Don't Let Your Shadow Self Drive the Car: It's Probably Not 16!

As I typed the word shadow above, a crow landed right outside the patio door!  I always think of crows as a playful shadow reminder.  This one was particularly shiny and elegant, strutting his dark shadowy self.  He then flitted over to the tree where two endlessly-chasing-each-other squirrels were un-phased by his presence only inches away.  The shadow and the light in a lovely dance.  

I wish it were always that way inside me.  The little kid in me wants to say "Can't I always be the squirrel? Can't we just play?"  Yet those shadowy crows are nestled inside us right next to the light and playful squirrels.  The bullying, domineering, sometimes attacking crow is inside me, as is the hilarious, jokester squirrel.  But it always seems like way more fun to deal with light than shadow.  Recently, though, I'm finding the hugest relief in dealing head on with those shadows. 

If we don't acknowledge that the shadow is there, it will silently, stealthily, move into position behind the steering wheel of our car of life and start driving, shoving the light over into the passenger seat without even being noticed until he crashes the car.    That happened to me last week -- FEAR drove my car right into the FLU.

After a few months of dealing with buying a house and getting settled, I have been delving back into rewrites of my book, getting comments from friends, strangers and writer's groups.  Soon my head was spinning from the feedback and I was so afraid I had to check out.  Perfect solution: stomach flu.  It allowed for unabashed complete check-out.

Once I figured out I let the shadow drive me into a wall, I got out of the car, looked through the debris and pulled that shadow self out from behind the wheel.  Who was she and why was she so afraid?   We had a good chat and I realized she was the little girl who felt incredibly unsafe when my parents divorced.  I had never realized that I felt "unsafe" during that transition time.   I didn't want to be alone with my mom who I sensed, even at that tender age, was not completely stable.  Nor did I want to be alone with my dad, because he wasn't a mom.  Neither option was completely safe, each held its own sense of danger.  As a 53 year old adult, this transition time with my book was feeling equally unsafe, and that that shadow self who was born when I was 7 years old, was crying out in fear.  I'm glad we got to talk.  Of course, as soon as we did, I was on the road to swift healing.

Doing shadow work takes far less effort than pretending the shadow isn't driving you into walls.  The more you do it, the faster you get back into the driver's seat.  I can't more highly recommend Debbie Ford's work which I've been practicing now for over 4 years.   I mention it a lot in this very fun interview I did with Ted Lyde who is himself very adept at the brave work of looking at his own shadows while making us laugh about the whole game of life.   

His interview with me:
Learning Not to Swear with Ted Lyde