The Practice of Becoming Visible by Sophie Davies
After years of championing other people’s stories, Sophie is learning what it means to finally share more of her own.
Welcome to a guest post by fellow creative and community-builder, Sophie Davies!
Sophie Davies is the founder of Cuppa Culture, a community bringing women together through local culture, conversation, and storytelling in support of local businesses. She curates Bay Area–based openings, events, and pop culture in CUPPA on Substack, and facilitates monthly Substackers gatherings where women explore their editorial voice, share ideas, and learn from one another. She co-hosts a speaker series called Sips & Stories with The Spoonlist that spotlights creatives and business owners who contribute to the fabric of Marin County’s neighborhoods.
Drawing on a career in public relations, marketing, and events in the U.K. and U.S. in the fashion, lifestyle, and publishing industries, Sophie believes the best conversations don’t just happen online—they continue around neighborhood tables, and between people, preferably over a warm cuppa!
Follow Sophie on her Instagram
Today, I have the absolute pleasure of featuring Sophie as a guest contributor! So, I’ll pass it off to her…
Hi Tomatokind readers,
When Vanessa asked me to write a personal essay for TomatoKind magazine, I said yes immediately. I started it, stopped, started, stopped, and avoided writing it for days. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because writing about myself feels very different from my usual writing about other people…especially about a vulnerable topic like visibility.
The universe has been whispering to me through different people and scenarios that it’s time to widen my comfort zone and take bolder action to be more visible and share more of myself.
Somewhere during the process of writing this essay, I realized Vanessa hadn’t just asked me to write a guest post. She had unknowingly given me a challenge and another opportunity to become more visible. I started taking steps to put myself out there more, taking up more space, and raising my hand to be on bigger stages. The first draft was theory. The second draft was taking action. And the third draft became a chance to look back and realize how much had changed in just a few weeks.
Looking back, I realized this wasn’t a new challenge. My career has continued to push me out of my comfort zone since I was a shy 21-year-old graduate who went straight into a decade-long public relations career in the fashion industry. My days were spent pitching stories, building relationships with journalists, running events, leading teams, and helping brands tell their stories. It was an exciting career that took me into rooms I never imagined I’d be in!
But I was the PR dressed in black with a headset—the woman you see just behind the celebrities on the red carpet. My job was to make sure the brand, or the face of the brand, was the star of the show. I wasn’t supposed to be visible. My career has always revolved around helping other people become visible.
When I co-founded a branding and marketing agency in my thirties, I was navigating entrepreneurship for the first time while raising two children under the age of five. I was tired, but a level of visibility as a founder was required to build a reputation from the ground up, which meant running workshops and speaking at conferences. We were marketing our clients, and used our company blog, newsletter, and social media to sell our expertise and services. I admittedly preferred to do it through photos rather than video, and in person through sales and networking.
Even today, through my Substack CUPPA with Sophie Davies, I spend my time introducing people to local businesses, curating recommendations, and bringing communities together. I’ve always loved holding the spotlight for other people.
What I’ve been slower to learn is how to stand in it myself.
Why This Feels So Hard
As a British Gen X business owner, I struggle with the performative nature of marketing yourself on social media to stay top of mind and relevant. I have been both reluctant and defiant about appearing in front of a video camera. I suspect the messy reality of midlife has a lot to do with this. I noticed a significant change that happened in my early to mid-40s that affected my self-trust, confidence, and belief in myself—perimenopause, which generally has a huge impact on women’s visibility for countless reasons I won’t go into in this essay.
So I started to ask women my age who show up online in videos how they do it.
I was speaking to an amazing content creator who produces the most joyful videos about cooking. Check out Marin Mama Cooks! She makes it look so effortless that when I said it probably sounds silly how hard I find it to be in front of a video camera, she responded with something that has stayed with me:
“Making recordings of yourself helps you fall in love with yourself more because you become more familiar with the person you see.”
That idea stopped me in my tracks. As a British person who struggles with the concept of self-love or being your own best friend, it’s a challenging concept to grasp. I often criticize how I look, sound, and what I say, and that has a lot to do with my formative years. Growing up in an Irish family in London, standing out wasn’t encouraged. Modesty was. Sharing your opinions too loudly wasn’t something we celebrated; it was “getting too big for your boots.”
Life Had Other Plans
Speaking of family, at the beginning of 2025, I was navigating my father’s cancer diagnosis and flew to London to celebrate his 80th birthday (we share a birthday) before he went into surgery. It was the first time we celebrated our birthdays together in 18 years, since I moved to the Bay Area.
At the time, I was professionally in a bit of a creative funk. I had just decided to walk away from the corporate job that required me to shapeshift in order to produce finance programming and events for C-suite executives.
It was a reminder that life is short, and spending my days in constant Zoom meetings discussing topics that don’t match my interests and natural curiosities was wasting my potential.
Around the same time, my co-working space of 11 years, The Hivery (where I co-ran my marketing agency), was reopening. I needed to creatively express myself again so I made myself a simple promise: I was going to show up for my writing again.
Finding My Way Back
I wanted to start a Substack to find my way back to creativity and joy again. Of course, the path from wanting to do something and actually doing the thing took a minute… It took a few months to pluck up the courage to get started, as it required being… yes, you guessed it… visible.
