An Ode to my Shadow

Hello beautiful disregarded one. I am sorry I have tried to dismiss you. No longer do I wish to cast you away, deny your existence, reject your presence, or slam the door in your face. I am sorry I haven’t loved you, which was all you needed to be comforted.

I see that you are my pain. The pain I’ve collected as a human and pushed down to the level of unconsciousness. You are the part of me that needs the most love, the most acceptance, the most permission to express yourself - at least to me.

I have spent my life believing you weren’t supposed to be here. That belief has only grown as my body has. I believed you were beneath me, a simple unenlightened noise.

I see you now dear shadow. 

You are me as a little girl. I see that you are innocent. You are me as the teenager who craved belonging, I see that you just wanted love all this time. You are me as a young woman, trying to find her way. I see that you needed me to show you. You look like me as a new mother, with a heart blown open caring for the most precious thing I’ll ever have and the sudden anxiety that came along with it. You are the suffering that so often comes with this beautifully uncontrollable human experience and the fear of suffering that was only ever imagined. 

You are the wound that never healed. In front of me again, to give me another chance to embrace you, to welcome you in, to become whole. This is all you’ve ever wanted from me. It’s all you ever tried to receive, the thing you see me give to others again and again - a witness, an ear, a shoulder, a person that understands. 

As I take you in my arms, I am truly here for you for the first time. I welcome you. I bring you into my heart, so you may finally know the love that you’ve always craved. At last, I am known fully to myself. I know my highs and my lows. The whole spectrum is seen, the whole thing given permission to exist. 

I am whole. I am the love that welcomes all, not by being above it all, but by being the valley beneath to which all flows without discrimination. I am here for you. I am here for me. No part of me is an outcast, nothing is rejected so I am no longer a fragmented being. I scoop up all these forgotten pieces, distortions of the mind, and hold them to my heart as long as they need holding. And then I let them go so they can be free. 

That’s all you ever wanted. To be loved, to be welcomed, and to be released towards your own ascension.