7 Rewards Visibility Has Given Me Thus Far
Because if we are going to talk honestly about what visibility costs, we also have to talk about the rewards that only show up once you start being real.
[Lee aquí la versión en español]
To be or not to be visible? This question has been haunting me for the past eight years.
Then the phone rang, and it was mi amiga Ana with Her Wisdom Era idea. ¡Tan sabia ella! If you are reading this story, you have likely already heard how we came together to create this beautiful space. Since then, we’ve released two episodes of our podcast.
In Episode Two, María Hinojosa dropped gem after gem. Or like my dear friend Anja puts it: “Nena, les dio como 10 billboard-worthy quotes.” Of all of it, I have been thinking about something Maria shared that I cannot let go of.
And before I go there, let me tell you what was happening the day we recorded the episode. My daughter had been sick for three nights in a row, which means I was sleepless, cranky AF, exhausted, frustrated, and feeling small. Like, ¿qué ganas tengo yo de estar frente a una cámara hoy? Do I really need to do this all over again?
And then María started talking.
She told us that her daughter once looked at her and said, Mom, I don’t need María Hinojosa. I need my mom. And then her son Raúl added his own version of the same truth — that there were times when Suave (the incredible man behind the story that won María and her team a Pulitzer Prize in 2022) would call from prison and María would stop talking to her own son to take the call. Two children, two different moments, one shared message: the María, the mom, behind the public figure is the one we actually need.
I sat with that for a long time after we recorded. That night I finally slept well. Because I know that feeling, not at María’s scale, but in my own way. I know what it is to have spent years building a presence, a voice, a version of yourself the world can see and consume, while the people closest to you were waiting for you to just come home.
Was it the ego?
Visibility is something we have been taught to chase. Especially those working in media. Post more, show up more, be more, reach more. Que si eres influencer, que si no te ven se olvidan de ti, que si stay relevant!
And somewhere in that relentless pursuit, many of us stopped asking what it was actually costing us. The price we are paying for staying “relevant.” Like when you realize, most of the people around you feel like a transaction rather than a real connection.
María has spent nearly forty years walking into rooms where no one expected her to stay, being the first Latina at NPR, building Futuro Media from scratch in Harlem, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and still holding this perpetual internal conversation about what being visible really means. And what it asks of you when you also happen to be a mother and a wife and a woman who is, as she put it, still figuring it out in her 60s. The awards did not resolve that tension.
It was the nos she is still getting from time to time that saved her.
Let. That. Sink. In.
Maria made me feel free. I also felt seen. Because, while I know saying this here might be counterproductive, it gave me the courage to say things out loud. For once, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with social media. Then she said, “The things that actually connect with people are never the planned, polished moments. They are the unscripted ones, the ones where I’m at the airport with my hair uncombed, reacting in real time to something that just broke my heart. You cannot program authenticity.”
The performed version of visibility, the one where you calculate what to show and how to frame it and what reaction it might get, will never land the way the real thing does.
So I did as I do: I made a list. Because if we are going to talk honestly about what visibility costs, we also have to talk about the rewards that only show up once you start being real.
When There’s Ego… You Better Call an Amigo!
Here Are the Rewards Visibility Has Given Me Thus Far:
1. People stop performing for you. When you stop performing, something almost miraculous happens: the people around you se relaja y coopera también. Your friends start texting the real version of what’s going on. Realness is contagious.
2. You find out who your actual people are. UFF! This one can be painful. And yes, some of them will surprise you. Your real community, your real friends, they were always there, just waiting for you to stop showing up as the curated version so they could finally reach you.
3. ¡Al carajo la impostora! Not because you’ve conquered the fear that comes with the so-called syndrome, let’s be honest, it still shows up at times, but because you’ve stopped pretending you don’t have it, which turns out to be most of the work.
4. You stop wasting energy on rooms that were never yours. This is a big one. You realize you were exhausted not from doing too much, but from doing too much in the wrong places, for the wrong people, in the wrong language. Visibility without alignment is just a longer commute to nowhere. Es energía dispersa.
5. The things you actually say start to land. Like, people get you. The thing you said at the airport, hair undone, half-frustrated, completely yourself. That imperfecta version of you starts making sense to the world.
6. You get to stop pretending the cost wasn’t real. You spent years absorbing the cost of visibility sin nombrarlo. It brought you loneliness, anxiety, and relationships that got less AND more of you than they deserved. Naming it makes you free to do it differently. Ponle nombre y apellido.
7. Being seen starts to feel like rest, not work. And that is the whole reward I’m starting to experience through my work at Her Wisdom Era, alongside the only woman I’d want to do this with, Ana. When visibility stops being a performance and becomes a truth, you stop feeling depleted. You start feeling more YOU.
What María shared with us will stay with me for a very long time. She said she still talks to her therapist about how to manage the tension between the public person and the private woman. She said it still kind of freaks her out. And she said that if being public and being available brings more love and security to our fellow Latinas, she is down for it. That is not ambivalence. That is wisdom! Knowing the cost and showing up anyway because the reason is bigger than the discomfort.
BOOM!
And that is what Her Wisdom Era is asking of all of us, me first. To open up to the possibilities being visible may bring. And to live our midlives with joy and freedom, even when scary, and then tell the truth about what that has been like.
That, as it turns out, is worth being visible for.
¿Seguimo’?
Mucho love,
Cristy
