I was playing with the lighting in the window of my room because I loved the way it fell on my face — ya know, a photographer thing.
It was just for fun at first — a simple, spontaneous exercise of being present in the moment.
But then I started to notice a whole lot more.
I saw beauty and depth and meaning through my own eyes, reflected back at me in photo form.
I saw half of me in light, the other half in shadows.
One side, the bright parts of me that I show to the world.
The other, the dark parts of myself that are hidden from view.
As I continued to look deeper into this photo, staring into my own radiant, blue eyes, I felt something. But I couldn’t put it into words because my brain would not let me.
I have been wrestling with this a lot lately, my mind turning off when it all feels like too much.
So I looked at the photograph, wanting to write about how it made me feel. The picture was worth 1,000 words to me — they just couldn’t be formulated yet.
After my little photoshoot, I went about my day, listening to YouTube videos about self-love and healing, trying to get myself out of the head-space of NEEDING to figure out RIGHT NOW how to solve some of my more intense mental health battles. I wanted to get myself out of the spaces I felt trapped in.
And then it clicked — trapped. Ah yes, stuck in my own body, in my own mind — that feeling you get when you’re on the brink of doing what this photo was speaking to me about — “shadow work.”
I paused the video I was listening to and sat there with no thoughts. My brain was empty because I was being asked to feel, not to think.
And I really, really didn’t want to. At all. I just wanted to analyze my way out of this endless trap, hoping that it would make me feel safe.
But I had no choice at this moment, my body was screaming at me to feel all the things I had been ignoring.
And rather than shaming myself for it getting to this point, I reminded myself that I have been trying to feel into my body and feelings lately, and that it’s okay it got a point where it felt more extreme and urgent.
I did a little bit of breath work to try and access what was going on, but it didn’t take much for the feelings to come pouring out of me.
I bawled, I yelled, I screamed into my pillow, and even punched it a little (exercises I’ve learned in some classes about releasing and feeling through emotions). Cathartic, to say the least.
And it was interesting, the things I found myself yelling and screaming about. I spoke of my desire for things to just be simple. I asked “why” a lot. “Why can’t there just be the one thing in the future that will save me, help me, cure me, allow me to life fully in my body and mind? Or how about something in the past that I can cling to, or someone or something I can blame?”
“No,” I proclaimed to that part of myself, “all I have is this. This body. This mind. This moment. Right here. This soul. Me. All of me.”
And then I melted into myself, I hugged myself, I gave myself the tenderness and compassion I had been seeking.
I begged God, or some elusive being I was praying to, to give me the love and comfort I sought after, to send me someone to just hug me.
And while I do believe in God, the Divine, a presence that is always near and loving. I’m not always able to lean in.
And there isn’t always someone sent to comfort us.
So in that moment, all I had was me.
All I will ever always have, is me.
And I sat with her.
All of her.
Gosh, what a morning!
I wasn’t expecting all of this, and I resisted it because I didn’t want it to get in-between me and all of the tasks I had planned today. I wanted to be productive and get things done.
But in the grand scheme of things, this work was and is far more important.
What started as being a distant observer of shadows seen in a photo of myself, turned into a deep journey inward and an incredibly powerful experience.
Whew!
I will say, too, that as of now, I’ve merely touched the surface of shadow work on my own personal inner work journey because it’s SCARY (at first). So, I’m not very well-versed in it, yet.
But one thing I do know is that most of us avoid looking at the parts of us that we have always viewed as “bad” or the parts of us that have been shamed, mistreated, or not accepted.
We hide them because, at some point in our childhood, we were told they weren’t okay and needed to be thrown out completely.
And now, we often put all of our focus into the aspects of self that everyone sees as “good,” or the things that make us popular, or fit in, or help us belong — to the point where we completely deny other aspects of self that want to be heard and seen and loved, too.
I do not know what all of this looks like for me in the future. God knows I want to. I want to know what will help me or fix me or heal me or what will take me to some ultimate place of flow and gratitude and bliss and purpose. Sometimes, I desire this just for myself, but often it’s because I feel it is what others expect of me.
But those expectations are no longer mine to bear. People often want certain things from us simply because they want to feel safe. It is their own nervous systems that “need” us to get to a certain point in our journeys, to get to some sense of “arrival,” just so they don’t have to worry about us anymore. People who care for us often want us to be on their timelines so that they can feel some sense of control.
But for me, in my desire to “arrive” too quickly, I bypass very important parts of the journey.
The more I deny the present moment, the more I deny myself, and that is a cost I am not willing to pay anymore.
It should go without saying, but I will voice that I do not mean we go do whatever we want and hurt the people we love simply because we have a shadow side that wants to act out. This journey is toward the exact opposite of that. It is about being aware of all of these parts of us so that we do not continue to judge what others do wrong, while acting in complete ignorance of our own issues and the way we hurt others.
So today, I sit with and honor the parts of me that felt safe enough to express their grief and pain today.
I honor the fact that I do often feel divided and at war with myself, not only with my shadow self, but with all of the parts of me that confuse me, that make me wonder who I really even am, and where I am going.
And though I “know” a lot about the modalities that will help me in this journey, and the steps to take, and the things to do, — for today, I only have today. I don’t have the answers and I am not in a hurry. I am not on anyone else’s timeline. I am on my own.
And today, as it is, is beautiful.
I am also laughing at the irony of it all, because at first I was typing all of this out in part because I wanted to write myself into solving some of the current dilemmas in my brain, since thinking my way out wasn’t working.
But all my body wanted from me was to feel — to be, to photograph, to write, to express, and to know that I am worthy of the fullness those experiences bring. I don’t need to think or write my way into any conclusions. I need to just, be me.
And that is enough.
I am enough.