When did a new year last feel so heavy? So weighty? So shadowed?

Healing is never a straight line; it is never lined up for us in direct steps, orienting to know what happens next. Healing is rarely pretty, like your favorite memoir would have you believe –  but rather ugly, painful, shattering, raw. Healing rarely becomes pretty without a healthy dose of ugly first. 

We are living that ugly right now. The festering wounds we have ineffectively addressed as a society have hit an infectious point: dividing us in a way many have never seen. Those that have lived through similar instances – The Civil Rights Movement  – WWII – wait to see how history will view our ugly. Our shadow. 

Shadow work has gained significant momentum through this COVID-19 moment; therapeutic styles often reflect sociological shifts.  Society has shifted dramatically in the course of 12 months. We have been forced, as a society, to confront our ugliest underpinnings: to now determine what this ugliness means going forward.

Therapeutic shadow work invites us to do the same thing. Our shadow is the side of ourselves which we have cast aside due to undesirable associations. Our rage, our sexuality, our jealousy, our biases, our hatred. Our shame. 

The longer we allow a shadow to remain, the colder, darker it becomes; we lose more as a result of its spread.

If we integrate the cast aside parts of who and what we are, we can also begin to integrate the parts of self cast out as a consequence. When we reject our rage, we also reject the source of that rage. Our sexuality, pleasure.  Our jealousy, ambition. Our biases, compassion. Our hatred, love. Our shame, power. 

As we shed light on our shadow selves, we invite their reintegration into the whole.

This does not simplify the work to be done, but by acknowledging the “problems” – the shadow – we can form solutions – the light. As we welcome the pain of healing, we allow space for the opposite.

Look how far we have come. 

As individuals, we have become more introspective. People that never did therapy before, started airing out generational pain. We have embraced mindful practices, healthy habits. We have confronted things that scared us in the past to try again. We have entered new ways of relating, set boundaries on hard and painful situations, terminated relationships, work alliances, situations that do not fulfill us. We have opened our eyes to what our policy, our inactivity, our passive acceptance has caused.

We have shed light on individuals that continue to suffer through the horrors of 2020  – through today. Those home with abusive partners or parents; humans that could not pay their bills, let alone afford food[ essential workers taken for granted; health care employees drained and neglected. Millions others murdered, penalized and simply ignored. Infrastructure that has been stripped for years, leaving us vulnerable. Laws that only care for some. 

From individuals absorbed in our own problems, to sacrificing for close to a year for the health of others. Stepping outside ourselves to protest, together, inequality. Raising our voices in unity, in power, to acknowledge the monumental change that needs to occur before we can heal. Embracing the differences among us even at fever pitch to raise a conversation – even if it’s just “what were they thinking” to intiate understanding why humans would make such radical choices. 

We have called out our shadows, by name. 

In exposing our pain, we have opened the door to healing; we invite in the light.