The Polished Version Is Still Me. It’s Just Not All of Me.

I spent years learning to be vulnerable. Then a room full of women helped me see that sharing my story and letting people know me aren’t quite the same thing.

At dinner last week, my friend Cindy said, “I want to see you, the whole you, not just you from the waist up on Zoom,” to the 12 women sitting around the table. Many of us were meeting in person for the first time.

She’s a stylist, so she literally wants to see the whole outfit. But her comment got me thinking about what we choose to show and what others actually see. And those aren’t always the same thing.

Since I wrote Off-Script: a mom’s journey through adoption, a husband’s alcoholism, and special needs parenting four years ago, I’ve felt like I’ve shown a LOT of myself. I wrote about some of my worst moments, the mistakes I’ve made, and the work I’ve done to dismantle my perfectionist facade. I’ve talked about the ugly feelings, the ones that made me feel branded as an incompetent mother, and the boundaries I’m learning to set.

I thought I’d made significant progress in letting people see the real me. Scratch that. I’ve made real progress.

But here’s something I hadn’t fully considered: I know my whole story because I lived it. Other people work with whatever pieces they’ve encountered, and I meet most people in my business-owner or volunteer-leader role, where I’m most likely to show up with a blazer and an agenda.

Evidently, that woman can still be a little intimidating.

I’ve been told that before, and it surprises me. The Valerie before the book was intimidating, sometimes intentionally. But life has changed me, and I genuinely want to connect with people. I try to be affirming, thoughtful, and authentic. I also like being articulate, prepared, and polished.

For the first time in my life, I feel more comfortable with my body and enjoy putting together outfits. I like showing up ready for meetings, knowing what’s on the agenda, and bringing some thought to the conversation.

Being competent in the midst of chaos has always been one of my coping mechanisms.

The day after my daughter ran away, I led a school board meeting. Several colleagues came up afterward to tell me what a wonderful job I’d done. They had no idea what was happening in my personal life. Being prepared was something I could control when so many other things were out of my control.

I didn’t grow up confident. I was the girl who got hives before her junior year of high school AND college because she was so stressed about being editor of the school newspaper. I’ve experienced plenty of self-doubt and overthinking and been through the kind of stuff that makes people say, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe you went through that and stayed upright.”

I’ve seen my broken pieces, and I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without those cracks in the armor.

Last week, I spent several days in Halifax with 20 women at a business retreat. I arrived feeling pretty settled with my business, ready to learn, connect, and dream big.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much the personal development sessions would affect me. But I was in the right room, surrounded by women I trusted to have my best interests at heart. That made it easier to hear feedback I might otherwise have dismissed.

If you enjoy reading about personal transformation, I invite you to subscribe.

The feedback was that they wanted to see more of me—not just the competent, put-together woman on Zoom. They wanted to see the woman who sometimes wonders whether she’ll be accepted in the room, who cries at WAY more things than she used to, and who is still figuring out how to balance being competent and compassionate.

My initial reaction? Seriously? After everything I’ve been through?

But then I realized that people aren’t paying nearly as much attention to me as I’m paying attention to me.

They haven’t necessarily read my book, every Substack reflection, or watched every Instagram reel. They don’t know all the experiences that shaped me.

And when they typically see me, I’m prepared, articulate, and ready to contribute, which is genuinely me. It’s just not all of me.

Apparently, there’s still some perfectionism in there

One of our sessions was led by the Imposter Sisters, Colleen and Alix. The agenda read “Imposter Syndrome + Confidence Presentation,” but the session focused on perfectionism.

I’ve written a memoir and years of blog posts reflecting on perfectionism. I’ve earned the Girl Scout badge and practically completed an Eagle Scout project on the subject.

Surely, I’d already done that work… but apparently, not entirely. Once they started describing five types of perfectionism, I felt it.

The two types that resonated most were the Superhuman, who feels pressure to excel in every role, and the Perfectionist, who can fixate on one criticism despite overwhelmingly positive feedback and feels pressure to appear polished, professional, and completely in control.

Check. Check. Check.

I’ve made tremendous progress with perfectionism, but I still hold myself to a pretty high bar for how I show up in the world. And perhaps that’s part of why people see me as so put together.

But what happens when people see more?

Throughout the week, we laughed, cried, talked about our lives, and shared things that don’t typically come up in business conversations. We were getting to know one another beyond our professional roles. At the end of the retreat, we exchanged anonymous reflections about what we’d seen in one another. One woman wrote:

“I see you. I appreciate your natural leadership, but also your willingness to go deep and get messy and be vulnerable. I feel how much you want to lift others up, and that’s beautiful.”

What struck me was that these women had seen the polished, capable woman. But they’d also seen the woman who could get emotional, question herself, laugh at herself, lie down on the floor at a party (stone cold sober), and acknowledge that she was still figuring some things out.

And they didn’t find those things incompatible. They saw both.

I’ve been thinking about Cindy’s comment ever since.

For a long time, I thought writing Off-Script was my stake in the ground. I’d told the difficult stories. I’d acknowledged my imperfections. I’d stopped trying to pretend I had everything together. And that was real progress.

But vulnerability isn’t something you do once and check off the list.

I know my whole story, while others see only what I share. And sometimes what is most visible is the woman I’ve worked hard to become.

I like that woman. I like being confident, prepared, and polished. I don’t particularly want to revisit the difficult days or have those experiences define me.

But the difficult days are part of how I got here. Those experiences shaped the woman people see today.

So I’m left wondering how much of our stories we need to share for people to understand us, and how much understanding simply comes from spending enough time together to see more than the surface.

I don’t have an answer yet. But I’m thinking differently about what it means to let people see the whole me. And maybe that’s enough to take away from a week I thought would be mostly about business.

---

This was originally posted on my Substack.