1/14/2016 (Day 14) Me and My Shadow

We all possess what Carl Jung referred to as our Shadow Self...that untamed part of our unconscious mind which contains our instincts and urges, repressed desires, impulses, weaknesses and all manor of things we are ashamed of or embarrassed by and seek to hide from the world. These thoughts, feelings, urges and desires are often repressed and hidden even from our own conscious minds and sometimes come out in dreams or fantasies. As small children we are taught that our Shadows urges are bad and that we should be ashamed of our wants, needs and desires...we are told that we are selfish and bad when we unabashedly make our desires known. We are punished for exhibiting behaviors driven by our baser shadow instincts and so we are taught, from a very young age, to repress them. We often learn to act the opposite of our deepest urges early on because we are shamed by society into subjugating our desires in order to fit in.  

Having gone to Catholic school for the first few years, the message to repress my Shadow side and ''be a good little girl,'' in order to be assured a place in Heaven some day, was drilled into my head at an early age. I internalized a certain sense of reverence from my experience with Catholicism, that I still, to this day, am thankful for; and fortunately, I never managed to suffer from much of the "Catholic guilt" when it came to sex, but in thinking back on my relationships with men, I can see where my sense of gender roles, and my ''place'' as a woman were strongly influenced and my deeper desires subjugated as a result of my Catholic upbringing. 

In the many years since my school days, I have done a great deal of soul searching and integrated many of my ''demons." One area that I have always found particularly challenging to face is that of my anger and rage. Over the years I have explored this scary place inside of myself enough to know that it is because I am absolutely TERRIFIED of my own temper. Even as a kid I had a bad temper and always found great release in the breaking and smashing of things...which I learned, the hard way, many years ago, is not a particularly wise shadowy urge to give in to. This inner rage has always caused me great deal of shame because ''good little girls'' don't get angry! 

So, for many years, I swallowed my anger and suppressed my rage by burying it in all kinds of shit...food, drugs and alcohol, shopping, sex...anything would do, really, just so long as it kept my anger at bay. My mind and body suffered because I was repressing a part of myself that was needing to be expressed in order to heal. Eventually, after years of repressing my anger, I had a severe physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health crisis.  For 7 long dark years, I faced a depression so dark and deep that it threatened to swallow me whole each and every day of my life...every breath felt like a struggle to survive, my weight climbed higher and higher, my body became like a prison and for a time I lost all hope and all desire to hope and if it weren't for the fact that I'd had my daughter, both of my parents, two dogs, 3 cats and 17 houseplants depending on me to show up every day and take care of them, I would have simply curled up in a ball and and left my earth vessel behind. I had lost all sense of the magic around me...I had felt the magic around me my whole life...even when I was a little girl in Catholic school, it felt magical, and I couldn't feel it anymore...not even when I tried, and that was one of the most terrifying feelings I would ever know. It seemed to evoke an almost panicky sense in me...I was constantly anxious and incredibly sad. It was the darkest time of my life, both internally and externally and there were many times that I wasn't sure that I would make it, but deep down inside, a Divine spark still existed and some part of me knew...remembered, really, that I had come here, into this specific body, in this specific place and time, on a Divine mission, and I knew that it was far from complete and I knew, deep in my heart, that I just had to find my way back to the Light. And so I found the strength and I began to fight...

    (Me on my 40th Birthday, July 4th, 2005, in full ''body armor")  

I 2007 I made the tough decision to walk away from full time care taking of my parents, which I had been doing for the previous 7 years. It was one of the most painful decisions of my life, but I knew that if I stayed there, it would literally be the end of me. I had nothing left to give and no reserves left to tap and it was leave or die. I spent the next several years facing down the demons of my Shadow by digging deeply and fearlessly into the very depths of my Soul, exploring the anger and rage (and many other shadowy truths) I had so carefully repressed. I found things in there that would frighten Jack the Ripper (okay, well maybe not that bad, but...lol) and learned more about myself with each and every secret I uncovered. I became fierce and fearless in my quest for self understanding and discovery, I allowed my Shadow to emerge and found that it would not destroy me after all...I explored the anger, felt the rage, working diligently to release and transmute it. I found healthy ways to deal with it and I began the long and arduous task of learning to truly Love  and accept myself. And, then one day, I realized that I could feel the magic all around me once more! And at first, I was afraid that it might leave again...and for a time it waxed and waned, but I came to realize that the spark had never truly gone out, it may have dwindle to a mere ember, but it was always there and with proper care and feeding, I could bring it fully to back to life. It had been a long road, I had journeyed through the Dark Night of my Soul and come out the other side, and could feel the Light on my face once again, and boy did it feel wonderful!!! 

(Me on my 50th Birthday, July 4th, 2015, oh what a difference a decade makes...lol)