ANEW: Word by Word
The siren-call towards possibility and wholeness
“Who let you in here?”
I’ve always imagined some version of that question being tossed at L. Todd Rose on his first day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At this point in his development, Todd opines that he’s a young man still figuring out how his mind worked, staring down a writing assignment that looked like a trip up King’s Peak, which is the highest point in Todd’s home state of Utah. Todd didn’t enter through the grand front door of intellectual promise; he flunked out of high school before graduating, and clawed his way through Weber State, making his way through what seemed more like a side window. Todd is brilliant, of course, but brilliance comes through the most circuitous ways when you are neurodivergent, struggling with time and attention issues. Sometimes it hides behind excuses, worry, doubt, and self-sabotage. All of these, my friend Todd knew.
His story could have been mine. Not in the details, but in the feeling. That “who let you in here” echo is familiar to anyone who grew up feeling or being different, maybe neurodivergent or attention-scrambled, or perhaps trying to cobble together sentences while the inner critic stood guard with a clipboard. I never thought of it as imposter syndrome — I just hadn’t built the practice. Anne Lamott calls it the “butt in chair” philosophy. For me, it’s “word by word.” Sit down. Push past the early gloom. Unplug the inner editor who wants to tsk-tsk or there-there every sentence. Write the one word that gets you to the next.
Some mornings, that critic tries to bar me from even getting to my desk. Not today. Today I’m in my office, typing, choosing creation over hesitation. I have published two posts twice a week for the past eighteen months, along with the concomitant podcast that extends what I am reading into something more agile and flex-y.
And part of the reason I get here — the real reason — is that I surround myself with reminders of those who didn’t get the luxury of writing their own story. I think of Kate Coleman, our great-great-grandmother, born enslaved in Mississippi, sold away from her parents before her life had even begun. Her story came to me in fragments, in the cadence of a woman denied authorship of her own life. To write, for me, is to honor her and others like her. To carry what she could not. To refuse to waste the miracle of having language, time, and a keyboard.
I think too of Mrs. Ellene Beard, my high school college counselor. A woman who orchestrated the futures of thousands of kids like me — Black, white, LatinX, ambitious, uncertain — kids who didn’t yet know how to dream at scale. She siren-called us toward possibility. Half the time, we were too busy wrestling with the noise in our own heads to hear the cheering section behind us. Mrs. Beard will get her own post soon, because people like her — architects of belief — deserve it.
Here’s the thing most people never say out loud: the voices we fight aren’t only external. Some of the most persistent ones are internal, old tapes we’ve absorbed from places we’ve left behind — relationships, jobs, even whole regions of the country. Sometimes you have to physically relocate to spiritually relocate — to manifest your own damned destiny. I’ve walked away from things, and people, because the noise drowned out the part of me that wanted to write, to lead, to imagine.
Everyone has a guiding trope — something that calls you back to “perhaps the self-same song,” as I like to say. For me, it’s Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale. The poem reminds me of the tension between limitation and transcendence, between the part of your brain that says, “Why bother?” and the deeper voice that insists, “Write anyway.” Keats was writing about mortality, but I read it as a map out of creative paralysis. That other death…
Because here’s the truth: the limiting voice doesn’t go away just because you’ve built a career in education or leadership. In fact, the higher you rise, the more you have to encourage others to silence the very voices you’re still battling in yourself. I tell students and colleagues all the time — don’t let the voice that says “you’re not enough” narrate your story. I say it to them because I need to say it to me.
Somewhere in the house of my imagination — an old, creaking house with too many rooms — there’s a closet on an upper floor. Not the top floor, but close. The closet door barely stays shut. Behind it: every limiting thought I’ve carried with me since childhood, every clipped-wing belief about who I was allowed to be or who others claim that I am. The door bulges. It rattles. But it stays closed because I keep writing. Word by word. Every day I write, I move one thing out of that closet and into the trash.
That’s the craft for me. Not the perfection. Not the polish. The practice. The choosing. The liberation.
Writing is how I make sure my story—our stories—don’t get lost. Writing is how I honor the people who didn’t get the chance. Writing is the one thing I can do, consistently, to keep the door to that closet from flying open.
And so I keep at it
—word by word.
May it always be so.
Curated Listening:
What does a baptism by music feel like? Well, if you love the transformative words lighting the way from Brother James Baldwin and the incomparable music of Meshell Ndegeocello, then you will know. Listen to Meshell Ndegeocello sing Love HERE. Deeply enjoy this breath of life and love.
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— Brian
Beautiful. I had never thought about the luxury of being able to write, to have the time, as a gift not to be squandered. And in the name of those who did not have this luxury. Thank you.