Ruth Rathblott hid part of her identity for decades: She had a limb deficiency due to a congenital condition called amniotic band syndrome.
Out of fears that she would not find a job, love or acceptance, Rathblott hid her left hand from coworkers and dating partners for 25 years.
“It’s incredibly exhausting,” said Rathblott. “It takes a toll on our mental health and our physical health, and honestly, it’s lonely.”
After Rathblott decided to stop hiding, she became passionate about encouraging other people to do the same. Her new book is called “Unhide and Seek: Live Your Best Life, Do Your Best Work.”
In it, she argues that hiding aspects of yourself – such as a disability, your sexual identity, or your mental health status – isn’t just bad for you; it’s bad for everyone.
She discussed why people hide, the line between unhiding and oversharing, and more with WNYC’s Alison Stewart on a recent episode of “All of It.” An edited version of their conversation is below.
Alison Stewart: When was the first time you realized you were different?
Rathblott: Like many of us growing up, I didn’t think I was. My parents encouraged me to do everything. They kept me going.
Then I got on a yellow school bus to start a new high school, and someone stared just a little bit too long at my hand when they got on.
For the first time, I felt super nervous, and I felt different, and so my instinct was to just tuck it in my pocket, thinking it would just be for that bus ride. That was the first moment of really thinking, “Wow, I’m different.”
When did hiding stop working for you?
Rathblott: I think hiding is a continuum. It’s a journey. We’re always unhiding and learning and thinking about those parts of ourselves that are different. With hiding, there’s always a fear of rejection, a fear of judgment.
For me, hiding stopped working 25 years later. I literally hid my hand for 25 years from friends, from coworkers, from dating relationships.
What were you afraid of?
Rathblott: I was afraid somebody wouldn’t like me if they found out. I was afraid of what people would say: “Oh, it’s disgusting,” or, “Oh, it’s awful,” because those were the comments in my head.
I was afraid that people would reject me, they wouldn’t hire me, they wouldn’t date me, they wouldn’t love me. I think what it came to was I didn’t actually love myself, but that’s what I was so afraid of.
What did you learn about yourself when you decided to stop hiding?
Rathblott: The first step in unhiding is self-awareness. It’s that space of acknowledging it to yourself. What is it that I’m hiding? How is it holding me back? How is it holding me back from connecting? How is it holding me back from thriving and feeling like I belong?
The first piece of that journey was actually just acknowledging what it is that I was hiding and how it was holding me back.
I think what comes along with unhiding is this immense freedom. This relief, this joy that, “Wow, I don’t have to keep up a facade anymore.” Something I’ve learned about hiding is most of us are hiding something, and yet we walk around thinking we’re the only ones.
It’s incredibly exhausting. It takes a toll on our mental health and our physical health, and honestly, it’s lonely. It keeps us feeling disconnected from ourselves and others.
How did you feel isolated when you were in hiding?
Rathblott: The interesting thing about hiding is that you never get to let down your guard because you’re always worrying about someone finding out, and so you’re actually never really present with anyone. You’re just constantly thinking about: When’s the next time? How is someone going to find out? When’s the time that someone’s going to discover it?
You’re always worried about that, so it keeps you at a distance from people. It keeps you building walls around yourself in relationships with people and relationships with yourself because you’re not actually present.
Here’s a question for you. This came through via text. “I assist people with disabilities interested in employment and wonder how you would approach this conversation with people who feel hiding is safer, better, and necessary at work.”
Rathblott: It’s interesting. In this book, I definitely talked about this concept of what I call “strategic hiding” because there are still times and places right now where it is unsafe to unhide.
We are not at a place in some workplaces where it feels safe – where we’ve created that safe place for people to unhide their differences or disabilities – and so I say start small. Especially with people with disabilities who feel like it’s not a safe environment. Start with a manager who may be safe. Start with an HR director who may be safe. Start with a coworker you trust.
But start small – because I’ve had people share stories about their managers not wanting to tell their managers about caretaking a family member or even having kids. Yet when they talk to a manager about it or an HR person, they’re able to start to understand that person can support them differently. They can actually show up for them differently and make work accessible.
When you think about the line between unhiding and oversharing, what is it? What’s appropriate for work?
Rathblott: So there are boundaries. I think there are a couple of things that come up with the “open book” versus unhiding. It’s thinking about: Why is it that you’re sharing what you’re sharing? Why is it important? How does it make you feel connected to someone else? How is it allowing you to let someone really know you, and at the same time, not having them carry that weight of what it is that you’re hiding or what you’re dealing with? And so there’s a fine boundary.
The other piece is that unhiding is a privilege because there are certain groups in this world that we’re in right now and this year, for whom it’s unsafe to unhide.
