Somewhere Between Who We Are and Who We Want to Be

Every year around this time, I find myself taking stock—not just of what I’ve done, but of who I’ve been. This year, that reflection has felt heavier, and more urgent. Maybe it’s the headlines, maybe it’s the conversations I’ve had with friends who are exhausted, scared, hopeful, and determined all at once. Maybe it’s the sense that we’re standing at a crossroads where “business as usual” is no longer compatible with the kind of world we say we want.

Whatever the reason, I’ve been sitting with a simple, uncomfortable question:

Who am I, really, in the systems I say I want to change?

It’s a question that pulls together a lot of themes—intersectionality, privilege, allyship, personal growth, and the messy work of building a more just world. It’s also a question that refuses easy answers.

The Moment I Realized “Being Nice” Wasn’t Enough

Years ago, I was in a meeting where a colleague—let’s call her Maya—kept getting interrupted. She was one of the few women of color in the room. Each time she spoke, someone cut in, redirected, or “clarified” what she’d just said. The pattern was obvious. My discomfort was obvious—to me, at least.

But I stayed silent.

After the meeting, I went up to her and said something like, “I’m sorry that happened. It wasn’t fair.” She gave me a tired smile and said, “I appreciate you saying that. Next time, say it in the room.”

I’ve never forgotten that.

In my head, I was “one of the good ones”—someone who cared about fairness, who read the right books, who believed in equity. But in that moment, my allyship lived only in my thoughts and private apologies, not in the space where it mattered most.

That was one of my early lessons in the difference between intention and impact, between self-image and actual practice. It was also an early crack in the story I told myself about who I was in relation to injustice.

Intersectionality Isn’t an Abstract Concept

Intersectionality is a word that can feel academic or overused, but at its core, it’s incredibly human. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, it describes how different forms of oppression—like racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia—don’t just stack; they intersect, creating unique experiences of harm and marginalization.

In practice, it looks like:

– A Black woman being discriminated against in ways that are not fully captured by either “racism” or “sexism” alone.
– A disabled queer person navigating a world built for neither their body nor their identity.
– A low-income migrant worker facing language barriers, labor exploitation, and xenophobia all at once.

Intersectionality asks us to resist the urge to flatten people into one dimension. It also asks us to examine where we sit within these overlapping structures.

For me, that’s been an ongoing process of naming my own positions: where I hold privilege, where I don’t, and where I benefit from systems I didn’t create but certainly participate in.

The Uncomfortable Inventory of Privilege

Privilege is one of those words that can trigger defensiveness, shame, or denial. But privilege isn’t an accusation; it’s a description of unearned advantages that shape our lives in ways we’re often taught not to notice.

A few years ago, I started doing a quiet inventory of my own. Not to beat myself up, but to be honest.

Questions like:

– Where do doors open more easily for me than for others?
– Where am I presumed competent, safe, or “belonging” without having to prove it?
– What parts of my identity rarely put me at risk?

The answers were clarifying. I realized how often I walk through the world without worrying about being stopped, questioned, or harmed. How often I’m able-bodied without needing to think about stairs, small print, or inaccessible spaces. How frequently I’m spoken to in my native language, with the assumption that I “fit” wherever I am.

Privilege doesn’t mean my life is easy or that I haven’t struggled. It means that my struggles aren’t compounded by certain systemic barriers that others face every day. And that matters—not as a moral judgment, but as a call to responsibility.

The Gap Between Values and Habits

One of the hardest truths I’ve had to face is that believing in justice doesn’t automatically make me act justly. There’s a gap—sometimes a chasm—between my values and my habits.

I notice it when:

– I stay silent in a conversation because I don’t want to “make things awkward.”
– I center my own comfort in discussions about harm I haven’t personally experienced.
– I listen selectively, gravitating toward voices that confirm what I already think.
– I treat activism as something “out there,” rather than something woven into my daily choices.

That gap isn’t a sign of failure so much as a sign of being human in a deeply unequal world. We’re all socialized into systems that teach us to prioritize certain voices, bodies, and experiences over others—including our own.