I craved a way to share the types of things I was naturally curious about in long form writing again. The Substack platform was enabling me to reconnect with the thoughts of magazine editors I hadn’t heard from in nearly 20 years, since I served them as a fashion PR director. I saw how these editors were able to reconnect with readers, in a more accessible way, after their magazines folded years ago. One of the things I appreciate about Substack is that it’s a place where people who still appreciate long-form writing hang out. Not everyone can be summed up in a quick caption on Instagram, and nor should they be. The human experience is more nuanced than that.
I saw it as a sign to start blogging again.
I started getting excited about the prospect of sharing my writing again. Back in 2009, I started blogging as a therapeutic way to navigate the culture shock of moving to America from England as a new parent, creating posts about places and activities moms could take their kids to and meet other parents. Then local businesses started reaching out to me to be featured, so my PR skills came in handy, and I started using social media to market the content, which progressed into social media marketing job roles for a couple of years before co-founding a marketing agency.
The Visibility Practice
To some women, I probably already appear visible through the community gatherings I facilitate. I run a Substackers group where women explore their editorial voice, share ideas, and learn from one another in community. I often recap these in-person moments on Substack and Instagram, but I find it easier to share a photo rather than a video for the reasons I’ve mentioned.
The online world requires me to produce videos that will probably do a better job of capturing the energy and what it feels like to be in the room. As soon as someone points a camera at me, I go from being present to becoming too self-conscious. It’s something I’m still working on. But on the days I’m hard on myself, I trust that people don’t connect with perfection—they connect with people.
On the subject of connection, it’s the supportive people in my life that help me increase my visibility. The ones who want me to do well, give me helpful feedback, push me out of my comfort zone, and open doors. Grace Kraaijvanger the owner of my community space, The Hivery, is one of those people. She has supported me through professional changes over the last 12 years and continues to make space for me to thrive in a kind, curious, and joyful community.
Grace is an expander—someone who is a few steps ahead of where you want to be. We all need expanders in our lives to light the way!
Nada Jones is another expander in my life. She is a podcaster and community leader of Liberty Road—a community for women in midlife based in Los Angeles.
Last summer, when I was just a few weeks into writing my Substack, I was invited to speak on a panel moderated by Nada Jones. I shared my experience of plucking up the courage to start something new, and how it was going so far. It was a visible moment that I was grateful for.
It led me to co-hosting an ongoing speaker series called Sips & Stories with Megan Stewart of The Spoonlist that spotlights creatives and business owners who contribute to the fabric of Marin County’s neighborhoods.
Fast forward to now, during the process of writing this essay, Nada and I were messaging each other about the events I’m doing, and she mentioned “let’s find a way to get you down here too” (in LA). In the spirit of being more visible, I proposed doing a Substackers breakout session at her annual summit, Liberty Road Live, on October 1st. I pitched the concept and outcome, and I will be included on the lineup being announced soon. I am so grateful for the opportunity, and it is another example of the big steps I have taken while writing this essay.
What I’ve Learnt
The funny thing is, I thought writing this essay would simply be an opportunity to tell my story about my creativity through writing on Substack.
Instead, it quietly changed my attitude towards visibility.
Over my career, I’ve realized confidence has never arrived before a new chapter in my life. It has always arrived because I stepped into one.
I’m still much more comfortable shining a light on someone else’s business than talking about my own, but I will be sharing more of myself in my Substack writing.
I’m still more likely to post a photograph than a video, although I’m trying to get over being self-conscious and do that more.
I’m still practicing becoming visible. But perhaps that’s the point.
Visibility isn’t a destination we suddenly arrive at one morning. It’s a practice. One conversation. One essay. One brave raise of the hand and saying “yes, I can do that” at a time.
Substack reminded me that writing isn’t simply about sharing what we know. Sometimes it’s about sharing who we are becoming.
I’ve spent years creating space for other people’s voices and stories, and now, gently and imperfectly, I’m learning to trust my own.
My community gatherings and my content in CUPPA with Sophie Davies are about highlighting culture and local businesses. But they’re also about helping people feel seen.
This essay—and everything it asked of me while writing it—helped me learn to extend that same generosity to myself.
So perhaps this essay isn’t the conclusion after all.
Maybe it’s simply another small act of becoming more visible.
Note from Vanessa: I’m so grateful to you for sharing a piece of your heart and your story with our readers. And, for starting and stopping so many times. I feel many points of connection, and I am certainly taking a piece of your vulnerable spirit with me into the rest of my week as I battle more fear-based, creative blockers of my own. Because, this self-discovery journey is hard. Really hard. And, you sharing openly about the messiness of it is neccessary, and moving, and real. Thank you.
Dear readers, to immerse into Sophie’s beautiful community (and to read her many more candid writings to come), visit CUPPA with Sophie Davies.
With that, have a beautiful and creative rest of your month, friends!
Quick reminder to join us for…
Live Conversation with Nicole Garfunkel, personal stylist for people in eating disorder recovery, on 7/22 at 11am PST. Add to your calendar here.
A Summer Picnic with Creative Lunch Club in Berkeley on 7/24 at 12pm PST. RSVP here.
Summer Vision-boarding: A Mid-Year Reset & Manifestation Party on 7/29 in Berkeley, CA at 6pm. Get tickets here.
And, our July Possibilities Club on 7/31 at 3pm PST over Zoom. Open to paid subscribers only. RSVP here.
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