When I think about the open book, it’s about allowing for space to not have to share everything. I think about different communities, like the trans community or the Jewish community, there are places where it feels unsafe. When I think about the boundaries around unhiding, it’s knowing your audience. It’s knowing yourself first. It’s inviting someone in.
It’s building that community so that you have that shared experience and then sharing your story so that someone else can see themselves in you.
When I think about even the callers that you just had, it’s about allowing for just one other person to know what’s going on and then start to build that community.
A lot of kids are heading back to school, and it’s a place where people are self-conscious. What would you tell a little kid about how to grapple with the pressures to conform or the pressures to hide?
Rathblott: As someone who worked with young people for my entire career, for 25 years, I think that there’s a lot of pressure, and I think there’s pressure with social media, right? There’s pressure with conforming, even in the classroom, and with friends. It’s also a natural and healthy development stage.
The idea of fitting in with your peers, that is a natural Erikson stage of development. I think it’s about finding that one person that you can feel connected to or finding that one club or after-school activity or in-school activity where you feel like you found your people.
It’s starting to build that and find safe places. I also think that it’s OK to also explore counseling and different ways to deal with something that you may feel is different about yourself.
You say that people with disabilities have been left out of that equation a little bit. Why do you think it’s important to include disability within DEI?
Rathblott: There’s a couple of things, I think, yes, when you look at some of the statistics and the research, diversity has definitely been left out. I think there was a statistic that I talked about in my TEDx talk, which is this idea that 90% of companies at the time of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd’s death, when that ignited, the idea was, “Let’s jump into DEI.”
Ninety percent of companies immediately rushed in, and only 4% of those companies actually included disability as part of their agenda with DEI.
What’s interesting about disability is, it’s actually the largest minority group. It cuts across all lenses of diversity. You can be any race, any gender, any age, any sexual orientation and have a disability. Disability is truly, in terms of the world population, the largest population, so it’s intersectional.
Also, it can happen to us at any time. We can be born with a disability, we can acquire a disability, or we can be taking care of somebody and a caretaker to somebody with a disability. It’s really a conversation for all of us, so it’s important that it gets included in that DEI conversation.
We have somebody who has a text that says, “The HR manager is never a safe person to go to.” Have you heard that before?
Rathblott: I think it depends on the company. I’ve heard it, and it’s the part of the work that I do, which is, how do we connect with the HR teams to start to build a culture of unhiding, a culture of trust, a culture where people can feel seen and belong and feel heard? Yes, I’ve heard it, and yet, at the same time, I don’t want to disrespect really great HR managers who are out there, who are fighting on behalf of people and championing people.
Have you ever been in a situation where you really thought to yourself, “Did that really happen to me that I didn’t get that job because….?”
Rathblott: No, because I was hiding so much. The HR manager did not know about my hand. Nobody knew about my hand. I got so good at hiding where it was not part of my interview.
Dominique’s calling from Brooklyn. Hi, Dominique, thanks for calling.
Dominique: I’m actually hiding right now – that’s not my name. I am one of the millions of women who, after menopause, lost estrogen and cannot have sexual intercourse anymore. It’s extremely painful, and I cannot tell anyone. It’s extraordinarily shameful.
It’s because of the way society looks at older women, so women lose not just their youthful looks, they lose this huge part of their personality that they cannot talk about. I still date, and what do I say? “We can only go so far. Are you OK with this?”
I even went as far as to change my post for a brief time on one of the dating sites to say, “I love sex. I love all of it, except I can’t do this. What do you think?”
I actually got three responses, and they were positive, but that was it. I lost my nerve, I can’t even tell friends. How do I tell a date? If you really like someone, you get to a certain point, and then it ends.
Yes.
Dominique: Really, it’s huge and nobody talks about it. You can’t really unhide this.
Yes, I’m going to have Ruth weigh in. Well, first of all, do you have your response?
Rathblott: I think that what’s interesting, Dominique, is the idea that you’re sharing in terms of thinking that you’re the only one and that there are so many of us who have felt like that.
I think why I share my story is because it allows for others to then start to say, “Oh, I have felt like that, too.”
I’m just throwing this out there and inviting you to think about it because you’ve started that journey of acknowledging what it is that you’re hiding: Start by inviting in one person to talk to about it like you’re doing here, because there are so many of us, again, that will understand or have understood or have gone through it.
The third is the idea of building your community because it can be as easy as a Google search or even just finding an online community. I know personally, Dominique, other women who are managing through what you’re managing through.
The reason I share my story, again, is so that others can say, “Yes, I’m hiding, too.” It often feels like we’re the only one. It often feels exhausting and lonely, and that no one will like us or date us or love us. Actually, when we start to let down some of those guards, we become much more connected to others.