By Jennifer Amaral-Kunze, M.Ed., LPC | Beyond the Mirror
Jennifer Amaral-Kunze, A Northern Colorado counselor, reflects on the masks we wear, the emotions we hide, and the healing power of unguarded honesty this fall season.
There’s something about this time of year, the way the air turns cool and restless, that wakes the bones. In Northern Colorado, the wind carries the scent of damp earth and fallen leaves, the kind of smell that feels like memory, something ancient, calling you inward. The air is sharp and alive, full of endings and beginnings. The trees have stopped pretending now. They let go without apology, their leaves gathering at their roots like small offerings.
We could learn something from that.
Halloween arrives with its flicker of candles and rustle of costumes, a night where masks are not only allowed but celebrated. Yet when the last trick-or-treater drifts home and the porch lights dim, many of us are still wearing ours. The practiced smile, the calm voice, the careful stories that keep our hearts tucked safely away.
We call it composure. We call it strength. But often it is simply protection, a quiet wish not to be hurt again.
I think of all the ways we were taught to hide what’s real.
Don’t cry.
Be strong.
No one wants to hear that.
And so we grow up fluent in the language of concealment. We learn to hold our breath in moments that should have been soft enough to cry through. We learn to say “I’m fine” when the truth is that something inside us is unraveling gently, like thread that’s been pulled too long.
But our emotions are not flaws. They are the weather of the soul. They move through us to clear the air. Tears, anger, joy, fear, each one a season, each one a tide coming home.
When we turn them away, they don’t disappear. They wait.
In our bones.
In the tightness of our shoulders.
In the quiet ache that finds us when the night grows still.
So maybe this Halloween, instead of putting on another mask, we can set one down. Maybe we can let the dark teach us what it means to be unguarded, to feel something all the way through.
Because beneath every mask is a story that still wants to breathe.
When I think about Día de los Muertos, which follows close behind this night, I think about how our ancestors understood this truth. They knew that love and loss belong together. They knew we are not meant to hide from the dark, but to walk with it, candle in hand, heart open.
And maybe that’s what this season in Colorado invites us to do, to walk among the bare trees, to feel the cool wind pressing against our skin, to remember that even in the quiet and the dark, life is still moving beneath the surface.
In that light, unmasking isn’t about exposure. It’s about belonging. It’s remembering that our humanness, with all its cracks and colors, is the most sacred thing we carry.
So as you move through this season of shadows and celebration, may you loosen the armor. May you honor what is real, the grief that lingers, the joy that startles, the stillness in between. May you sit by the fire of your own heart and listen to what it’s been trying to tell you.
And when the mask finally falls, as all things true eventually do, may you recognize the face beneath it, the one that has been waiting all along to be seen.
