Me and My Shadow: From Boxing to Dancing to Wholeness
“Within everyone there is light and shadow, good and evil, love and hate. In order to be truthful, you must embrace your total being. A person who exhibits both positive and negative qualities, strengths and weaknesses is not flawed, but complete.” — Rumi
Today marks 15 years since my beloved mother, Wendy, took the A Train to the spirit realm, ending her life and forever changing the course of mine.
It was Mother’s Day 2008. Her final, violent act of self-determination — of self-liberation really — was as bold and unexpected as it was heartbreaking. At 71, she had been battling severe anxiety and depression for the better part of two decades. A dark, brooding cloud of mental illness had appeared seemingly out of nowhere the year I graduated from college, replacing my animated, purposeful, type-A supermom with someone I dearly loved yet barely recognized.
In her last years, like Schrödinger’s cat, she seemed simultaneously dead and alive. Her light had gone out, giving her a haunting, ghostlike quality, as if she was dead but still walking amongst the living.
Then, one Sunday, that Sunday — the Sunday on which we celebrate the divine feminine beings who gave us life — on that Sunday, May 11th, 2008, with one courageous and profoundly tragic leap off of a platform at 42nd Street, she chose to end her life and her 42-year journey of motherhood, unwittingly paying tribute to The Hitchhiker’s Guide’s universal wisdom in the numerology of her final act. In that instant, spontaneously — and I imagine unintentionally — she birthed me anew, offering me the gift of new life from the remains of her own.
At a time when I desperately needed both a wake-up call and a lifeline, her death offered me both. I was 42 years old and had all the elements of a good life — one of relative privilege with all the toys and trappings that we are sold with a promise of happiness. Yet inside I was profoundly miserable, oscillating between paroxysms of anger and sadness, all the while pretending that everything was fine when it was so clearly not.
The shock of her death woke me up to my own misery, allowing me to see myself and my soul’s journey with entirely new eyes. Like the Dickensian Ghost of Christmas Future, she showed me a future that might be mine if I didn’t take action.
At that moment, I saw two paths forward with startling clarity. I could become the poster child for tragic mother-daughter stories, going on Oprah and Jerry Springer — like many other victims of circumstance during the early aughts — making a livelihood telling and retelling my tales of woe to anyone who would listen. Or, I could turn my attention inward, journeying through the darkness to find the light within, attempting to do the inner work that my mother was sadly unable to do.
If you’ve been following this series that I call Contagious Vulnerability, you’ll know that I chose the introspective path. A long, and largely solitary road that has been far harder, lonelier, and more life-giving to walk than I could have ever imagined when I took that courageous first step. A road and a life that I would not trade with anyone for anything.
Like all newborns, I spent the first 15 years of what feels like my second life looking at my inner and outer world with a mixture of awe and wonder — which does not mean that it’s been a blissful, Edenic existence full of sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. Awe and wonder are states of being inspired by circumstances of darkness as well as light, fear as well as love, despair as well as joy. As with all journeys of becoming, mine has been more than a little dark, messy, and scary at times.
This morning, to mark the anniversary, I reread my earlier piece about shadow work entitled “Shadow Boxing”, written on March 4th, 2020 just days before the mother of all disruptions was about to hit us like a freight train. I presenced with my 2020 self and felt such compassion for the way that Kate courageously spars with her shadow and pronounces the realization of Jungian synthesis when it’s obvious to me now that it was more conceptual than actual, more aspirational than embodied.
Six months after writing that piece, I joined a course called The Mighty Heart, a learning experience I found lacking in many ways but one which offered me a precious and generative seed of gold, one that took my shadow work to a far deeper level and whose ripple effect is still reverberating within me, effecting change at the core of my being.
In module 4 we were invited to tame our inner critic and meet our shadow via a guided meditation. I was instructed to sit quietly with my eyes closed and visualize my shadow or inner critic sitting in a chair across from me. These two aspects of my psyche merged into one and I witnessed a dark, foreboding presence fill my inner landscape, towering over me and leaving me frozen in fear. I was then guided to ask it a series of questions to find out what it wanted.
Rather than engage in an awkward, convoluted dialectic inside my own mind, I found myself moving to sit beside it, bridging our separation, taking its hand in mine, and gathering the courage to engage rather than cower. I told it that I trusted it had wisdom for me that I wanted to hear but that I could not receive this wisdom if it continued to deliver it with a bullying, domineering energy. I felt the daunting presence shrink down to my size and the fear dissipate. My shadowy, reproving bully diffused with love, curiosity, and an invitation to belonging, I invited this inner darkness to join what my friend Nadine Kreisberger calls my Roundtable of Inner Characters, provided that it promised to tone it down, to become one of many wise voices rather than a lone shouty, intimidating one.
The insight I gained from this experience is that we do battle with and vanquish our shadows at our peril, not theirs. This holds true for our inner critics, our egos, our judge, and all the darker aspects of our psyche. Our healing journey of inner work cannot be a war of the roses or a battlefield of winners and losers. Shadow work will fail if we pathologize our darker aspects. If we choose to treat these shadowy forces as enemy combatants, the vanquished parts of us will operate silently in the shadows, on the margins, until they burst back on the scene to stage their comebacks. They will define us as much by their absence as they do by their over-expression.
Like playground bullies, what these punishing forces really want is our listening, our witnessing, and ultimately our love and acceptance. And yes, just like the cruel kids at recess, they are looking for love in all the wrong ways. The truth is that they will continue to punish us until we find the courage to face and embrace them and offer them belonging. Because the only path to true and sustained inner harmony is one of wholeness, not one built from exclusion or exclusivity.
The journey to wholeness involves a willingness to presence with and make space in our hearts for all that we are, all that we’ve been, and all that we are becoming. The light, the shadow, all of it. To realize this state of peaceful and harmonious oneness, we must discover, welcome back, and integrate all the pieces of our fragmented psyches. The gifts of doing this inner work are not limited to peace and resonance within. When I am able to be with all of me, I have the capacity to be with all of you, and all of the beings in the relational spaces I navigate. As within, so without.
My mother was sadly, tragically unable to summon the courage to face her inner darkness despite all the love, encouragement, and therapy she was offered. Over time, the shadowy forces within grew to monstrous proportions, stealing her light and ultimately her life.
Her journey inspired my practice and offerings of Contagious Vulnerability and I honor her as I continue to walk my soul’s path of service. As the Vulnerability Doula I guide beings on courageous journeys of inner exploration to discover, reclaim, and reintegrate lost pieces of themselves. These experiences start with a somatic grounding and a simple but powerful question — “What’s on your heart?”, “What’s alive for you in this moment?”, “What’s here now?” From here we engage in curious conversations led with humility, an open heart, and a willingness to be with whatever shows up. Whether experienced 1:1 or in a collective setting, these powerful journeys are not for the faint of heart and offer riches beyond measure. I am humbled and privileged to witness powerful and profound transformation in the brave beings who show up to do the work.
I share this today in honor of Wendy, in honor of Mother’s Day, and in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. If you are struggling or need listening, I am here. If your soul is nudging you towards the path of inner work and you want an experienced guide and partner in that journey, I am here. If you are curious, I am here.
I am here.