We Wear The Masks
We Wear The Masks, Hosted by Michelle Singh
We Wear The Masks
Shattering the Mask of Silence The Family Meeting Where Everything Got Swept Under the Rug
Secrets don’t dissolve with time; they calcify into the ways we love, work, and parent.
Michelle opens a private vault to talk about molestation, a family’s denial, and the heavy cost of silence—especially in spaces where image is prized and sex is taboo. We trace the path from being the “perfect” high achiever to recognizing how buried pain turns into masks that seem protective but slowly suffocate joy.
Across this conversation, we unpack the shock of a family meeting that should have been a refuge and instead became a tribunal. You’ll hear how blame and minimization rewrite memory, how shame metastasizes into distrust, and how abandonment fears steer choices—staying in the wrong relationship, tolerating harm, or shrinking to keep the peace. We speak plainly about Caribbean family dynamics, the culture of sweeping things under the rug, and why calling abuse “normal” is a betrayal.
The episode reframes purity narratives, challenges respectability politics, and offers a language for those who have felt unseen in their own homes.
What follows is a roadmap for breaking generational curses: telling the exact truth, feeling the anger and grief, mapping the ripple effects on marriage and parenting, and creating boundaries that protect people rather than reputation. Michelle shares how speaking openly with her husband and daughter began to restore dignity and agency, and how owning the story turned pressure into purpose. If you’ve ever wondered why success still feels empty, this is an invitation to unmask—gently, bravely, and with support.
Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help this message reach more people ready to trade perfection for peace. Your voice matters; what truth are you ready to name today?
Message from Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh
I’m Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh, born in Jamaica, raised in a traditional Indian household where I never quite fit the mold. For over 40 years, I chased every expectation family, culture, society, collecting degrees, titles, and accolades. I had purpose and security, yet something was missing. I was achieving, not thriving.
As an award-winning global educator, Michelle finally realized that fulfillment doesn’t come from perfection, it comes from alignment. Today, she help high-achieving, culturally diverse women educators recognize how disengagement quietly steals their joy. Together, we break those patterns so you can redefine success on your own terms and lead with purpose, from fulfillment, not sacrifice.
That’s why I created this podcast, to tell my story honestly and unfiltered. The truths I buried, the patterns I tolerated, the lessons that set me free. But this isn’t just about me, it’s about you. Through these stories, you’ll see reflections of your own journey and uncover what’s been holding you back.
Join me as I disrupts disengagement, break the cycle of busyness, and learn to lead and live from a place of true joy and wholeness. It’s time to reclaim your power and thrive, not just survive.
Welcome to We Wear the Masks. This is a podcast for high-achieving women who check all the boxes, got all of the degrees and the accolades, and you have it all together, but you still feel empty and disconnected inside. I am Michelle Singh, and I've been there and I'm still there in some cases. So I created this space to tell my story, all of the truths that has trapped me, the secrets that have held me captive, and the people and situations that I endured for far too long. So, as you listen, I invite you to uncover your lessons and your blessings from my story. I invite you to reflect on your own journey because we have to break this cycle of disengagement and disconnect and unmask what is holding you back so that you can find your fulfillment and your joy. Let's dive in. But I know it is something that needs to be said. I know I need to give wings to these words and allow this story to soar because it symbolizes much more than what happened. It is about the actions that have to take place by people who want to break cycles, generational curses, and want to shine a light on the things that our family does and says that they've done and said for generations. And they continue and continue and continue to do. And I had a little boyfriend and we got serious. And of course, you know, I felt loved and I felt, you know, we were we were having a good relationship and he made me feel special and all of the good things. And so, of course, I became sexually active. And then my mom found out. And so when my mom found out, of course, she was not pleased, she was not happy because sex is very taboo. Even though people are doing it, they don't want to talk about it. Even though they had kids out of wedlock and got baby daddies and baby mamas, they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to admit that they was a little, you know, freakish in their teenage years, but they look completely down on you when you're in that same space, right? And they judge you and they make you feel less than. And it's just not right. And so that's how I felt. That's how I felt. I was condemned. I was, it was, I felt like I was disgusting. There's no other word for me to describe how I felt that she looked at me, right? Because in her eyes, I lost my virginity. And so I remember that night after she found out I, you know, I the I think the only thing I wanted to share, because it's there, this is the idea of the virginity, and and and you know, it's so pure, and you just have to be, and and again, for me, having to live up to certain standards, you know, cultural standards and societal standards and family standards, I was trying to live up to all of those standards. And of course, you know, being the perfect child and the perfect student and all of that was part of it. And so I just did something that knocked me off of the perfection. And so I needed to fix that. And so when I thought about it, I was like, well, technically, I'm not a virgin, and I did not lose my virginity to my boyfriend. And so one of the biggest things, the biggest secrets I had to tell was that night I sat at my my mother's bed. It was in the dark, and I remember having the words in my head, but it could not come out my mouth. I thought I was speaking the words, but it just was not coming out of my mouth. And what I when I said was, I did not lose my virginity to blank. I lost my virginity to blank. And this losing my virginity, not even losing, it was taken when I was a child living in Jamaica. I don't even remember the age. Came to America when I was nine, lived in Jamaica until I was nine. It definitely happened before I was nine years old. Okay. And so my uncle molested me. And I had to share that and tell my mom that her brother did that to me. Her brother was the one who stole my virginity. Now, my mom