Where All of Me Belongs

I’ve been giving my career a lot of thought lately. I’m sketching a clear vision where I don’t have to choose which side of me shows up. I’ll still operate with professionalism when it’s needed, but I want to be unapologetically me: my spirituality, my light, my fierce love for humanity.

I am a JD and a finance girl, and I am also a writer, a poet, a traveler, a creative. I want a career that lets all of that live and breathe together.

I imagine myself building better businesses, organizations, and governments—leading with integrity, humanity, and creativity. Ultimately, I want to be a promoter of peace, integrating my skills for collective healing and liberation. Maybe that work looks like diplomacy, or an international consultancy, or an entrepreneurial practice. Whatever the label, I see myself sitting in rooms where policies are being made, using my knowledge, experience, and storytelling to shape systems that actually help people.

I envision myself doing this work across the globe and in my home country. Flights to Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. Conversations in New York, LA, Boston, Atlanta, and beyond. Wherever there are people in need of humane systems, I will show up.

I bring analysis, communication, and adaptability to culture change and policy implementation. I want decisions to be smarter and kinder for the little people—the single mom trying to navigate benefit systems, the immigrant family making a home in a new country, the friend whose brilliance was overlooked. I do this work for them, for my parents, and for every little Black girl who’s been told her dreams are too big.

There was a time I thought I should abandon law and become only a poet. But my soul knew better. She chose law for a reason. Not just for money—though I will be well paid—but to show up for people who need someone to fight in the rooms they can’t enter alone. To be a bridge between policy and personhood. To bring tenderness and imagination into places that have forgotten how to care.

So what do I need to do? Keep loving myself. Keep staying true. Keep clearing the vision. Grow a strong root system for that aspen tree and in this light let no person dim your shine—friend, lover, family—tell them to fuck off and kiss your ass. Respectfully.

You are allowed to be many things. You are allowed to be sacred and strategic. You are allowed to be a lawyer and a poet. Keep doing the work. Keep tending your garden. The world needs people who can hold complexity with a soft heart and an unrelenting backbone.

What does your work look like when you refuse to choose just one part of yourself?

Tell me below.

— Zar