The Ugly Beauty of Meeting Yourself Without the Masks

What a beautiful concept in general, it is, to decide who you’ll be - and no longer be - and then to make the shift.

Entirely possible. Brilliantly beautiful. And also horrendously ugly.

It reminds me, for some reason, of that unforgettable scene in Fleabag where hot priest goes on about love. And how awful it is. How hopeful. How love is truly the most beautifully horrendous thing we can do to ourselves and with another.

(If you’ve never seen it, WEIRD, but here it is)

And THAT is what the process of confronting who you’ve been feels like to me.

Except, where love is somewhat inevitable, shifting your self concept is a choice.

I wonder if that makes it more hideous…or more beautiful?

Because there’s always a cost. To evolution, to beginning again, to loving (and the inevitable losing), to stop choosing safety and instead choose the breadth of your desires.

And the cost is not theoretical in the least. Because there is grief in meeting an identity that once protected you, saved you from yourself, hid your vulnerabilities away. There is grief in allowing that version to exist without blame or fury…and still choosing not to let her run your future.

It feels like a choice - expand, grow - but I’d argue that it’s as essential as love…presuming you want to live a life that you never have to look back on and wonder “was that all there is?”.

Imagine being at the end of it all, whenever that day shows up for us all, and wondering just how much more of you you could have been…?

Now that I’m here doing it, making the connection between self-concept and love is actually not entirely a coincidence.

For me, it’s where it all started. With the moment I realized that love - and growth - ask something of us that fear never will.

They ask us to move ahead into the unknown without having all the answers. To jump without seeing the net. To live, to live…without knowing when it all ends.

And just like true love, real growth often requires meeting and releasing identities that once kept you safe in service to the ones that will allow you to be fully alive.

And the reason we don’t talk about it all that often, is because that’s the ugly bit. The uncomfortable, gross, snivelly, hideous bit.

Shifting your self concept is rarely (if ever?) the glow up montage from a 90’s movie that we want it to be.

In reality it’s more like two hours of screaming at the main character on the screen to let go of the thing holding her back so she can finally be the her we all want to see succeed.

This is what it sounded like, almost exactly a year ago, before I had language for shifting self-concept:

A direct excerpt from my journal, January 6, 2025:

Can I truly close the book of the last 40 years and decide to write a new one? Can I show up wholeheartedly to the next version of me? What chases away shame? How do we heal it? What is the antidote? Brene Brown says that “shame is the fear of disconnection. It’s the fear that we are not worthy of love and belonging.” It often causes people to hide or withdraw. She says that by embracing vulnerability we create connection and belonging with others, which are key antidotes to shame. Perfectionism is a response to shame — it’s the belief that if we appear perfect, we will be loved and accepted. I feel like at the very least if I can let all this go I will feel less tired. It’s weighing me down, all this sadness and feeling bad about myself. Which then creates a difficult cycle because I’m so tired I can’t (or don’t) show up to myself. I have to let myself off the hook and get back to focusing on my purpose. I am here to help women be their best selves. And I deserve to show up as that version of me — for me. But also for them. It’s truly, truly time for me to remember who I am. Or in the wise words of my {exasperated} brother: “Cyn, you’re a badass and it’s time to remember who the fuck you are.”

(tell me anything more brutally, beautifully honest than a little brother…)

I think it’s clear that I was grappling here with the ugliness of personal development. How hard must a person work to be the “best” version of themselves?

And what if growth isn’t about becoming someone new at all, but about becoming honest about who we already are?

I’m starting to believe it’s as beautiful and ugly as this:

The work should never be about changing yourself. It should always be about becoming MORE of who you are. And yes, I think that does include the ugly bits.

Because contrary to everything I thought before, loving my ugly bits shrinks them but loving my beautiful bits grows them.

Nothing on this earth (except loving and losing) has shattered me as much, I think, as coming to terms with the truth of who I am.

Of looking myself dead straight in the mirror and not just acknowledging, but truly accepting what I see there: the layers upon layers of masks we all wear, even when we think we don’t.

The self protection.
The self-deprecation masquerading as vulnerability.
The truth telling that cuts like knives because there’s no safety in softness.

And contrary to what my fear OR IF I DARE SAY, society, would tell me…learning bit by bit to love the ugly bits of me didn’t make me feel smaller, or less safe, or unworthy.

It did the opposite, in fact. It made me more brave. I’ve become more confident. More delulu, in fact. More certain that I have everything I need to have everything I want.

IT’S WILD.

When I finally stopped trying to squish all my desires, my ugly bits and pretty bits, my needs and wishes into something easily quantifiable and ready for consumption by another (ok sorry, that’s gonna have to be a whole other essay…) the thing that just kept bursting out from me was this:

I FUCKING WANT IT ALL.

I know. You’re appalled. You’re intrigued. You’re thrilled. You’re embarrassed for me. You’re curious. You can’t look away.

Who says that?

Me. I say it.

And the thing is, not only do I mean it, I know I’m going to get it.

Because once you stop shrinking what you want AND who you are, there’s really no way back. It’s just forward.

However if there’s one thing I wish someone had been able to tell me while I lay crying and shaking on the floor through all of it, it’s this:

The harder you love the ugly bits, the more they soften and make way for the beautiful bits of you to shine through. Love them not to diminish them, but because they got you here.

And all the beauty of you is resting right beneath them.

The beautiful, ugly truth of it all is that life is only 103 short years or so, if we’re lucky. I’m not gonna force myself to be a scared little girl for the rest of mine. Not in the name of likability, nor of safety, nor of self improvement, nor of being palatable enough to be loveable.

And I don’t think you should, either.

(If you’re a “but HOW” kind of person, I share more of that side of things here.)