How much of your identity is shaped by the need to be seen a certain way? In this reflection on authenticity, Mariel draws from T.S. Eliot, The Beatles, and her own mask-making journey to explore what it means to gently unhook from the false self.
Most of us construct some version of a public self: a curated identity we use to navigate the world. It helps us fit in, gain approval, or avoid rejection. We’re taught to craft these masks so early that we often mistake them for our true selves.
“Eleanor Rigby / Puts on the face that she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for?”
— The Beatles
This haunting lyric captures the loneliness of living through persona. The mask we show the world may be pleasing, competent, or even beloved. But it is not the whole story. When we identify too strongly with that partial self, we begin to lose contact with the tender, dynamic truth underneath.
In my early twenties, I participated in a clowning intensive with Richard Pochinko, who used mask work as a path of inner revelation. Over several weeks, I created the masks you see in the photo. Each one revealed an aspect of myself I hadn’t yet learned to name. It was one of my earliest experiences of integration: encountering not just the face I showed the world, but the many selves I had hidden away.
This experience laid the groundwork for a lifetime of helping others reconnect with their own wholeness. In somatic therapy, the body leads. It remembers who you were before the performance began. It gently invites you to come home.
This isn’t about ripping off the mask. It’s about softening our attachment to the false self. We discover that we are more, not less, when we stop trying to be only what others expect.
So I offer these questions as doorways:
- What face do you prepare to meet the world?
- Who are you beneath the roles you play?
- What part of you is asking to be met, seen, felt, and lived?
In the end, it’s not about rejecting the mask. It’s about remembering the Self who made it.