Authentically Me
A reflection on becoming — while still learning how to live itFor most of my life, I felt like a liar. Not because I wanted to deceive anyone, but because I learned, very early, that telling the whole truth about myself did not feel safe.
I learned how to soften myself, how to temper my light, and how to present just enough of who I was to belong without revealing the parts that felt most vulnerable. At a young age, I learned to pretend everything was okay. I became skilled at it. My parents did their best. I believe that. And I was so good at pretending that the depth of what I was carrying often went unnoticed.
By high school, hiding had become second nature. I was groomed by a trusted adult and, in the aftermath, lost myself for nearly a decade. I would have lied for him. I would have done anything to protect him and did when someone tried to intervene. But more than anything, I did not want anyone to know.
I pulled away from my friends and isolated. I missed out on years of connection while learning how dangerous truth could feel.
In my late twenties, I met a woman and developed a deep friendship that slowly became a loving relationship. I had never thought of myself as a gay woman. I only knew that I loved her. I also knew that if I was outed at work—as a teacher in a Catholic school—I could lose everything I had built.
So I hid. From my school community, from colleagues, and from the parts of myself that longed for ease.
My friends knew. My parents knew. But this knowing was unspoken. No one asked. No one said it was okay. No one made space for the truth to land. So the responsibility remained mine—to name it, to carry it, and still to carry the weight of being careful.
I wore a mask that tempered my light. I learned when to dim, when to redirect, and when to stay quiet. I did my best to be real within the boundaries that felt survivable at the time.
And for a long while, that was enough.
Until it wasn’t.
Living Between Truth and Safety
When people talk about authenticity, it’s often framed as a bold declaration—just be yourself. But for many of us, authenticity unfolds in layers. It is shaped by timing, by relationships, by grief, and by the nervous system’s deep intelligence about when truth will be met with care and when it will not.
For a long time, I thought this story was about identity. I see now that it was about congruence—about the distance between who I was inside and who I was allowed to be outside. Each chapter of my life narrowed or widened that gap. When the mask was needed, it kept me safe. When it became too heavy, it signaled that something in me was ready for more truth. This has been the work of a lifetime—not becoming someone new, but becoming more aligned with who I already was.
I didn’t hide because I was ashamed of who I was. I hid because I was protecting something precious.
There are seasons when survival comes first. And there are seasons when the soul begins to ask for more space.
The First Coming Out: Love, Loss, and Impossible Timing
I came out to my mom on the day my dad died. I was 32 years old and hiding it from almost everyone. Even now, that sentence carries weight. In the midst of profound grief—raw, disorienting, irreversible—I had to tell her two things at once: that I am gay, and that I was moving out soon to buy a house with my (now) wife.
The timing was not planned. It wasn’t strategic or ideal. It was simply honest. My mom, in her shock and sorrow, had just told me she was going to sign her house over to me. And I knew, in my body, that I couldn’t accept that without telling her the truth.
Not in that moment.
Not at that cost.
Authenticity sometimes arrives as an ethical line you cannot cross—even when crossing it might make things easier. I wasn’t choosing drama. I was choosing integrity.
Truth Isn’t Always Gentle—But It Can Be Clean
That day taught me something I would only understand years later: truth doesn’t need to be loud to be real. It doesn’t need to convince. It doesn’t need permission. It simply needs to be clean. Clean truth is offered without manipulation, without performance, and without asking the other person to manage our feelings about it.
That day, I told the truth not to disrupt but to stay aligned with myself.
And alignment matters.
The Second Coming Out: Claiming My Work, Claiming My Voice
What I didn’t yet understand was that this wasn’t the only truth I was carrying. Being gay was not the only part of me that had learned to stay hidden. At the age of 35, I had a profound spiritual awakening. The day after reading part of a book about what a medium did, I channeled a spirit. From there, new experiences unfolded quickly—seeing auras, reading energy fields, and facilitating healing.
And still, I was a teacher in a Catholic school. I struggled to reconcile these experiences with my faith, my profession, and my sense of safety. So once again, I hid. I set those parts of myself aside so completely that I stopped doing most of that work for nearly twenty years.
Spiritual identity is a different kind of exposure. It invites skepticism, projection, and misunderstanding. It can threaten credibility, belonging, and professional standing—especially for someone with a long career rooted in education, leadership, and evidence-based systems.
This wasn’t about a label. It was about permission. To say: this is how I perceive the world. This is how information comes to me. This is part of how I serve. That kind of truth doesn’t just live in the mind.
It lives in the nervous system.
And my nervous system knew the risk.
Authenticity at Work: Loving My Students, Losing Myself
By the time I reached mid-career, hiding was no longer just personal. It had become professional. I loved my job. I loved my students. I loved my athletes. Teaching was not just a profession—it was a vocation. It was where my heart lived, where my energy went, and where I felt useful and alive.
And yet, my life required constant editing. Not just of who I loved, but of how I experienced reality. To survive professionally, I learned to be evasive, careful, and strategic. I avoided questions about my personal life. I used neutral language. I redirected conversations. I let people assume what they wanted to assume.
