What Are You Keeping Hidden That You Don't Need to?
The hawthorn is in bloom. All month it has been preparing for this, its thorns present long before its flowers. May is the moment it lets itself be seen.
I have been sitting with this question for a few weeks now, and a recent conversation with Erin Rogers, founder of ERA Collective and a genuinely wonderful leader, brought it back to the surface for me. Erin had a mentor, a senior woman at the professional services firm where she worked, who looked at her one day and noticed a small streak of pink in her hair.
"Why don't you just do the whole head?" she said. "Why not go full pink?"
Erin described the effect of that question as transformative. Not because of the hair itself, though the hair did follow, and became, she says, part of her personal brand. But because someone had seen her. Really seen her. Had looked past the professional surface and noticed what she was quietly, tentatively, allowing to show. And had said: more of that, please.
The question that came to me in that moment was this: what are you keeping hidden that you don't need to? And its quieter companion: what would you like others to see, that you aren't letting them?
These are not comfortable questions. But they are important ones. And May, the month of the hawthorn, feels like the right time to sit with them.
The Hawthorn and the Hidden
The hawthorn is one of the most contradictory trees I know. For most of the year it is all thorns, defensive, not easily approached. And then in May, it erupts. Clouds of white blossom, a scent that carries on the wind, a tree entirely transformed. It did not become a different tree. It was always this. It simply came into its season.
I think many of us are a little like the hawthorn. We carry our thorns as protection, and quite often they have served us well. But underneath, something is waiting to bloom. Something we have been keeping back, sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of habit, sometimes because we have simply never been asked to bring it forward.
What people asked Erin afterwards, the ones who came to her workshops, the ones who knocked on her office door, was not how she had done it. It was how she had found the courage to be who she wanted to be. In the most visible way. In an environment that had never seen it done before. That is the question underneath the question. Not what are you hiding, but what would it mean to stop?
Focus, energy and presence
There is another thread running through my thinking this month, one that also emerged from my conversation with Erin. I have been thinking about presence: what it actually takes to be fully present, to ourselves, to the people we lead, to the moments we are in.
I have come to think of it like this: Focus + Energy = Presence.
When we understand our own rhythms, when we protect the conditions that allow us to think and feel well, we can bring our full attention to what and who is in front of us. When we are depleted or running on empty, we are there in body but not in spirit. And the people around us, the ones who look to us for steadiness, can feel the difference.
Erin spoke about this with great honesty. She shared something of a very difficult period in her family's life, and of learning, through it, that the most important thing she could do for the people she loved was to take care of herself first.
Her daughter, with a clarity and courage that moved me deeply, found a way to tell her that what she needed most was for her mum to keep living her life. To go to yoga. To be normal. That Erin's presence, in the anxious, hovering sense, was not what was needed. Her presence, in the full and replenished sense, was.
The most important thing she could do for the people she cared for was to care for herself first.
This is not a new idea. And yet it is extraordinary how often we need to be reminded of it. How we pour ourselves out for others and call it leadership, when what the people around us actually need is for us to be replenished, present, and real.
On boundaries and the courage to hold them
Closely related to presence is the question of boundaries. Not as walls, but as the conditions that make it possible to give well. Erin spoke about this directly: that guardrails change as life changes, but that learning to protect your energy, and giving yourself permission to do so, is one of the most important leadership lessons she wished she had absorbed earlier.
When the ground is moving, when the team is changing, when the demands are relentless, the temptation is to abandon the boundaries that sustain us. We tell ourselves this is not the time for self-care, that we can run on empty for a little longer. We cannot. And nor can the people who are looking to us.
Knowing your rhythms matters. Knowing when you do your best thinking, when your energy is high, when you need space before you can give well to others. These are not indulgences. They are the conditions of good leadership.
An invitation for May, and for June
As the hawthorn blooms and the days lengthen, I want to leave you with a few questions to carry with you. Perhaps on a walk. Perhaps in a quiet moment at the start of the day.
What are you keeping hidden that you no longer need to?
What would it mean to let a little more of yourself be seen?
Where are you depleting yourself when what the people around you actually need is for you to be replenished?
And who in your team right now needs you to truly notice them?
These questions do not have quick answers. They need space, movement, and often another person alongside you to help them surface. That is precisely what Walking Partnerships was created for. Going outside to go inside, walking and talking in nature, is one of the most powerful ways I know to create the conditions in which this kind of thinking becomes possible. Leaders tell me afterwards that they came away with more clarity than they arrived with, not because anyone gave them the answers, but because the space, the movement, and the conversation helped them find their own.
The themes of this blog, what we keep hidden, how we manage our energy, how we hold our boundaries when everything is shifting, are exactly the kinds of questions we explore on a Walking Partnerships day. Not in a structured, agenda-driven way. But through genuine conversation, in the open air, with other leaders who are navigating something similar.
The next Walking Partnerships day is on 25th June at Horsell Common in Surrey. It is a small group, and I would love for it to include more leaders who are in the middle of exactly this kind of transition. If that is you, or if it sounds like someone you know, please do get in touch.
If this has resonated with you, I would love to have a conversation. The framework Lucy Kidd and I created together, Collaboration Equation, is built on Curiosity, Care and Courage. It is designed for leaders and their teams going through change and gives you a practical, relational way forward.
Get in touch directly at anni@annitownend.com or visit annitownend.com
With warmth, Anni