🔥 Is this your superpower? In Community #67

🙌🏽 Welcome to In Community.

“Who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, [and] how to dream about our futures.” – America Ferrera

It’s no secret that representation matters.

It matters as a way to accurately reflect the world around us, and it matters as a way to make sure our voices get heard, especially in spaces they’ve traditionally been missing or ignored.

👉🏽 But what about when it comes to seeing our own paths? 

Last week, when I wrote about how being “too emotional” shapes women’s and men’s behaviors at work, part of what I called out was the strength that comes from unexpected places – and how it affects our paths forward.

America Ferrera, the award-winning producer, director, and advocate known best for her leading roles in TV and film, has spoken about what seeing our paths can look like without models to follow because the systems are built to prevent them – and us – from existing.

When we don’t see these models to follow, what we don’t see is ourselves – truly as we are, individually and collectively. Without them, we often end up resisting ourselves to fit the molds we do see around us. And it takes a toll.

Without our presence, the systems of status quo sustain and remain solid. Without our solidarity with others like us, our voices remain unheard and our faces unseen.

Ferrera’s articulation that “presence creates possibility” is a gentle yet needed reminder that simply existing in spaces we might stand out is the opposite of resisting ourselves.

The power we find through that existence is where the seeds of possibility grow into something strong. It’s where we access our presence across culture, in entertainment, business, politics, and social change.

By doubling down on who we are in the face of all odds against us, we remind ourselves that our identities – that very thing that we resisted until we existed as we are – represent our superpowers.

And those superpowers that are uniquely ours to use? They’re needed now more than ever.

Watch and listen to America Ferrera’s full story.

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In community,

Fahad