Embracing Our Light and Dark Sides of Our Soul

8/13/2019 Embracing Our Light and Dark Sides of Our Soul

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Embracing and Honoring the Light and Dark Sides of Our Soul

A Self-Portrait

I recently came through a very dark patch of anger, depression, uncertainty

and frustration about my life when it turned upside down and inside out. Lastyear, I had opened up a wellness center to support whole mind, body spirithealing in others. Inside of a year, broke and devastated, I was unable tocontinue to advertise or promote my business. The financial decline wasimminent. The obvious constraints of my own limits (my own physical healthand my time commitments) were eating away at my very soul.

As oddess!"eali#ed beings we do understand that we attract thesee$periences to teach ourselves important lessons, and to remind us of whowe are.

The first thing I reali#ed was that I was trying to fit a mold a friend and dearmentor of mine had set up for herself. This is what I tend to do. Look forshapes, molds and models to fit myself inside and hide in (like a hermit crab)as opposed to shedding it and lighting a path anew for myself. The %ourney oftrying on many costumes, masks and hats to see what fits is one I&vetraversed for years. It is a symptom of an unwillingness to unveil the lightwholly for the world.

'e all do this to some e$tent or another. As if walking around fully encasedin another&s garments is enough to hide us from who we really are. 'e wearmakeup, try on clothes, dye our hair, pluck our eyebrows, carve up our facesand bodies all in an attempt to look or appear to be something or someoneother than who or what we are.

As if we don&t know we are all naked and fully e$posed underneathanyways and indeed incredibly fragile and delicate ! to be handled withcare and compassion.

A large part of this comes from a unwillingness deep within to acknowledgewho I am and what I am here to do. 'e are afraid not of our darkness, but ofour light. 'e obsess about our darkness and ignore completely our lights. 'eare addicted to our dark sides, but not in an attempt to embrace it.

I&ve tried to carve up these aspects of myself in a number of different ways,but I continue to run into myself at the dead ends in this endless sacredlabyrinth I call a life path.

I reali#ed, through the work that I had embarked upon in this wellnesscenter, my %ob was not to teach my clients physical wellness. In fact, I had solittle interest of that. I was only interested in building a community to guidingthem to rediscover who they are and what they are truly capable of.


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All of my clients that were attracted to me, needed to be remindedconstantly that they needed to learn to love and accept themselves, wholly.ompletely. *r they would not find it within themselves to embrace a lifepath that enlivened them and energi#ed them.

I reali#ed, no matter what I taught my clients about physical health, It alwayscame right back to the energetic, spiritual pieces of ourselves that weignored, disavowed or neglected. +ost of the time it was the Light theyrefused to embrace.

It was only recently that I reali#ed these clients were attracted to my work,because this was the deep self work I was in need of for myself.

I worked mostly with women, and these women, like me, had facede$tensive, brutal e$periences in their lives. rom rape, to abduction, tohorrific familial or spousal abuse, to the comple$ emotional dysfunction andsocietal self!ob%ectification our rape culture continues to perpetuate. +ostthe women walked into my doors victims, but they left empowered,embracing themselves and honoring the sacred path they walked upon.

'omen walked into the center and told me they felt as if they walked intothe Temple of the oddess. they would tell me privately they felt as if theoddess spoke through me to them. It was a place to honor ourselves, our%ourneys and learn to embrace all aspects of our powers. *ur classes andgroups were fun, embracing, %oyful, e$uberant and at the same time,enlightening and deeply transformational.

-o when I had to close it down or risk complete financial ruin of my family, I

was devastated. ow could I, a consultant of marketing and business, havemade the very mistakes I coached others to avoid that ultimately led to mybusiness having to close down/

I knew the truth deep inside, but I was afraid to face it head on. The truthwas, I was never interest in running or operating a wellness or health center.I was interested in healing and leading a women&s spiritual movement thatenabled and empowered women to walk a moderate path of spiritual andpersonal mastery in their daily lives with their family, in their professions,and in their own private lives.

I ignored my soul&s calling.

