What They Don't See When They Call Me "Influential"
The hidden cost of strength: what nobody sees behind the mask.
Someone at work told me recently that they never would have known I get emotional behind closed doors. Which I didn't view as an insult, it's just proof of how good the mask has been while healing.
For years I wore one - strength, confidence, perseverance, resilience - and I didn't even know it was a mask. I hadn't connected what happened to me to anything I felt. It took losing my little brother and everything that spiraled after it to get me into treatment, into a diagnosis, into actually seeing myself for the first time. Twelve years of intentional healing since then. I didn't start to feel real confidence, instead of faking it, until I was 39. I'm 40 now.
Here's what nobody sees.
This wasn't my first breakthrough - twelve years of healing has given me plenty of those. But this one was a bit different. A few days ago, on PTO, my body finally stopped letting me push through, at a level of work stress I'd never felt before. I got on my vibration plate to help regulate my nervous system, and I ended up sobbing - pulling at my own shirt, hugging myself like a little kid, crying so hard at one point that no sound came out. Alternately tapping my collarbone area. Reparenting myself in real time. If anyone had walked in, they would have thought I was losing my mind.
That's what it actually takes to process trauma, for me. Not a quote graphic, Sunday affirmation, or a spa day. A grown woman on the floor, doing the thing most don't clap for.
I've been recognized as an Influential Woman. People ask for my advice on leadership. And I want that - I never want to stop helping people, learning, growing. But they have no idea what it costs, every single day, to be the person who shows up steady for everyone else.
Growing up, nobody protected me. Not really - not consistently. A couple of chosen people have stayed close, though even they protect from a distance sometimes. I used to think that meant something was wrong with me. It doesn't matter anymore why it happened. What matters is that I know what boundaries are now, and I get to choose who's close to me going forward.
Some people would look at everything I just described and call it weak. Unstable. Say I shouldn't be leading others while carrying this much. They have it backwards.
It takes an enormous amount of strength to keep going when your brain and body are fighting you. It takes years of inner work to get to where I am. And that's exactly why I'm qualified for this - not because I have a wall of shiny credentials, but because I have lived it, done the work, and educated myself on top of it.
You can do this too - but go at the pace that's actually safe for you.
It won't be Instagram-story glamorous. You won't want to brag about the pain. If you stay with the process - if you keep doing the work even on the days it feels like it isn't working - it is working. It's years of unprocessed weight finally moving.
But moving that weight without support can also knock you sideways. If what's underneath is still raw, unprocessed trauma doesn't always release gently - it can spiral just as easily as it can heal. Check in with yourself honestly before you push into it: do you have a therapist, a support system, somewhere to land if this stirs up more than you expected? If not, that's the first thing to build, not the last.
Our nervous system needs to know it's safe now, so it can finally unlearn what it had to learn to survive, and that won't be linear, it never is. I have found it to be just as important to rest when I feel I need it and to not compare my timeline with anyone else's. Comparison is a progress stunter.
Be gentle with yourself. And if you keep telling yourself you can't - that's worth noticing too, not judging.
I believe in you.
This isn't a substitute for professional support. If anything here stirred something up, please reach out to a therapist or someone you trust.
If you're ready to start unlearning what no longer serves you, my Awareness to Action framework walks you through it - download it here.
What mask have you been wearing so long you forgot it was one?
