Earlier today, I tweeted about former Chicago Blackhawks (and current Florida Panthers) head coach Joel Quenneville.
I was raised in a household that stressed the need to make spaces welcome for others. You don’t use complex words around people who struggle with education. You don’t speak quickly with people who are still learning English. You don’t make brash jokes about the number 69 in front of someone who doesn’t feel comfortable discussing sex, or get loud and aggressive when interacting with someone who is painfully shy.
That upbringing — designed to assimilate with others instead of forcing them to assimilate to me, perhaps to a fault — left me as an adult in a position rife with hyper-awareness of how comfortable I seem to make others.