I ignored the dark side of my soul, the side that craved recognition,acceptance and healing.

The same pieces of myself that my own clients were ignoring.

I was afraid of being a pillar. *f being a successful leader. In all honesty, I


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was afraid I wasn&t good enough or worthy enough to succeed. I hatedspeaking publicly. I am so intensely afraid of large crowds and the energy isusually overwhelming.

I disliked the terms many people used to talk about themselves, their

services or their skills. I found I had trouble convincing myself people weren&tout to hurt me.

0et, in a physical space where I felt I could manage the direction, the energy,and the vitality of the group, I was immensely successful.

+y female friends rallied around me when I talked of my closing the centerdown and attempted to redirect me into braver more large scale pursuits ofhosting retreats, of teaching women the skills to embrace their spiritualgoddess nature and align it with their professional life. They encouraged meto come out and tell my husband and the world who I really was. Theyagreed that a physical center wasn&t needed, but a spiritual center was. Theyall told me I was a spiritual center and I needed nothing but to travel andteach.

I think my fear was in becoming that spiritual center for others. The dark sideof my soul rose up and throttled my voice. I attempted to run a podcast witha friend but we 1uickly ran into problems. I couldn&t sustain it, because Icouldn&t keep the looming doubts at bay. +y old programming that I wouldnever be good enough to lead or teach others kept returning in full force. Iwas facing my worst fears.

0ou would think my background in venture finance, construction, pro%ect

management, technology, strategy, marketing and consulting variousbusinesses over the years I would have had amassed a wealth of abilities tohandle such things, and you would be right. I&ve run teams, built castles,drove innovation.

2ut, when it came to fully investing in myself, and putting myself out there tofollow my true bliss, I found I choked. *ver, and over, and over again. Thedark side of the moon.

0ou see, privately, I had been invested deeply in 'omen&s -pirituality since Icould remember. I had no use for man&s god. I was a spiritually enlivened

being. I knew my core. I used my skills and abilities to draw to me seeminglyimpossible positions and e$periences.

2ut I never believed I was stable enough, strong enough, healthy enoughemotionally, or brilliant enough to be a spiritual center or leader. I was no-tarhawk, no stable solid woman of the earth. I was a star goddess. Agoddess who lived in a male dominated dark earth sphere her whole life, whohad been abducted, raped, nearly killed, possessed, abused, traumati#ed


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waitwas that the only legacy I wanted to leave behind/ a hurt little girl witha tiny voice and nothing important to say/ 'hine about my past and my lotand use those as the e$cuses why I can&t do/

I was innately practical, deeply creative and fiercely independent. These

were words used by my peers to describe me. I am also very kind, loving andgiving. I had no interest in running to a od or putting myself into the handsof another person to let them run me, rule over me or control, push ordominate me ever again. I saw those aspects in the horses with whom Ishare my life with. These aspects are all me. The rigid and the fle$ible, thedark and the light. the yin and the yang.

I saw my dark side and being faced with my weaknesses and my fears thedepression mounted me and there were days where I could barely get out ofbed. I was of no use to anyone, least of all myself. The pain of theautoimmunity I struggled with overwhelmed me, and sucked me inbefore I

knew it I was sick and waiting to die.Then visions struck me. "epeatedly.

I had been thrust into leadership positions since I could remember as a child.orced into the limelight, to teach, to converse, to lead. 2y the time I waseleven I was a leader. I was teaching all over the west coast about the poweranimals had to heal and empower people to live full lives. I believed in thepower of my voice, even back then. 2y the time I was thirteen I was a leaderin three non!profit organi#ations and increasing membership andempowering girls to lead in all three. I held those positions until I turnedeighteen. I had earned them through my commitment to a higher cause.

I never felt truly worthy of the positions. I was a wilting wallflower. Too shy,too 1uiet, too incapable. That was my inner programming that I haddeveloped within since I could remember. I wasn&t smart enough, strongenough, or good enough.

3escending into the darkness I left behind my friends, family, my petseveryone and everything.

