Accepting our Shadows

Over the last year, I have been diving deeper into my own shadow work in my journey to becoming a coach. Serving others in this way brings a great responsibility to continuously identify and heal the wounds within myself so that I am in integrity with the work that I do. I am deeply committed to this lifelong journey of healing not only myself but also doing what I can to heal the conscious collective. Below is a moment of clarity that I wrote about recently when I was diving deeper into how shadows can develop from childhood experiences. In identifying the WHY and seeing how rejecting that part of ourselves no longer serves us, we can reclaim fractured parts of ourselves and integrate them into full self-acceptance. I am only speaking based on my own reflections in this post, and hope that it resonates with others.

A shadow develops when something in our life tells us that we are not worthy enough as we are. We adapt our behaviors according to the reactions we get from the world, and we begin to hide parts of ourselves within us, determined not to let it out. As the years go on, it becomes harder and harder to hold this part of ourselves in because it creates a deep wound within us that needs to be healed. The shame or guilt we feel when it starts to seep out triggers us to warn us that we are doing something wrong and we are not safe, based on something that happened to us in the past. But it is also creating a disconnection from being able to express ourselves fully and authentically. When we can start to acknowledge that the reason why our shadow developed in the first place is because a childhood need was not fully met, then we can start to believe that we are worthy. We aren’t feeling ashamed or guilty because something is actually wrong with us, but because we were programmed to believe it from our external world at some point and adapted accordingly to survive. We are no longer that version of ourselves, nor are we in the same environment, and it is okay to shed that belief and embrace that part of ourselves again without painful feelings wrapped around it. Can you embrace that part of you? Can you say to it “I’m sorry I rejected you and hid you away for all of these years. I know you are there to help me meet a need within myself and I am listening now. Together we will heal and become one again. There is nothing that I need to say, do, or feel in order to be worthy of love from myself and from others. I can simply be myself because I am part of the divine. This is a reuniting of all the parts of myself as one soul.”