“I Remember Syrup Sandwiches”: The path to empathetic and authentic leadership. “I remember syrup sandwiches…” Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics hit me differently the other day. And while this article is a nod to that lyric, it’s really about so much more. My sister and I were talking about our childhood—reflecting, doing that thing siblings do when time stretches the distance between memory and understanding. And she said: “Do you remember when we used to make syrup sandwiches?” Just like that, I was transported. The taste, the struggle, the silence. I hadn’t thought about it in years—maybe I’d blocked it out. Not because it was necessarily traumatic, but because survival sometimes forces us to forget. We weren’t miserable. We laughed. We played. We had each other–until we grew apart in our teen years–that’s a story for another time. We were undeniably poor. We made syrup sandwiches. And drank sugar water—a sweet treat. I washed my clothes in the sink and dried them in the oven. Hun...