The question is not whether that gap exists, but what we choose to do about it.

Questions for Self-Reflection

If you’re reading this and feeling a mix of recognition, discomfort, and curiosity, you’re not alone. These are some questions I’ve been asking myself lately. You might sit with them, too:

– When have I witnessed harm or exclusion and stayed quiet? Why?
– Where do I feel defensive when issues of race, gender, class, disability, or sexuality come up? What might that defensiveness be protecting?
– Whose stories and experiences do I trust instinctively? Whose do I question or doubt?
– How often do I seek out perspectives from people whose lives look very different from mine?
– What am I willing to risk—time, comfort, social approval, convenience—to align my actions with my values?

These questions aren’t meant to produce perfect answers. They’re meant to keep us awake.

Moving From Allyship as Identity to Allyship as Practice

One of the subtle traps of progressive spaces is treating “ally” as a badge rather than a verb. We can start to think of allyship as an identity we hold, rather than a practice we engage in and are accountable for.

Allyship as identity says, “I’m one of the good people.”
Allyship as practice asks, “What am I doing, concretely, to show up for others?”

Allyship as identity resists criticism because it feels like a threat to who we believe we are.
Allyship as practice welcomes feedback because it helps us grow and be more effective.

In my own life, shifting toward allyship as practice has looked like:

– Interrupting harm in real time. Saying, “Hold on, I want to hear her finish,” or, “That joke relies on a stereotype—can we not?” It’s imperfect and awkward, but it’s better than silence.
– Redistributing opportunities. Passing along speaking invitations, leadership roles, or visibility to people who are underrepresented and overqualified.
– Listening more than explaining. Especially when someone is sharing an experience I don’t have. Resisting the urge to jump in with solutions or stories about myself.
– Investing time and resources. Donating, volunteering, learning, and supporting organizations led by the communities most affected by injustice.
– Accepting correction without centering my feelings. When I get something wrong—and I do—trying to respond with, “Thank you for telling me,” rather than, “But I didn’t mean it that way.”

None of this is about perfection. It’s about direction.

Building a Better World Starts Very Close to Home

It’s easy to think of “building a better world” as something that happens in policy rooms, protest lines, or distant futures. And yes, it happens there. But it also happens in the quiet decisions we make every day:

– Whom we believe.
– Whom we hire, promote, or recommend.
– What jokes we laugh at—or don’t.
– What we teach our children about difference and fairness.
– How we respond when someone says, “That hurt me.”

I think of a friend who, after learning more about disability justice, started insisting that every event she organized had accessible seating, clear signage, and breaks built in. It seemed small at first—a logistical detail. But the message it sent was profound: “You belong here. We thought about you before you arrived.”

That’s what building a better world can look like: a thousand small signals of care and inclusion, layered over time, backed by larger structural changes.

A Path Forward: Gentle, Honest, Persistent

If there’s one thing I hope we all carry into the coming year, it’s this: growth is both possible and necessary, and it doesn’t require us to hate who we’ve been.

We can hold two truths at once:

– We have participated in harmful systems, sometimes through action, often through inaction.
– We are capable of learning, changing, and choosing differently.

So maybe the path forward looks something like this:

1. Tell the truth about where we are. Without sugarcoating, without dramatizing. Just honest inventory.
2. Stay curious about ourselves and others. Let discomfort be a teacher, not a verdict.
3. Translate values into habits. Pick one concrete practice—speaking up, redistributing resources, learning from a new perspective—and commit to it.
4. Stay in relationship. Building a better world is collective work. We will get it wrong. We will need to apologize. We will need to forgive, and to be forgiven.
5. Keep asking, “Who am I in the systems I want to change?” And let the answers move us closer to the people we want to be.

Somewhere between who we are and who we want to be is a long, winding path. It’s uneven, uncomfortable, and often humbling. But it’s also where solidarity is born, where allyship becomes real, and where a different kind of world begins to take shape—first in us, and then around us.

The question is not whether we will stumble. We will. The question is whether we will keep walking.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash