Remove the Mask, Risk the Exposure, and Breathe: A 2021 Resolution
Updated: Jan 14, 2021
Today marks the end of the most extraordinary year in my lifetime, and I’d venture to guess, yours too. It’s been 295 days since the announcement of the pandemic that sent our world into a great scavenger hunt for sanitizer, toilet paper, and face masks. Can you believe it? It’s been over nine months of covering our faces.

I’ll be honest. I hate wearing a face mask. I miss seeing smiling faces. I dislike feeling restricted, and I especially hate forgetting the damn thing in the car nearly every time I make a trip to the store.
I mean, it makes sense to wear them of course. Scientists and healthcare professionals explained to us that without these masks, we risk exposure… not just our own exposure, but exposing others to the virus. And, I’m a big girl, so I can handle it for as long as necessary.
However, this mask-wearing, exposure-risking, restricted-breathing scenario got me thinking.
It wasn’t that long ago when I was sitting at a lunch table with a co-worker (we will call her Sue) in my corporate coaching job talking about a similar experience.
Like me, she heard a calling deep in her soul that told her something felt ‘off’ in her life. She just wasn’t as happy as she could be. She was exhausted with the rat-race. Perhaps you have felt this way, too?
She was beginning to become aware of a different kind of mask-wearing, exposure-risking, restricted breathing experience that so many of us go through. It’s not the kind of experience that relates to a physical disease per se, but one that certainly causes emotional and soul-level dis-ease.
Sue asked how I balanced my different roles. Between being a wife, a mother, a coach in the corporate, a life coach as an entrepreneur, a student, a daughter… and the list goes on, she wanted to know how I seemed to move so seamlessly between the roles and not lose my mind.
To be honest, there was a time I thought I would because rather than just shifting from activity to activity, I wore different masks for each role.
With my husband, I could be myself for the most part, but I often wore the wife mask, never revealing my deepest crack or sharing my darkest thoughts, such as the desire to suffocate him with a pillow in my sleep-deprived insanity while he peacefully snored loudly enough to wake our sleeping baby.
With my kids, I wore the “perfect mom,” never letting them see me worry or lose my shit, which usually resulted in me eventually blowing up and REALLY losing it. Then I would spend the next several hours to days feeling guilty and ashamed of my behavior, and then eating an entire box of Oreos to drown the feelings.
But the main mask I wore that caused the most dis-ease in my body was the one I wore to work. We have a tagline to go along with it (although I haven’t heard it for a few years). “Leave your personal life at home.”
What that generally translates to is leaving who we truly are at home, along with the most amazing parts of ourselves. When we wear the mask that covers our fear, anxiety, or uncertainty, we also mask and cover our creativity, passion, and joy.
