"Are You Two Together?"

Gabriela Holt
May 19
3 min read

It's like asking someone "How far along are you?" when they're not even pregnant. The audacity is real — and so is the sting that follows.

My husband Seth and I are in an interracial marriage. And I wish I could tell you that strangers minding their business at the grocery store checkout was a given. It's not. "Are you two together?" has become such a familiar question that we've developed our own silent language for it — a look, a breath, a moment of choosing not to educate a stranger on a Tuesday afternoon while we're just trying to get home.

Recently, Seth went to pick up balloons I'd ordered through the grocery app. The employee couldn't find them under Holt. Seth asked him to check under my maiden name — Carranza. Still nothing. He tried again: "Gabriela Carranza." The response? "Oh — that's YOUR wife?"

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is SUS. And I'm done pretending otherwise.

WHAT MICROAGGRESSIONS ACTUALLY DO

Here's what people who've never experienced them don't understand: it's rarely the individual comment that breaks you. It's the accumulation. It's the hundredth time you've had to smile and explain. It's the exhaustion of performing patience for people who've never had to think twice about walking into a room and being seen as exactly who they are.

Microaggressions whisper the same lie in a hundred different ways: you don't fully belong here. And when that message is reinforced enough — at work, in public spaces, in relationships — people start to believe it. They start shrinking. They start editing themselves before anyone else gets the chance.

WHY I BUILT THE LOVE™ FRAMEWORK

I spent nearly two decades in education — as a high school counselor, an academic life coach — watching brilliant people dim their light to fit into spaces that were never designed for them. I watched leaders of color code-switch until they didn't recognize themselves. I watched LGBTQ+ professionals perform straightness just to survive their workday.

And then I looked in the mirror and realized I was doing the same thing.

I recognized the people and workplaces that were dimming my light — and I decided that wasn't for me anymore. I left. I built something. I built it specifically for the people who've been told — explicitly or through a thousand small moments — that they are too much, not enough, or simply wrong for the room.

The LOVE™ Framework is my answer to that:

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO REDISCOVER YOURSELF

Here's the lesson I keep coming back to, whether I'm working with a first-generation professional navigating a corporate ladder they were never shown, or a leader of color who's tired of being the only one in the room:

It is never too late to rediscover yourself.

And the people who aren't growing with you — the colleagues, the environments, the relationships that keep asking you to be less — it may be time to thrift them. Yes. Thrift. As in: release them with love, wish them well, and let someone else find value in what no longer fits your life.

Being your full self feels better than you remember. Love who you are. Be with whoever you want to be with. Celebrate it — out loud, in public, at the grocery store checkout.

Work With Gabriela

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Con amor y luz ✨