You need to come out to yourself right now
Being honest with ourselves is the highest form of self-care — reflections on the book, The Wedding People
Phoebe Stone has hit rock bottom and plans to end her life. She’s a 40-something professor of Victorian literature from the Midwest, grappling with a divorce, infertility, and the recent loss of her beloved cat. Determined to commit suicide in style, she books a stay at the opulent Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, her first-ever glimpse of the ocean. But as she stands on the brink, a lavish wedding party confuses her for a guest, setting her on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.
That’s the premise of The Wedding People by Alison Espatch. I just finished the audiobook and loved it. While the setup may sound heavy, it’s a funny, sharply written, heartwarming story.
The book got me thinking how important it is to “come out to yourself” every so often in life — and no, not just with a new color on the rainbow flag. By coming out to yourself, I mean accepting some truth that’s gurgling beneath the surface in your life, demanding to be heard. Perhaps it’s something you’ve been avoiding, denying, or unaware of. It could be anything — good or bad, big or small. The point is to push back against the gravitational pull of fake, performative living. Coming out to yourself is just a tool for being honest with yourself — a practice. Otherwise, it’s just all too easy to get disconnected from our own truths.
This is what happened to Phoebe. Over the years, as a married Midwest adjunct, she wasn’t real with herself or her husband. It was as though she was play-acting at life instead of living. Thus, her marriage became stale, and her husband ditched her for another, more fertile woman. It’s not like she set out for this to happen — it was a gradual, boiling-the-frog effect. Reconnecting with herself literally became a matter of life or death.
When she checks in at the Cornwall Inn to end it all, she realizes everyone else is there for a wedding and gets entangled with the wedding party, particularly the 20-something “bridezilla” Lila. Through these unexpected connections, Phoebe begins to reconnect with herself. The turning point comes when she’s so far down the path of not giving a f*ck that she starts telling the truth — to herself and others. In one scene, she blurts out to a man in the hotel hot tub that she wants to have sex with him, and it turns out to be the groom-to-be. Awkward!
Phoebe doesn’t consciously “come out to herself” per se, but through small acts of being honest with herself and others, she gains a new lease on life. Much of what causes this is her interaction with Lila and their unexpected bond. Phoebe is middle-aged and on the brink of giving up, while Lila is 28 and living out her Pinterest-perfect wedding fantasy while grieving her father’s death. To Lila, Phoebe is the one person she can be honest with at her own wedding. To Phoebe, Lila is a mirror who forces her confront the play-acting and dispassion in her former marriage. What if she had been more honest, more real? Could things have been different?
I won’t spoil the story, but Lila and her groom-to-be Gary aren’t exactly living in their truths either. Indeed, all of the main characters are disconnected from themselves in different ways and for different reasons. Life is performative for all three of them until various truths pierce the veneer over the course of the story.
The book made me reflect on my own reckonings with personal truths — those phases of feeling disconnected and unhappy, caught in a performative closet that didn’t reflect my true self. Every so often, I’d have to break out of it by coming out to myself about something, and my life would get better for it.
In my twenties, for example, I came out as gay after years of internal conflict. In my thirties, I embraced my introversion and gave myself permission to carve out alone time and avoid draining social roles. During Covid, I realized drinking was no longer serving me and have taken a break from it ever since. More recently, I have been coming out to myself as middle-aged, thanks to a big birthday that’s coming up in a few months. These truths aren’t always easy to accept, but internalizing them has made me feel like I’m swimming with the current of life instead of upstream.
Coming out to ourselves is useful on a smaller scale, too. The truths we accept don't always have to be big or “bad.” Some of my favorite truth reckonings are when I realize I want or like something I didn’t expect. For instance, just before I started my Substack in October 2023, I put a stake in the ground that I wanted to learn to write personal essays. I was like: Yes, I want to learn to write a personal essay. This wasn’t anything earth-shattering; it was just making something conscious: I want to do that!
Today’s culture often pushes the illusion that image and clout equal happiness — that if your life looks amazing on Instagram, it must feel amazing too. Obviously, that’s nonsense. The performance of happiness isn’t happiness at all. In fact, it’s its own kind of torment when people look at you and think, “Wow, you have it all,” while inside, you feel hollow.
We know, intellectually, that internal happiness matters more than external appearances, but it’s still easy to fall into the trap of self-delusion, even for non-Kardashians. This tension feels especially sharp at midlife, when we confront the reality that the goals we chased in our 20s — success, status, a picture-perfect life — aren’t delivering the fulfillment, connection, or joy we imagined. That creeping sense of disconnect often sneaks up on us, just as it did for Phoebe.
The concept of coming out to yourself is a way to avoid this. It is valuable because it is a conscious act of acknowledging — of swinging the closet doors open in our consciousness to some truth, even if it is simple. It is an antidote to the shoulds and delusions that disconnect us. It is a practice that allows us to live with greater integrity, freedom, and alignment — a foundation for a more fulfilling and honest life.
So clean out your closet and find some new truth to embrace in 2025. Perhaps it will save you from despair, as it did for Phoebe. Or maybe it will wake you up in some new way. At Phoebe advises Lila at one point: “Nobody can take care of you the way you need to take care of yourself.”
Being honest with ourselves is the highest form of self-care.
Prompt: What is a new truth you’re embracing in 2025? Share in the comments!
Special thanks to CansaFis Foote for draft feedback.
"The point is to push back against the gravitational pull of fake, performative living." Gosh yes! Raising a glass to this. Thanks for the review and this potent sentence. This alone charges me up.
Right on! Why couldn't someone have explained this to me when I was in my 20s? It's taken a long while but I'm getting there.