The Mirror and the Mask- Fables of Truthism
Chapter:5- Suffering – The Forge of Compassion: Fable:1: The River Who Remembered Being Fire (The Woman They Called Graceful Right Before They Crossed Her Line)
For years, they called Rhea graceful.
A calming presence on every team call.
The one who smoothed over tension with elegance,
Nodded through interruptions,
Smiled when men explained her own slides to her.
She had learned to flow.
To adapt.
To fold her fury into silence and call it professionalism.
Rage, they said, was unbecoming.
Especially for women like her.
Especially when you are ‘lucky to be in the room.’
The turning point came quietly.
A pitch she had been working on for four months…..
Her concept, her strategy, her late nights…...
And it was presented without her.
By her manager.
On Zoom.
With her camera off.
Watching him take credit in real time,
saying ‘we’ when he meant ‘me.’
And nobody questioned it.
They smiled. Applauded. Moved on.
Something broke.
But not the way she feared.
Not tears. Not retreat. Not another night of grinding teeth.
No.
Something remembered.
Something old.
A fire.
The kind she hadn’t touched since she was seventeen and screamed at her father for hitting her mother.
The kind that got her slapped and told,
‘This is not how you speak to men.’
That fire had drowned for years…..Under yoga, Tone modulation, and Office politics.
But now….
It roared.
The next day, Rhea walked into the team debrief and said:
‘I need to say something before we begin.’
They expected another composed summary.
Instead, she looked straight at the man who stole her voice and said….
‘You took my work. Not by accident. And I am not going to swallow that for the sake of harmony.’
The room stiffened.
Someone tried to interrupt.
She did not stop.
Not this time.
When she finished, there was silence.
And it stayed.
Nobody applauded.
But nobody forgot.
She went home, opened the doc she had been building for years…..
A private file of her contributions, erasures, microaggressions.
She renamed it:
‘Proof I Did not Imagine It.’
Then she sent it to HR.
Not to burn it all down.
Just to stop watering down the truth.
She was not fired.
She was not promoted either.
But things changed.
A little.
People stopped talking over her.
Started crediting her slides.
One intern messaged her after a town hall and said:
‘Thank you. I thought I had to swallow it too.’
Rhea replied:
‘We are allowed to be rivers. But not when they keep setting us on fire. Suffering unchosen breaks you. Suffering understood transforms you.’
She flowed until they stole her flame,
Then rose when silence begged retreat.
Her fire did not scorch the room…
It taught the water how to speak.
This was also a really powerful one. Loved it.