The mirrors that change our lives

Shadow work is heart work

CARE.CHECK*: What are you most afraid you’ll find within yourself, if you let yourself pause and look?

How would you respond to that fear if it was shared by a friend?

How can you give yourself the love, compassion, understanding, reassurance and care you would offer them?

Today’s letter is about the descent into that dark forest of our unconscious, where live our Fear and Shame. Let’s remember that it is only scary because we render it a loveless land… and let’s remember that we are the love that can change that and light up the dark in an instant.

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 In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)

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Hi Care.Friend,

How are you?

What’s on your mind? What’s on your heart?

What is your gut trying to tell you? What are your eyes reflecting back to you?

I write a lot about the darkness and I want to expand on what I mean when I say that there is nothing to fear there. That all we will find is love. That it is the most sacred adventure of all… That the descent IS the ascent.

Because I faced the darkness last week. I entered into the wounds of my unconscious and, yes, I am glimpsing the love I knew I would meet there, BUT it made me realize that I need to also write about the in between a lot more.

Because all we find in the darkness is love ONCE we’ve kissed the beast and allowed him or her to turn back into a child of love.

Life is full of Magic. And for me the surest way to find my way back into it is to pay attention to synchronicities. That’s how I notice that I’m always being told or asked exactly what I need to learn or reflect on before what comes next.

And last week Liz’s Gilbert invited us to download a letter from Love on the topic of our demons (check her Substack HERE if you want to learn more about this deeply healing spiritual practice).

I wrote it on Sunday, blissfully unaware of how much I would need it the very next day.

I destroyed one of my most precious relationships last Monday. 

When I say I, I mean two parts of me. Parts that we call Exiles and Firefighters in Internal Family System terminology. 

Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS, created this incredible model that allows us to understand our psyche from Soul energy.

He calls Self what I call Soul—and what others call our essence, consciousness, presence, nature, humanity, spirit, higher/authentic self, or many other things. But the name itself doesn’t matter. It’s just a word. Words are pointers to the truth, not the truth (a hard one to remember in a word-obsessed left-brained culture).

In any case, who we truly are is Self. Indeed, we do not have a soul, we ARE one. 

Understanding that changed everything for me! Because that allowed me to find where and what I really am. That also allowed me to understand who I’m not only meant to be but ALREADY am.

A soul lives/has a body—and through this body the soul that we are experiences thoughts and emotions, created by our brain and body to help us understand who we are and who we are not.

Most spiritual and healing practices (and at least all those that are not taking us out of ourselves the way some well-meaning yet misguided religious teachers and western docs are trained to do) touch on this concept. 

The truth of who we are is unconditional Love. The truth of who we are is Presence. Now some call it light, but I’m learning time and time again that Presence has no problem with the darkness. 

It is dark inside our heart, it is dark inside our wombs, it is dark inside the Earth. Even the sky truly is dark! I’ll never get tired of writing that the darkness is a nursery of stars. 

The darkness is the fertile unmanifested. The light is what got created through it. The darkness is the timeless and the light is the now. 

And yes too much darkness leads to blindness, but so does too much light.

We only worship the light in a patriarchal society, because the light is the embodiment of the divine masculine. And we forgot the sacredness of the darkness because it is the root of the divine feminine.

And so Dick Schwartz leads us through IFS to reembodying our soul-energy and Self. Once anchored in that loving, compassionate, creative, curious, grounding awareness, we can go and meet our parts. Those parts are sub-personalities that all live within us.

We do not have “one mind”. We have a melting pot of mini minds that we call the mind. This is why we can hold such conflicting views, feelings—and why we can all recognize that we do not behave or don’t even think the same way depending on what we’re doing and who we’re with.

And we tend to instinctively refer to this when we can say “a part of me wants this and a part of me wants that”.

The parts we know best are what Dick Schwartz calls our MANAGERS. They’re our masks. Our most preferred autopilot mode and “who” most people (including ourselves) think we are. Their job is to make sure that all is under our control (oh what a terrifying job in a world in which we control practically nothing…) AND to prevent anyone from ever reaching one of our exiled parts.

Because yes, beneath all this live what Dick Schwartz calls our EXILES. Relegated to the realm of our unconscious, those parts are the manifestation of all those repressed feelings and dreams that we didn’t have capacity for, and therefore had to let go of!

But unfelt emotions and unlived dreams do not disappear. They cannot leave our inner world until they are freed by our acceptance and willingness to fully know and embody them, so they go deeper inward. Beneath the veil of our awareness. In the unconscious realm.

