I was born in south Florida and from there moved from place to place, in the US and abroad. But despite all the wandering, I somehow absorbed the message that I should diminish myself and stay small. Maybe we all did. Maybe for me this message had its origins in my spy dad whose training was to blend into the background and observe, or from his Midwestern parents before him, who believed so much in the power of silence and keeping to themselves. Maybe it came from my shy and introspective mother, who spoke most comfortably with brushes and acrylics, water colors and canvases. Maybe it came from my own reluctant self. Certainly it comes from a world that teaches girls, and queers, and so many of us to stay inside our closets and doubt ourselves.

But isn’t it time we left the smallness behind?

Let’s leave the cobwebbed walls and dusty floors, the cracked windows and uninsulated walls. Let’s leave the crumbling floorboards and dilapidated chairs. All the rooms we’ve outgrown and the ways we hold ourselves back. Let’s abandon our fear of trusting and risking, our penchant for careful circumspection. All the stabs at erasure.

It’s time to tweet and report and paint and blog and write and film and speak. Time to shed and become, and stop trying to squeeze ourselves into tight places. Isn’t it finally time to do this? To breathe under a wider sky?