Writing (and Twirling) Out of Hiding

Noticing, feeling, healing, sharing

Me and the twirly brown coat

As a 24 year old newly graduated speech-language pathologist, I had much to prove – to myself, to my colleagues and supervisors, to clients and their families, and to my own family. I was an adult! I was smart! I was professional! Fear of being found out as incapable fueled my work ethic. Arrive early and read every bit of information in client files. Take copious notes to be well-prepared for intake interviews and assessment sessions. Rehearse various possible scenarios in my head to minimize the likelihood of a freeze response to unexpected encounters. Consult with colleagues, listen more than speak, write everything down. Think and rethink. Stay focused during meetings, or at least look like I was listening intently while working on formulating intelligent and coherent responses. Edit reports to perfection. Take on extra responsibilities. Try and stay one step ahead. Convince everyone I was a competent professional.

But I knew I wasn’t the professional I was pretending to be. I knew I didn’t really belong. I was too young, too naïve, too inexperienced, too insecure. I hoped everyone else didn’t know what I knew. Later, I would undercharge for private therapy, an imposter posing as a skilled therapist.

In my first full time permanent job, at a centre for people with developmental disabilities, I shared a large office with three other therapists while the building was undergoing renovations. The desks were placed along the perimeter of the room, underneath high windows. One winter morning, I entered the office wearing a new brown wool coat, and was struck by the way the sunlight filtered through the window, lighting up the room’s central open space like a stage. The coat was bulky with shoulder pads, a point collar with a row of large buttons to mid-thigh, the length continuing down almost to my ankles. It’s thick, heavy fabric flared out from my waist with a satisfying swoosh as I walked. The comforting weight of it straightened my spine and I took long, confident strides, enjoying the feel of the fabric lightly drumming my shins with each step.

After scanning the empty hallway to ensure I was alone, I stood in the hazy sunbeam in the middle of the otherwise dim room and spun around and around, arms out wide. I spun faster and faster to gain enough momentum for my coat skirt to lift and take flight, delighting in this fun act of physics. After a joyful minute, I was happy, dizzy, and cleared of any remaining sleepiness. I began unbuttoning and sensed movement near the doorway. I looked up and nearly jumped out of my coat. The respected psychologist in the office across the hall was standing there looking at me with an indiscernible expression. Oh god, did she just witness my juvenile behaviour? Heart racing and cheeks reddening, I quietly wished her “good morning,” pretending she hadn’t just seen me twirling like a child. She grinned at me, amused.

When we later became friends, she told me that was the day I earned her respect and affection, as a person and a professional. Until that day, she had interpreted my shy, quiet demeanor as haughty judgment. “I thought you were this super intelligent young woman who looked down on everyone,” she shared, to my astonishment. I was passing too well.

She wouldn’t be the only person to make wrong assumptions about me. And it wasn’t the first time, and wouldn’t be the last time I made myself disappear in an attempt to keep up appearances, only to have it backfire. I had been hiding myself, from others and from my own consciousness, since I was a young child. Although this incident taught me that even well-established and well-regarded people had insecurities, and that my behaviour may not be interpreted as I think it will, childhood thought patterns, especially those rooted in trauma, are difficult to break. It is hard to be found when you don’t even know you are lost. I remained good at hiding myself, until a shocking revelation about my parentage in 2022 made me question everything about my identity. Since then, I’ve been slowly exploring and releasing everything I’ve kept so well guarded. I’ve been writing out of hiding.

It’s been cathartic to revisit my life through writing, to tell old family stories from my own perspective while exploring how I felt about the experiences as they happened. This revisiting and reshaping is allowing me to better understand how I feel now and to more fully experience life as it happens in the moment. My senses are heightened, but in a different way than the all too familiar fight-or-flight mode that framed my encounters with the world. I’m noticing things, and writing about what I notice. Writing out of hiding has allowed me to pay attention not only to how I feel, but to the world around me in all its complexities, all its ugliness and its beauty – for life can be ugly, but it can also be beautiful, and often at the same time.

Writing is helping me heal. Like the brave writers before me who have shared their secrets, whether about hidden disability experiences, childhood sexual abuse, not parent expected (NPE) discoveries, menopause, tumultuous family relationships, and so many other experiences society tells us to keep hush-hush, I am ready to share. These writers helped me to know it’s more than OK to share personal narratives of uncomfortable topics – and so many of you writing on Substack and beyond helped me get there as well. Once I get my bearings here on Substack, I’d like to write more about these trailblazers and how they have helped me develop as a writer, and a person.  

I will no longer hide myself to please or protect others, or to fit into the narrow confines of societal expectations of normalcy. For me, writing is an act of discovery – and self-discovery – that is leading to some clarity of self and life; a continual becoming. I would never have thought that writing and sharing what I hold so tightly hidden deep within could be so freeing. Frightening still, but freeing nonetheless. I am more at ease with myself and my relationships than ever before (but there’s still a ways to go – more becoming to come). Through sharing stories of the ‘unspeakable,’ we create a ripple effect, supporting more and more people to write out of hiding (or talk, sign, draw, paint, sculpt, sing, or perform out of hiding). Let’s write out of hiding together!

To learn more about me and what Write Out of Hiding is all about, you can read my “about” page. If this all feels right (write!) to you at this moment in your life, please join me in this space. I’d love to know your own experiences writing out of hiding.