When I first started practicing law, at twenty-five years old, it is fair to say that I wasn’t very comfortable or confident in myself. I often felt like I was putting on the act of a “lawyer;” in the morning I would put on my ‘costume’ of blouse and skirt and go to an office where I behaved in the way that lawyers were supposed to behave. I’m not sure I actually knew what that was; I grew up watching Matlock and L.A. Law and I certainly didn’t feel like any of those people, and gratefully I didn’t really act like them either. But I had no idea what I was doing or how I was supposed to behave and since I did not grow up in a home with professional occupations I just kind of made it up by watching the people around me.

On the first day that I could actually show up in court after passing the bar, the partner I worked for sent me on my own. I had a stack of case files, I showed up, I watched what the other lawyers did when the judge called their case, and so when my cases were called I did what they did. I did not know why I did it, I had no idea about the function of the actions I was taking, but I did them and I made it through the day. When I got home that night I yelled at my husband, was annoyed by my baby daughter and sobbed for a long time. I didn’t know why I did that either but it was at least a reflection of the genuine feeling I was having.

I have now been a licensed attorney for twenty-six years (holy cow!), and I’m more comfortable in who I am than I was back then. I suppose the difference now is that I don’t particularly care if I am acting the way I am supposed to act because I know something about just being the way I am. I have worked in a lot of different settings and across a lot of different roles, and they generally all call for the same thing: honesty, kindness, humility, thoughtfulness. The systems in which you work may change, the structure of the interactions shift, but the substance of who you are and how you show up – well that shouldn’t be an act, it shouldn’t be a unique persona for a certain setting, it should be the core of who you are wherever you are.

I remember reading a trashy article about celebrity A criticizing celebrity B because when they spent time with B privately they acted just like they did in public. A didn’t like that B was just who B seemed. I read this and I thought, ‘wow! A you have got it all wrong – B is who I would want to be friends with, B is who you can actually know and maybe trust.’ Maybe I’m boring, or maybe I’m not terribly sophisticated, but I’m okay being who I am, wherever I am. You can call it integrity, I think of it as alignment, but it’s really about being the fullest expression of yourself in every part of your life.

Now this doesn’t mean I’m going to jump on a zoom and start singing my new favorite song during a meeting, or throwing my feet up on the front pew while sipping bourbon. Not because I don’t sing songs or sip bourbon but because that’s not the right time or place. What I’m not going to do is pretend I don’t do those things, or try to hide that part of my life. I’m a writer, and a theologian, and a lawyer. I have prayers flags on the wall behind my desk, I don’t hide those from my screen. When the dogs bark I close my office door because the sounds is distracting, when the cat walks in front of the screen I move her. I am a person, I do person things and have a life of people and pets, and I also think about issues of right and wrong. Most of us can do all those things together.

It’s hard to live in a persona, it is hard to try and act the part in the right way at the right time. I think it actually hurts you psychically, emotionally, spiritually; like driving a car that has the alignment off, it will run but a tire is going to wear down in an odd way and create a hazard. That happens to us when we bifurcate or trifurcate (?), or divide up who we are in different places and for different people. When you live a life that seeks alignment, when you know what your values are and how to express those across your various responsibilities, you just run well for a lot longer.