Ampersand Answers: Stop Hiding

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding places.

Zora Neale Hurston
MEInk, 2.15.26  

The Question: 

How can I stop hiding who I truly am? 

&mpersand Answers: 

First, let’s agree that you can’t really hide who you truly are, but you can definitely feel like you should or ought to or do. 

Second, the love that playwright Hurston references here is existential love, and self-love, not necessarily love from another. 

Your soul comprises two of the four indivisible aspects of being. The four are body, heart, mind, and spirit. Soul’s two parts are heart and mind; the two work as a symbiotic pair. Thoughts create feelings. Feelings inform thoughts. Round and round forever. 

If you feel as if you should hide a part of who you are, the love that will free that part is within you, and has been all along. Much like Dorothy’s ability to go home.  

Take yourself someplace quiet, where you will be undisturbed. Write, draw, dance—whatever feels right to you—to engage that hidden part. Really look. Really see. Really ask that part what it needs to stop hiding. 

Most often, I’ve seen that these parts of ourselves are much younger than our biological ages, were created out of necessity in particular circumstances, and need simply to be informed that whatever caused its existence is no longer operative.  

You don’t have to tell another soul about this process for it to be effective. It’s your witness, and your love, that will free that part from the feeling of needing to hide. And it will startle you how much energy is freed up for living after you quit hiding.

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