What If Someone Saw More in You Than You Could See in Yourself?

My life was shaped by words.

Growing up in trauma, the behaviours around me and the words being spoken to me didn't make sense with who I felt myself to be. But there were positive words too. I was the quiet one, the polite one, the leader, the strong one, the teacher, and so many other things people saw in me. Some of those things were true, but none of them felt like the whole of me.

In many ways, I have had the career I have because people saw things in me that I couldn't yet see in myself. They gave me opportunities, trusted me with things I wasn't always sure I was ready for, and reflected back strengths that took me much longer to recognize and believe for myself.

At the same time, my personal life looked very different. I carried a lot of pain, anger, depression and self-hate, and I buried much of it until I could begin to understand it. There was always this disconnect between the person other people could see, the person I knew somewhere inside myself that I was, and everything I had learned to believe about myself along the way.

Throughout my career, I met people in all kinds of places in their lives, and taking the time to really see someone was always important to me. Sometimes that meant recognizing a strength or potential they hadn't seen in themselves yet. Other times I was working alongside someone whose life had been shaped by addiction, incarceration, homelessness, trauma or years of simply trying to survive. Whatever brought someone into my life, there was always more to them than what could be understood from where they were standing at that point in their life. The more I got to know people, the more there was to see — including things they may not have been able to see in themselves yet.

Sometimes that was hardest to remember when someone was escalating, fighting to protect themselves, fighting for their worth or simply fighting to be seen. Those are the moments when it can be easy to respond only to what is happening in front of you. But again and again, I learned how important it was to stand in that moment with someone and still see the person underneath it.

That didn't mean ignoring the behaviour or pretending difficult things hadn't happened. Sometimes the truth was hard. Sometimes there needed to be accountability, difficult conversations or change. But none of those things required us to reduce someone to the worst thing they had done, the hardest thing they had lived through, or the way they were responding in one difficult moment.

Sometimes what someone needed most was another person who could see all of it and still reflect back the parts of themselves they had stopped being able to see.

It was something I did with clients, something I asked of my staff, and something my staff needed from me too. Not someone telling them everything was okay, but a safe place to be honest about where they were, to have difficult conversations when they were needed, and still know that one moment didn't define everything I saw in them.

For a long time, I couldn't understand why I could do this so naturally everywhere except in my own life.

I could see beyond someone else's pain without defining them by it. I could see beyond a mistake and still recognize everything good that was standing in front of me. I could believe there was more in someone even when they couldn't see it themselves.

But allowing someone to do that for me was much harder.

It took me a long time to understand what it meant to truly be seen — not just as the leader, the strong one or the person who could carry everything, and not just through the painful parts of my story either.

Just as me.

To have people in my life who could stand on the other side of me and reflect back the best parts of myself without needing me to perform them. People who could tell me the truth when I needed to hear it, sit with me when I didn't have everything figured out, and still see something in me that I sometimes couldn't see for myself.

I think there is something incredibly powerful about being seen that way.

Because being seen isn't about having someone tell you everything you want to hear. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable. Change can take work, and there are times when we have to look honestly at ourselves and recognize something that needs to be different.

But there is a difference between someone helping you see something you need to change and someone making you believe that thing is who you are.

The people who have had the greatest impact on my life didn't tell me who I should become. They helped me see more clearly what was already there.

And after spending so many years watching what can happen when someone begins to see themselves differently, one of the most beautiful things I have been a part of is watching someone begin to see for themselves what others have been reflecting back to them all along.

To watch them start to believe in their own worth, find more of their own voice, and little by little, live with a freedom they may never have believed was possible for them.

And that is where freedom begins — when you no longer have to live through everything you learned to believe about yourself, and can live as you.