in, something steady and human. There’s a pretty solid age gap between us, twenty years, give or take. Maybe more. I’ll blame the TBI for not being precise. It’s convenient.

I don’t normally relate to younger generations in a “let’s grab coffee and talk all afternoon” kind of way. But with her, we clicked immediately. No easing into it. No small talk runway.

I respect the fuck out of her. She respects the fuck out of me.

She’s an exceptional developer, truly gifted, but what I admire most is that she’s curious about life. She’s lived enough to understand that life is messy, and people make it messier. She’s been through hell in relationships, and I’ll admit I sometimes get protective, borderline parental, when she talks about them. There’s a part of me that wants to go straighten a few motherfuckers out for hurting my friend.

But mostly, I love watching her grow.

I love watching her step into her role, solve problems, and own her competence. I love talking with her. We don’t do light conversation. It goes deep immediately, every time, and she doesn’t flinch. That matters. That kind of presence is rare, and I respect the hell out of it.

The other day, out of nowhere, she texted me saying she almost just called, no warning.

I reminded her that I’m Gen X. Phones ringing don’t scare me. You can call me anytime. No preamble. No permission slip.

So she did.

And we talked. And talked. And talked.

At some point, I slipped into familiar territory, my long, bruising career arc. I explained how I’d been on a management track early on, twenty years earlier. I was a team leader. I was on the short list. Then I came out. And suddenly, my trajectory changed.

The title shifted. The expectations narrowed. I was reclassified into something more “appropriate”, a role with support specialist in the name. It took me nearly twenty years of grinding, scrapping, and surviving to claw my way back to where I’d already been.

When I finished, she said something I didn’t realize I needed to hear.

She told me she respected the hell out of me for crashing through that ceiling. That it was hard enough to advance where we work as a woman. Harder yet as a queer woman. And that she couldn’t even imagine what it took as a transgender woman.

That stopped me.

Because that’s what being seen feels like.

As a queer woman herself, she understood the weight, the friction, the invisible taxes. And in that moment, I wasn’t explaining or justifying or minimizing. I was simply recognized.

And maybe that’s part of my legacy. Not the titles. Not the org charts. But knowing that I did my part to knock down some bullshit doors, enough that the next wave might not have to bleed quite as much to get through.

Because this friend I’m talking about? She’s a leader. She understands people. She’s doing the technical work now, but she’s the future of our institution … if we don’t fuck it up. And if my existence, my persistence, my refusal to disappear made the path a little clearer for her?

Then yeah.

That ripple mattered.