I began working with clients in 2007, but have been a student of this work since I was seventeen years old! I had the great fortune of working with a psychotherapist who was also a master shadow coach during my ripe and impressionable teenage years. She later became my mentor and I have been living and breathing this profound work ever since.

People always tell me that they think shadow work sounds intimidating. There is this idea that your hidden self will suddenly pop out and say “Boo!” But the truth is— your spookiest self is the one that you can’t yet see. Why? Because the parts of us we aren’t allied with or truly aware of tend to be the most powerful parts of us, acting out unconsciously in our relationships, quietly polluting our inner landscape with self-limiting beliefs, and keeping old patterns locked in place. Our unconscious parts perpetuate our anxiety and shame, and keep us in survival mode instead of allowing us to break free and thrive.

It is our denied parts that have the most power over us because parts that get pushed out of our conscious view don’t just go away… they go into hiding. And nobody likes to be snuck up on, but our shadows tend to creep up on us. The worst kind of enemy is the one you can’t see and shadow work is about making friends. We lighten things up by brining light to the places that have been dark and underground, and in doing so you gain more agency over your self and your life.

I used to approach this work- this inner work, this shadow work- so seriously. Perhaps, too seriously. I thought, ‘If bringing deep awareness to my inner life and the things I struggle with (which were numerous!) will offer the keys to my liberation, then I am going to do it with an austerity befitting a monk, with a spirit of true sobriety.’

But this being human thing is an arduous and messy business all on its own. In time I learned that bringing light to the shadowy parts of myself wasn’t just an act of bringing my awareness to the parts of me that I didn’t understand yet, that rendered suffering, or made me feel shame. It meant bringing a light touch and a light heart, too. These are the postures that can get you far as you travel from the inside out. We humans are nothing if not full of multitudes. We can do deep inner work and hold it as light as a feather at the same time. This alone is a practice we can cultivate, this holding of opposites, learning to reside in grief and joy at the same time. Shadow and Light. Making space for the whole of us. 

I know firsthand from working with countless clients, and from my own personal life, that this work offers liberation. I would go so far as to say that doing this work is a form of resistance and an act of true peace. Because peace is not something that just happens ‘out there.’ Peace has to start somewhere and in the great chain of humankind we are each responsible for our own links and kinks.

Doing this work untangles us from our habitual stories and struggles, unhooks us from our projections about other people, and opens us up to a softer affection for ourselves and others. That is true peace making. I have found that when we make friends with our WHOLE self, the life we are longing for can finally unfold before us, because it unfolds from within us.