was, she believed me. I will say she believed me. I know and I felt that she believed me. And what happened next? I'm not sure why this happened and why it needed to happen, but this is what happened next. Like a family meeting was called. I don't know if that was her idea, to be honest. And I don't, or it maybe she told somebody in the family and they suggested that. I don't know where that came from. But the family meeting happened. And in this family meeting, we went to, I remember we went to the back room of my grandparents' house. And there were several family members there, aunts and uncles. Um, I believe my brother was there, my mom was there, my grandparents were there. Uh, I believe a few of my aunts were there. And I don't know for sure if I don't think any of the younger cousins were there. My brother and I are the are the oldest cousins, and I don't think that any of the younger cousins were there. But in this meeting was where I shared, my mom shared what happened that my uncle molested me. And I was sharing the biggest shame that I had carried my all of this time from the time I was a kid, a child in Jamaica, all the way up to now being, you know, being a teenager in high school, right? And I shared the greatest shame I've ever felt to my family, to the people who are supposed to protect you and are supposed to love you unconditionally, and are supposed to make you feel safe. And the result of that meeting was blame, being called a liar, being told by my grandmother that if it happened, it was because I wanted it to. I am a five, six, seven, eight, nine-year-old child who chose to have my uncle molest me, your son, and that is what you say to me. So I remember being so full of rage in that meeting. My other uncle said something to me that wasn't nice. I don't know what he said, but I know it wasn't nice because he never says nice things. And I had a cup, I think it was like a Burger King cup or something with soda, and it was like one of those large cups or was full of ice. And I tossed that cup at him, and I felt a little bit of satisfaction, just a little bit. I really wanted to punch him in the face, but I felt rage. My mom believed me. But they chose to ignore it. After it was said, they chose to ignore it or to not believe me. They chose to continue about life as if nothing happened. They chose to not speak of it, they chose to sweep it under the rug, as if this thing did not affect my entire life, as if their actions in that family meeting did not impact everything I did and said from that point forward. Me being guarded, me not trusting, me not even fully loving and forgiving myself, all of that came from that family meeting, from my whole family, sweeping it under the rug and taking this greatest shame and pain and ignoring it. That for me was my pain and my shame that I had to confront. It is a pain and a shame that I am just speaking of publicly. I have only shared it to a handful of people like my husband. I just recently shared it just a few months ago with my own daughter, who is 20. Outside of the people in that room, nobody else knew except for my husband. Not even my childhood friends who were with me from I landed in America and started public school, right? They don't even know. And so we all have these secrets, we all have these moments of trauma and these moments of shame and pain that are that's buried deep because I had buried it so deep that I wanted it to disappear. But the reality is it couldn't disappear because it had imprinted in me and imprinted in my life so much that it affected how I navigated living my life. And in order for me to see that a lot of the decisions I made, again, with my out of feeling rejected and feeling like my own family did not choose me, that affected how I was in my marriage, in my relationships. That affected how I was raising my own daughter. And in order for me to make any kind of change to be a more fulfilled and a better human being, I had to confront that truth. I had to dig deep, pull that thing right up, and share it publicly, shine light on it because this is a thing that happens more often than you know, and especially in the Caribbean, where folks like to sweep things under the rug because they don't want to look bad. Them don't want them family to look bad, right? And so things like these happen to to to young girls and women, and it needs to be talked about. These are generational curses that need to be broken because we cannot truly heal and fully heal unless we talk about it. And we can't normalize it. We cannot. Normalizing it. That's not right either. You can't normalize it, it's not a normal thing. Your uncle cannot molest you. That is not normal. That is a family member. Your family has to make you feel safe. That is not normal. Stop normalizing those things. Stop normalizing the thing that bring the person shame and allow the person to get rid of the shame by talking about it and get past it. So if you're holding on to something, the biggest secret in your life, it is shameful, it is painful, but the only way that you are gonna get it out of your system is to get it out of your system, is to talk about it. But not just talk about it. You gotta really feel the feels like what did it feel like? What was the result of it? How did it affect how you lived your life? Are you making decisions because of the feeling that came from that? I felt rejected. I felt abandoned by my family. And that feeling of abandonment and some abandonment is something that I spent my whole life trying not to feel. And that is what made me wear masks to fit into certain spaces and certain places. That is what made me stay in situations and relationships because I didn't know what was on the other side, but this is not too bad. So let me just tolerate it because I don't want to be feeling abandoned. So, how do those things affect how you live your life? Because you're missing out if you don't dive deep into that. You don't know how much freer you can be if you get it out. Thank you for listening to We Wear the Masks and for walking with me through my story. Know that this podcast is more than just a chronicle of my life. It really is a mirror for yours. And it reflects the masks that you wear, that I wear, that we all wear, and those truths, whether or not we like them, that are hidden beneath those masks. So I hope it sparked a reflection for you about your own journey, those lessons and those blessings that are part of your experiences, as well as the masks that you are ready to remove. I would love to stay connected with you on your journey. Visit me at iammichellesing.com or you can reach me on my social media platforms. And finally, if this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone you know who needs to hear it because I know you know someone just like you. And remember that this journey to unmasking and uncovering your true self is ongoing. So keep pushing and moving toward that fulfillment that you have worked your entire life for because you deserve it.