Tonight I’m writing this, after doing a spell for a beloved friend and brewing some mugwort tea. *I love dream work, even if it alludes me but I think tonight is a good night for some good (maybe even insightful) dreams. I’ll be working through my Shadow Work journal and workbook tonight, and cataloging it here.*

I was tagged in a post on IG by Mystica Mundi about Shadow Work. I had maybe vaguely heard of it on other witchcraft sites, Pinterest or “the ‘grams” and it seems scary but also something I might need it my life. I started … not obsessing over it, but thinking about it a lot. There are definitely some weird stuff that goes on in my head that I need to address and since I’m not seeing a therapist right now, this might be a painful but necessary route.

Everything I’ve read on Shadow Work says it’s not a fun, happy-time sort of a process. It WILL be painful and it WILL make you look at some shit you have shoved down deep in order to protect yourself from yourself or from others. I know for a fact that I have MAJOR anger issues I need to work through that have recently come to serious light. To the point of scaring myself on how I handle situations.

Anyway, I hope you’ll stay with me on this weird journey I’m about to undertake. Hopefully my spirit guide Cristina (see previous post for more on THAT awesome encounter) can help hold my hand through this in my dreams or in my meditation.

Right now, it’s 11:05pm on Nov 23, 2019. I feel a little bit out of this post because I just did the one about Cristina and all it’ll take to get back into this is to just do it. I’ve had my whole cup of mugwort tea (they say to drink it 30min before sleep but since I’m writing 2 posts tonight and doing work in my journal, it’ll probably be close to an hour or 1.5 hrs after finishing my cup. I’m feeling calm but a touch nervous and not at all tired.

Okay, it’s 11:35pm now. I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest. One simple exercise has given me an emotion I wasn’t expecting. Although, I really should have. I knew this wouldn’t be fun.

In the first step, you write the person who triggered you today. My daughter is 3 and very hard headed. Today she threw a huge fit over not being able to go into gymnastics 30 minutes early. Her friends were in the earlier class and she decided she needed to be with them too. Understandable but still, you can’t barge into a class just because your friends are in there. I took her outside and we played in the car. Her mind was blown by the sunroof.

I had to write down 5 traits to her: smart, funny, hard headed, manipulative and loving. Then I had to re-read them with “I am” in front of each. Which one hits you? Which one do you feel defensive about. Mine was “manipulative”. I AM MANIPULATIVE. That’s a damn bummer and something I immediately thought “I’m not manipulative at all!”. If you think about it, we’re all manipulative, so it shouldn’t be a shock that I am too. But that’s the point of shadow work isn’t it? It hurts and it sucks but you have to break through those defenses and admit things you know, deep down to be true. I am to feel my feelings and pay attention to how they make me feel.

The next question was “What’s your oldest memory you have of when you’ve felt the same way?” I skipped it. I couldn’t remember FEELING particularly manipulative but I’m sure I have been. But after moving to the next question (what would you tell your little kid self with the wisdom you have now?) and the next section, I came back to it.

When have I felt the feeling I had when I said out loud “I am manipulative”? Being called “spoiled” by my sister. I don’t think I was but apparently to my older sister (6 years older, half sisters, who my dad has helped raise since they were 6), I totally was. Maybe she thought I was manipulating my dad into giving me what I asked for. I also did things that they weren’t doing but wasn’t a big enough impact for them to notice.

I still feel shitty that my sister called me spoiled. That’s probably how my daughter feels when I say she’s manipulative. I don’t say it out of love and I don’t say it with a clear, teachable mind. I say it when I’m stressed that she won’t let me leave her bedroom at night without my husband having to step in because she’s melting down. Maybe she’s feeling abandoned when I leave. She’s not being a brat, she’s just lonely.

**BTW THIS IS WORKING ON DEEPER STUFF RIGHT NOW!!**

My husband and I spend a lot of our time on our phones or watching another tv or cleaning the house while the kids play or watch their shows. We don’t connect with them. We don’t spend quality time playing together or wrestling. We’re just trying to decompress from our own work days. That can be left for AFTER they go to sleep or just use that time as our decompression. Tickling my kids until they can’t breath is the most fun I ever have with them! Their laughs are pure and full of happiness. They truly are magical creatures.

The second step is to accept and reclaim the character traits that impacted you the most and include what the purpose of those traits play in your life now. For me, being manipulative gets me what I want at work, being hard headed keeps me from being pushed around or taken advantage of and being loving helps me give my kids the emotional love that I didn’t get (which I need to work on more with staying away from my stupid phone).

The third step is to cut out step 1, thank the person you named and read what you wrote for step 2. Then realize your negative resistance to your shadow by burning step 1.

And my own step 4 is to write about my experience here.

Every day is the same set up, which I feel will have a lot of repeats since my kids know how to spin me up just the right way to make me lose my shit. But we’ll see how it all shakes down. I’m thankful that I have this journal, I’m thankful that I can blog about it, I’m thankful that I have a way to touch those nasty emotions and work through them.

Stick around to watch the train wreck that is Lorraine’s emotions 😉