There’s a strange kind of silence that comes after the mask begins to crack. Not the quiet that comes with peace, but the hollow kind. The kind that hums in the spaces where you used to overperform, overapologize, and overexplain. It’s the echo of your own voice realizing it was never fully yours. That’s the sound of unmasking.

For years, my mask kept me alive. It helped me navigate rooms where my brain was “too much,” my emotions “too intense,” and my pace “too inconsistent.” It translated me into something palatable, someone easier to promote, easier to praise, and easier to tolerate. I learned to be whatever the moment demanded like being polished in the leadership meetings, precise in the clinic, patient when I wanted to scream. My mask was a masterpiece of adaptation which was sculpted from survival, refined through rejection.

And then one day, I couldn’t wear it anymore.

That’s the thing no one tells you about unmasking, it isn’t one brave, cinematic moment of revelation. It’s a slow collapse. The weight of constant pretending eventually outgrows the structure built to hold it. You start to feel fractures like the laughter that doesn’t reach your eyes, the nodding in agreement while your gut twists in dissent, the exhaustion no amount of rest can heal. The mask begins to slip not because you’re fearless, but because you’re tired. Bone-deep tired.

And that fatigue is sacred, it’s the body’s way of saying, “Enough.”

When I began to unmask, I expected freedom. What I didn’t expect was grief.

Grief for the version of me everyone loved, the one who worked tirelessly, anticipated needs before they were spoken, and never let the tremor beneath the surface show. Grief for the identity that earned belonging, even when that belonging cost me myself. Grief for the roles I played so well that I almost believed them.

Unmasking isn’t just about finding who you are, it’s mourning who you had to be to survive.

I think about the years I spent collecting compliments like proof of existence. Every “You’re so dependable” and “You’re a rock for your team” was a jackpot win in the casino of external validation. I lived off those dopamine hits, they fed me when I didn’t know how to feed myself. But like any gambler knows, the wins never last long. You keep pulling the lever, hoping the next spin will finally make you feel enough.

And then one day, you realize you’ve built your identity on borrowed currency.

That realization is devastating. Because the grief of unmasking isn’t just sadness, it’s disorientation at its maximum. You stand in the rubble of who you were, realizing you don’t yet know who’s underneath. You can’t go back to pretending, but you don’t know how to live forward either. Every step feels raw. Every interaction feels risky. The silence after a lifetime of performing is deafening. It feels like starting over without a script, without a costume, without applause.

That’s why I created The What's Left Unattended Playbook.

Not as a manual for perfection, but as a map for the in-between...that messy, confusing middle where grief meets growth. It’s the space where you relearn your own language. Where you stop editing your joy. Where you stop apologizing for needing rest. Where you begin to trust that the version of you who doesn’t overachieve still deserves to exist.

Unmasking is not linear. Some days, you’ll feel radiant in your authenticity. Other days, you’ll grieve the mask like an old friend. You’ll catch yourself longing for the predictability of pretending. You’ll miss how easy it was to be admired. You’ll mourn how much of your worth was built on exhaustion.

But that grief is proof that you’re awake now. You’re conscious of the transaction, the one where you traded self-abandonment for acceptance. And consciousness is the first step toward healing.

The Playbook doesn’t promise to erase the grief. It gives you a place to hold it.

It’s where you can sit with your sorrow and your relief in the same breath. Where you can explore the anger beneath your exhaustion. Where you can name the fear of being misunderstood without apologizing for it. It’s not about fixing yourself, it’s about remembering you were never broken. You were just performing a version of survival that the world applauded.

The truth is, unmasking hurts because it dismantles your reward system. You stop getting the external validation that used to numb the loneliness. You start losing relationships built on your compliance. You realize that the world often prefers the mask because it’s quieter, more predictable, easier to control.

But your real self, the one that stims, questions, dreams too loudly, and feels too deeply...that self was never meant to fit inside someone else’s comfort. That self was meant to breathe. And when you start breathing again, the grief begins to transform. It doesn’t vanish; it matures. It becomes gratitude for your own endurance. Compassion for the years you spent surviving. Reverence for the courage it takes to rebuild identity from the inside out.

That’s what post-traumatic growth looks like, not constant joy, but conscious reconstruction.

My own growth didn’t come from bulldozing the pain. It came from sitting with it. From learning that grief isn’t the opposite of healing...it’s the evidence of it. Every tear I cried for the masked version of me was a baptism into authenticity. Every tremor of guilt was an invitation to grace. Every time I felt lost, I was reorienting to a self I had abandoned long ago.

So if you’re unmasking, please know that the grief is not regression. It’s release. You’re not broken for missing the person you pretended to be because you’re human for grieving them.

And when you’re ready, when the noise in your head softens and you can finally hear the whisper underneath then you’ll realize you were never meant to play small to be seen. You were meant to be seen as you are.

When you’re ready to start writing your own playbook, and not the one written for you, but the one written by you then I’ll be here. Not as someone who has it all figured out, but as someone who has sat in that silence, grieved that loss, and chosen, again and again, to keep becoming.

Because unmasking isn’t an ending. It’s a return.