When Your Old Stories Get Loud

Visibility, vulnerability, and the practice of coming back to what's true

Photo by Jeremy Horvatin on Unsplash

I made a list of all the reasons why some people didn’t show up for me on my big day.

I included practical reasons, psychological explanations, and personal possibilities. Probably all of my reasons were true to some degree. But I am getting better at not rushing to rationalize and intellectualize every hurt or disappointment I feel and make it mean something wrong about me or anyone else. I’m quicker to just allow myself to feel what hurts, get curious about the story I’m telling myself, and bring myself back to what is true. That is the practice.

The purpose of personal growth isn’t to never be upset or never stray outside your Circle of Coherence. “Perfection” is not the goal. Personal growth expands your capacity to recognize the patterns that pull you away from your truth and course-correct before you spiral into despair. Like the lane assist feature in your car, the practice keeps you centered.

Without vulnerability, we would never grow. But that doesn’t make it easy to move through. Here’s how this played out for me in the week following my big reveal.

Facing the Void

Publishing Your Untamed Truths meant there was nowhere left for me to hide. Printed on the page are my stumbles, struggles, and the lessons drawn from them. But beyond the window to my inner life, there is the vulnerability of putting my stake in the ground and living my own teachings.

What was personal becomes public—not just my past but my present.

Putting yourself out there brings the vulnerability of visibility. There will always be the spectators, who have never risked visibility themselves, who hurl judgments and insults. But in today’s world, when you look out to the crowd, you are more likely to see people buried in their smartphones, distracted by their own drama, or caring more about how they look to others in the stands than what’s on stage.

You face the void.

As deeply as I appreciated the enthusiastic cheers and support from people in my front row (and a few people who totally surprised me), it was hard to process the silence of the majority who seemed not to give a shit. My old story found an opening: the world doesn’t want what I have to give.

I had a choice—I could wallow in self-pity, blame people, or come back to what’s true. I chose the practice.

The Metrics That Matter

In the book, I pose two guiding questions to stay coherent: Is it mine? and Does it align? That story of being invisible and unimportant to the world isn’t mine. It’s the product of internalizing a lack of external validation and emotional support growing up that made me question my own value. It was interpreting the gossip and slights of not fitting in as something defective in me. It is allowing external metrics to define my worth and the worth of my work.

Nor did that story align with what I know to be true about me and my book. I showed up authentically, honestly, and courageously in the spirit of service. What I learned and gained through writing the book is its own reward. That would be true whether 50 or 5 million people read it. I took a chance on my dreams and was willing to be vulnerable in sharing my experience with the world. The measure of success was never about the results of doing it but having done it at all.

But it is also true that I want the book to make an impact in people’s lives. Knowing that is already happening for my early readers brings joy to my heart. Seeing the book sell puts a smile on my face. The tension is in being honest with myself that while I wrote it mostly for myself, I published it to share it. My old self-protection would say I don’t need anyone, but I do care about how the book is received. I just can’t let sales numbers (high or low) define its value or how I feel about it.

Helping me hold that lightly is remembering who I had in mind when I published it. I went back to what I wrote in my introduction, before the anxiety of exposure set in.

This path isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who want to answer their deepest calls and longings, even if it’s scary. It’s for the spirits that don’t want to stay small and on the sidelines of their own lives. It’s for people who love themselves enough to bring their brightest light to the world. If that’s you—my sacred rebels and wild hearts—I offer you a hug and a hand. This is the journey of a lifetime. You are freeing what has always yearned to emerge through you—your untamed truths that refused to be silenced.

The world may not want what I create, but those who hear the call will answer. The people who need my book will find it.

Showing Up

Even returning to those words, the silence of certain friends had its own sting.

I don’t require my friends to be my fans—our connection might have nothing to do with our contributions to the world. But this experience clarified two things: (1) where I can do a better job showing up for people, and (2) who is really in my front row.

Publishing this book gave me a much deeper appreciation for how vulnerable it feels to put yourself out in the world and how much timely, personal support means to the person taking the risk.

Whether we resonate with someone’s work or not, acknowledging what it took to create and share it is a profound kindness. Not as a form of external validation, but because we care about connection and celebrate bravery. We are saying: I see you. I appreciate what you add to the world.

I was so grateful for the friends who celebrated with me. I was moved by the messages from people in my past who took a moment to write something thoughtful. And yet my mind drifted to the people I’d emailed, invited, and previously shown up for who said nothing. Even after a week.

The practice didn’t make that not hurt. It just kept me from turning the hurt into a verdict. It clarified that I can’t hold self-worth in one hand and accept invisibility in the other. That is static. And it is the enemy of coherence.

What We Can Learn From Olympian Alysa Liu

As I was sitting in my discomfort, a replay of Alysa Liu’s figure skating performance popped up. The announcers relayed how she said she doesn’t need the medals—she just enjoys sharing her art. They talked about how she performs without carrying the weight of competition and how that ease and nonchalance is actually what puts her on the podium.

When she was done, she knew her performance was incredible, that she nailed it, and she wasn’t shy in showing her emotion about it. “That’s what I’m [bleep]ing talking about!” she yelled into the news camera. She won gold.

I teared up witnessing her triumph. That 20 year old’s “fearless joy” was what I needed in that moment. To see someone doing something for the love of doing it. To be willing to step onto what is arguably one of the most intense and visible arenas and skate like no one is watching. To see coherence in action.

When I came back to what was true—thanks in part to Alysa Liu—the old story faded away. It wasn’t really about who showed up for me but how I showed up for myself. The former is data but the latter is what matters. I did something brave. I rumbled with the vulnerability of it, as Brené Brown calls it. I returned to what’s true with greater resilience. I can be proud of that.

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Carolyn Brouillard is a corporate dropout turned author and teacher. Her work bridges spiritual insight and real-world application, delivering practical frameworks for personal transformation. She is the author of Your Untamed Truths: Reclaiming Self-Sovereignty, which helps readers bring inner truth to lived reality.