Photo credit: seeks2dream

I saw the national touring production of Oprah Winfrey’s The Color Purple on Sunday night in Los Angeles. Incredible! It’s been twenty years since I saw the movie version, which I hardly remember. But I was blown away by how the story line illustrates a striking contrast between visibility and invisibility. 

The main character, Celie, bares her second child at the age of fourteen after being raped multiple times by her step-father. Shortly thereafter, her step-father hands Celie over to a local farmer who continues the abuse for many years.

Celie had the life sucked out of her by these abusive men and she simply accepted her fate of being nothing more than a door mat. Even when Celie befriends Sofia, a strong, independent, and won’t-take-no-crap woman who demonstrates (sometimes with physical violence) how she takes care of herself and gets what she wants, Celie is still unable to find her own courage and power.

Many years later, Celie is finally fed up with decades of abuse, and she takes charge of her life. By finally embracing her courage and the knowledge that she controls the choices she makes, she becomes worthy of living a fulfilled life. Many wonderful things happen in Celie’s life, and Celie even handles the setbacks with positivity and grace. 

Near the end of the show, I could barely contain my emotions when Celie sang these words that capture her transformation from invisible to visible:

“I believe I have inside of me
everything that I need to live a bountiful life.
With all the love alive in me
I’ll stand as tall as the tallest tree.
And I’m
thankful for everyday that I’m given,
both the easy and hard ones I’m livin’.
But most of all
I’m thankful for
loving who I really am.
I’m beautiful.
Yes, I’m beautiful,
and I’m here.”

Go see the touring Broadway show, read the book, listen to the Broadway cast recording, or watch the movie. I bet you’ll be inspired.

Check out DevYou for an article I wrote on transforming limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. It’s a simple and powerful process for addressing beliefs that underlie many of the things that limit us, including issues related to invisibility. The article is 6 Questions That Will Change Your Life.

While you’re there, check out the rest of DevYou. Brian Tanaka, the site’s author, writes about a variety of issues that you may appreciate, including self-development, writing, technology, and productivity. Brian is a freelance writer, programmer and web developer, book author, and an all-around awesome person.

www.invisiblelives.com

A few weeks ago, an Invisible Lives reader sent me an email with a question about two of the terms I tend to use interchangeably. He asked:

“Do you make a distinction between invisible and hidden? Hiding who we are (invisible) vs. withholding some aspect of ourselves (hidden).”

Let’s explore it…

Hiding Vs. Invisible

Even though the words evoke a significant overlap in meaning (and I do use them interchangeably), I see them as qualitatively different. Here’s how:

Hiding is actively and consciously concealing some aspect of you. There is a situational quality to hiding. Think of the childhood game “Hide and Seek” and imagine being the hider. In this case, the hider actively conceals his/her body from the seeker, actively trying not to be found. In life, we have all learned how to hide as a defense against real or perceived threats. It’s a natural part of our survival in the word. 

For example, I have actively and consciously concealed from others the fact that I’m gay, especially when I have sensed or felt a threat of some sort. In contrast, I no longer conceal this fact from my friends or family…or the readers of this blog!

Invisibility is the belief that you do not deserve to be seen, that you are deficient or inferior to others, or that you are unworthy to live your biggest, most beautiful life. These beliefs are the forces behind invisibility. They hijack our ability and willingness to be visible. These beliefs quietly and insidiously displace who we are with destructive forces like shame, fear, resentment, and anger. We can even be well-aware of our own invisibility, but it can still sneak out of the shadows when we’re not paying attention.

For example, I recently had a phone conversation with a friend during which I felt very uncomfortable…yet, I continued the conversation without revealing my discomfort or intervening in some other way. During the call, he asked me questions that I blindly (and inappropriately) answered. I was barely aware of the pressure in my chest, the inappropriateness of my responses to his questions, and the conflict that had brewed up inside of me. As soon as I hung up the phone, however, the sensations that I had been holding back rushed over me…and I felt sick to my stomach. I allowed invisibility to hijack me and now I had a mess to clean up. It took me about an hour to work through what had just happened and to figure out how I would resolve the situation. The good news is that I put on my “big girl pants” (sorry - I heard someone say that recently, and I LOVE that phrase) and I called my friend back. In our follow-up conversation, I was uncomfortable, but fully present. I took responsibility for my behavior and we worked together to resolve the experience. I was visible…and it made a difference.

If the distinction between hidden and invisible is still muddled, think of it this way:

• Hiding is situational, active, and conscious; the person hiding can reveal him/herself at any moment.
• Invisibility is pervasive and insidious; it is fueled by a set of negative beliefs that hijack our consciousness; the invisible person struggles with being visible to others and, most often, to him/herself; invisibility is a way of “being” in the world; many of us who are invisible, don’t even know it when it’s happening.

If the distinction is still unclear, let it sit for awhile or don’t even worry about it. Ultimately, what matters most is that I inspire at least one person in this world to see themselves differently and to live consciously, visibly, and be their biggest, brightest, most powerful self.

What is your perspective on the distinction between hidden and invisible? What other words would you like to explore or clarify? I invite you to post your response as a comment or send me an email (my email is on the About Me page).

www.invisiblelives.com

I sat on the edge of her bed while she lay there struggling to breathe. Her body had been ravaged by lung cancer, emphysema, and the aftermath of her lung surgery six months earlier. She looked up at me and, without any warning, said in a labored voice, “Paul, I know…I’m dying…it’s okay.”

My family and I had been hiding from her the doctor’s terminal prognosis (we didn’t want to upset her), but she had obviously figured it out (she was NO dummy). With her words of defeat, I burst into an uncontrollable crying jag that cut through my attempt at being a stoic 18–year old boy about to lose his mother. She was suffering, and soon it would be time for her to leave us.

Underneath the unbearable strain of the impending loss of my mother was the presence of another set of emotions – the fear, doubt, and deeply embedded shame associated with my newly discovered certainty of being gay (see Are You a Friend of Dorothy?). I wanted so desperately to share with her that I’m gay; I wanted to be real with her; I wanted to be loved and accepted by her; but I also wanted to respect the fact that she deserved as much peace as possible during the remaining days or weeks of her life.

For better or worse, I chose to hide my personal revelation. A new, parallel sense of mourning emerged – that I would never have the opportunity to come out to her and she would never know (at least in an earthly way) this very important transition that I was making in my life. We were each making our own transitions and we didn’t have the opportunity to share them fully with each other. I was beginning one of my many transitions from invisible to visible (emotionally, psychologically, interpersonally) and she was beginning the transition from visible to invisible (in a physical or bodily sense).

I never did muster up the strength to come out to her that day. My internal story was that she was too sick to deal with such disappointing and controversial news. More so, I deeply feared that she may reject me outright, tell me to get out, or be so heart-broken that she would die on the spot. Whatever the outcome, I imagined it would be something horrible. 

The next morning I headed back to college, hopeful that I would return within a few weeks. I never saw her again. She died five weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving 1983, while I was making the 5–hour drive home from college. The coroner had removed her body from her bed about one hour before I arrived home. Once again, my mom and I were simultaneously in transition – she to her new home and me to my childhood home.

I suspect that if my mom had continued to live long enough for me to come out to her that she would have struggled, at first, but eventually embraced all of me, that she would have made the effort to understand.

What was a time in your life in which you chose to hide a part of yourself? What did you hide? How did it turn out? What opportunity did you abandon as a result of choosing/needing to hide?