#6 On Being Told to 'Lay Low'
On choosing rooms that let us expand...
For a long time, I kept my work life and my personal storytelling separate. Not because I didn’t have opinions, but because I learned, early on, that sharing too much could cost you. That lesson came from a previous work experience, one I’ve spent years unpacking and healing from. I can say this now, with confidence: I’m healed.
This year’s annual reflection stayed with me in a way I didn’t expect. I’ve received positive feedback before, but something about this one landed differently. It wasn’t focused on output alone. It spoke to how I moved through rooms. How I engaged. How I led.
The words that stood out weren’t about execution or metrics. They were about presence. About the way I navigated conversations.
About how my directness created momentum instead of avoidance. About how, in spaces where issues were often softened or sidestepped, my willingness to address them openly was seen not as a liability, but as forward motion.
I had to pause after hearing that.
Because years ago, in a very different environment, I was told something else entirely. A supervisor, in a more senior role, once told me that I could come across intense.
He suggested I should “lay low.”
I remember sitting there, trying to keep my composure. I wasn’t being careless with my words. I wasn’t being disrespectful. I was being clear.
What stayed with me wasn’t just the comment itself, but the implication beneath it. That firmness, when it comes from a man, reads as confidence. That when it comes from a woman, it becomes something to manage. Something to soften. Something to shrink.
For a moment in my life, I wondered if that feedback would follow me. If it would teach me to quiet myself. To dilute my instincts. To take up less space.
Instead, it taught me something else.
I didn’t need to become smaller. I needed to find a place that understood strength as something to cultivate, not contain. A place that knows collaboration doesn’t mean compliance.
That accountability doesn’t have to be gentle to the point of avoidance to be effective. That honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable, is an act of respect.
Reading this year’s reflection, I felt something settle. Not triumph. Not vindication. Just clarity.
I didn’t lay low. I grew.
And maybe growth isn’t about becoming someone else, but about leaving places that ask you to be smaller.
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For the everyday snippets and softer moments, come find me on instagram @tamtamvu.