Do you struggle to be seen?

Like most women, I've struggled with being seen my whole life. Ironically, I’ve often felt I am showing up fully and I am revealing it all. That reality, I realised a few years ago, was far from the truth.

Here's how it shaped my life and career.

Throughout most of my life, like most high-achieving women, I have been hiding myself.

I've played small.

I've played perfectionist.

I've shape shifted and bent myself to fit in.

I've stayed quiet.

I've been the good girl.

I got the straight A* grades, first class degrees, distinctions, scholarships, promotions, built the startup.

I thought I was being big, bold, out there.

But I later learned I was still keeping myself small.

I was still hiding.

I was still choosing what I revealed to the world.

I was choosing to reveal the 'put together Kat'. The 'productive Kat'. The 'successful manager Kat'.

I realised when I was 25 that I was doing this when my anorexia returned whilst living in Dubai. Horrified, frightened, and determined to quell the demon, I tackled it head on. I overcame it within 2 years, for good, and thought, “Okay, I’m done now, I’m healed. I’ve learned to show up and be seen, I’ve learned to not be a perfectionist”. I thought I was done.

I didn't know it back then, but I wasn’t done at all.

At the age of 27, despite working so tirelessly at healing my inner demons, excavating any fears and anxieties within me around my weight, appearance, what I thought I ‘should’ be, I still was hiding.

At the age of 29, I took this energy into my first engagement.

I thought I was being vulnerable. I thought I was being real. I thought I was showing up wise, experienced, raw. I'd read self-help books, done retreats, and gone to therapy. I thought I’d learned how to be real, reveal, and be authentic.

Yet I remember in marital counselling, 3 years later, with my ex fiance, tears streaming down my face, my makeup running, my hair unwashed, feeling raw, and the marriage counsellor saying to me:

"You always look so perfect Kat. You're always so put together. Even now, you're still keeping it together".

And I felt confused. I thought I was letting it out. I was. I genuinely, truly — hand on my heart, was.

I didn't know how to let out more.

Only later when I'd ended it, when I'd lived through months of losing weight, suffered the most intense stress I'd been under in my entire life, panic attacks, arguments, beating my fists against the hardwood floor mid-fight so hard that the neighbours came to check that I was okay, only when I had the eerily still silence of suddenly finding myself living alone again, in a foreign city, having to start over, having to rediscover who I am, having to process where I'd gone wrong...only later did I really see.

That I had been hiding in that relationship. That I'd never really let myself be seen. That only towards the end when the veneer had begun to wear crack, when my nerves had begun to give in on me, when my energy had begun to falter…only then, did the real me emerge.

A deeper, primal, core version of me that knew in my deepest of hearts that I wasn't living my authentic truth, or in my authentic self.

A fierce, multifaceted, loud, outspoken, angry, so angry, ugly, wild, powerful force emanated from me.

She wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t contained. She was far from perfect.

She was furious. She was determined. She wanted to destroy, to ruin, to run.

And I had let her out.

And as I did, I realised that she wasn’t so scary. She was passionate. She believed in truth and justice. She believed in freedom. She believed in herself, in humanity, in living from that deep, raw place where emotions run free and love is the core root of them all, the creative force, the truth of life.

I met my own shadow.

Not in the manicured, contained, safe way that I had done in my careful anorexia recovery, or on the organised retreats I’d attended throughout my 20s. But in the raw, messy, wild, untamed, agonising landscape of real life. With real consequences.

And slowly – slowly, slowly, slowly, I made friends with my shadow and embraced her. I welcomed her life force. I gave her the gift of expression. I let her speak. I took on her form.

Through this, I began to feel more free. My expression became more full. My creativity began to flow. My heart opened. I felt more power. I felt stronger. I finally felt like me.

It took this catastrophic breakdown to realise I'd been hiding all along and so I made a vow to never, ever, hide again. To be honest, to be authentic, to show up, to let myself be seen.

And years later, here I am now, finally knowing myself, finally not afraid of the ugliness or the shadow or the imperfection. Finally I am able to take on the full form of my expression, though I suspect this will always be a work in progress after 30+ years of being a high-achiever.

I am finally in the right relationship, in Ibiza, doing the right work of service.

I’ve realised that everything aligns when you let yourself be seen.

Everything flows when you let yourself be free. Your relationships, your intimacy, your business, your art, your service, yourself expression.

So I ask you:

Where are you hiding?

Where are you not letting yourself be seen?

And what might happen if you did?