Hiding in Our Shadows

What a friend’s secret revealed about the lessons we mirror, and the fear of being seen we never fully outgrow

Series: Dear Diary, But Wiser

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This is what happens when self-awareness clashes with itself — when we realize there are still wounds we haven’t healed, hidden fears we’re still suppressing.

A few years ago, I met this lovely young girl. We had a great connection and became really good friends. She’s much younger than me, and I could see all the lessons she still had to work through in her life. Even I forget sometimes that we are mirrors to everyone we know. Every time I connect with someone, my first thought is: what is this person trying to teach me about myself, and what am I learning about them? This is how I process behaviors like intuition, pattern recognition, self-awareness, and discernment, among other things. And with each person I meet, I want to know — am I living my inner truth with them? Am I being who I am? Am I saying what I need to say? Am I doing what I want to do?

Our conversations touched on a lot — processing personal emotions, figuring out the meaning of things, talking through relationships. I watched her navigate her life, especially in love and family. These are the friendship dynamics where I learn the most — not just about the other person, but about myself. We sought advice from each other, support, simple walks together.

This story is about a lesson I learned the hard way — that sometimes the advice we give people, the ways we think we’re helping, is actually us projecting our own fears. And for the first time, I recognized that I’d given the wrong advice, and I found out why.

She and I were neighbours in a triplex. I was moving and needed a specific kind of place — more room, a private garage — and it just so happened her downstairs neighbours were moving out too. It was perfect.

When I met this girl, she had recently gotten out of a relationship. She was single, vulnerable, and based on her past, she needed a friend. That was something I’d always been good at. So we built a strong bond and had a lot of fun together. Months went by, she met someone, and — well, we all know how that goes. Once you meet someone, you slowly disconnect for a while because the focus shifts to the relationship, and this one mattered to her. I understood. She was young and in love. I was used to it. It never bothered me — I had my own life I was dealing with. We stayed connected, even when we drifted, and neither of us ever took it personally.

Then my move happened. She was excited we’d be reconnecting, and so was I — it just so happened her downstairs neighbours were moving. She and her boyfriend were still together, but theirs was a long-distance, nomadic kind of relationship. She was so excited she wanted to tell him right away. He went silent. The apartment wouldn’t be available for a few months, so I still had time to look at other options. Nothing came up.

But this opportunity felt too good to pass up. We both wanted to be neighbours, so we overlooked the warning sign. I’m someone who values speaking the truth and being yourself in every relationship, and her boyfriend never wanted to meet me — not once. Right from the start, he didn’t like me. Maybe it was because I’m gay and he felt insecure. Maybe he was jealous. But when I see things like that, I don’t get involved. My motto is: that’s a them problem, not a me problem.

As for my friend, I don’t like inserting my opinion into other people’s relationships. I did that for years in my past, and I’ve learned it’s a waste of time. People have their own lessons to work through, and most of the time, they need those exact relationships to figure themselves out. But I did ask her once — I knew you before you met him. How does this person get to come into your life and tell you what to do? Why is he the one determining where I get to live? Why is my move being decided by someone else?

Deep down, I could see all the signs in this relationship. But it wasn’t something I needed — or wanted — to get involved in. I can’t carry other people’s problems and force them to see what I see. This is where I lean on discernment, because I knew she still had lessons to face, and this relationship was where she’d be learning them.

When the apartment finally became available, she still wanted me as her neighbour. And I knew exactly what that meant. That this would be a secret.

The real trigger for me came later. Most of the time, I get so wrapped up in other people’s emotions that I forget I still have my own wounds to heal. I forgot about my own mirror, and what this would mean for me.

I moved in. And every time her boyfriend came to visit, I’d either go on a road trip or stay quietly downstairs, like no one lived there at all. I didn’t have a problem with it at first. It didn’t bother me. Until it did. Until it started to feel like hiding. The control felt too familiar. Now I felt like someone was controlling me — not my friend, but my friend’s boyfriend. And what I didn’t realize was that the guilt of keeping this secret from him was quietly growing in her too.

When she listened to her gut and went against her boyfriend’s wishes about me moving downstairs, neither of us realized what it would stir up in both of us. Because he didn’t want me living there, and she never told him I had, she ended up enabling that behaviour instead of letting him deal with his own insecurity. And in not telling him, we both fed it — his insecurity, and in turn, our own.

My friend and I carry similar mirror wounds, and sometimes it’s hard not to see them. Where she avoids conflict with her boyfriend, I fill the emotional void that’s missing in their relationship. When someone refuses to do their own shadow work, it pushes the people around them — like my friend, like me — into people-pleasing. The guilt we feel for doing something we shouldn’t have to is often the first sign of that pattern. My friend and I also mirror truth-seeking — that’s what we reflect in each other, and every time we’re in the same space, it grows in both of us. If you give in to someone’s negative patterns and become too accommodating, that pattern gets projected onto you. But if you stay in your truth, and your counterpart can’t rise to meet it, you have to recognize what that’s telling you. Because it’s always easier to accommodate someone’s negative behaviour than their positive one.

