EMBRACING INVISIBILITY

When we were young, I’m sure you played superhero games with your friends—each of you choosing which superpower you’d carry. Even today, we joke and ask each other, “If you had a superpower, which one would you want?”

Mine has always been either teleportation—because transitioning into movement, tasks, or destinations has never been my strongest suit, thanks to ADHD and task transition dysfunction—or invisibility.

Invisibility has always fascinated me.

Ironically, I’m a speaker and writer with an aura that lights up rooms. I incite attention—often without trying. And while that can be beautiful, sometimes it’s unnecessary. Sometimes it attracts the wrong crowd. Sometimes it’s simply too loud for the season I’m in.

Recently, while spiraling through the process of rebuilding my brand—both my fashion business and my work in self-awareness—I had a realization:

Invisibility isn’t just a power we wish we had while rebuilding.
It’s an attribute we must practice.

Be invisible.

I’ve heard this phrase too many times to ignore it. You can’t listen to more than one or two podcasts from successful people without hearing some version of it: “Disappear. Build quietly. Stop announcing. Stop performing.”

Since my divorce, life—let’s call it the universe, or God, or divine timing—has forced me to practice invisibility.

Trying to meet bills, put food on the table, and consistently create content to attract readers and listeners meant I was dependent on my phone, my laptop, and the internet. Everything ran through a screen.

And then—my phone crashed.

My office crashed.

The very tool that fed us daily, just as sales were beginning to pick up, died. Suddenly, I wasn’t just disappointing customers with pending orders—I was completely in the dark.

I won’t lie. Anxiety visited. Briefly. Loudly.

But almost immediately, I got the message.

This was not punishment.
This was an invitation.

Time to possess invisibility.

Time to work quietly, in the dark.
Time to build systems, in the dark.

Two months before moving into my small, cozy apartment, I had set a goal: focus more on writing and limit my online fashion business to one or two days a week. Around the same time, I launched a new project—Urbanspy by Urbanthrift—sourcing pieces directly from Gikomba Market, the heart of Nairobi’s thrift fashion ecosystem.

The project started picking up.

But I didn’t have a system.

It was exciting—and exhausting.

Right before the move, I also let go of my nanny of over three years. I couldn’t afford her anymore, and my children and I had agreed: it would be just the three of us now. We were about to find our rhythm—or let the rhythm find us.

Transitioning from having live-in help for over a decade to suddenly doing everything—meals, chores, school runs, bills I didn’t even know existed—while rebuilding an integrated brand felt like chasing my own tail.

For two months, I wasn’t building.
I was reacting.

When my phone crashed, the lesson became undeniable:

I cannot build this life without strategy.
Without structure.
Without help.

With my phone on, I felt pressured to constantly create, post, chase clients—and inevitably scroll. Hours disappeared into videos preaching the very thing I wasn’t practicing: go quiet, build structure, master discipline.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

My phone dying was a blessing in disguise.

Yes, I may not make those few daily bucks right now. But faith—real faith—teaches us that provision isn’t only money in hand. Sometimes it’s time, clarity, and alignment.

I used to wonder how people talk about disappearing for three to six months—sometimes even a single month—when monetizing your art is the difference between survival and homelessness.

But they do it.

They sell cars.
They sell furniture.
They shut off phones.
They leave social media.
They distance themselves from noise—friends, family, opinions.

And while they’re invisible, they master discipline.

Invisibility isn’t isolation for punishment.
It’s isolation for integration.

It’s where self-awareness sharpens intuition.
Where healing becomes practical, not poetic.
Where strategy replaces chaos.
Where dreams stop floating and start landing in reality.

So this is me, in the dark—not lost, not broken.

Just building.

Quietly.