I had become immersed in my pain, deep within myself so I could work onprocessing all that had transpired since I was borne. The pain of failure, the

pain of re%ection, the pain of abuse, the pain of letting go of my owninterpretation of what I am here to do while allowing my oddess 4atureshine through.

I find when I fight my natural inclination ! to be a spiritually advanced,independent, free thinking, powerful oddess, I inevitably find myself tryingto fit inside another person&s molds and models. It feel safe to be anotherperson, %ust a mother, %ust a worker bee, or %ust a writerand recently, %ust a


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private tiny person. 0et, I tout my past accomplishments to anyone withinlistening radius to bolster my confidence and perpetuate a false bravadoabout myself. ow sad that is. 4o one needs to know what I&veaccomplished, e$cept myself. I am here to offer more than %ust that.

I am not my failures, not my attempts to don different hats, not mye$periences, not my accomplishments. I am not my children, not my parents,not my employers, not my clients I am none of those things. I

but at the same time, I am all those things. I must embrace ALL aspects ofthe Infinite. The dark with the light.

This attempt to fit a model or a mold seems to be a pattern of mine andwhenever I attempt to do so, I end up breaking both myself and the mold inthe process. I find many others sinking into a pit of mediocrity or lack. Thesame pit I find myself sinking into. 'e all have to walk through the valley ofour shadows. If we do not learn to embrace our shadow souls we willcontinue to attract to ourselves those lessons and e$periences that empowerus to face these aspects of ourselves.

A dear, beautiful friend of mine told me I tend to sink within, pull back too1uickly before failure comes and run away before the going gets tough. Thisis indeed a recent pattern of mine.

-he asked me why I was so afraid to face the dark parts of my soul. -heinspired me to shine a spotlight into my dark places, to be honest aboutthem, to stop the comparison of where others were along their path vs.where I am along mine.

I decided that this year would be my time to learn to lovingly embracemyself as a whole and complete oddess who walks in mastery of the5niverse where I share all my gifts and knowledge to empower womenaround me. The brilliant and beautiful lights that are who I am are not theentirety of my being. The whole aspect of me is filled with brilliant light anddark shadows alike. I am not perfect. I have a brilliant temper, I have verylittle patience for what I see as being the ignorance of people, I don&t havethe desire to cripple or disempower another through using words or phrasesthat block them from their own sacred power. I also have shadows and fears.ears about being hurt again, re%ected, or locked away and possessed again.

I am wild, fierce and free. 2ut I am also deep, soft, mysterious, and yes,flighty and creatively artistic.

owever, the one thing I have never committed to has been to commit ! tomyself. I do have a deep fear of commitment. ear that if things don&t workout, it will somehow reinforce that I am a failure or completely inept. earthat if I am re%ected, or my products or services are re%ected, the core of whoand what I am is being re%ected. ear that if I put myself fully and wholly out


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there in the world, that people will hate me, won&t accept me, or will not loveme. ear that when I put myself out there, people will not find value.

ear that if I put myself out there, I&ll be as 1uickly forgotten as the lastnight&s news. 4othing more than a grain of sand.

There are many parts to me that make me feel if everyone knew about them,I would not be as loveable or acceptable to them.

This is what makes me human. 6mbracing our humanity of imperfection, ourfears, our darkness, our mistakes, our weaknesses, this is part of whatmakes us perfectly uni1ue and suited to our individual soul purpose, this iswhat makes us capable of pursuing our Life&s reat 'orks.

onoring our humanity our interconnectedness with all while honoring ouruni1ue facet this is also a part of the process.

honoring ourselves as multi!faceted, powerful and deeply magical mastersand mistresses of the universe... this is the %ourney of the -acred oddess7ath.

-o I have emerged from my dark %ourney to embark upon on a path a pathof empowerment, a path selfless! self!full love a path of complete self!acceptance for not only the parts of me and you that I cherish but thepieces of me and you I tend to really dislike and wish I could surgicallyremove as well.

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Embracing Our Light and Dark Sides of Our Soul