Halloween, especially with a Blue Moon, is a perfect time to align with your Shadow Self. To face the things hidden deep inside, and make peace with your past shame so you can unlock your truths.
Around Halloween I tend to get retrospective. I love this time. The weather starts to cool and a sense of fall is in the air. Pumpkins and skeletons decorate yards and lawns. I like to read spooky things and think about mortality. This is all part of the ancient rituals surrounding Halloween and also part of searching into the Shadow Self.
If you’ve never heard the term, Shadow Self, it’s the hidden things in your subconscious, things buried because of fear and shame. Our anger, fear, and sadness reside inside our Shadow Self.
But the shadow is not something we should be afraid of. It is as much a part of us as the light. Shame and guilt make us feel like things are worse than they are, or that we are somehow different than others. In truth we all have these traits within us to varying degrees.
For me the Shadow Self was my truth, my childhood, and my lost joy.
I find that in times of great grief the valve connecting my conscious to this shadow self open. It is within these deep moments that suck my chest and make gulp in sobs, that I see my shadow self clearly.
I work well with visualization. When I work with my shadow self I imagine her as my inner child.
She is the person I had to leave behind when the demands of my parents, one an addict the other an enabler, forced me to behave as a miniature adult. She’s the one who I wish I could hug, and often imagine hugging in mediation to help heal so much past hurt.
She is my loneliness, my innocence, my dreamer, and the one who knew full joy.
I faced my inner shame and realized shame is not something so bad. Shame reveals a truth I wish to keep buried. Accepting shame made me realize I was queer. That realization gave me strength to make changes, no matter how hard, to become authentic.
Once I faced this shame, the grief began to surface. I started to grieve everything in my life. I grieved the childhood I lost, the mother I wished I had but will never have, the childhood pet that died, the frailly members who died, the addiction that wrecked havoc on my childhood and now my marriage. I grieved the loss of a pregnancy and ended friendships.
I had not grieved things in my past because I never had the opportunity. When my childhood pet died, I did not grieve. My mother needed me to be strong because her grief was greater, her emotions more important than my loss. When my grandparent died I held in my grief, again. My mother, who was besides herself with grief and had been the one to lose a parent needed me to be strong.
Too many times I shoved my own feelings aside to put others first.
No more.
My inner child still needs space to mourn. She needs the space to cry. She needs the gentle acceptance that her feelings are valid, that she is not less-than because of all the pain she had buried and tried to be strong. It is her vulnerability that makes her strong because that is where her truth lies.
I get angry, but that anger tells me something about my values. I no longer burst out with rage and yell or snap. I let my anger exist in my chest, and I listen to what it is trying to tell me, what value it is worried about in the moment.
My sorrow also speaks of my values. It speaks of how much I loved. I weep because of the deep love I have lost. I am reminded that my connection to this loss meant it was important to me. The relationships that end, the expectations that are not being met, the death that took someone I loved, all speak of how much I have lived and how many things I am connected to.
It is okay to grieve the loss of things, no matter how small. It is okay to be angry with grief, to be weary.
For all the things I have grieved I still feel there is a long way to go.
I will walk into a room and remind myself, my pet is no longer here. Sometimes I say this with acceptance, it is a fact that I now live with. Sometimes this fact grips my chest and pulls deep sobs from my heart. When the tears come, I let them. I release them and cry until I feel relief. I don’t stuff them down or hold them back. I feel them and I visualize my pet. I think of what they meant to me, what they were to me, what they looked like and felt like. It hurts and I miss them, but I remember and I grieve.
There is no shame in crying over things we have lost.
Tears bring healing. Healing brings relief. Relief leads to a full life.
I’m still doing shadow work. Trying to tap into that inner child and those hidden values and joys that I have lost connection to. I am hoping that while the veil is thin during this Halloween season, I can connect and discover more about myself. The truth is there and it is setting me free.
Blessings be.