The Olive Branch

By Leslie K Leland

I have been the wounded and the wounder. Both are true.

I watched a video recently of Shyne talking about 50 Cent.

If you know anything about either of them, you know there is history there. Real history. Public history. The kind that gets rehashed every few years by people who have no stake in it except entertainment.

But he didn't rehash it.

He talked about becoming an elder statesman. About reaching a place in life where the assignment changes. Where you stop keeping score and start convening. Where your responsibility is no longer to win the old argument but to bring people together.

And then he talked about extending olive branches.

I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

Because at 53, I am beginning to understand the responsibility that comes with becoming an elder stateswoman.

Not just getting older.

Not just becoming more successful.

Not just accumulating titles, accomplishments, relationships and influence.

But becoming responsible for what my presence creates in a room.

And lately I have been asking myself one question.

Are olive branches emanating from me?

I Have Been the Wounded and the Wounder

That is the humbling part of getting older.

If I tell the truth about my life, I cannot construct a story where I have always been the person who was wronged.

I have been excluded. And somewhere along the way, intentionally or not, I have made someone else feel excluded.

I have been misunderstood. And I have misunderstood people.

I have had people assume the worst about my intentions. And I know there have been times I assumed the worst about theirs.

I have been disappointed by people. And if we are being honest, somebody somewhere has been disappointed by me.

I have been the wounded and the wounder.

There is something freeing about admitting that.

Because once I stop needing to be innocent in every story, I can get curious about what every story came to teach me.

That does not mean what happened didn't happen. It does not mean betrayal wasn't betrayal, or that exclusion wasn't painful, or that we abandon boundaries and ignore patterns wisdom is telling us to notice.

It means I do not want an old wound to become the interpreter of every new room I walk into.

When the Wound Becomes the Interpreter

This is the part I think women in leadership have to watch closely.

The longer we live and the more rooms we enter, the more history we accumulate. Some of it is beautiful. Some of it is not.

Eventually you are going to walk into a room with someone who did not support you. Someone who underestimated you. Someone who did not invite you. Someone who said something about you. Someone you do not trust. Someone you may have hurt. Or someone whose version of what happened looks nothing like yours.

That is where leadership gets interesting.

Because you can walk into that room carrying everything that happened before you arrived.

Or you can walk in and ask, what does this moment require of me now?

Here is what I have learned. Remembering and reliving are two different things.

I can remember what happened without giving it authority over what happens next.

I can have discernment without suspicion becoming my default posture.

I can have boundaries without becoming hardened.

I can forgive without restoring access.

And I can extend an olive branch without pretending there was never a reason one was needed.

That is not being fake.

That is maturity.

Because when the wound is doing the interpreting, everything ambiguous becomes evidence. A look becomes a slight. A seating chart becomes a message. Silence becomes strategy. And a room full of people who came for one reason gets recategorized as a room of suspects.

The cost of that is not abstract. You lose the room you are actually standing in.

Unity Does Not Require Intimacy

This matters to me because of what we are building with the Women's League.

We are bringing accomplished women together. Women with businesses. Women with influence. Women with relationships. Women with strong opinions. Women with decades of experience.

And women with history.

If we are going to build something significant, we cannot require that every woman entering the room has a pristine history with everyone already in it. That is not possible. And I do not believe that is what unity means anyway.

Unity does not require intimacy.

We do not all have to vacation together. We do not have to become best friends. We do not have to pretend disagreements never happened. We do not have to give everyone the same level of access to our lives.

But if we are going to call ourselves leaders, we have to develop the capacity to share a table when the assignment is bigger than the history.

That is the kind of Women's League I want us to build.

Not a room where women silence themselves for the appearance of harmony.

A room mature enough to hold truth, accountability, boundaries, disagreement, forgiveness and collaboration at the same time.

Because there are things our businesses need. There are things our communities need. There are things the next generation of women needs.

And some of those things will require us to build alongside women we would not necessarily choose for our personal circle.

That is leadership.

Be Careful What You Water

There is another responsibility that comes with sisterhood, and I think we talk about it far less.

When someone we love has been hurt, our instinct is to protect her. I understand that instinct. I have had it. I have acted on it.

But there is a difference between validating someone's experience and watering someone's wound.

Every woman in leadership needs people around her who love her enough to ask, do we know that to be true?

Not because her feelings are not real. Not because her history does not matter.

But because yesterday's pain can make today's ambiguity look like tomorrow's threat. And when everyone around a leader agrees with every suspicion, the suspicion stops being a feeling and starts becoming culture. These people are against us. Those people do not respect us. Somebody is trying to sabotage this.

Once that takes root, everything gets interpreted through opposition. Including the good.

I want women around me who can hold my hand without automatically holding my grudge. Women who can say, I understand why that hurt you, and let us make sure we are responding to what is actually happening.

I want to become that kind of friend too.

That is an olive branch.

The Elder Stateswoman

Becoming an elder stateswoman is not an age designation.

It is a posture.

At some point leadership has to become less about proving who was wrong and more about deciding what we are responsible for making right.

The higher we rise, the more people we are responsible for convening. The more influence we acquire, the more careful we have to be about what our presence gives permission to.

Do people become more divided when I enter?

Do grievances grow around me?

Do people feel pressured to choose sides?

Or does my presence create the possibility that something different can happen here?

Those are the questions I am asking myself.

Because I have not always gotten this right. I am still learning. I am still catching myself. I am still finding places where an old story wants to interpret a new experience.

But maybe that is what becoming is.

Not reaching some place where nothing bothers you anymore. Not becoming so healed that you no longer remember pain.

But developing enough awareness to recognize when the wound is trying to lead, and choosing not to hand it the microphone.

At 53, that is the woman I want to be.

A woman with boundaries. A woman with discernment. A woman with a memory.

A woman who can apologize when she has caused harm, and receive an apology when one is sincerely offered.

A woman who does not need everyone to agree with her.

A woman who understands that some relationships will be restored and others will remain respectfully distant.

And still, a woman from whom olive branches emanate.

Because the olive branch is not evidence that nothing happened.

The olive branch is evidence that what happened no longer has authority over what happens next.

If we are going to build something meaningful for women, if we are really going to build tables big enough for all of our brilliance and history and difference and possibility, then this is part of the work.

Before we ask who needs to extend an olive branch to us, maybe we ask a harder question.

What is emanating from me?

That is the question I am carrying into this next season.

And it is the kind of leadership I hope we build together. 

The Women's League of the Black Chamber of Arizona is built on this idea. A table wide enough to hold our brilliance, our history, our differences and our possibility, all at once.

If that is the kind of room you have been looking for, come find us. Follow the Black Chamber of Arizona to see what we are building.