There’s this unspoken pressure in today’s world to have a stance. A sharp opinion. A headline that declares exactly what you’re for and, even more important, what you’re against. Especially if you’re meant to be the “expert.” It’s as if the more polarizing you are, the more authority you appear to hold. And we reward that. The bold declarations, the oversimplified absolutes.
I recently found myself in a conversation with my manager/communications strategist, echoing feedback I’d also received from a seasoned book agent. Something about my “stance” hasn’t quite landed. Not gaining the traction that, by industry standards, should have come after years of showing up and sharing. So we went deep into messaging, clarity, and voice. The questions came one after another: What’s your point of view? Where do you stand? How do you make it loud enough to be heard? You know, those branding exercises.
It wasn’t confrontational. It was thoughtful. But still, the subtext was clear: if I wanted to be seen as the expert, I needed to be more “direct.” More opinionated. More “sure.” We’ve been taught that to grab attention, we must provoke. We lead with what not to do. We craft content that warns, shames, and shocks—“5 Mistakes You’re Making…” or “Never Buy This Again…”
And yet, I stood my ground, not in opposition to the feedback, but because while I recognize my content hasn’t fully resonated, this is what I am sure of:
I’m sure this entire premise is flawed.
I’m sure that our obsession with strong stances and neatly packaged opinions has dulled our ability to think critically, to sit with uncertainty, to create our own.
I do have a stance. I do have thoughts. I do have opinions, but I hold them with the understanding that they are personal, not prescriptive. My convictions are not universal truths, and they were never meant to be adopted without question. I don’t believe clarity requires conformity and I don’t believe that true leadership shuts out difference.
I’m not here to declare what’s “right” or “wrong” in food, wellness, or design.
That’s not expertise to me. That’s performance.
I’m not interested in turning my beliefs into commandments or presenting personal preferences as collective standards. I don’t need to be the loudest in the room to hold a strong point of view, and I certainly don’t need to manufacture controversy in order to feel validated as a thought leader.
What I’m here to do is offer perspective.
Not as a prescription, but as a possibility.
To share what I’ve learned, rooted in lived experience, constant learning, and a celebration for beauty in the everyday.
Most of all…I’m here to create space, not to fill it.
Because real expertise, I believe, isn’t about imposing conclusions. It’s about creating the conditions to spark your own. …and I’m not willing to abandon who I am just to make it more digestible in the eyes of the algorithm.
And that belief has only deepened. Over the past week, this conversation has lingered with me, quietly urging me to examine not just my response, but the very foundation of my perspective.
I’ve realized something else. The notion that I have “no stance” is, in itself, an oversimplification. Because in my own life, I’ve seen how quickly we project polarization where none was ever intended. We’ve been conditioned to interpret preference as opposition. To assume that to love one thing is to reject its counterpart. As if nuance can’t exist. As if I can’t prioritize wellness and eat clean while also savoring my mother’s traditional Puerto Rican recipes. Or that, in design, not gravitating toward a certain color or style means I believe it has no place or value. And yet, I’ve received the comments—the ones that suggest I’m contradicting myself or backtracking. But my stance was never that rigid to begin with. Can’t we hold both? Can’t we live in a world where seemingly opposing things can coexist? Where loving something doesn’t require hating what it’s not? We’ve been taught to view opinions as absolutes. That any expression of enthusiasm must carry an undercurrent of rejection. That to choose one thing is to renounce another. And that, too, is part of the problem.
And without that distinction, we risk outsourcing our beliefs, mistaking borrowed certainty for our own inner truth. Because in the end, going along is easy but standing in your values is deliberate.
There’s a quote by that feels especially true here:
“We are born artists. And then society does its best to beat it out of us.”
And that’s the quiet tragedy, isn’t it? That we’re born with a point of view…curious, instinctual, alive, and somewhere along the way, we’re taught to trade it for someone else’s.
To follow. To perform. To blend in.
But we don’t need to. We can listen. We can learn. We can gather ideas and insights and still, always, return to our own knowing.
That’s the invitation: not just to take a stance, but to ensure it’s truly our own.
So yes, in case it’s not clear, I do have a stance. It’s to not to tell you what to think, but to challenge the idea that anyone should. My stance is to create space for reflection, to encourage you to trust your own inner voice, and to question the absolutes we’re so often handed. To take what I share, not as doctrine, but as an invitation…to pause, to probe, and to choose what’s true for you. To ultimately, be intentional.
I don’t know if my content will ever truly “land” in a culture that rewards volume over depth, where polarizing takes are praised as truth, and certainty is performed louder than it’s lived. I don’t know if sharing my thoughts offered with space for your own reflection, will ever be considered “strong” enough, but I’ll continue refining how I show up. Clarifying my stance, strengthening my voice, and yes, hoping my message finds its mark, but never at the expense of becoming someone I’m not. Because at the heart of it all, if you walk away from something I’ve shared, more connected to your own voice than to mine, then I’ve done my job.
With Love,
Kathleen