I have been hiding.

Not completely. I show up every day for my writing. I share on my blog. I show up daily in my virtual co-working community.

Over the last few months, I’ve even delivered a handful of workshops. I started sending a weekly newsletter, so I’m showing up there.

I’m showing up in a lot of places.

AND… I’ve been hiding.

Even in that showing up, I’ve been hiding.

I can feel it as a disconnection from the meat of my work, my resistance to share what’s real — the messy parts of my truth.

Calling Out My Hiding

I know I’m hiding by what I’m avoiding. The work I write but I don’t publish, the work I publish but don’t promote, the ideas that stagnate in the process from thought to form.

Despite my desire to reconnect on social media, and my promise to myself to do so, I haven’t connected.

I’ve been hiding from my friends. And from myself.

And I’ve been hiding from my fears. Or at least trying to.

I’ve been hiding behind the veils of spinning thoughts and complexity and confusion and self-doubt.

My fears don’t like this game of hide-and-seek that I’ve been playing. They have been chasing me down, and in the moments when it is most inconvenient they pounce: closing my throat, squeezing my heart space, knotting my belly, clamping tight on my psoas, pressing down on my ribs, preventing me from breathing fully.

Cutting me off from oxygen, Prana, my life force energy.

My fears want to be seen. They are begging to be acknowledged, held, nurtured. Sometimes they feel too big to cradle in my arms.

I, too, want to be seen. How ironic. My fears and I, we want the same thing.

So I’m hiding. Hiding with my fears.

Hiding feels safe.

When you’re hiding, nobody can see when you screw up or when you get stuck.

When you’re hiding, nobody can attack you for doing or saying the wrong thing.

When you’re hiding, nobody knows when you don’t know the answer.

Hiding also feels precarious.

When you’re hiding, you’re always looking over your shoulder, afraid of any move that might reveal you to be the imposter that you are.

You wonder when everything will catch up to you, when you’ll be found out.

Hiding is isolating and lonely.

And hiding takes a lot of energy: all that work to ensure you stay hidden.

I’m tired of hiding. And I’m afraid of being seen.

The tension between these two is the most draining of all.

We had a conversation.

My fears tell me not to publish this, that it’s dangerous to be seen in the muck, in a place where I don’t yet have all the answers.

I gather my fears in close, seeing them, holding them, cradling them. I thanked them for working so hard to protect us.

We’ve been hiding for a long time; most of our life. Maybe we can try a different way.

I tell my fear that it’s ok to be seen in this vulnerable place. When we remove the veils will see that we are not alone. We will let others see that they are not alone.

We don’t need all the answers just yet.

All we need is a willingness to be seen, and a little bit of courage.