The Weight We Carry: How Life Buries Our Truth
- Nyoka Samuels-Gilchrist
- Nov 6, 2025
- 6 min read
We think we're protecting ourselves. Really, we're just getting better at hiding.
I'll never forget the moment my boyfriend called me out for changing clothes in the closet. Not the bedroom—the closet. Like I was sneaking around in my own space.
"Why are you hiding?" he asked. And that question hit different because I knew exactly why. I didn't want him to see the holes in my socks. The worn-out underwear I hadn't replaced. These tiny, human imperfections felt like secrets I had to keep—even from someone I was sleeping with.
Think about that for a second. I was ready to be physically naked with this man. But emotionally? Spiritually? I was fully dressed and locked behind a door.
That's where it starts, isn't it? With the small things, we convince ourselves don't matter.
When Self-Work Meets Survival Mode
Here's what nobody tells you about "doing the work": life keeps adding weight while you're trying to sort through what you're already carrying.
I started my healing journey single, living at home, relatively unburdened. I had time. I had space. I thought, "Okay, I'm going to figure myself out."
Then I moved out.
And suddenly I wasn't just working on myself—I was working on surviving. That apartment everyone congratulated me for? It came with bills, bills, bills. The car that was supposed to represent my freedom? It needed insurance, gas, and maintenance. Another bill.
This is what they sell us as independence: a second job we never applied for, managing our own survival.
You think you're becoming your own person, but really, you're just becoming more tightly wound into a system that needs you tired. Each new "accomplishment" of adulthood is actually another layer between you and the person you're trying to become.
The Layers Keep Coming
The cruel irony is that the more responsibilities you take on, the better you get at hiding—not because you're trying to, but because you have to just to function.
You tell yourself:
"I'll work on my intimacy issues once I figure out my budget."
"I'll be vulnerable once I'm more stable."
"I'll deal with my deeper stuff when things calm down."
But things don't calm down. Stability never quite arrives. There's always another layer being added, another reason why now isn't the right time.
The self-work that started when you were single and unencumbered is now competing with exhaustion, with just trying to keep your head above water, with the relentless grind of bills and expectations, and the performance of having it all together.
It's hard to be emotionally open when you're emotionally drained just from existing.
Let's be real about what "independence" actually means in our society.
Moving out isn't freedom—it's a monthly negotiation with capitalism. The apartment isn't just a space; it's rent due on the first, utilities in your name, repairs you can't afford to make. The car isn't autonomy; it's another tether to a system that demands you keep producing just to maintain what you already have.
And here's the kicker: each thing that's supposed to represent your growth actually becomes another place to hide.
You're not just hiding holes in your socks anymore. Now you're hiding:
The fact that you're one unexpected expense away from crisis
The exhaustion that lives in your bones
The dreams you had before survival became the priority
The parts of yourself that don't have the energy to show up
Each new layer of responsibility becomes another excuse for why you can't quite get to the deeper work. Another reason to put off the hard conversations—with yourself, with others, with your own pain.
The Truth About Hiding
What I learned from that closet moment—and the years since—is this: we don't stop hiding because we get more secure. We don't become transparent because we finally get our lives together.
We stop hiding when we realize that the holes in our socks are us.
The worn-out parts, the unfinished edges, the spaces where we're barely holding it together—that's not something to hide from intimacy. That is intimacy.
Real connection doesn't happen when you've got everything figured out. It happens when you stop pretending you do.
The layers life adds—the bills, the responsibilities, the exhaustion, the weight of just existing under capitalism—those aren't obstacles to your healing. They're part of what you're healing from. Part of what you're learning to stop hiding behind.
Breaking the Pattern
So how do we stop accumulating layers? How do we break the cycle of hiding that gets more sophisticated with each passing year?
We start by telling the truth.
Not the polished version. Not the "I'm working on myself" performance. The raw, unglamorous truth that you're tired, you're overwhelmed, and sometimes you change in the closet because you can't handle one more thing—not even someone seeing your worn-out underwear.
We start by recognizing that vulnerability isn't something we earn through achievement.
It's not a luxury we get to access once we've reached some mythical state of stability. Vulnerability is how we get to stability—by letting people see us while we're still figuring it out, still struggling, still wearing socks with holes.
We start by understanding that the system wants us too exhausted to heal.
That's not conspiracy—that's design. When you're drowning in bills and responsibilities, when you're too tired to think deeply about your patterns, when survival takes up all your bandwidth, you don't have energy left to question why things are this way or to imagine something different.
But here's what they don't tell you: healing doesn't require perfect conditions. It requires honest ones.
The Practice of Integration
Instead of waiting for life to calm down (it won't), we practice integration—bringing all our fragmented parts into the same room and letting them talk to each other.
The part that needs to pay bills gets to sit next to the part that needs rest.
The part that's trying to "make it" gets to acknowledge the part that's exhausted from trying.
The part that presents as "together" gets to befriend the part that's falling apart.
This isn't about having it all figured out. It's about stopping the performance of having it all figured out.
Because that performance—that's the real weight. That's the layer that's killing us.
You Can't Wait for the Perfect Moment to Be Real
The perfect moment is the one where you're tired, stretched thin, wearing socks with holes, managing a household you can barely afford, trying to do self-work you don't have energy for, and you let someone see you anyway.
You let them see that you're changing in the closet because you're scared of being seen as less than.
You let them see that "independence" feels more like drowning than freedom.
You let them see that you don't have it together, that the layers keep coming, and that sometimes survival is all you can manage.
That's when the real work begins.
Not when you're stable and whole and healed. But when you're messy and struggling and still showing up—holes in your socks and all.
Your Turn
What are you hiding in your closet? What layers have accumulated that you tell yourself you'll deal with "once things calm down"?
What would it look like to stop waiting for the perfect conditions and start being honest about the imperfect ones you're actually living in?
The self-work doesn't pause for capitalism. But maybe the work is recognizing how capitalism tries to pause your healing—and choosing to heal anyway, in the margins, in the mess, with holes in your socks.
Because you don't need perfect conditions to be whole. You just need to stop hiding the fact that you're not.
This is part of Chapter 1: Migration (Emotional Wellness) from "7 Dimensions of Wellness: Breaking Free from Modern Medicine to Honor the Whole You" by Nyoka Samuels. The book explores how emotional, physical, social, spiritual, environmental, mental, and cultural wellness intersect to create true holistic health.
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Nyoka Samuels is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-raised nurse educator, wellness rebel, and author of 7 Dimensions of Wellness: Breaking Free from Modern Medicine to Honor the Whole You. She’s an ɔkɔmfoɔ (traditional priest) and holds multiple nursing degrees.
After nearly 20 years in healthcare—and a mental health crisis at 19 that changed everything—Nyoka founded 7 Healing Waters LLC, where science meets spirit and cultural wisdom flows freely. She’s a graduate of Dr. Uché Blackstock’s Advancing Health Equity Champions Program and Luvvie Ajayi’s Book Academy.
When she’s not writing you’ll find her podcasting on AuthenTEA-cally Nyoka, planning international wellness retreats, or running barefoot through her garden with a cup of herbal tea—or maybe a second cup of coffee, because holistic health means listening to what your spirit needs today.
Hip hop and reggae raised her. Pregnancy transformed her. Burnout nearly broke her. But ancestral wisdom rebuilt her.
Connect with Nyoka at https://calendly.com/7hwaters/testing-the-waters or follow her journey on Instagram @holistic7hw or LinkedIn @Nyoka Samuels.
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