The Invisibility Wound Has a Name
A rusted metal picture frame lies broken and half-buried among smooth black stones, weathered by time and tide. The frame’s emptiness suggests a forgotten portrait, a presence erased.
This post is dedicated to my grandfathers, Joseph and Albert. I see you.
There’s something sacred about what’s unfolding in my life right now—and I say that not as someone chasing a healing arc, but as someone listening closely to what’s already in motion.
Last week, I wrote about the ache of invisibility in a piece called Not on Social Media, Still Addicted. I talked about the pull to perform in order to be seen, the pain of disappearing when I step away from the noise, and the choice I made not to feed the wound, but to sit beside it. Be in relationship with it.
I didn’t know what would happen next. I just knew that when the urge to scroll showed up, and it always does, I’d try something different. I’d stay. I’d listen. And in that stillness, something unexpected happened:
My grandfathers came through. Not as memories or facts. But as a fire in my chest. As a lineage of grief I had never felt before.
Joseph, my dad’s dad, died at 47 from black lung after years in the coal mines. Albert, my mom’s dad, was injured in the mines and never worked again. My own father was hurt on the job at 52 and was never able to return to work either. All three men—crushed by systems that only valued them for what they could extract, produce, and provide. Once they couldn’t? They became invisible.
I grew up in a lineage that never spoke of loss. When my ancestors came to the U.S. from Lithuania and Slovakia, they assimilated into whiteness. They stopped speaking their languages. They shed their culture. Their traditions were swallowed in order to survive. Our Lithuanian last name was anglicized, made palatable, made white. That was the cost of inclusion. That was the beginning of invisibility.
My mother grew up unseen. My father grew up unseen. So I did too.
And like them, I learned to contort. I chose my career, my relationships, my entire identity around being seen. I didn’t know I was doing it. I only knew I felt empty when I wasn’t reflected.
And yet something in me refused to conform.
When I changed my name in October 2019, I didn’t realize I was beginning a descent. But looking back now, that act—reclaiming a name that wasn’t rooted in colonial palatability—was the moment the unraveling began. I stepped out of a lineage of invisibility. I stepped into myself.
Since then, I’ve been shedding layer after layer of what was never mine. My appearance changed. My gender identity came into focus. I let go of performance. And with every step toward authenticity, I’ve lost an incredible amount of visibility.
The systems I used to thrive in no longer recognize me.
But the frequency I once sent out into the world wasn’t mine. It was distorted by survival. By whiteness. By the need to be good, to be liked, to be productive.
Now, as I come into resonance with my truer self, the world grows quieter. But something more ancient is listening.
When I stopped scrolling, I heard them. Joseph. Albert. I heard their grief. Their rage. Their shame. Their sorrow. These were men who worked in the underworld—coal miners, extractors of the Earth. They took from her in order to feed their families, and they were discarded when they could take no more.
They were sons of the old world, silenced by the new.
And now they speak through me.
So I’m doing a ritual. A 40-day devotion to these men. It began on May 28 and will end on July 6—four days after the anniversary of my father’s death. This blog post will publish on June 11—four days before Father’s Day. Four days before and after. The number four. The number of the Emperor in Tarot. That is what I call sacred geometry of the soul.
This is no accident.
The ritual has two parts: the first is a burial of the old story. I spoke their pain aloud. I buried it in the Earth. I named it. Witnessed it. Released it. The second is a living devotion. Each morning for 40 days, I will light a candle and speak their names. I will read aloud a new story. One in which they are remembered, honored, and whole.
They may have been discarded in their time, but not in mine.
I have grandfathers now.
I’ve placed their photos on my altar, where they can be seen. For the first time in my life, I feel their presence—not just as shadows of men I never knew, but as ancestral companions who are finally visible to me.
And something has softened in me. Not just emotionally, but viscerally. In my body, there’s a loosening, a click. Like a puzzle piece sliding into place after being turned over in your hand a hundred times. That kind of satisfaction. That kind of exhale. For so long, I’ve been walking with this invisibility wound, this ache of worth, and no matter how many times I tried to fix it, nothing touched it. Not therapy, not energy work, not the endless striving. But this…this ancient grief that rose up from the underworld and moved through me, it’s doing something different. It’s transformation.
I can feel my soul relax into it. Like, oh. There it is. That’s the thing we couldn’t name. That’s the one we’ve been waiting for.
And I see how this work—this quiet, invisible work—could never have come through if I hadn’t said no to performance. If I hadn’t let go of the grasping. If I hadn’t learned to stay.
This is what it means to be in relationship with your wounds.
If you’re reading this and something stirs in you, if you’ve been carrying a wound that won’t seem to shift no matter how much “work” you do—maybe you’re holding something that was never yours to begin with. Maybe, like me, you’re the one who’s here to feel it. To give it voice. To stay with it long enough to hear what it has to say.
This is the work so many of us are being called into now. To name what was never allowed to be spoken. To witness what our ancestors could not. To let what was buried rise for restoration. For truth.
This is how we remember.
This is how we come home.
From the underworld, with love,
Alexandra Winteraven 🖤
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