The Visibility Wound - And Why Your Soul Chose It
Often you are confronted with hard truths along your healing journey.
One of which has surfaced for me lately:
You are not hiding because you are humble.
You are hiding because you were hurt.
Most struggles with visibility are not confidence problems.
They are wounds — formed long before adulthood and often in our earliest formative years.
When Being Seen Was Unsafe
For many of us, visibility was not encouraged — it was corrected, minimized, uncelebrated, or simply ignored.
Maybe you were too expressive.
Too emotional.
Too intuitive.
Too fiery.
Too honest.
In some way, viewed as simply too much.
So your nervous system learned early:
It’s safer & more comfortable to be smaller than I really am.
You learned to:
• shrink mid-sentence
• read the room before speaking
• dim your excitement
• soften your truth
• become palatable
• shapeshift like a chameleon to please others or somehow promote harmony and peace within the energy around you
You didn’t become invisible.
You became strategically less than your essential essence.
You became conditioned to dim your light around others.
My Personal Story - Where the Wound Began
I never felt truly celebrated as a child. Ancestral patterning of emotional neglect and suppression was carried through in my mother’s lineage and hit strongly in our home. I lost count of how many times the old cliche “children should be seen and not heard” was chided into my subconscious and reinforced. I could relax and shine one-on-one, but in any spotlight on-stage, or in front of a group, I collapsed inside myself. I went to college on a music scholarship, yet my anxiety during public performances was so intense that even after standing ovations, I doubted and self criticized every note. I avoided the spotlight entirely, and it robbed me of the joy of my gift. For more than two decades after college, I didn’t touch music… until recently, when my healing path led me back.
It wasn’t until I began studying astrology — and witnessed raising my own Leo rising child — that this missing piece and thread of my own inner child healing has finally come into focus.
My birth chart tells a truth that I ran from for years: as a Leo rising with Jupiter tightly conjunct my Midheaven, I am created to be seen. But my Chiron in Aries etched a wound around identity so early in life that visibility felt somehow dangerous instead of natural. I learned to hide the very fire I came here to embody — and reclaiming it has become the heart of my most recent healing.
The Ego’s Role as Protector
As we grow, ego steps in — not as an enemy, but as a guard.
Don’t risk it again.
Don’t be misunderstood.
Don’t draw attention.
Its safer - and simply more comfortable - to sit back and stay unseen.
This creates internal patterns of:
• perfectionism
• self-editing
• overthinking
• indecisiveness; waiting for the “right” moment
• playing small even when the soul is ready
Ego isn’t the villain.
It is the protector of the child who once learned that visibility came with pain.
But here is the turning point:
What once kept you safe is now keeping you stuck.
The Fear of Being Misunderstood - The Aries Chiron Story:
For many of us carrying this wound deeply, the fear isn’t visibility itself.
It’s being seen inaccurately.
The natal wound of Chiron in Aries often carries the imprint:
If I reveal who I really am, I will be miscast. I will be misunderstood.
So, to compensate, you often:
• over-explain
• soften your truth
• hesitate to take up space
• spend more of your energy and time managing perception instead of embodying essence
This is not insecurity.
It is not pride.
It is a karmic wound around identity and self-trust.
And, it is meant to be healed.
The 12/12 Portal - An Ancient Window For Shedding
For thousands of years, repeating numbers were recognized as threshold days — moments when identity and manifestation become more malleable and release happens with less resistance.
The number 12 has always marked completion and transition:
• 12 zodiac signs
• 12 lunar cycles
• 12 stages of initiation
In numerology, 12 reduces to 3 — the number of expression, truth, and rebirth.
This year, the 12/12 portal coincides with a waning moon, the lunar phase of release and shedding.
Which could not be more synchronous - especially within the context that these are occurring in the Year of the Snake - a year of embodying endings, cycle completion, and shedding.
