12/10/2026
A lesson from a child.
Lately, I've been going through a difficult time with my work. Manuscript rejections, questioning, and a review that went beyond criticizing my arguments to telling me my work wouldn't be published in that journal or any other.
The reviewer brought up the names of great philosophers. But I never claimed to be a philosopher. I never claimed to have invented perception.
I'm an observer and researcher.
But I'm also a little girl, a young woman, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a student, a pharmacist, a patient, a mother, a coach, a writer, a behavior change specialist, a master coach.
A human.
Much of my work has grown from observing human experiences, including my own, and asking questions about what happens to our perception within them.
Yesterday, my five-year-old daughter reminded me why this matters so much.
I was picking her up from school when she told me she couldn't find her water bottle.
I asked her to look for it. She searched, then came back crying.
I was surprised. Why was she crying over a missing bottle? This wasn't like her.
I reassured her that it was okay if she couldn't find it, but she insisted on looking again.
So I followed her.
In the classroom, one teacher encouraged her to keep looking. I explained that I didn't want her to become so distressed over a bottle.
I kept reassuring her, but she was determined.
Eventually, we found it.
On our way home, she told me something I hadn't known.
Earlier that day, a friend had thrown her bottle into the bin, and she had cried.
She told me she'd cried twice that day.
I asked whether the second time was when she couldn't find her bottle. She said yes.
Then I asked if she'd been afraid her friend had thrown it into the bin again.
She said yes.
Suddenly, I understood.
She wasn't simply crying over a missing bottle. She was afraid something upsetting had happened again.
I couldn't see that in the classroom.
And yet, I'm grateful I respected her insistence on looking, even when I didn't understand.
I had my own interpretation. I thought she was becoming unnecessarily distressed. I tried to reassure her.
But I didn't make my understanding a requirement for allowing her experience to have a place.
I didn't have to understand her perception to respect it.
That was the lesson.
We encounter people every day without knowing what they're carrying into a particular moment.
We see reactions, hear words, observe behavior, and interpret from our own position.
But there may be something we cannot see.
Something that matters enormously to the person experiencing it.
Yesterday, a five-year-old child reminded me why protecting perception matters so much.
And after everything I've been facing with my work, I needed that reminder.
I'll continue observing, questioning, researching, and writing.
Because I'm a human trying to understand something about human experience.
And I believe that's a place from which meaningful questions can begin.
