Honoring and Healing the Shadow

Dear friends,

This month I’m sharing:

• 🌗 A new reflection on shadow work

• 🌿 A great Labor Day supplement sale

• 🗻 Just one spot left in the Nepal retreat

• ✨ My monthly meditation group

Each section is below—please scroll down and take in what calls to you.

As summer spirals to a close and the evening shadows grow long, we begin to turn inward. Autumn often feels like a tender season—its very rhythm invites release, surrender, and the courage to meet what we have been carrying. Fall calls forward the shadow, and I’ve learned how vital it is to cultivate practices that help us turn toward all of ourselves with clarity and compassion.

There’s no sage stick or crystal in the world big enough to clear away your unconscious patterns if you aren’t willing to relate to them directly. No matter how much we smudge, manifest, or surround ourselves with “good vibes only,” we cannot bypass the shadows within unless we’re willing to turn toward them. Shadow work isn’t about erasing or banishing—it’s about entering into relationship with what’s hidden, with kindness.

As Stephen Levine reminds us, “To heal is to touch with love what we once touched with fear.”

To integrate and heal the shadow means turning toward the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden: the wounds, the fears, the protective strategies. It’s about cultivating intimacy with what we would rather deny, so those parts can finally feel seen, respected, and eventually released. As Jeff Foster writes, “The shadow is not our enemy—it is love in disguise, waiting for recognition.”

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Our shadows form when something is too overwhelming to bear—fear, shame, trauma, or the need to belong. At those moments, parts of us retreat into darkness.

This isn’t weakness. It’s intelligence. It’s survival. As Jeff writes, “The darkness protects you, my love. You bury the pieces of yourself too frightening to face… until you are ready to face them. It’s intelligent, this burial.”

The shadow is not failure. It is protection. It deserves reverence for helping you survive.

What is buried doesn’t disappear. The shadow waits—circling back in patterns, triggers, projections—until it feels safe enough to be welcomed.

As Jeff reminds us, “You forget that the Underworld is only made of abandoned pieces of you… These lost and frightened fragments are forever longing to return to you. The darkness seeks you!”

When we stop resisting and bow to the shadow, everything changes. The “monster” becomes a lost child longing for belonging. The dragon we feared reveals itself as the guardian of treasure. Shadow work is soul retrieval—the conscious gathering-in of what we exiled, returning those fragments to the light of awareness.

Caroline Myss says it this way: “The journey of life is the unification of fragmentation. Fragments are units of power that are out of control. We make agreements to come and collect ourselves.” Shadow work is one of the deepest ways we collect ourselves.

Too often we feel shame about our compensations, survival patterns, or archetypes. We call ourselves the martyr, the codependent, the pleaser, the “shadow empath.” Yet if we look deeper, we see that every shadow carries a sacred intent. These patterns are attempts at love. They are simply outdated, no longer age-appropriate, no longer life-giving.

Think of the dragon guarding a treasure. The shadow is that dragon. It is fierce not because it hates you, but because it protects something precious inside you. Relating to it directly—honoring its role—gives you access to the treasure it has guarded all along.

Not all shadow is personal. Sometimes it is cultural. Imagine a woman born in 1932 with the archetype of the CEO, the visionary entrepreneur, the alpha leader. At that time, society had no space for her power. Her brilliance would be shoved into the shadows, where it might emerge distorted—as the “wicked queen,” the “bitch,” the villain.

This is why I love modern retellings of myths like Maleficent—they show us the childhood wounds behind the villain. They remind us that the shadow is not inherently evil; it was forced there by circumstance, and it deserves compassion.

Every archetype, every emotion, every pattern carries both wound and wisdom. Caroline Myss reminds us of this in her archetype cards, which always include the light and shadow aspects together. Rage, for example, has been culturally demonized—but in its light, it is a signal that something is blocking your medicine, your will, your right to exist.

