A wooden plaque says: YOU CAN'T MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY YOU'RE NOT PIZZA" which is a perfect metaphor for doing allyship.
A wooden plaque says: YOU CAN'T MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY YOU'RE NOT PIZZA" which is a perfect metaphor for doing allyship.

“You can’t make everyone happy; you’re not pizza.”

I saw these words on a plaque a couple of months ago and I knew I had to have it. As a lifelong people-pleaser, I have spent the past several years learning that it’s simply impossible to please everyone. Add to that the fact that I love pizza. It became imperative that I see these words as a reminder Every. Single. Day.

My calling leads me to the center of discomfort on a daily basis. Enough outside my comfort zone where growth can happen, but not so far out that I require a blanket fort to cope. In this messy, awkward, super uncomfortable middle is where I’ve discovered that magic happens! It’s where I try to get others to join me in seeing the world in a new way. However, no matter how I try to engage people, I get judged by people standing outside of my arena who tell me I’m doing it wrong. I can be kind and empathetic or hurt and pleading. I can be angry (though rarely). No matter how I engage, someone always sees me as confrontational. Someone always perceives me as pushing away people who see things differently than I do. So what is left? Silence? I refuse.

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We have an activity in our GLSEN* Professional Development called Earliest Messages. Through it we explore our biases or acceptance of concepts around diversity based on the messages we received from our family/friends/teachers/society growing up. Because I’m often asked why I do this advocacy work and HOW it came to be that I’ve always thought diversity should be celebrated when I say, “I’ve always thought diversity should be celebrated,” I’m often thinking about the earliest messages I received.

Sometimes something brings back an early message in it’s entirety and I think, “Aha! That was it! That was my earliest message about…”

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IMG_3261This book. Woah. It almost rendered me speechless. Almost. It also almost made me ugly cry on the plane a half dozen times. Almost. The fact is, Glennon Melton Doyle, author of Carry On, Warrior and my favorite blog, Momastery, superbly took all the feels straight out of my heart and put WORDS to them! WORDS! Brilliant, riveting, funny, emotional words that give substance to all the love I want to show to and share with the world and don’t know how to express!!

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Originally published August 9th, 2013.

Society can break people. On the day I realized this, I was in a 6th grade classroom in Manhattan, Ks. It would be my first opportunity in life to look someone in the eyes and try to help them heal. I was a sparkly-eyed bilingual elementary education student teacher with dreams of changing the world, in what I considered at the time to be a diverse school. That’s when a 6th grade student, Francisco*, broke my heart.

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