By Ayanna Pressley
Congresswoman and Movement Builder
Do you ever think about what a mirror really is? How it works? The reality is no two are exactly the same. As you move through the world, each image reflected to you will appear slightly differently. When rays of light hit rough surfaces, they bounce the light back in all directions. This is called diffuse reflection. Metal and glass, meanwhile, are very smooth and reflect light back in a different way. They offer a closer measure of what’s represented in front of the surface, but it’s still not a perfect replica.
Growing up in Chicago, my mother was my mirror, reflecting to me and the world all the light embodied within her. I was constantly by the side of a woman who was steady, fierce, loving, and human. She was my shero. She gave me my roots and my wings. She taught me that our job and our work are two separate things. Our job—and she had many—is what pays the bills. Our Work—with a capital w—is the collective work of liberation and upliftment of community.
She loved me fiercely. When I was a child, she did not read me bedtime stories. She read me the words of Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm. She ached for me to see in myself deep potential, value, self-worth, and dignity. She sought to instill in me from an early age a counternarrative. She knew that the world writ large does not value the humanity and fullness of Black women. That we are often portrayed as a narrow reflection of who we are, filtered through a prism of outside expectations, biases, and shortcomings. But in our home and in her loving arms, she anchored me to a vision of my power.
My mother took exception when people used nicknames for me. My name, Ayanna, translates to beautiful flower, and my mother would tell me that she had given me the name for a reason: so that I would never be without the affirmation of my beauty and worth. Later in life, she routinely gifted me flowers to wear on my lapel, a physical reflection of the name she had given me.
The experience of learning to see myself through my mother’s eyes, with the intentionality and fullness she sought to impart, was not always an easy one. I often found myself—and still do—in spaces and moments that reflected a broken image, where my body, the way that I simply showed up in the world, was seen as disruptive, deserving of criticism, somehow inadequate. In those moments, I had to fight to remember my mother’s mirror: that who I authentically was would always be enough.
My mother did not hesitate to prepare me with the armor I needed to navigate the world. But she also passed on—in word and deed—an innate understanding that embracing my joy was, in and of itself, an act of liberation. In a world that would place on my shoulders many expectations, what would matter most was that I found my way and defined my own path, one foot in front of the next. What mattered was that when I looked in the mirror, I would not see an image refracted by the lens of society, I would see a full, deserving, purposeful, and deeply loved woman. I would see Sandy Pressley’s daughter.
There is a small mirror in my office that I always look into before I head out to make a speech on the House floor or testify in committee. As a congresswoman, there’s a practical reality to stepping out of my office door each day: my appearance matters. I check for lipstick on my teeth or smudged makeup from the sticky DC heat. But that’s not why I started this ritual. My mirror, my intuition, guides me through the world all women must navigate when we open our door each day to the outside world which filters our image and actions through the fractious perspective of others’ lived experiences. On any given matter, on any given day, my words—always with consistent purpose and intent—will land differently on any two sets of ears. The mirrors that refract through the lens of a shutter, the C-SPAN camera, and the livestream does not accurately reflect me. They catch the angles of rough surfaces, creating a diffuse reflection. They will not see me through the mirror I see myself in but that of their own making.
I have always loved language. I learned early on from a church pew the gift and true discipline of delivering a word. Of meeting the moment and offering folks language to describe their discomfort, soften the edges of a harsh reality, or lift their hearts as they move through the day. Some words, when strung together just right, in the moment they are most needed, can reflect something real and true. Words can hold together a shared sentiment that unifies people who see the world and move through it in deeply different ways. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of those moments where we collectively see a crisp image of what’s in front of us and what’s possible.
And yet, the goal is often not to peer into the same mirror at the same moment and see the same image reflected. The world is too multidimensional, people are too multidimensional, to fit such a limited view. That would overlook the complexity of who we each are and how the world has shaped us. The narrative we have crafted, from moments of adversity and moments of true joy and love. What we are after is shared purpose, not perfection. My mother set me on a path to define the way the world saw me, but her primary goal was that I define the way I see myself—that my first instinct when I look in that mirror before leaving my office is not one of judgment but one of affirmation, purpose, and perseverance.
She instilled in me a deep sense of empathy but cautioned that that empathy must come with some armor. It is too easy to elevate each person I cross paths with, to put them in the front row of my heart regardless of their intent. To give the comments of a childhood friend the same weight as someone who wishes my family harm or hurls sharp words at me. After all, most humans are seeking to be heard and seen fully. Whether possible or not, a part of us wants others to see us the way we see ourselves—to be seen, heard, and valued for precisely who we are. But that experience can be vanishingly elusive—the good inevitably accompanied by the hateful—and we must learn to don our armor and choose which reflections we allow into our hearts.
As a woman, I have leaned into my intuition by defining my own mirrors. They don’t always show me an image I’m comfortable with, but they reflect my truth. That counsel provides the strength to step into an often-unwelcoming world and manifest my full self.
As I navigate the machinations of my daily life and fight for the most vulnerable, those left out and left behind, I find myself shoulder to shoulder with far too many who cast aside those mirrors, push through eye contact, and presume their mirror is the only one through which we must all see. But that is no way to move in this world with purpose. To see others fully, we have to first fully see ourselves. Our whole selves. Each day, we must choose to go in one direction—to see one single version of ourselves as truth. We see the direction of weariness and indifference, or we see the direction of hope and justice. To know the direction you must choose, follow what your intuition is telling you is staring back at you. Lock eyes with her through the glass, and commit to exactly what you see reflected back.