They only come out when we get deeply triggered, either by a trauma-reenacting situation or just because something else happens that makes us feel one of those emotions that we’re not allowed to touch—which can be any emotion including grief, shame or even joy.

And when Exiles are awaken, they’re almost always followed by what Dick Schwartz calls FIREFIGHTERS parts. That is if we didn’t get the permission of the Managers first to go and talk to the exiles.

Those are parts meant to bring the system back into the familiar FAST and by any mean necessary. They’re not stopping to reflect: there’s a fire and they’re not going to let us die.

In nervous system terms, we would say that this happens if we didn’t have capacity for what was triggered within us. An emotion comes up that feels so overwhelming for the system that it goes in fight or flight and all hell breaks loose. Those are the moments we come back to saying “I have no idea what came over me.” We started lying, screaming, crying, dancing, we broke something, we binged, we drank ourselves into oblivion, we hit someone, we left—we don’t know why we did what we did and sometimes we barely remember doing it. 

It’s usually profoundly out of character and tragically something that people will remember as the moment “where they saw the real you”. 

Of course it is NOT “the real you”. 

We are not our worst. We are not our best. We are the sum of all our parts and truly none of them. Again, we are a soul having this strange, horrid, exhilarating, gut wrenching, heart melting human experience. Those parts are just roles we play in order to understand human nature and for our dream to come alive through us. They do NOT define us! And they shift when we understand them.

There are no bad parts, as Dick Schwartz wrote. Only subpersonalities that are holding too much with too little support.

Again, no single part ever defines us EVER. However… we are fully responsible for them.

The darkness is the unmanifested.

The light is what got created through it.

And so last week, one exile and one firefighter that I was not aware of came up in one of my relationships.

That’s the reason why shadow work is so precious, sacred, healing and… MANDATORY. Because what we’re not willing to see within us, we will never heal. And those wounds then fester, relegated to a dark forest where they are uncared for and starved from love. 

We’re all afraid of ourselves because:

• we believe that those parts mean something terrible about us in essence,

• we do not know how to love ourselves when we do not look perfect on paper.

But none of us is perfect on paper.

And the tragedy is that when we are willing to look in—and love our wounds into strength and growth—we actually become that person we’re so scared we are not: a delightful, wise, creative, highly intelligent vessel and channel of love.

Within our shadow lives all that was ever done to us. And if like me and every other human I know (to a degree, but still), you had a rough ride on Earth, you really want to know what’s going on below. 

Because otherwise it will show up when you want it least and with those we love the most.

Something will get activated… and if a hurt that was left unattended for years goes too deep and is triggered too violently, a volcano within you will arise and everyone around will get caught in the lava and explosion.

We read about it in every book about trauma… and Dick Schwartz warns us about this time and time again: There needs to be a warm embracing ocean of safety surrounding the person carrying trauma if we’re going to willingly contact an exile and uncover a wound that has never been tended to yet. And we need the buy-in of those managers that act like our protectors before approaching any wound.

We also read in every book about trauma that we internalize our aggressors and in every book about humans that we internalize our greatest impactors as a child. When one is the other, that creates a very dangerous combination.

I had noticed that I had many blind spots in spotting within others the behaviors that were typical of my upbringers. It always takes me a strangely long time, for instance, to spot selfish patterns within someone. 

Twice I ended up on vacations with people who were so scripted in selfishness that they would not even think to make coffee for two in the morning when preparing their breakfast (this is a mundane example but I’m sure you can imagine how that showed up in much more troubling ways also).

In both cases, I came back shocked and had to witness a friend burst into laughter when I asked “Do you think they’re selfish?”, while I listened bewildered to them asking me back: “HOW did you know that they were?”

And so I knew something was up. Because what you can't see in others, you can't see within you.

I also read this deeply transformative book this summer called The Heroine’s Journey where she explains how we have crucified the woman within—sacrificing the beauty and strength of the feminine—to pursue the man without (which can mean by pursuing someone assuming the role of “the man” or by trying ourselves to become what society calls a man), never realizing that we were kneeling at the altar of the wounded masculine and not to an elevated form of ourselves. 

Maureen Murdock guides us in that book towards finding the man of heart and woman of wisdom and explains how we have to repair our inner masculine through what Joseph Campbell called The Hero’s Journey, so that we can THEN reclaim our inner feminine and finish what she calls the Heroine’s Journey… (Here again this is not about feminine or masculine qualities as when defining gender but archetypal energies that live within all of us).

