Authenticity at work and home? It’s all about the snakes….

I’m sitting on my living room floor with Vivi, hot-gluing rubber snakes to a black swim cap. We’ve been at this for an hour. The glue isn’t strong enough for the heavy serpents, and they keep dropping to the carpet like defeated enemies. We’ve now graduated to a staple gun. The snakes MUST stay on. Vivi MUST be Medusa.

“Why not Athena?” I suggest, thinking of the goddess of wisdom as a potentially easier alternative. “You love Greek mythology. Athena is powerful.”

“Because Athena is BORING, Mom. I want people to actually be scared of me!”

Fair enough.

WHY MEDUSA?

Vivi has been devouring Greek mythology lately. She loves the stories that showcase powers across both dark and light. She debated being Athena briefly, but Halloween begs for something fiercer. She wanted to SCARE people. She revels in the idea of the gorgon who turns mortals to stone with just a glance. She thinks her ice-blue eyes (what a Game of Thrones fan once called her “White Walker eyes”) are perfect for the role.

My daughter celebrates the dark along with the light.

And honestly? It’s thrilling to watch her try on dark spirits, to see her scare herself a little and her friends even more. There’s something about the contrast that makes coming back inside to our warm home after trick or treating even cozier. When it’s all over, she’ll spread out her Halloween loot on the living room floor, safe and sound. 

She’s not becoming evil. She’s exploring a different kind of power, testing what frightens her. And when the night ends, she’ll peel off that snake-studded cap and return to being herself, a little braver for having tried on the dark.

MY OWN HALLOWEEN MEMORY

This takes me back to age fifteen, upstate New York, piles of leaves everywhere. My friends and I were in Shelly’s attic on Halloween night with a Ouija board. We scared ourselves to death trying to conjure spirits. We’d scream anytime the wind blew, convinced it was a demon we’d summoned.

But we also held hands and hugged each other. Reassured one another that maybe—maybe—it was just a game.

That warmth in the dark brought us closer, united against the dark. 

THE COST OF HIDING

This Halloween ritual has me thinking about something I rarely discussed early in my career: the cost of hiding our complexity.

We’re told to “bring your whole self to work,” but I’ve learned that advice needs nuance. Not every workplace is psychologically safe for full authenticity. I’ve worked in places where showing vulnerability felt dangerous and admitting struggle could be weaponized.

But there’s also danger in pretending.

When we perform a fake version of ourselves day after day, people notice. We can’t build real trust. We miss out on opportunities to inspire others and connect more deeply. We exhaust ourselves by maintaining an illusion.

I recently let a colleague know how I manage my anxiety. Instead of judgment, he shared his own strategies. Two high achievers, just trying to help each other out with our inner demons. That conversation wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept stapling on the perfect-professional mask.

LESSONS FROM AN UNLIKELY SOURCE

Vivi begged me to watch K-pop demon hunters. I really didn’t want to. But I ended up loving it—like really loving it. I’m the one playing the lead song “Golden” on repeat in our kitchen now.

The show features a K-pop girl band that hunts demons (including a demon boy band). The feminism alone was marvelous, but what struck me was the main character’s arc.

The lead singer is half-demon herself: mother a hunter, father a ghoul. She spends most of the movie covering up her demon marks, riddled with shame. She was instructed that “our faults and fears must never be seen.”

But here’s what happens: she starts to lose her voice the more she tries to hide the marks.

Only when she decides to make peace with herself and tell her story does her voice come back. At the finale, when demons are about to take over the world, her voice is most brilliant when she sings openly about all that she is. The darkness actually diminishes.

Always hunting for a teachable moment, I asked Vivi if she had demons inside her. 

“Yes, sometimes,” she said matter-of-factly. 

“Does Mommy?”

 “Oh yeah…” Long pause. 

We both laughed.

WHAT WE’RE REALLY HIDING

Authenticity at work? Yeah, at work everyone battles demons. 

• The executive who hides their ADHD while it’s actually the source of their brilliant pattern recognition. 
• The leader masking anxiety that drives their exceptional risk assessment skills. 
• The manager concealing past failure that shaped their best judgment.

Or me, trying to acknowledge the anxiety-inducing perfectionism so I can better live with it. So I can stop letting shame spread like poison through everything I create.

What if we stopped treating our struggles as disqualifications and started viewing them as data? As connection points? Or an impact for creation?

I’m on a constant quest to understand and make peace with my own darkness. The crushing anxiety. The trauma I’ve worked through. The co-parenting challenges. We all have our shadows, right? And then we have light.

True growth doesn’t demand we be only one thing. It doesn’t ask us to exile the parts we’re afraid of.

LEADERS WHO STOPPED HIDING

Some leaders are showing us what’s possible. Arianna Huffington openly discusses her collapse from exhaustion that transformed how she built Thrive Global. Simone Biles withdrew from Olympic events to prioritize her mental health, redefining what strength looks like. Prince Harry has been remarkably open about his therapy journey and grief.

They didn’t share to perform vulnerability. They shared because hiding was costing them more than honesty ever could.

BACK TO VIVI

In a few days, assuming my stapling works, Vivi will put on her Medusa costume and transform into something fierce and monstrous. She’ll parade through the neighborhood turning people to stone with her icy gaze. She’ll collect her candy. She’ll come home.

And then she’ll peel off that swim cap full of snakes and become herself again, a little braver for having tried on the dark.

WHAT HALLOWEEN OFFERS

I love Halloween. It offers us a chance to acknowledge we’re not just light. There’s shadow in all of us. We can look at it, laugh at it, even celebrate it and still come home to warmth, love, and belonging.

 The scariest thing isn’t the darkness itself. It’s pretending it doesn’t exist.

What would become possible if we stopped hiding? If we let some of those snakes fall and saw that we’re still whole, still worthy, still powerful, maybe even more so?

Here’s to keeping the real snakes on. The ones that are actually part of who we are.