This is the essence of shadow work: to see both. To understand that what we reject in ourselves is also what holds our medicine. To honor the darkness not as a problem, but as a sacred doorway.

James O’Dea—humanitarian, activist, mystic—once said the world today can feel like “sulfuric acid,” with shadow wielded as power, eating through our humanity. The only thing that can withstand such corrosive energy is gold.

Here, gold is presence. Clarity. Compassion. When we stand in that gold, we can face both our shadow and the world’s shadow without being consumed. The light within us is indestructible.

True awakening is not an escape from humanity. It’s not about rising above sorrow or bypassing anger. It’s about bowing to the full spectrum of life—joy and confusion, fear and freedom, ecstasy and agony.

The most alive people I know have cultivated deep compassion for their own brokenness and compensations. They make it safe for others to be fully human, too.

Jeff writes, “I promise you… if you stop, and turn to face it… you will see yourself. Not death there, but life. Not destruction, but absolute safety. Your salvation lies in the darkness… and its salvation lies within you.”

Shadow work is tender, humbling, and patient. It asks us again and again:
What needs to be seen and loved inside of me, or in?
What needs to be understood?
What is waiting to be honored?
When we love our shadow until it’s ready to be released—without force or rushing—we discover treasures we never knew we had.
Awakening does not mean being untouched by life. It means being so deeply touched that nothing is left out. It means meeting each other, heart to heart, in the fire.

✨A Poem I Am Loving Lately 
Why Darkness? 
by Jeff Foster
To end, I want to share Jeff Foster’s beautiful reflection on the darkness—not as something to banish, but as the very ground of our healing and the source of our deepest light and integration of our fullness.
 “Why darkness, you ask?
The darkness protects you, my love.
You bury the pieces of yourself too frightening to face, bury them in the night and fog until you are ready to face them. So you don’t ever have to bear what you cannot yet bear, or feel what you are not yet ready to feel. It’s intelligent, this burial. But then you forget. You forget that the Underworld is only made of abandoned pieces of you. You forget that YOU were the one who put the pieces there. It was your own creation, the monstrous Hell realm, the devils and the dragons. These lost and frightened fragments are forever longing to return to you. The darkness seeks you! It will haunt you, stalk you, follow you wherever you go. You cannot run, for it is all you, all the abandoned pieces of your great and ancient heart, all needing help, longing for integration, crying out for inclusion in a bigger self. I promise you, I promise you, in the depths of your most terrible despair and loneliness, in the bulging eyes of the most hideous monster chasing you, if you stop, and turn to face it, and just look hard enough, when you are ready, and not a moment before, if you just look hard enough, and through the eyes of love, you will see... yourself. Not death there, but life. Not destruction, but absolute safety. You will see your own kind eyes smiling back at you, a safe place within the trauma. Your salvation lies in the darkness, you see, and its salvation lies within you! You are One, you always were. No separation! Nothing to fear but the loss of all fear! Let the darkness have you my love, breathe into its sacred core, give it what it cries for, and you will feel the most extraordinary Power, know the most blinding Light!
Why darkness, you ask?
So you are protected from your own immense Power.
Until you are ready...”

October 6th - October 18th

This is a truly special journey, and we’ve gathered an incredible group of women who are ready to travel with open hearts and a spirit of deep connection. We’ll travel together through temples and terraced hillsides, in ceremony and stillness, laughter and awe. Along the way, we’ll explore Nepal’s rich spiritual traditions, breathtaking landscapes, and vibrant culture, with a nourishing, inspiring, and transformative itinerary designed to awaken and restore. If you’ve been feeling the call, this is your moment. We would be so honored to have you with us.

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A Monthly Group

This is an ongoing group that meets monthly online with Elizabeth Astor to practice ways to work with challenging moments and mind states and to cultivate resilience and wellbeing. We gather on zoom 2-3pm MT, the 3rd Tuesday of each month.

Come Join Us! We practice together, laugh together, and learn how to ride the waves of life with more clarity and grace.

$20 / Month

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