The Courage To Be Seen: Allowing Your Whole Self To Be Received
Episode 37: The Courage To Be Seen
In this episode I share my experience with being visible online and how I let go of old patterns and beliefs. I share what’s next for me as I step into a new and unexpected role and share more of myself. Listen to this episode when you are feeling unsure of what’s next and need a little encouragement to allow yourself to be fully received exactly as you are.
Episode Details
Summary
In this episode, I’m reflecting on what it means to be visible and how my relationship with being seen is beginning to change. For a long time, sharing parts of myself could feel like asking something of other people. Now, I’m starting to see visibility as an opportunity for connection, presence, and meaningful impact.
I share about a new opportunity to write the newsletter for my local yarn shop and what it felt like to become more visible within that community through WIP Wednesday. Even though being seen brought up discomfort and old fears, it also gave me the opportunity to receive the support that was already there and recognize how aligned this new role feels.
This episode explores the idea that our presence can be meaningful without needing to control how it is received. We do not always have to know exactly how our work will help someone. Sometimes our role is simply to show up, share what feels true, and trust that the right people will find something in it.
I’m also finally sharing something I’ve been creating behind the scenes: a new YouTube channel called From the Shoreline. It will be a lighter, more creative glimpse into my life, where I’ll share knitting projects, writing updates, the journey of working on my novel, and more of the everyday creative process.
Starting something new feels exciting, playful, uncomfortable, and a little scary all at once. But it also feels deeply aligned with my North Star of creating meaningful ways for us to spend time together.
This is an invitation to consider what visibility might mean for you. What if being seen does not have to be about performance or approval? What if your presence, your creativity, and your willingness to share yourself are already enough to create connection?
This episode is for you if…
You’re ready to step into a leadership position and be more visible in your life
You’re curious about starting a podcast and/or a YouTube channel and want to get a peek behind the scenes
You crave meaningful connections and relationships but find it hard to allow yourself to be fully seen
You feel like you’ve been in hiding and are ready to step out into the light
You’re a creative who wants to share more of your gifts but aren’t sure where to begin
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Welcome to The Shoreline, where we explore the tender in-between seasons of the human experience. My name is Kim, and I'm here to support you as you navigate your next becoming. Here, we don't fix, we listen. We don't rush, we allow. Hello and welcome. If you're new here, I'm so happy you've made your way to The Shoreline. And if you're returning, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here. So I would like to share what has been coming forward for me and what I've been thinking about lately. And that is the idea of being visible. And I've shared before that I'm in a season of stepping into being more of a leader just in life. And I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be visible. And I think that some old patterns have been coming up of thinking about when I share something, feeling almost like it's a burden to have people watch what I'm sharing or take in what I'm sharing. And I've noticed there's a shift in myself of thinking about being visible, really as an opportunity to have impact on others and to be of service. And I've shared my new North Star a few episodes ago, and that is how can I create meaningful ways to spend time together. And I think that this really relates to being visible and seeing visibility as an opportunity to really have an impact. Because you never know how just your presence can impact someone else. It's not always about what you do or what you say or even what you share online. It's really just your presence. All of those things are ways to share your being and your presence with someone else. And it's been really interesting. I have had some unexpected ideas and opportunities come forward. And it's really been testing my desire to be visible and my beliefs on visibility. And it's been honestly uncomfortable. So the most unexpected opportunity that's come forward recently is that I've been given the opportunity to write the newsletter for my local yarn shop. And I've done email marketing in the past. I used to freelance for an agency and I had clients of my own. And I really enjoyed doing that for other people and helping them with marketing. I learned a lot when I had my jewelry company, and I really wanted to use those skills to help other people. And so I've done it before, and the opportunity to write the newsletter kind of just fell into my lap. And in a lot of ways, it makes sense and I'm feeling really excited about the opportunity to share more about my local yarn shop and to help build community and really to support the yarn shop and hopefully help it grow and expand. And I'm really just excited to be part of it and to be really rooted in that community. And so from that opportunity and taking on the newsletter, in