I'm Bringing All Of Me

What happened when I stopped deciding which parts of myself belonged in the room For a long time, I thought credibility required editing myself.

Depending on the room I was walking into, I would decide which parts of me were allowed to come along.

The researcher could come.

The advocate could come.

The mother could come, sometimes—especially if her story was relevant and appropriately packaged.

But the deeply sensitive part of me? The intuitive part? The spiritual part? The part that notices things, feels things before I can explain them, and sometimes simply *knows*?

She usually had to stay home.

I didn't know how to reconcile her with the woman who had been trained to research, analyze, cite sources, question assumptions, and defend conclusions. And if I'm truthful, I was afraid other people wouldn't know how to reconcile those things either.

So I learned to compartmentalize.

I could move through a single day inhabiting several different versions of myself, depending on who was in the room. Academic Lane. Advocate Lane. Mom Lane. Writer Lane. Spiritual Lane.

Each one was real.

None of them was whole.

And it was exhausting.

I don't think I understood how exhausting until recently.

Compartmentalizing requires constant vigilance. You have to keep track of which version of yourself is appropriate for which room. What you can say. What you shouldn't say. Which parts will establish credibility and which parts might threaten it. How much emotion is acceptable. How much intuition needs to be translated into evidence before anyone—including yourself—will trust it.

And I was always reading the room.

I've done that for as long as I can remember.

I would walk into a space and take it all in before I said much of anything. Who was talking? Who wasn't? What was the tone? Where was the tension? Who felt comfortable? Who didn't? What was being said, and maybe even more importantly, what wasn't?

I think that's part of why people have sometimes thought I was shy.

I wasn't necessarily shy.

I was processing.

I was taking in an enormous amount of information before deciding where and how I fit into it.

And because I was also compartmentalizing myself, there was another layer running underneath all of that: *Who am I supposed to be in this room? Which parts of me are safe here? Which parts will be understood? Which ones should I keep to myself?*

No wonder I was tired.

I wasn't simply participating in rooms.

I was reading them, processing them, translating myself for them, and then deciding which version of me to offer.

When Knowing Wasn't Enough

There were so many times in my work when I already knew something.

Not because I had pulled it out of thin air. Not because intuition is magic or always right.

I knew because I had spent decades living, studying, observing, listening, parenting, researching, teaching, and working alongside families and professionals.

There is knowledge that comes from research.

And there is knowledge that accumulates in you after years of paying very close attention.

My intuition wasn't separate from all of that experience. It had been shaped by it.

But I didn't trust it.

I would sense something, then research it.

Find evidence for it, then research some more.

Question whether I had enough evidence, then look for another source.

I was researching my way back to conclusions some deeply experienced part of me already knew were worth trusting.

Part of that was for other people. I wanted to be taken seriously.

But a lot of it was for me.

I needed to prove my own knowing to myself.

Somewhere along the way, I had absorbed the idea that intuition was the opposite of rigor. That sensitivity weakened credibility. That feeling deeply might make people take my thinking less seriously.

And so I overcompensated.

More research. More evidence. More citations. More analysis.

I called it rigor—and sometimes it absolutely was.

Rigor is one of my strengths.

But sometimes it was armor.

Sometimes it was fear.

Sometimes it was the exhausting work of trying to make absolutely certain that no one could dismiss me.

I am beginning to understand the difference.

What Happened Wednesday

This week, I was part of a webinar reflecting on 50 years of IDEA, alongside academics and professionals whose work I deeply respect.

I knew what I was there to talk about: families.

It is the part of this work I know perhaps better than anything else—not only from my research, but from my own life.

And, of course, I came prepared.

I had my notes. I had statistics. I had carefully organized what I wanted to say.

I had prepared to be Academic Lane.

Then I started listening.

As the other panelists spoke about where we had been, what had changed, and what fifty years of IDEA had meant in the lives of children and families, I found myself getting emotional.

I thought about how far we had come.

I thought about the families who had fought for what we now consider rights.

I thought about my own family.

And suddenly my carefully prepared notes didn't feel like what I needed to say anymore.

So I put them aside.

For someone who hates public speaking, this was not a small act.

I actually said, "I got emotional while you all were speaking, and I decided to go ad lib on this."

And then I spoke from my heart.

