Candid Conversations Newsletter Shift the Frame: Why Perspective Is Power, and How Context Adds Clarity

A Moment in St. Louis 🍻

Where memory collides with truth

On one of my trips to St. Louis—a city I’d always meant to come back to—I felt something different settle in. The Gateway Arch stood tall, a strange symbol of expansion, ambition, and everything this country tries to remember and forget at the same time. That feeling hit deep. The last time I was in St. Louis, I was a different person.

I thought about Lewis and Clark, about myths of movement and arrival. The Mississippi doesn’t ask politely for attention—it just gets it. And I’ve always felt something for rivers. Their pull is familiar. Reminiscent. This is the city that made me stop running at night and trade dark-colored clothes for neon—sharper, louder, more vivid tones.

But this trip wasn’t about history or symbolism. I was here as a young, Black professional, walking the city with a different kind of awareness.

There was a tension in the air—quiet but steady. I couldn’t name it at first. I noticed small protests here and there but didn’t give them much thought. I was focused on work, on exploring. St. Louis has some of the most underrated cocktail bars in the country—Planter’s House and Blood & Sand come to mind. There’s also 4 Hands Brewery, and a cluster of some of the coolest microbreweries in the country just steps away from top-tier BBQ spots—a delight that filled my nightly dinner adventures. Work by day, and food-and-drinks enthusiast by night.

That night, after dinner at a ramen spot, I struck up a conversation with a couple in their early sixties. We started talking over a few pours of Japanese whiskey—he was surprised Japan even made whiskey. That was my cue. I broke it down—light to bold, smooth to layered. That opened something up. They shared that they were retired lawyers, now dedicating their time to advocating for the wrongfully accused.

Curious, I asked about the tension I’d been feeling. The man leaned in, real low, and said just one word: “Ferguson.”

And everything shifted.

Frames We Inherit 🎞️

The past doesn’t knock—it lingers in the room

That word landed hard.

In an instant, the past and the present blurred. I wasn’t just standing in downtown St. Louis—I was standing on ground still trembling from what happened just a few years earlier. Michael Brown. Darren Wilson. Ferguson. And a few weeks back, the protests that followed the acquittal of Jason Stockley—the officer who shot and killed Anthony Lamar Smith.

That history didn’t just live in the streets—it lived in the atmosphere. St. Louis has long been a case study in what happens when policing becomes a tool of pressure rather than protection.

It became the first place in the U.S. where I didn’t feel like I was just passing through—I felt watched. Not necessarily in a hostile way. Just… seen. Closely. Intentionally. And I know what that feels like, especially when you’re the one the burden of proof falls on during a traffic stop. That kind of awareness can make you brace—even when nothing’s happening.

Looking back, I realize that moment wasn’t just about that city. It was about how many of us move through the world with frames we didn’t choose. Frames that shape how we’re seen, how we see ourselves, and what we think we have to do to stay safe.

For a lot of us, survival mode is built in. We’re taught to be strong, adaptable, low-maintenance. But we’re rarely taught to ask what that conditioning is doing to us over time. That armor we wear? It protects, yes—but it also isolates. It limits what we let in and what we show.

And often, what looks like ambition is just a carefully curated way to feel a little less vulnerable.

“This is what I have to do to survive.”

That line has covered a lot of ground in my life. But it’s also taken a toll.

At the time, I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling.

I do now.

The Game Within the Game 🎮

When survival looks like achievement

It wasn’t until a few years later that I came across The Status Game by Will Storr. And in it, I found language that helped me understand something I’d been living.

Storr argues that much of human behavior—our ambition, our allegiances, our anxiety—is rooted in our pursuit of status. Not the surface-level kind. The primal kind: to matter, to belong, to not disappear.

He breaks status into three dominant games:

• Dominance (power and control)

• Virtue (moral standing)

• Success (competence and achievement)

When you grow up in survival mode, those aren’t games—they’re tools. Lifelines. Status becomes armor. It becomes a filter. It becomes your quiet strategy for staying visible and safe.

And in that framework, something about St. Louis clicked.

Because in cities like this, where aggressive policing has historically been the norm, the dominance game plays out in full view. Law enforcement isn’t just asserting authority—it’s sending a signal. And in response, Black and Brown people adapt—by doubling down on the virtue and success games. You perform safety. You become palatable. You control what you wear, how you speak, when you speak, who you speak to. Not because you’re trying to impress—but because you’re trying to exist.

For many of us, status isn’t about ego. It’s about protection.

In most places, I move quietly. I blend in. In St. Louis, I felt noticed. And with that came a full awareness of the performance I’d been fine-tuning for years.

Because how you see yourself almost never matches how the world sees you.

And sometimes, that gap is the whole game.

Beyond Survival 🕶️

What happens when protection starts to imprison

With time, I’ve realized survival isn’t just about staying alive—it’s about the mindset we carry to avoid being harmed.

If we don’t interrogate where that mindset came from, we start to believe that our grind, our polish, our posture is who we are. We confuse defense mechanisms for personality.

But what if they’re not?

Amanda Ripley’s work on high conflict helped sharpen that for me. She explains how people get stuck in rigid, us-versus-them thinking. Add that to survival mode, and you find yourself in a constant loop: always on alert, always braced, always one misstep from being misunderstood—or worse.

That mindset shrinks your world. It steals curiosity. It turns difference into threat. That’s why we need space:

• for contradiction.

• For duality.

• For grace.

The Frame Shift 📴

When awareness becomes agency

These days, I’ve learned to move differently.

To stay aware, but not always armored.

To stay open, even when the past says, “Don’t.”

To ask better questions. To feel more. To trust the stillness.

Survival got me here— but it doesn’t get to define the rest of the story.

Think back for a moment.

What if I told you that the couple I met at the ramen bar—the ones who said “Ferguson”—were white?

What changes for you?

How does your frame shift?

That’s the point. We must remain open. Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do isn’t to fight harder or climb faster.

It’s to pause.

To look again.

To ask: What frame am I in?

And who handed it to me?

Sometimes the real shift isn’t external. It’s internal. And that shift—quiet, intentional, earned

is how we keep moving. Inch by inch. Toward something better than survival.

If this resonated with you…

Let it echo before you respond

Sit with it. Re-read the part that caught your breath.

And if it brought something up—language, memory, maybe a frame you didn’t realize you’d inherited—share it.

Reply. Forward it. Start a conversation.

Or just take it with you into your next room, your next meeting, your next pause.

We’re not just surviving.

We’re re-framing.

Until such time…