the knitting world, there's something called Whip Wednesday. A whip is a work in progress. So something that you are working on and then it's the initials WIP and we call it Whip Wednesday. So the local yarn shop shares an Instagram reel every Wednesday where all of the people who work at the yarn shop share what they're working on. It's something as a customer and part of the community of the yarn store, I really look forward to and it's so fun just to see what everyone's working on and the yarns they're loving, the patterns they're loving. Because of this recent opportunity to write the newsletter, I was also invited to be part of Whip Wednesday. So this week I recorded and it went up. And on Wednesday, it was really beautiful to see all of the comments on the real and people being really excited for me to be part of the community in a new way. And what was really interesting is that I noticed in myself, I felt a lot of discomfort, just felt really uncomfortable to be seen. And I had all of these thoughts kind of in my mind of like, what if this isn't right? Or what if this upsets people? And my mind kind of just went wild for a little bit. And then I came back to my North Star, I came back to feeling really aligned and rooted in this opportunity. And I really just took a moment to really let all of the positivity sink in and to feel all of the support. And it really shifted something in me. And I started to think about this beautiful opportunity I have to be more visible in the community and the impact I can have on others and how fun it could be to share what I'm working on and what I'm passionate about in knitting. And it's aligning with other ideas and opportunities as well. And it just felt like, wow, this really makes sense. And it's not something I necessarily would have written down and gone after, but I'm so happy that I said yes and that this opportunity flowed to me. And I'm just really excited to be more of a presence in the community and to share more of myself and what I'm passionate about. I really feel like I'm being kind of nudged to just be more seen and to share more freely and to not worry so much about the impact that it's having. I don't need to decide how it's going to affect someone, but I can really set the intention that I want to have an impact in a positive way and for my presence to hopefully create something meaningful for someone else. And I think that's what I really mean by my North Star of how can I create meaningful ways to spend time together. It's really just infusing my presence into everything that I do and everything that I share in hopes that someone takes something away from that, whether it's a shift in their mindset or just feeling really seen and supported, or just enjoying learning something new, or just enjoying being present in with whatever it is that I'm sharing. With that, I've been sharing that I have something that I've been working on behind the scenes and it's been an idea that I've been really excited about. And it's finally time where I feel like I can share it with you. So I want to share with you, if you're listening to this in linear time, then it will be next week for you. I am launching a YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this at a different time, then the YouTube channel might already be live. So that's the announcement. I'm starting a YouTube channel and it's going to be a podcast or just videos that are related to this podcast, but slightly different. So we'll rewind. A few months ago, I met with a podcast strategist, just wanting to see how I can support my podcast and grow it, and just wanting to see if we were a right fit to work together. And she suggested that I put my episodes on YouTube and start videoing. And I sat with that and I felt kind of this pressure to do that because that's what everyone does. And I ultimately decided not to, because I think what makes this podcast, this space so special, is that it's audio only. I think that it would change the nature of what this is if I were to suddenly be on video. And I want this to feel really intimate, and I want to be able to be really vulnerable and not think about being on camera and adding that extra element in. So this podcast will always be, or for the foreseeable future, will be audio only. But I've been feeling this nudge to be on YouTube and to be in that space. And simultaneously, I've been feeling more and more excited about sharing my knitting. It's become a hobby that I'm really passionate about. So bringing all of that together, I thought it would be really exciting to share more of myself and to start a YouTube channel. And so the idea behind it, it's called From the Shoreline and it's really a glimpse into my life as a creative. And I like to think of it as kind of my creative studio. So I'll be sharing knitting updates, what I'm working on, what's inspiring me. And then also, I'll be sharing more regular writing updates. So I want to also document the journey of writing my novel and all of the ideas and kind of everything that goes with that pursuit. And I thought it would be cool to kind of share more of a behind the scenes look at that in real time and give you insight into what I'm working on and how I'm pursuing publishing and just what all of that looks like. So if that's something that's interesting to you and you want to follow along, you can find me on YouTube. My channel is my name, and then it's also called From the Shoreline. And