Showing Up Is the Revolution

If you are an attention-loving extrovert or have diva-esque tendencies, you can skip what I’m about to say.

For all my fellow introverts, empaths, highly-sensitive folks, nerds and weirdos: this one’s for you.

Today I want to talk about showing up as your full self and why it matters.

I send these mails every week sharing what’s going on in my life, post my face all over social media and have led classes, retreats and workshops for over a decade--but ya girl is not a fan of the spotlight.

For most of my life, I’ve been an observer. The person who sits back at the party quietly sipping on my cocktail, watching everyone else--cataloging people’s topics of conversation, sense of humor and clothing choices.

As a brown kid who grew up in a very white environment, I trained myself to read people quickly and project back the image of me I thought would be most palatable.

I became a code-switching genius--sliding from teacher’s pet to class clown to cigarette-smoking emo girl and back again in seconds flat. With white friends, I adopted the codes of whiteness. With Black friends, I tried to be down. I remember sitting in my dorm room at college flipping my music from classical to rap because my Black friends were about to come through.

Let’s just say my people-pleasing skills were off the charts.

I know now that I developed these strategies very young as a means of feeling safe as a brown girl navigating a society based in patriarchy and white supremacy.

After many years of working on myself, I’m finally able to thank my younger self for doing everything she knew to keep us safe.

But recently, my invisibility cloak started to feel less like protection and more like a straight jacket.

Somewhere along the way I started wanting to be seen. Seen for who I actually am, free to display all facets of my weird, introverted, opinionated, sensitive, unconventional self.

So I started showing up. On social media. With friends. With strangers. I started putting my real, unvarnished identity out into the world.

And it was AWFUL.

I mean truly horrible. I suffered vulnerability hangover after vulnerability hangover. (Sometimes I still do.)

Sharing even not particularly personal information--a cookie recipe, a travel guide--flooded my nervous system and filled me with a sense of impending doom.

What if people actually see the real me?!?!?

What if they see this version of me and they hate it!!!!

What if I become an outcast and a social pariah and am forced to live out the rest of my days as that eccentric cat lady all the kids on the block are scared of?

I’d spent so much time hiding my real self away and people-pleasing. Showing up was excruciating.

But here’s the thing I kept telling myself: Every time I take up space, I am creating room for some other brown girl who feels like she doesn’t fit in to do the same.

Every time I show my face online and share what I’m really feeling or struggling with, that makes it a little bit safer for someone else to show up as their authentic self too.

And the world needs that.

We need nerdy brown girls feeling safe to be themselves so they can go on to do big things.

We need introverts and empaths and highly-sensitive people sharing their gifts of observation and understanding.

We need women and queer folks and people of color and neurodivergent people and humans in bodies of all shapes and sizes sharing their experiences and shifting the dialogue.

So if, like me, you have a tendency to hold yourself back, to get caught up in “what will everybody think?”, I’m here to tell you that letting your true self shine is wildly liberating. (I can now post pics of myself on Instagram and feel confident and natural and beautiful! Who even knew that was possible?!?!?!)

And it’s exactly what the world needs to bring greater justice and liberation.

You showing us as your wild, weird, beautiful self is the revolution.

So if you’re feeling inspired to show up louder and prouder, drop a comment below and share how it’s going. Or tag us on Instagram @wearelionesse. I love to hear from you and read every single comment and DM.

Know that whether you comment or not, I’ll be here cheering you on as you step into your full, spectacular self.

XO,❤️

Olaiya