The Hidden Parts of Ourselves
We all carry shadows within us—parts of ourselves we’ve hidden away, wounds we’ve tried to forget, and experiences that have shaped us in ways we may not fully understand. Shadow work invites us to journey into these dark corners with compassion, to illuminate what has been hidden and reclaim our wholeness. My own path with shadow work has shown me how powerful this healing can be, especially when we’re brave enough to look at what we’d rather ignore.
When Innocence Meets Reality
Recently, I was doing a deep dive into healing my soul. At one point, I spent time with my sweet college-age self, watching myself weep over the sad sexual experiences that occurred once I decided that “saving it for marriage” did not make sense to me. One after the other was disappointing. I had an idea, likely a knowingness from lives past that making love was magical. These experiences were far from magical. And the funny thing is . . . the boys, young and programmed to satisfy their own needs, had no idea how painful and unsatisfying that was to me. They didn’t know any better. We were young and naive. No one told us how to do it. In fact, what they told me was to NOT do it, and if I did, I was a sinner.
Finding Power in the Darkness
In the darkness of sacred plant medicine ceremony, re-living the pain and sadness, deeply feeling the feelings that I did not understand at the time, gave me my power back. I held myself with understanding and love. I could see that these people did not know any more than me and were programmed just the same. “They know not what they do.” Luke 23:34, came to me. Does that mean they did not hurt me? No, indeed, I was hurt. However, I also learned through that experience, there must be a better way to introduce sex or love making into our lives as young people.
The Importance of Deep Diving
The larger point here is how important it is for me to do these deep dives occasionally to see what is getting in the way of my success and happiness. Learning through exploring the darkness is powerful. My past sexual experiences significantly impact my current sex life as a married woman. So, how do we change this and heal our wounded parts? How do we safely explore these dark parts of ourselves? How do we embrace our dark side?
Seven Pathways to Healing
There are lots of ways to tend to the wounded self and explore this “dark side”:
- Being still.
- Meditating using any method you are called to, there are many, including the FREE Holding Meditation or the Many Yous Meditation on my website.
- Talking through it with a counsellor.
- Participating in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), psychotherapy treatment that is designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories.
- Doing regression hypnosis, such as Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT.)
- Practicing guided meditation, like the SHE (Self Hypnosis Exploration) technique which takes a person through the process of excavating the inner hidden spaces that are holding us back. The goal of the SHE process is that after a few sessions, a person can use this process on themselves without being guided.
- Participating in psychedelic therapy with reputable shamans or therapists, using psilocybin or ayahuasca. When doing plant medicine, we call upon nature to take us through a process of exploring your inner spaces. People around the world have been doing plant medicine ceremonially for centuries. For many, this is a rite of passage and changes their lives forever. Calling on nature to help us through the process of exploring our dark side, is powerful. A person needs to be called to this medicine ceremony, properly prepare for it and integrate the learning afterwards.
The Wisdom of Baba Yaga
Lalinka Fabbri is my co-host for the upcoming Inner Awakening Retreat in Costa Rica. Her mother’s ancestors are Russian. We were exploring the goddesses who could help us create this container for personal expansion. Lalinka was reminded of a Russian deity from her childhood, Baba Yaga, who represents healing through darkness. According to Russian folklore, Baba Yaga lives in the forest, flies around on a mortar and pestle, and dwells in a hut built on chicken legs. She is depicted as the quintessential wicked witch, who heals and helps people using nature. It is the old hag that lives in the forest who helps people in secret.
Reprogramming Our Cultural Stories
We grew up on stories such as these. As I reference earlier, we have been programmed our whole lives to believe a certain way through stories and media, including seeing witches or old hags as evil and sinister. And yet, there is another important dimension to Baba Yaga’s story.
According to the World History Encyclopedia, Baba Yaga (Baba Jaga) is a witch or ogress from Slavic folklore who lives in a magical hut in the forest and either helps, imprisons, or eats people (usually children). She is among the most famous figures from Slavic folklore as guardian of the fountains of the waters of life and is sometimes seen as embodying female empowerment and independence. In movies and media today, she is increasingly seen as a source of wisdom and power rather than a personification of evil.
The Power of the Wild Feminine
“Baba Yaga crosses the wicked witch trope with the fairy godmother trope to create an ultimately far more unpredictable and powerful role than either of those,” Yi Izzy Yu states, one of the authors who contributed to the anthology, Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga, edited by Lindy Ryan. Yu goes on to say, “She’s powerful despite not being attractive in a conventional sense. She lives by her own magical terms rather than mundane rules.”
Lindy Ryan, editor of this collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by the Baba Yaga explains, “The essence of Baba Yaga exists in many cultures and many stories and symbolizes the unpredictable and untamable nature of the female spirit, of Mother Earth, and the relationship of women to the wild. She’s a shamanic trickster, a category and boundary-crosser, a [reminder] that freedom lies a little beyond the border of social norms, and that we can learn as much from the dark as the light.”
“Her wild disregard for the ‘rules of man’ inspired me. She isn’t bound by hearth and home, rather it is bound to her. Baba creates her world, remakes it in her image, and the world—the wild world—loves her for it. All else trembles,” states Angela Yuriko Smith, multiple Bram Stoker Award®-winning and Elgin Award-nominated author.
Creating Our Own Wild World
What if WE do that . . . create our world, remake it in our image, how we want it to be, and the world—the wild world— loves us for it? The idea makes me tremble.
In medicine ceremonies, we co-create a healing environment with the spirit of nature to heal these deep inner wounds, loving into our dark side. We rewrite our story and craft a new plan for our future based on what we want, not what others want for us. We are not “getting rid” of the darkness, but healing by embracing it with love, looking at it and honoring it for the lessons we have learned. That darkness has crafted us into the multi-dimensional, deeply rich characters we are today.