Together, they create an ancient energetic opening:
• for dissolving old identities
• for releasing inherited patterns
• for shedding the skin that once protected but now constricts
This makes 12/12 a powerful moment to recognize — and alchemize — the visibility wound- or truly any other pattern or wounding that may be holding you back from your life path.
Whether you are reading this today, on 12-12-2025 or on another, the message still holds true - the call to release the subconscious patterning and blockages that are holding you back, is an invitation for growth. And spirit will honor your recognition and desire to surrender and release these whenever they surface for you. Coinciding your release on a day with mystical meaning is simply another layer you can add into ritual or spiritual devotion, if you so choose. But, it is not a necessity. Follow what feels true to you. My mystical soul just loves synchronicity, sacred meaning, and ritualistic based practice.
Visibility As Devotion, Not Performance
Healed visibility isn’t about exposure, applause, or being “on.”
For a long time it was those very things that I used as an excuse to hide behind, as I associated them with self inflated pride and ego.
On the contrary, visibility is devotion.
It is a reclamation of your most central essence.
It is the moment you decide:
I will no longer abandon myself to stay acceptable.
And when embraced through authentic alignment, visibility becomes presence —
steady, grounded, and rooted in truth.
Reclaiming the Throne
When you stop bargaining with your light:
• your path clarifies
• the right people recognize you
• your energy stops leaking
Stepping into visibility isn’t arrogance.
It is returning to yourself.
And you are much easier to find when you stop hiding.
The Sacred Pause
True visibility has rhythm:
• expression
• rest
• integration
• re-emergence
There is a difference between hiding and healing.
Healed visibility honors both.
Simple Tools for Alchemizing the Visibility Wound
1. The Unseen Self Letter
Write what was never witnessed.
What you learned to suppress.
What brilliance went uncelebrated.
Release it with intention.
2. Mirror Work
Look into your own eyes - hold contact for several seconds and say:
My visibility is safe with me.
Let the body learn and reinforce what the mind already knows.
3. Somatic Shedding
Hands to throat and chest.
Exhale the moments you dimmed your light.
Your body remembers — and can release when you invite it to.
4. Identity Contemplation
Sit in Meditation & Ask Yourself Honestly:
Who am I outside the story others projected onto me?
This is the place of deep authenticity and awareness, where the wound becomes wisdom.
5. Threshold Act
One honest act.
One brave step.
One truth spoken.
Name it.
Cross it.
It is the first step towards action and embodiment and regular practice will help to reinforce new subconscious patterning.
The Purpose of the Wound
Many of us who carry this wound have it tied to our life purpose and carry a voice that is meant to be used in service to others.
You were not unseen because you lacked worth.
You were unseen because your truth needed depth.
And that growth was still forming.
The truth is this: your visibility was never meant to be fragile.
It was never meant to depend on approval, timing, or permission.
It was shaped through contrast.
Tempered through silence.
Forged in the years you learned how to hold your fire inward before you were ready to carry it outward.
This moment — this shedding — marks a quiet but irreversible turning point.
Not the rise of a louder version of you,
but the return of a truer one.
You are not here to force yourself into visibility.
You are here to stop leaving it.
To release the belief that being seen must cost you safety.
To loosen the vow that told you love of any kind required shrinking.
To let the old skin fall away naturally, now that it no longer fits.
Visibility, when healed, is not a performance.
It is presence.
It is the calm certainty of standing in your truth
without bracing for impact.
And when you allow yourself to be seen this way — steadily, honestly, without self-abandonment — something profound happens:
The world adjusts.
The right people recognize you.
Your path clarifies.
Your energy stops leaking.
Your light no longer needs defending.
Your voice no longer needs justification.
Your fire no longer needs to wait.
This is not a dramatic becoming.
It is a grounded remembering.
And from this place,
your visibility stops feeling like a risk
and starts feeling like home.
Wishing you so much love, compassion, and tenderness as you travel along your healing path.
May you always feel seen for who you truly are and celebrated for the gifts you carry.
With Much Love,
Seraph