I’m someone who is proud of who I am. I always encourage people, especially women, to speak up and tell their truth — no matter how it comes out. Loud, aggressive, happy, sad. However it needs to come out.

The truth was, she couldn’t keep this secret from her boyfriend anymore, and I didn’t like that I was the one being kept secret. I felt ashamed. Hidden. Suddenly, whenever he was around, I couldn’t even step outside, because I was afraid he’d see me, and I didn’t want her to get caught. I knew how important this relationship was to her.

Then one night, she came downstairs crying. She couldn’t carry the guilt anymore. I asked if she wanted me to move. She said no — but she wanted to tell him, because the guilt was growing every day. And this is where my advice got lost. There was a fear inside me, one I could feel rising. I told her: do you know how upset he’ll be that you didn’t listen to him? But also — it’s not fair to either of us that he put us in this position, because for whatever reason, we had to answer to someone who was uncomfortable with this. This kind of control in their relationship wasn’t healthy. I told her maybe she should wait. Delay telling him. He’d told her he was going to propose, and he kept pushing it back. Once they got married, she’d be moving to the US to be with him — so what did it matter if I lived here now, for a little while?

I thought that by telling her to wait, I was protecting her. I knew what the truth would mean — that it would open up something bigger in their relationship. She said she’d take some time and delay it.

That night, I went to bed and couldn’t sleep. Here’s the thing — sometimes when someone is finally ready to have a conversation with us, we, the ones listening, aren’t actually ready to receive it. And in true form, I replayed the conversation in my head, dissected it, analyzed every word. That’s what I did. And the more I sat with it, the more short-tempered I became. This conversation did not sit well with me. I had begun to feel frustrated, and for me, that’s always a sign — my nervous system is out of place, and something is off.

Why did I give her that advice? All this girl ever did was come downstairs crying, wanting to tell her boyfriend the truth — and I told her to stay silent instead. The exact words that, when I was young, made me get louder whenever someone told me to be quiet. And there I was. Face to face with my own shadow. This is what generational conditioning does to women. This is why my mother had her heart attack — because she was told to stay silent, because “that’s just the way men are.” And for me, I still carried an unhealed wound around being seen. The exact thing this girl and I were mirroring for each other: speaking our truth in order to finally be seen.

A few days went by, and I couldn’t sit with the feeling. I focused on my writing instead, and my friend was off with her boyfriend. We’re not the kind of friends who talk every single day — when we’re apart, we check in; when we’re together, we each carry on with our own lives. When we need something, we’re there, simply and easily. That kind of friendship has always felt peaceful to me. Sometimes living near friends can be hard — you always want to hang out, talk, gossip, fill the day with drama. But not her. She was fiercely independent.

Two weeks went by, and she called me one night. That wasn’t normal for us. Something about the way she called felt different. After we said hello, she told me she’d just been on a walk because she had told her boyfriend everything. I asked how he reacted. She said, right now he’s sitting with it, and I’m out for a walk.

I told her I regretted the advice I gave her. You were building up the courage to tell someone the truth, and I shut your voice down and kept you hiding. I should never have told you that. I told her I was sorry, and that I was so proud of her. She understood. And we hung up.

In that moment, I sat with the knowing that she’d taught me a lesson about myself. My own fear of being seen. I didn’t want to hide anymore either. I had been the one trying to keep myself from feeling ashamed — and all she ever wanted was to tell someone the truth, because she felt guilty holding it in.

As for my friend, this situation surfaced new wounds in her relationship too. When you love someone fully, you trust them — you don’t even think twice about what they’re doing or why, because you’re secure. This never would have become a situation at all if there wasn’t already a problem underneath it. Where there’s a lack of trust, there’s a need for control, and that creates a bigger problem — and a bigger life lesson for her. This story is still unfolding.

This girl taught me a bigger lesson — one I needed — that I still carried a fear of being seen too. And here’s the thing about life lessons: we never stop having them. Just because we think we’ve unblocked something doesn’t mean there isn’t more to release. I’ve always been a confident person, but like most things, it took time to believe in myself even more, because there was always a fear of growing. But healing takes time, and every wound is covered by its own veil. As you slowly unblock and release what’s underneath, as you build more confidence and start exposing yourself to being seen, the veil doesn’t lift all at once. It rises slowly. When we find ourselves going through the same lessons — fear, confidence, being seen — it means we’re not done yet. We’re not as fully confident as we’re meant to be. We’re not yet as seen as our capacity is calling us to be. But every lesson moves us forward, as long as we choose to face it. If you don’t face your fear, if you don’t listen to your gut, you’ll never find out who you can become.

That means our soul is pulling us toward growth, not toward staying small. Our soul knows exactly where to take us, and timing has everything to do with it.

For me, when these lessons repeat, it means there’s more on the way. If I’m breaking through the barriers of being seen, it means I’m being prepared for something bigger — a build-up toward something in my own life, my own purpose. And suddenly, the moment you realize you’ve learned the lesson, your entire world shifts — just like that, in the blink of an eye. My new fear now is repeating lessons, because I know there’s always something greater waiting on the other side. And that’s the adrenaline I chase now.