Eventually, I’d come to see her frustrating response as a training ground, preparing me for a truly unfair world, where the facts frequently get twisted or overlooked. She was teaching me that the world wouldn’t always see things the way I saw them. She wanted me to know I wouldn’t always have a say in the matter either—“That’s just the way it goes, princess,” she’d say. Her message to me was clear: “Falling down is inevitable. It’s the getting back up that’s on you.”
