Integrating the Shadow

Carl Jung wrote extensively about the dangers of projection and one-sidedness.

That which we deny in ourselves must be concretized in outer experiences and other people. Sometimes those projections cost us dearly and in other cases they gently prod us towards integration.

My favorite illustration of this involves one of my best friends, Marla.

Marla is one of the most delighted and delightful people on the planet.

She literally infuses joy everywhere she goes.

When the movie INSIDE OUT came out in 2015, we all saw the movie together. At the end of the movie, Marla was upset because she said, “I did not like how Sadness kept pulling Joy down”. She went on to say that Joy should not have to put up with Sadness, and that was a bad message. Of course, she said it all with great humor and irony.

A few years later, her beloved granddaughter was born. We met weekly, so we would hear about Marla’s daughters regularly and the escapades of her granddaughter. Well, as soon as this babe could utter sentences, she would talk about feeling so, so sad. She would tell her grandma, known as YA YA. “Shhh shhh sad”

She would feel sad for the trees not getting water. She would feel sad that her YA YA had to leave. Basically, she felt sad about a lot, a lot of the time. She would tell her YA YA that she needed to go lie down because sometimes the Joy was just too much with YA YA.

Weekly, we would joke with Marla about how sadness had to find her after all because Joy actually needs Sadness to be whole.

Flash forward to last night at the fabulous poetry book reading at Godmother's Books with Heidi Rose Robbins.

At the Q&A, Marla’s daughter asked Heidi about her now 6-year-old daughter and her poetic bent. She regaled the audience with a story where her daughter had just been at a crowded parade, and she exclaimed: “If I were a parade, my baton would be sadness.” She was asking Heidi how to encourage this little sensitive poet.

Well, you can’t beat that, can you?

I looked over at Marla, also in the audience, and we gave that very deep knowing look that, in a nanosecond, conveys the whole tamale of the human condition.

None of us can escape our invitation to be whole.

Where we insist on identifying narrowly with one feeling, or one attitude, or one position, we will need to visit the “other” nearby.

All of this is to say that which you refuse or cast out in yourself will be presented to you on the stage of your life, with characters who must show you the shadows of your own psyche.

As for me, I must constantly address the more vulnerable and fragile in others, as I was raised to be almost entirely self-sufficient, efficient, and emotionally tough.

I must revisit over and over again how others have a much harder time with organization, agency, and straightforwardness.

It’s a workout, but it’s like the sand polishing the pearl; the more empathy I develop for them, the more grace I give my own fragility.

What about you?

LOVE
Jennifer