This Is Me

Ok, confession time. One you probably didn’t see coming.

I’m a huge fan of The Greatest Showman. The movie, the soundtrack, all of it. I’ve watched it more times than I’d like to admit, and I still put the album on regularly. Bet that’s not the kind of thing you expected from me 😅.

A few days ago, one of the songs from the soundtrack came on while we were grocery shopping. That same day, I stumbled on a Gary Vee short about people who never go after the life they want because they’re too worried about what others will think. Two nudges toward the same idea in one day, so here we are.

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My favorite song off that soundtrack is “This Is Me.” If you know it, you know. If you don’t, here’s the part that gets me every time:

“I am not a stranger to the dark.

Hide away, they say,

‘cause we don’t want your broken parts.”

We live in a world that teaches us to hide our broken parts. Keep up appearances. Always look like you have it together. Admitting you’re struggling, weird, different, or just not “normal” feels like a confession of weakness.

Except none of us are strangers to the dark. Not the rich, not the successful, not your boss, not your parents. Every single person you know has been broken at some point. It’s not the exception. It’s the human experience.

📸 This is also me 😬

Knowing that doesn’t kill the instinct to hide though. I caught myself doing exactly that a few weeks ago. I’ve been sending this newsletter for almost two years now, but I rarely get to talk about it with readers in person. Then a new friend here in Bangkok subscribed, and next time we hung out he started asking me about something I’d written, how I was doing, all of it. My first reaction, for about two seconds, was pure panic. Oh shit, real people actually read this. Wait, what did I write? Is it okay?

I’m fully fine with anyone reading anything I put out. But there’s something different about someone bringing it up to your face versus a comment or DM online. It hits differently. And if I’m honest, that instinct to double check what I said says a lot about how deep this “don’t want your broken parts seen” thing runs, even in someone who writes about it every week.

Rosie almost didn’t become a YouTuber because of a dinner party

Back in 2011, before “YouTuber” was even a word people used, Rosie already wanted to make videos. She didn’t. Too worried about what people would think.

She finally posted her first videos in 2017 and 2018. Simple stuff, day trip vlogs, our first time in Miami, us exploring the city. She was having fun with it.

Then we had dinner with some friends in France. One of them, in front of more than ten people at the table, made a joke about how boring her videos were. She smiled and laughed it off. What she actually wanted to do was disappear under the table.

She stopped posting for a while after that. Her confidence took a real hit.

We haven’t seen that “friend” since. Honestly, good. That’s not what you want from someone close to you.

When we moved to Miami, she met people who were actually supportive. Slowly her confidence came back, and in 2020 she started posting again. She hasn’t stopped since. Throughout four years of full-time travel, she filmed vlogs in the street, in public, wherever. People stared, smiled, said things. She stopped caring a long time ago.

(Here is Rosie’s Youtube channel if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/rosieandre).

She’s gone further than that, too. Rosie now talks openly on her channel about the pregnancy and infant losses we’ve been through. That’s not an easy thing to put out into the world. And it comes at a cost, she gets nasty comments on those videos regularly. Genuinely unkind stuff.

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“I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars.

Run away, they say,

no one’ll love you as you are.”

That’s the part nobody warns you about. It’s not just that we hide our broken parts, we get taught to be ashamed of them too. Like they’re proof we don’t deserve support or love anymore.

You’ve probably heard “hurt people hurt people.” It’s a cliché because it’s true. Most of the judgment thrown your way isn’t really about you. It comes from people chasing the same dreams, frustrated they haven’t gotten there themselves, who end up (usually without realizing it) trying to bring someone else down instead.

Rosie has gotten to a place where she can see that clearly with those comments. She knows it’s not about her. That doesn’t make the worst comments okay, some of what people write is genuinely cruel. But it does help her not carry it home with her.

This isn’t just a Rosie thing

Picture a woman somewhere in her 30s, 40s, 50s. She’s got a regular job, or she’s a stay-at-home mom. She’s got a passion on the side, gardening, knitting, gaming, doesn’t matter what. Part of her would love to start something with it. A blog, a TikTok, a YouTube channel. Share what she knows. Maybe even make some money from it one day, enough to fund more vacations, or eventually replace her job entirely.

Could she pull it off? Maybe. We’ll never know, because the odds are she never starts.

Not because she lacks the skills. Because of the voice in her head asking: what if my coworkers see this? What if people think we’re struggling for money? What if they think I’m having a midlife crisis, a 50 year old woman posting on TikTok? What if I fail and everyone sees it?

And that’s how a dream dies before it’s even born.

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“I am brave, I am bruised,

I am who I’m meant to be, this is me.

[...]

I’m not scared to be seen, I make no apologies, this is me.”

That line right there is the whole thing. Not being scared to be seen as who you actually are. Not apologizing for it. People will look, comment, judge, walk away. Let them.

Here’s the part that actually changes things once you get it: none of that judgment is about you. It’s about them. People who feel stuck can’t stand watching someone else move. It reminds them of everything they’re not doing.

We live in a world where it’s easier to pull someone down to your level than to lift yourself up to theirs.

So the goal was never to grow thick skin, or build a wall so nothing gets to you. The goal is understanding that whatever gets thrown at you says everything about the person throwing it, and nothing about you. Once you actually believe that, ignoring it gets a lot easier. So does having a bit of compassion for the people doing the throwing.

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If you’ve got a broken part you’ve been keeping under the carpet, or a dream you haven’t started because of what people might say, that’s exactly the kind of thing I work through with clients. If you want to talk it through, book a free call with me.

J

PS: here is the song in case you don’t know it.