The Friction of Being Visible

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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The Friction of Being Visible

It is only by risking ourselves
from one hour to another
that we live at all.
– William James

The friction of being visible can be felt in our courage to be seen, in the power of our vulnerability, and in the soft steal of our loving hearts. It is in the willingness to keep showing up again and again and again that we truly live.

Navigating the distance between the safety of our invisibility and the risk of visibility can be dangerous.

Is there truly safety in invisibility? Do walls around our hearts shelter us from heartbreak? Does trying and failing make never trying worth it? Does extending a hand and having it ignored hurt too much? I agree with those that suggest there are costs to both. If some costs of visibility are failure, disappointment, and grief; then some costs of invisibility are loneliness, sadness, and depression. The danger lies in the truths that both have costs and benefits, life is filled with both, and a certain moth-to-a-flame dance occurs when reaching out (visibility) and reaching in (invisibility).

I don’t mind failing at things I don’t care about, but I hate to Fail.

I have learned over the years I don’t mind failing at things I don’t care about, but I hate to fail. That mindset has lead me down one of two roads. Sometimes I act like I don’t care just so I don’t get hurt. I am invisible to the task so I don’t feel the pain that might come from visibly connecting and working my tail off, failing, and landing in the space of, “Well, its the journey not the destination.” When I am really disappointed and hurt, that is total crap. The other road of visibly caring about people and goals, and connecting with that part of me and removing my safe cloak of invisibility, allows me the sweet freedom to be fully myself and engage and live. Visibility feels more honest to me.

We have the power we seek.

Visibility means you know your power. I have always liked the part in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy learns she always had the power to go back to Kansas, long before Glenda told her. It seems this message always finds me when I am feeling the most afraid and ashamed and fearful. (I think it is even one of Oprah’s favorite thoughts.) Living visibly is built on knowing our power and wanting to share it with the world as only we can.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

I love this quote. (It has been attributed to many thoughtful people.) I connect power and living visibly. I want to suggest that overcoming the fear of being powerful is the key to living visibly. Chose visibility day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.