Welcome back to The Neighborhood Table - your seat is here.

At The Neighborhood Table, we gather to think deeper, speak honestly, and build the kind of community the world keeps saying is impossible. Every issue is a moment, a mirror, and a practice. Pull up a seat. The conversation begins here.

In this issue, expect to confront the assumptions, biases, and inherited beliefs we carry into new communities. You’ll revisit moments where others shaped your lens and learn how to reclaim your own. This reflection will challenge you to enter rooms with curiosity instead of inherited narratives.

Some people enter a room and see faces.
Some enter and see categories.
I used to see the world in outlines.

I grew up hearing stories about certain neighborhoods, certain people, certain families. Stories that were passed down like warnings. Stories that came coated in someone else’s fear, someone else’s assumptions, someone else’s limited experience. I was young, impressionable, and taught to trust what I was told before trusting what I could see for myself.

So I walked into communities already carrying conclusions.
Not my own, but inherited.
Not based on truth, but on repetition.

There was a season in my life when those voices were louder than my own curiosity. I entered spaces already braced for disappointment. Already expecting danger. Already convinced of who people were before I ever met them.

And every time I stepped into a room with those assumptions, something felt off.
I felt a quiet tension within me.
A pull between what I was told to believe and what I was seeing with my own eyes.

That tension pushed me into an island of my own.
A place where I questioned everything.
Why did I believe this?
Why did I assume that?
Why was someone else’s experience shaping how I stepped into the world?

It was confusing. It was disorienting. It was lonely.

But it was the beginning of growth.

Because one day, I realized the world was not in black and white.
It was in color.
Full color.
Vibrant. Complicated. Human.
And I had been walking around with someone else’s grayscale.

The moment I allowed myself to see people for who they showed me they were, instead of who I was told they might be, everything changed. Communities felt different. Conversations felt deeper. Trust felt possible.

I learned something important.

Community cannot grow where assumptions lead the way.
Community grows when presence does.

We cannot build bridges using the lumber of other people’s fears.
We cannot build trust using the nails of old narratives.
We cannot build connection if we only bring projections.

Who we are when we enter a room shapes everything.
Not the room. Not the people.
Us.

If we approach community with assumptions, biases, and inherited stories, we are not building anything.
We are dividing before we even begin.

And division is not always loud.
Sometimes it is silent.
A tightened jaw.
A closed mind.
A guarded heart.
A room that never had a chance.

But when we enter with curiosity instead of conclusions, we open the door to real connection.
We soften.
We listen.
We see people in color again.

This week, before you walk into a room, a meeting, a neighborhood, or a conversation, ask yourself one simple question:

What assumptions am I carrying that might close me off from connection?

Name it.
Acknowledge it.
Then practice releasing it long enough to see what is really there.

Curiosity is not naïve.
It is courageous.
It is the first seat at the table of community.

What is one assumption you have carried into a room that turned out not to be true?

If this question stirs something in you, sit with it.
There is wisdom in the unlearning.

Thank you for pulling up a seat at The Neighborhood Table.
See you next Tuesday.
The work continues.