Kind of a Wreck, Kind of a Leader

Not long ago, I found myself in a room full of professionals. People who looked polished, confident, sure of their place.

I smiled. I participated. I played the part.

But inside, I felt something different. A quiet swirl of insecurity. A sense that I didn’t quite belong. An echo of something familiar, being the new one, the outsider, the one quietly trying to prove I was worth listening to.

And no one knew.
Because I wore the mask well.

That’s the thing about the masks we wear.
They don’t always look like masks. Sometimes they look like leadership. Sometimes they look like resilience. Sometimes they look like fitting in.

But underneath, they often hide something tender.
Grief. Self-doubt. Fear. Burnout. Disconnection.

We wear them to feel safe.
We wear them to protect our soft parts.
We wear them because it’s what we’ve been taught, especially in professional spaces where vulnerability is often mistaken for weakness.

I’ve worn the mask of “I’ve got this.”
The mask of “I’m fine.”
The mask of “I belong here.”

And for a while, they worked.
But they also made me feel alone.

Because the more you perform a version of yourself, the more you start to believe it’s the only version that’s acceptable.

Someone close to me often tells me that I seem like I’m handling things well. And sometimes I am. Sometimes the strength is real. The resilience is real. But there are other times when that perception is just the mask, when I’m doing my best to hold it together, to stay composed, to keep pushing forward even when I feel like I’m barely keeping up. It’s not about being deceptive. It’s about not always feeling like falling apart is safe.

And it makes me wonder, how many people around us are doing the same?
How many masks are we missing? How often do we assume someone is fine because they’re smiling, or because they’re performing the version of themselves we’re used to?

We never really know what someone is carrying underneath.
Sometimes the mask is protection.
Sometimes it’s habit.
And sometimes, it’s the only way they know how to keep going.

But here’s what I’ve learned:
You don’t have to share everything to be real.
You don’t have to overshare to be authentic.
But you do deserve a space where you can take the mask off, even just for a moment.

Where you can say:
“I’m not okay today.”
Or “I don’t feel seen.”
Or “I’m trying, and it’s hard.”

We don’t need to wear the mask all the time.
We just need to find spaces where it’s safe to set it down.

And maybe, the more we make space for others to be real, the more permission we give ourselves to do the same.

Because being seen, really seen, isn’t weakness.
It’s relief.
It’s human.
It’s enough.