I don’t feel qualified to write about this.

However I also can’t deny my own lived experience in a female body, embodying a predominantly feminine essence, and so I will write this from my own lived experience – from living in my own body.

 

First, let’s get clear about what I mean by “shadow” and “shadowy”.

What is a shadow?

Put quite simply, it’s what we cannot see – but it’s there.

 

You could also say that the shadow “lives” in the subconscious, however it doesn’t take up the entirety of the subconscious.

 

We see the shadow much like we see the moon – through the illumination of the light of the sun reflecting on the moon, based on it’s relationship with us, the earth.

Because of this reflective quality and the shadows rather indirect way of showing itself, we often distort its meaning, and its presence in our lives.

 

I just want to be perfectly clear: the shadow is not the “bad” side of good. However, that said, the shadow can often present itself as the aspects of ourself that fall outside of the lines of social, cultural, and familial norms, often making its presence feel taboo and “wrong”.

 

While I’m here defining things, I should also probably clarify what I mean by “the feminine”.

I am not talking about the spiritual concept of the “divine feminine” nor am I talking about gender, nor sexuality. I am simply referring to feminine energy as it presents itself here in our experience, embodied. For example, flow, chaos, creation & destruction, the non-linear, fluid, circular, spiralic, nature, tidal ebbs & flows.

 

Another layer that I need to bring in is the concept of the feminine archetypes. These archetypes are often associated with women bodied people, and although that’s not a fixed concept, I’m again going to stick with speaking from my own lived experience as a human born into a female with a predominantly feminine energy essence.

 

The 3 of Swords Reversed

 

Regena Thomashauer or “Mama Gena” says that a woman’s heart lives in her pussy. I’ve always felt mine lived in my womb.

The anger and rage of repressed self expression just sitting there waiting for the next menstrual cycle to rear its ugly head: pain, severe pain.

As a child and adolescent, pain killers until they would stop working, vomiting, chills and hot flashes, nausea, and days of never ending suffering.

 

I wish I could say my own relationship to my womb and my own feminine is “healed”, but what does that even mean?

I can say for certainty that my relationship with m womb and my feminine heart has changed and evolved, however.

I used to think that if I just “fixed” the issue – first through western medicine, then alternative medicine, then energy medicine & spirituality – that it would go away and I wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.

 

These days I have a different relationship to my cramps, my bloating, my bleeding. I have a different relationship to my pain, my rage, and my shame. To me, my period is time for some sacred, no BS shadow work – because the alternative? Well what else am I supposed to do in bed for several days? I can try to ignore the pain that is screaming at me (tried that, doesn’t help!) or I can just listen to it. So I listen to it, without trying to “fix” it, or make it go away, or make it somehow more socially acceptable.

I stop productivity.

Because my bleeding is productivity. It’s the only thing that needs to happen.

 

I let myself sit in the shit and the mess of my humanness.

 

 

I feel the suffering.

I listen to the part of me that rages on the patriarchy, the part of me that hates how our cultural and social norms try to shove my wildness into a too small for my existence little “cute” and “pretty” box.

I am not pretty in this moment.

I am bloody.

I am sweaty.

And I am pissed the fuck off.

 

In listening to the rage, in wallowing in my victimized suffering, I look inward into my wild heart.

She is not caged up by the patriarchy, nor society, nor cultural norms – she is squished in there by me.

 

I am the one who perpetuates the very thing I rage against – and this is why I’m pissed off.

 

I’m pissed off because I can simultaneously feel myself wanting to fully embody those shameful, repressed needs, desires, and thoughts and at the same time I see myself in each moment lie. Sometimes I just can’t bring myself to be that honest – even with myself.

 

This is my experience of the shadow.

So I focus instead on nourishing my capacity to accept a little bit more – accept a little bit more of my darkness, a little bit more of my victimhood, accept a little bit more about the deliciousness of my inner most secret taboo self.

Little by little, she emerges from the shadows.

Little by little, a little more validated, loved, and accepted.

Little by little, a little more integrated.

Little by little a little more embodied.

 

Little by little, she emerges in my decisions, my actions, and my relationships with the rest of the world.

 

Little by little she and we are in harmony.

 

Images from The Light Seer’s Tarot