Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered. - Michelle Obama

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

For me, marriage was more like a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal. I

What I knew from working in professional environments — from recruiting new lawyers for Sidley & Austin to hiring staff at the White House — is that sameness breeds more sameness, until you make a thoughtful effort to counteract it.