To be invisible

I’ll never forget the first time I felt invisible…

I’d always been a participant in life – fully seen, fully there.  

I had a relationship I valued, was a mum to four amazing children, and a career I loved. I was called the smiler in my younger years. I was told, on numerous occasions, that I had a smile that lit up a room.

One thing I always felt…was noticed.

That changed the day I sat in a wheelchair. As if losing the ability to walk was bad enough. Losing my identity seemed – well, even worse. The loss of being seen was painful.

Suddenly, people spoke over me, around me, even through me.                                                             They asked my partner questions about me, as if my voice had been squashed between the process of standing and sitting. But I was there. 

I could feel it in my body – the stillness, the weight.
My shoulders curled inward, as if trying to make myself smaller, quieter, safer.
My breath changed too; it sat higher in my chest, shallow and cautious.
Invisibility wasn’t just something that happened to me – it lived in me.

The process of navigating what it meant to be a newly disabled mum and partner – while having to take ill-health retirement from a job I loved, was bad enough.                                                              

But then, realising that I was invisible, was really hard to take.

I’d never even considered therapy before – not on my radar. But once I started, it became the mirror I needed, though I hadn’t realised its necessity.                                                                                       It was therapy that helped me see myself again. Not as the person I once was,    but as the person I was now, changed, but as someone still worthy – still whole – even in this changed body.

Through therapy and reflection, I began to realise how much of my identity was tied to what I could physically do, rather than who I was.                                                                                                          For so long, I’d valued myself in movement, and the productivity, what I could give, was tied to that. But when the ability to walk and move around was stripped away, I thought I had nothing left.

But sitting in that stillness, sometimes in silence, looking in the mirror created by my therapist, I found something unexpected had happened. I found myself.    

Therapy became a mirror I hadn’t realised I needed.
It reflected the parts of me I’d forgotten: compassion, resilience, gentleness, strength.
Little by little, I stopped waiting for others to see me and began to see myself.

I learned that visibility isn’t always about being looked at – sometimes it’s about looking within.
And from that place, my worth no longer needed permission to exist.

To some, it may seem ironic, but people will only see you, when you see yourself.

To read more about how chronic conditions can affect you, you can read this post here

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