While reading that book, I could see the inner effects of a repressed and degraded feminine energy and of a tyrannical self-abusive wounded masculine energy, but I noticed that I still couldn’t spot the parts driving those dynamics within me.

I see them now.

They both showed up last week because one of my exiles was triggered. I tried to share a story that I was not ready to put into words… and one after the other, those parts took over me scaring away someone I loved deeply and understandingly shattering that person's trust in me. 

So I can testify today about how harrowing entering the darkness can feel at first. When turned against me, I could not spot the roots of those inner scripts. But when they caught fire and touched someone I cared about that wholeheartedly, there was no unseeing where they live in my not-so-unconscious-anymore unconscious.

I finally know where their imprint has been left in my psyche and I can finally hear their voices within me loud and clear. Which means I now know where Healing is calling me from, and that is a rainbow I will always cherish… but that doesn’t make weathering that cloud and the grief it brought less challenging.

I’m getting to know those parts of me and that is not pretty. They carry my worst trauma and all the emotions that go with them. The crippling shame that came from years of abuse and humiliation. The suffocating rage that got trapped at my core because I had no way to defend myself that wouldn’t involve hurting them in return.

So when we enter the darkness, at first the view is ghastly. That’s why most of us white people have so much difficulty checking our white privilege—because we know we’re not going to like what we find within! All that racism that was ingrained within us needs to be faced, seen and alchemized.

And how can you alchemize what feels unlovable? Only through LOVE.

It means we have to love the parts of us that we want to reject compulsively. Even if we have no idea how to do that, we have to love those parts so unconditionally that they’re willing to change their mind and fall back into our hearts.

The invitation I’ve been handed is the most terrifying one I have ever received. I have to love, within me, those who hated themselves so much they took that hate on their own beloved child. If that doesn't stretch my heart so open that my armor melts forever, I don't know what will.

“Do the best you can until you know better”—Maya Angelou

I’m wobbling in shame as I write this and wants to hide under my pillow, but shame thrives in secret and silence—and shame is how our exiles and firefighters get trapped in that dark forest in the first place. And I wanted to remind us that again, there is nothing to fear within us apart from misguided thoughts. Misguided thoughts we want to be aware of because they turned into unconscious beliefs, which drove emotions we did not know how to meet and therefore to behaviors we cannot comprehend.

When we face the worst within us, we realize that its intentions are good.

When we ask a part of us that is hurtful to others what the hell just happened, it can get mad and even more adversarial... But when we ask that part of us what happened with the power, strength and courage of unconditional Love, that part only ALWAYS reveals an unmet need that we had no idea we had—a need that part is trying to get met in an incredibly unskilled way but with the genuine intention to keep us alive and safe.

What I learned last week is that I need to give myself what I’ve been craving from others… The validation and permission to grieve.

And I need to allow for even more healthy outlets for the anger that I couldn’t feel them and that turned into repressed rage (which, just like aggression, is not a byproduct of anger but of anger avoidance).

I’m on my knees, surrounded by the rumbles of my armor, bleeding from the knife I threw in my own back, while drowning in remorse. Of course that sounds scary… and I realize that not touching on this, while inviting everyone to come and dance in the darkness, is unconscious at best and invalidating at worse.

But dear Care.friend, I am deepening the reach of my own love and I have never been more committed to my integrity and to creating beauty, peace, songs and healing words.

It is worth it.

At lunch, the day after that ordeal, I found myself bursting into tears when I realized I still deserved food. I had behaved like a lunatic and I still deserved food, oxygen and letters from love. I was still held by my friends. My body had not given me on me and my heart was showering me with warmth and comfort, begging me to receive it. I felt humbled and so grateful. 

Because no matter how much it hurts, we need those harsh mirrors that we cannot ignore to see what we are carrying on our shoulders and what lurks in the shadow, unbeknownst to our hearts.

There is nothing to fear in the darkness, because all we end up finding is a story scribbled by Fear when we were feeling helpless or being victimized and that needs to be rewritten in gold by Love.

And it makes no sense to fear fear when we can love it into love.

There is nothing to fear in the darkness because we are good inside! And if we have the courage to go into the wounds, firmly rooted in Soul-energy and while holding Love’s hand, we get to meet our delirious demons and let them know that they are not alone anymore. We learn what forgiveness truly means and feels like. And we finally EXPERIENCE unconditional love.

