I am going to try something different.

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To start to change my blogs.

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Making them more personal.

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Perhaps even tell a story.

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Something real that you just might be able to relate to.

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It's an experiment.

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So let's see how it goes.

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I usually write about ideas that have been around me in recent conversations or reflections.

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This time I want to talk about what came up for me in a recent ceremony.

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The weekend before, we watched the movie A Monster Calls.

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About a boy whose mother is dying from cancer, and his challenges with dealing with the whole situation.

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The boy felt alone, and angry, and ashamed at what he was feeling.

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What he dare not admit to himself.

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When I watched the movie, I had many tears in my eyes.

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This movie always strikes an emotional cord in me, and I never really knew why.

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So as I was reflecting on this in a recent ceremony, I began to understand how much I identified with the boy.

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Not that my mother died young or from cancer.

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But at his loneliness.

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His desire to be seen.

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And then when we was seen, he felt more lonely than before.

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His desire to be seen is something I deeply resonate with.

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For when I was a child, I never felt seen by my mother or my father.

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They were both so caught up in their own trauma, they had no emotional space for me or my sister or brother.

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So I looked outside my family to be seen.

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Yet when I was, it felt awful.

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That day I came to class, just a couple of minutes late as usual, wearing glasses for the first time in third grade.

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When the whole class saw me and laughed at me for wearing glasses, I wish I could just disappear.

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To be invisible so I wouldn't feel so embarrassed.

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That incident, and others after it, set me on a course where I would look for attention, but hide myself in the process.

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Hiding in plain sight became second nature for me.

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I became the black sheep of the family when I got a little older.

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Never the straight A student like my brother or sister.

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Getting in trouble for drugs in High School.

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And many other situations after that.

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Becoming a public speaker and author as an adult, yet not talking about how I was hurting inside.

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During the ceremony I saw all this so clearly.

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So here I am now, trying to be seen by being more real, more true, and telling you a story.

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Do you have your own stories around being seen or unseen?

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Can you relate to mine? I'd love to know...

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~ Sam Liebowitz, The Conscious Consultant

Host of The Conscious Consultant Hour