I was twenty‑three years old when I walked into Two Union Square for my first legal job — a downtown Seattle high‑rise with a marble lobby and a skyline view that made you stand up straighter. The firm took up eight full floors of that tower, a world of polished hallways, quiet power, and people who spoke in the kind of calm, clipped tones that suggested they’d never once been late to anything.

I’d grown up privileged, with a front‑row seat to how the world worked: educated parents and dinner table debates about justice and ambition. I understood power early. I understood structure. I understood expectation.

But I’d also been almost killed in a childhood accident, and that kind of thing rewires you. It sharpens your instincts. It makes you see through people faster than they expect. It gives you a quiet edge — the kind you don’t talk about, but you carry everywhere. I learned young that life can flip without warning, and that knowledge sits under everything I do.

So when I stepped into that high‑rise, nylons and all, I wasn’t just starting a career. I was stepping into the first version of myself — the one who didn’t yet know she would reinvent her life over and over again, not out of crisis, but out of instinct, curiosity, and the refusal to stay in any version that stopped fitting.

I didn’t know it then, but that job wasn’t the beginning of my career. It was the beginning of my becoming.