How I Learned to Live Out Loud
What began in a childhood linen closet became a lifelong lesson in quiet, safety, and self-expression
This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
The mess of a brain being re-wired.
In:
My midlife breakthrough.
Entering:
Stepping into my essence with understanding, grace, and authority.
When I was a kid, my favorite place to be was a tiny linen closet in my house. I’d crouch in the nook beneath the bottom shelf with my pillow and blanket, my flashlight and pen. I’d write on the wall and read. My mom knew about this place and pretended not to. She let me have that spot, just for me.
In that linen closet, I’d think and live in a thousand places nobody else knew about but me. I created a world that way. The world became so broad, so wide, so intricate, that whenever I was outside my little closet and people asked me what I was thinking about, I’d wonder immediately: Where do I start? Eventually, not knowing where to start, I’d turn pink. Then red. And I’d fall silent. The storm inside my body felt like it was about to burst through the walls of me.
I turned red for a long time.
I became a painfully shy adult. It was hard to talk to people. Most of the time, I felt like I had a different thought, answer, or question than the people around me. My thought patterns didn’t seem to match theirs. So it was often hard to start a conversation and even harder to continue one.
My closet, my words, and my books became safety.
Not surprisingly, I became a writer.
Well, first I became a painter, then a writer. I wrote and wrote, and as the years passed, I found myself able to share a little more. Someone once told me I just had to practice, that this was how shyness was broken. So I practiced talking to others. Painfully, I practiced.
Eventually, I learned that being an introvert was okay. That my energy came from other places, from the quiet that allowed me to build thought patterns that were, indeed, different from others. That was okay. That was even good. I got a PhD and began to understand the value of those thought patterns. I wrote more. I read more. I realized I didn’t have to break the very thing that made me. I had to break through.
For years, I asked God to help me be less shy, to turn less red. I felt like there was so much inside I still didn’t know how to share.
Then I had kids, and I had to break out of my shyness to make sure they were safe. I had to be out in the wild and, at the same time, become a kind of dome of protection for them. I morphed. I was no longer simply inside my warm, quiet linen closet. Instead, I became the shelter itself: a protective, transparent dome that let the light in so my children could grow, while still shielding them from whatever might come flying at them. Through that dome, I had to become both tougher and more transparent.
The shyness started to fall away, and I felt stronger, as if I were made of invisible steel.
Then my brain got rewired.
Literally. The canals my brain had created to deal with puberty’s hormones back in my tweens had to reconfigure themselves when I went through early menopause and estrogen took a back seat. But with estrogen in the back seat, I also became less embarrassed. The pink and red were almost gone. Instead, I wanted to paint my hair pink, to go a little wild.
I started to remember who I was before I went into that closet. The core. The essence. The self. I also started to value everything I had gathered inside my little linen closet and, later, inside my dome. I started to take my time when people asked me a question. I started to ask the questions I wanted answers to, even if they were complex, even if people didn’t have answers to them yet.
For years, I wanted to break my “shyness.” Now, I’m breaking through instead. I’m renaming the shyness, breaking down the doors I closed on myself, rebuilding them differently, and looking out onto the big world with the self I built.
It feels good.
In my late forties, I still have versions of my linen closet: my office, my retreats into writing, the moments while the kids are at school or camp, the quiet pockets away from the hustle and bustle of my company. That’s who I am. The only difference is that now, I can share it.
Now, when someone asks me what I’m thinking, I tell them. I just start somewhere. I decide when to let others see inside the dome, and when not to. And I’m grateful for the light that shines through, and for the light I am finally able to turn on from within.
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