I had watched my mother be diminished for being visible, for having opinions, for taking up space, and somewhere very young I had learned the lesson that safety lived in smallness.

So when I built a company, I built it from behind a man, and I called it modesty, and it was partly modesty, and it was partly a bargain I had struck with my own fear — I will do the work, and you can have the light, and in exchange no one will look at me too closely, and I will be safe.

It was a bad bargain.

It is always a bad bargain.

Because the thing about making yourself invisible to stay safe is that invisible people are not safe; they are simply unwitnessed, which is the opposite of safe.

I had disappeared myself so thoroughly, for so long, that when the people around me finally decided to move against me, there was no one — not our friends, not the company, not the world that knew Flynn’s face and not mine — who would even have known I was a person worth defending.