Were my words as polished as my notes?

No.

They were a little messy.

And I am realizing that maybe that is okay.

Because these issues are messy.

Families are messy. Systems are messy. Disability is messy. Love is messy. Fifty years of progress alongside fifty years of unfinished work is messy.

Maybe everything meaningful doesn't need to be cleaned up before we say it.

And something important happened for me in that moment.

I wasn't abandoning what I knew.

I was allowing all of it to speak at once.

The researcher was there.

The mother was there.

The advocate was there.

The writer was there.

The sensitive woman who had been moved by what she'd just heard was there.

My mind was there.

My heart was there.

For once, I didn't make any of them wait outside.

And here's the thing: when I look back over my life, leading with my heart has always been where something shifts.

It's where rooms full of people stop hearing an issue and begin understanding the human beings inside it.

It's where statistics become children and families.

It's where policy becomes life.

It's where people connect.

It's where change happens.

I have spent so much time worrying that this part of me made me less powerful.

I understand now that it has always been where so much of my power lives.

And I love her so much.

That sentence is almost hard for me to write.

Because it has taken me a very long time to get here.

Rigorous and Blue Truth

Last weekend, during a retreat, two words were given to me:

Rigorous.

Blue Truth.

I've been carrying them around ever since.

Rigorous made immediate sense to me.

That is a language I know.

Research. Questions. Evidence. Analysis. Looking again. Digging deeper. Making sure what I believe can withstand scrutiny.

But Blue Truth felt different.

Softer.

More intuitive.

It felt like the part of me that knows before she can always explain exactly how she knows.

At first, I wasn't sure what those two words had to do with each other.

Now I get it.

They aren't asking me to choose.

They are me.

Rigorous is how I investigate truth. Blue Truth is how I recognize it.

One doesn't diminish the other.

My intuition can tell me where to look.

My research can help me test what I find.

My experience can help me understand what it means.

My body can tell me when something isn't aligned.

And my heart can remind me why any of it matters.

That is integration.

Mind. Body. Heart.

Not competing for control.

Working together.

And maybe that's one of the greatest gifts of integration: I don't have to work so hard to manage myself anymore.

I don't have to decide which Lane gets to walk into the room.

We can all go.

And Now, D.C.

The timing of this realization isn't lost on me.

In a few days, I'm going to Washington, D.C.

I've been to D.C. before. I've sat in important rooms before. I've prepared talking points and statistics and policy asks and stories.

And I will prepare this time, too.

Because I am rigorous.

I know the issues. I know the research. I know what we're asking for and why it matters.

But something is different this time.

I'm not going to D.C. trying to figure out which Lane belongs in which room.

I'm bringing all of me.

The researcher who understands the evidence.

The mother who has lived the consequences.

The advocate who knows the policy.

The writer who understands the power of a story.

The sensitive woman who feels the weight of what is happening.

The intuitive woman who has learned to pay attention when something inside her says, This matters.

The woman who gets emotional.

The woman who sometimes cries when something matters enough.

The woman whose words may occasionally come out a little messy because she cares deeply about what she's saying.

She gets to come too.

Especially her.

For most of my life, I think I believed becoming more credible meant learning how to separate these pieces of myself.

Now I think my most meaningful work may come from doing exactly the opposite.

There is vulnerability in that.

Integration means being seen.

And being seen means someone might decide that a part of me doesn't belong.

But I don't think I'm willing to leave pieces of myself outside the room anymore just to make other people comfortable.

Wednesday showed me what happens when I don't.

I didn't speak perfectly.

I spoke wholly.

And it felt like freedom.

Maybe that's the work in front of me now.

Not becoming more.

Not proving more.

Not researching myself into exhaustion to earn my place in rooms I've already earned the right to enter.

But bringing what I have spent a lifetime gathering—knowledge, research, experience, intuition, sensitivity, strength, love—and trusting that together, they are enough.

That I am more than enough.

It's taken me a long time to be able to say that.

An even longer time to believe it.

But I do.

So that's who is going to D.C.

Rigorous.

Blue Truth.

Mind, body, and heart.

Researcher, mother, advocate, writer, intuitive, sensitive, spiritual me.

No more deciding who gets to come inside.

I'm bringing all of me.

And this time, I know she belongs in the room.