I will put a link to it in the show notes for you. So that is coming August 24th, and I'm super excited to be sharing that. And I think also it feels like it's kind of the missing piece to the puzzle. I think here we're very focused on transformation, growth, evolution, a little bit of spirituality, being in between space and what that looks like and what we're exploring. And my intention is that my YouTube channel From the Shoreline will be a little bit lighter and more of the creative side of my life and just giving you just more of a glimpse into who I am as a person and just another element of myself because the reality is we are all very complex. We are layered. We are multifaceted. I identify as being a multi-passionate creative. And so I want to have all these different outlets that I can share and just put my energy and my presence out into the world. So that's what's coming. I'm super excited about it. And it's just another opportunity for me to be more visible, for us to spend time together, and for me to share and give you a glimpse into my life. And so with that, I think, yeah, it feels really exciting and also a little bit scary, if I'm being honest, and a little bit uncomfortable. It's been a long time since I've been in front of a camera. In any capacity, I think after I closed my jewelry company, I really needed to take a step back and to go on a journey. And I've been slowly coming back and feeling like I'm ready to share. And so this is just another step forward on that journey. And I'm not exactly sure what's to come, but I'm feeling really good about it. And I've already started work on recording and playing around with editing. And that's actually been really joyful for me. I've been loving it. I didn't think that I would, but I was able to meet with one of my knitting friends who also has a YouTube channel. And she gave me a lot of tips and showed me kind of what she does. And taking all of that information she gave me, it's made it really fun and it feels really playful and exciting to share. It's really unexpected. It's not something I really saw for myself, but at the same time, it feels really aligned and really right, even though it does feel a little bit scary to put myself out there in a new way. It's all of it. And I think that's part of growth and being in the in-between space, is that you can hold things with complexity and with layered emotions, right? Because nothing is ever just one thing. As I said before, we are really complex and layered and we can hold multiple things at once. So it's exciting, it's a little bit scary, a little bit uncomfortable, but it feels like it really aligns with my North Star and with this pursuit of just wanting to have an impact and wanting to step into being a leader in my own life and being more visible and wanting to really have an impact on others and to be of service. So it really feels like the right next step forward. And I think that's the beautiful thing about evolving and transforming and being in the in-between space is that you don't need to have all the answers, right? You really just need to know what step forward you're going to take next and what direction you might want to be heading in without needing to know the whole path, right? You can decide which mountain you want to climb, which hike you want to go on, and you can choose that path without knowing everything that's coming next, all of the switchbacks, when there will be hills, when there will be valleys, when you'll be in the woods, like when you'll be going through a lot of elevation gain. That's part of the fun of it is not knowing every single detail. And so that's where I'm at, friends. And yeah, I'm hoping that you are excited about the YouTube channel as well. And if not, that's okay too. I'm always here for you. This podcast isn't going anywhere. I really just want this next pursuit to just to be another option available to you and to really support this space as well. I think it's something that will be complimentary and not in competition with it. So that's what I have for you today. If you are wanting to dive deeper into your own inner landscape, or you're not sure what the next right step is for you wherever you're at, I want you to know I offer guidance and support through The Shoreline Private Coaching Sessions. So in those sessions, you meet with me one-on-one every week for six months with support available in between sessions. And you can find more information or schedule time to chat with me about The Shoreline Private Coaching Sessions on my website. The link is in the show notes for you. So that's where I'll leave you today, friend. I hope you take good care while the waves carry you closer and know that your next version is already waiting on the shore.
If you’re feeling stuck in the foggy middle and exhausted from having to always “figure it out” alone, I want to invite you to…
Explore The Shoreline Private Sessions to find aligned support as you navigate a significant life transition
Use this FREE intention setting worksheet to help you find your north star
Read this blog post to discover my favorite books to inspire creativity
Listen to this visualization when you want to tap into daydream energy and invite more peace and calm into your life
Kim Kogane is a writer and intuitive guide helping you navigate the tender in-between seasons. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her dog, Cauchy, and three cats. Learn more about Kim