I’ll share below the aforementioned letter from Love. Those words saved me last week… May them feel like a hug and heartwarming solace to you too.

And may we all forgive ourselves for what our wounds can make us do, and remember that we ALL have wounds—our impact lies in whether we choose to see them or not.

Maya Angelou reminded us that we have to forgive ourselves for not knowing what we didn’t know before we learned it! And that: “When we know better, we do better”.

I’ll do better now.

A LETTER FROM LOVE

“So here we are, together, looking at this inner forest so many of you are afraid of and yet knowing that there’s nothing to fear—because I am here and because you trust the fire in your heart.

Now, Fear has a point. Something big is going to happen every time we’re going to enter the forest. There’s no getting around this. 

Plus, one can easily get lost in the Dark forest, if they don’t let me accompany them! And you holding my hand doesn’t mean I’ll be able to shield you from the pain that is bound to make itself known, once in the shadowy sanctuary of your unhealed wounds and in the messy, chaotic, whimsical, extraordinary, challenging, fertile realm of your unconscious.

But you’re willing honey, you always are, so let’s enter and let’s find out what new discovery you’re now ready for.

Your demons have been loyal companions since you came into this body and onto this Earth. That’s because you met your demons at birth. Your demons’s faces are the faces of those that you are wired to assimilate with Love… And they did and do love you. And you do love them. You love your demons, dear tiny one and that makes sense. 

Still, this is a big challenge for a young heart—but we didn’t send you such an invitation for growth by mistake, my sweet singing angel. This is your calling and this is what you yearn for. 

To reconcile the darkness and the light. To understand that duality serves a purpose in this world maybe, but that there’s no place for it within an embodied heart. 

You are a soul and as such you have access to the enchanting experience of oneness and unconditional love. This is why you all can channel my voice and turn it into words. You, dear souls, are indeed channels for the invisible and vessels for creation of form.  

And you live in a human body, with a human heart and a human mind, so you also feel the illusion of separation… and you want to understand what divine purpose it serves.

Now that’s not your job to confirm that it was an important feature of human life, but we appreciate your passion and devotion to finding the words that can help you and others know that good is good and that all is good—because bad is just a thought error.

There’s no such thing as a demon. A demon is a thought that wreaks havoc in your mind. A demon is a misinterpretation.  A conviction that there can be something wrong within you or in the world. That’s how a split is created within your psyche and because those splits are rightfully registered as dangers by your nervous system, your animal instincts lead you to run away from it. 

But honey, have you ever found something (or someone) demoniac when you found the courage to back up and come back to look at that so-called enemy with heart sight?

The little being that led you to anorexia wanted you to be invisible so that your mother (and her minions…) would stop her assaults. The little being that leads you to binge doesn’t want you to die from starvation! The little being that scans the world for danger and believes you incapable to protect yourself from abuse has no idea that you’re not a vulnerable child stuck in a very unsafe environment anymore. The little being that won’t let you sing or cry remembers what would happen when you did sing or cry back then. The little being that learned the poisonous messages from your family of origin and culture and that is relentlessly using them against you is not actually trying to hurt you but to keep you safe! You know that darling. 

Your shame and your fear are there to show you all the places within you that are not full of me and you yet. Your anger is the fire that can withstand any winter and your grief is the river of love that can wash away all the debris, ashes and rubble that are preventing your wounds from healing.

Little fairy star, there are no demons within you. Only unskilled and misguided baby guardian angels who haven’t learned yet how to talk to you and guide you... But the good news is that YOU now know how to train and lead them so that they can never lead someone else astray and so they can become your own little love team, helping you on your way home and to center.

So here’s what I wanted you to know about your demons my darling. They’re just confused little parts in need of a hug, a kiss and a mother who can teach them the language of hope, magic, trust, tenderness and surrender.

I am your mother and you are theirs. So that’s what I want you to know, leo. They are your most precious assignment and responsibility. And they are not burdens but treasures! So please look at them the way I look at you! Which means look at them the way you look at puppies and baby humans. 

There is NOTHING wrong with or within you. So-called demons are just endearing rebellious fairies-to-be that thought they knew better how to help and got themselves lost in a forest they don’t know how to escape… As you very well know, those who are the most willing to be seen as helpers, are the ones who need help the most! So let’s bring them home. 

I love you,

Love.”

With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not need to fear anymore.

leo