I wasn’t lying.
But I wasn’t telling the truth either.
And that constant monitoring took a toll.
The Cost of Being Careful
There is a moment that still lives vividly in my body. I ran into one of my former athletes while in cottage country. She was my captain, and I coached her for five years. She was there with her mom, and I was there with my partner. Time slowed. My system froze. I didn’t know what to say or how to introduce the woman beside me. I didn’t know whether to say, “This is my partner,” or whether that single sentence could unravel everything.
All I knew was that I wanted to disappear.
The fear rose instantly: what if I’m outed, what if this gets back to the school, what if I lose my job, what if I lose the work I love? The fear wasn’t imagined. It was real. And yet, what hurt most in that moment wasn’t the fear—it was the shame. Not the kind of shame that says I am wrong, but the kind that whispers something about me must stay hidden to be safe.
Shame didn’t come from my partner. It didn’t come from that athlete or her mom. It came from years of learning that visibility could cost me everything I loved. In that moment, shame showed up as self-judgment—the sharp, internal turn against myself for freezing, for not trusting that truth might be met with kindness.
I wasn’t ashamed of my partner.
I was ashamed that I didn’t feel safe enough to be honest.
Loving My Work More Than Myself
Here is the truth I avoided for a long time because it hurt to admit: I learned to set parts of myself aside in small, quiet ways, not out of malice but out of fear. Fear of being outed. Fear of being discredited. Fear of losing the work that gave my life meaning. I told myself I was being responsible. I told myself I was protecting my students. I told myself I was being professional.
And still, there was a cost.
I loved my work. I loved my students. I loved my athletes. And I loved being needed. But I did not yet love myself enough to risk being fully seen. So I chose protection over presence, silence over honesty, and excellence over wholeness. And every time I did, something inside me learned that my truth was dangerous.
That lesson doesn’t stay contained. It leaks into the body, into relationships, and into the breath you hold when someone asks an innocent question.
Waiting Until It Was Safe to Be Whole
There is another truth that belongs here. I did not fully embrace who I am until I retired from my career in education. Only then—when my livelihood was no longer at risk—did my body finally exhale.
That reality is painful to admit. I wish I had had the courage to step forward sooner. I wish I had trusted that my presence, exactly as I am, could have mattered.
And I also honor the reality that I did the best I could with the safety I had.
An Apology I Carry
There is an apology I hold quietly in my heart—to my students and to my athletes. I am sorry that I could not be fully there for you by being fully myself. I am sorry that my fear kept me guarded and that my silence may have reinforced the idea that certain truths must remain hidden.
You deserved teachers who were supported enough to be whole. You deserved role models who trusted their own truth. I did the best I could with the safety I had.
And still, there is grief in knowing it could have been different.
When the Mask Stops Working
There comes a point when the mask—no matter how carefully crafted—becomes heavier than the truth. For me, that moment didn’t arrive as a dramatic collapse. It arrived as fatigue, a quiet exhaustion from managing perception, from explaining just enough, and from holding back language that felt natural in my body.
Authenticity, I’ve learned, isn’t about disclosure. It’s about congruence. When who you are internally no longer matches how you’re allowed to show up externally, something begins to ache.
Choosing Wholeness Over Approval
Coming out—both times—was not about seeking approval. It was about choosing wholeness. Wholeness is rarely tidy. It doesn’t guarantee comfort for others. It doesn’t ensure understanding.
But it does create coherence.
And coherence is what allows the nervous system to settle.
What Authenticity Has Taught Me
Authenticity is not a single moment. It is a relationship with timing, with safety, with self-trust, and with discernment. Sometimes authenticity whispers. Sometimes it waits. Sometimes it arrives in moments that feel impossibly inconvenient.
And still, it arrives.
For Anyone Still Holding Parts of Themselves Back
If you are still carrying parts of yourself quietly, I want you to know this: you are not late, you are not weak, and you are not dishonest. You are listening.
Sometimes listening is the bravest thing we can do. And when your system decides the ground is stable enough, the truth will move.
Closing Reflection
I no longer wear the mask I once needed. Not because I was wrong to wear it or because I failed, but because it served its purpose. I did the best I could with the safety I had at the time.
And sometimes, that is enough.
Even while parts of me were hidden, I tried to let my light shine. I poured it into my teaching, into my students, and into my athletes. I encouraged them to be brave, to trust themselves, and to grow into the best versions of who they could become—even when the path wasn’t clear.
In many ways, I was teaching what I was still learning to live. I see now how often that happens. We are drawn to teach, guide, and encourage precisely around the edges of our own becoming. We speak courage while still gathering it. We invite authenticity while still negotiating our own safety. We call others forward even as parts of us remain just behind the threshold.
This does not make the teaching false.
It makes it human.
Today, I hold all of it—the grief, the regret, and the compassion for the woman I was. My light was never gone. It was waiting. And now, grounded and whole, I let it shine not as an apology, but as an invitation.
If you are still doing the best you can with what feels safe right now, know this: your light still matters, your effort still counts, and when the time is right, wholeness will meet you too.
