We love the idea of authenticity. It looks so neat in self-help books:
“Love yourself.”
“Be true to who you are.”
“Live unapologetically.”
It’s easy to embrace authenticity when we feel good. When we’re magnetic, generous, glowing, we say: yes, this is the real me.
But authenticity doesn’t vanish when you can’t stand yourself. It’s still there when you feel jealous, petty, ashamed, insecure. That, too, is part of the story.
Authenticity isn’t selective self-love. It’s radical acceptance of all selves.
Beyond the Aesthetic of “Authenticity”
A lot of what passes as authenticity today is basically an aesthetic. You can call it “authentic” to go makeup-free, wear linen, or post unfiltered rants online. And sure, it looks refreshing.
But if the whole point is to prove how “real” you are… it’s still a performance.
Psychotherapist and writer Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul, offers a different way of looking at it — a little less Instagrammable but a lot more honest.
He calls it psychological polytheism, which is a mouthful, but really just means this: our inner life isn’t ruled by one “true self.” You’re made of many different impulses, moods, and longings, often pulling in opposite directions.
Think of a moment where you were two contradictory things at once: ambitious and lazy, kind and jealous, confident and insecure — sometimes all in the same day.
What if you let them coexist?
Authenticity isn’t about cutting away the “bad” parts until one perfect self remains. It’s about learning to live with the contradictions of human nature — tenderness and pride, desire and fear, joy and grief.
Moore suggests that when you make space for your many selves, life doesn’t get simpler. It gets messier. But it also gets richer, more textured, more alive.
The opposite happens when we cling too tightly to one version of ourselves — the “always put-together one,” the “chill girl,” the “career woman.” In that kind of single-mindedness, we lose the ability to pause, reflect, and see what’s actually going on inside our souls.
So maybe authenticity isn’t about proving you’ve found “the real you.” Maybe it’s about giving yourself room to be many things at once. To admit: yes, I am both this and that.
“Make peace
– I have been a thousand different women, Emory Hall
with all the women you once were.
Lay flowers at their feet.
Offer them incense and honey
and forgiveness.
Honor them
and give them your silence.
Listen.
Bless them
and let them be.”
Candid Club on Authenticity
Candid Club was born from this hunger for something truer.
Back in December of 2024, the year I nicknamed my “year of authenticity,” I had just discovered a charming river spot and invited some of my closest sisters for a women’s gathering there to cap off the year.
I imagined a circle of women, raw and real together, one of the many evolutions of Candid Club.
Fun fact: CC actually started as a merch brand for my old thrift shop. The merch never made it past incubation, but Candid Club kept tugging at me. I knew it’s supposed to be something.
Long story short, only my best friend, Cassey, plus my aunt (who filled in as a guest), and my fiancé (helping with logistics) were able to come. The rest were swept up in the holiday rush.
For a moment, I doubted if Candid Club mattered at all. I even questioned whether the whole idea of “authenticity” was something anyone else wanted.
That gathering could have been discouraging. But that afternoon, frolicking by the river, laughing with the three people who did show up, I felt the seed of what Candid Club was meant to be. Small as it was, it was real. And real was enough.
Months later, in perfect timing, I reconnected with Princess (the other half of CC). From there, Candid Club began to find its present form: a safe space where authenticity doesn’t need an audience to be valid.
Gorgeously human
The gift of authenticity isn’t a polished identity you can present like a résumé.
It’s the quiet intimacy of recognizing yourself — not just the parts you admire, but the ones you’ve tried to hide.
That’s love, too. The kind Courtney Walsh wrote about — love that is sweaty and broken, tender and whole, love that limps and leaps, bruises and mends.
Authenticity doesn’t require perfection. It doesn’t require adjectives.
“It only asks you to show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.”
Flawed and fabulous, complicated and contradictory, gorgeously human.
And that, all on its own, is more than enough.
– C 💋
Candid Club 
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