YOU WERE APPLAUDED FOR THE MASK — NOT THE REAL YOU

A GinkgoMinds Blog by Jo Oswin

They clapped when you smiled through it. When you held your heartbreak like it was a bouquet. When you swallowed your truth and called it maturity. When you cleaned up other people’s mess and didn’t ask for anything back.

They said you were strong. Brave. So composed. But what they really meant was

:“You make your pain easy to ignore.”

No one applauds the girl who cries too loud. Or the woman who doesn’t bounce back fast enough. No one throws flowers for the part of you that breaks inconveniently, that feels too much, that can’t hold it together.

And so, slowly, you learned: To smile a little tighter. To cry with the door locked. To offer more than you have — and punish yourself for wanting anything in return.

This is how you end up being loved for your armour.

Not your softness. Not your rage. Not your joy. Not your realness.

Just the role you played so well that even you forgot it was theatre.

You became their safe place while carrying your own war. And no one asked where your wounds were bleeding underneath your service.

Because applause is a tricky thing. It sounds like love. It feels like worth. But it’s often just the sound of people enjoying the version of you that doesn’t make them uncomfortable.

You were never rewarded for your truth. You were rewarded for your containment.

And now? You wonder why vulnerability feels like danger. Why softness makes your skin itch. Why being seen leaves you nauseous, like you’ve done something wrong.

Because it was never safe to show up unfiltered. Because love was earned, not received. Because validation was conditional. And now your nervous system flinches at real intimacy — not because you’re broken, but because you were trained that realness has consequences.

But here’s the thing: The mask may have kept you safe — but it also kept you lonely.

You can’t be loved for who you are when no one gets to meet her.

You can’t be held when you keep showing up as the version of you that never needs holding.

And that performance?It may have won you the crowd, but it cost you the parts of you that were never meant to be palatable.

It’s not your job to be digestible.It’s not your job to keep the peace.It’s not your job to make healing look beautiful.

It’s your job to come back to yourself. To take the mask off — even if your hands shake.To grieve the years you spent earning love instead of receiving it.To let someone look you in the eye and see everything — and stay.

You don’t owe anyone a version of you that doesn’t feel like home.

And if the applause stops when you get honest? Good. Let it.

Silence is better than praise for your prison.

🖤 WANT TO GO DEEPER?

Inside Patreon, we unravel these survival patterns.We stop performing. We start feeling.We reclaim the messy, brilliant, hard-to-hold truth of who we are when no one’s watching.

And in Who the Fuck Am I Becoming?, my 10-part workshop series, we name the armour. We throw it off.We learn to love what’s underneath — even the parts we were taught to shame.

Because real freedom doesn’t come with applause. It comes with self-recognition. And that, my love, is louder than anything they could ever clap for.

xx Josi