You can’t do your best work solo, and you especially can’t do equity work solo. Real change requires sitting in the discomfort of true collaboration—the kind where you need someone else’s perspective not as a nice addition, but as the thing that makes your work actually stick. It’s humbling to realize your clearest idea needs another voice to become whole. It’s slower than you want it to be. But this is what it means to build something that lasts beyond your own limited vantage point.
The hardest part is the waiting for the communication to click. This patience isn’t passive—it’s the active work of making space, of learning a new rhythm together, of resisting the urge to fill silence or smooth over the friction that comes with real partnership. You’re learning how to communicate in real time, and some days it feels clumsy and inefficient and like you’re moving backwards.
But here’s what you need to hear: this work is desperately needed, and you’re right to move at the speed of trust. Every time you choose to co-create rather than control, you’re practicing the kind of leadership that actually shifts power. Every time you wait for an emerging voice to find its full expression, you’re building the future you say you want to see. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be. And it’s the only way forward that doesn’t replicate the same old patterns.
TUNING Design Co. 