Shadow Labor: Delivery with the Full Moon.
{Photo credit: Jason Baker Photography}
Balance. This is the very essence of balance.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed what happens when I start to allow myself to rest, to settle in. It’s like this internal war is waging, and I have to talk myself into relaxing. Like I’m trying to form a different alphabet that only I need understand, because only I need to rewire and relearn in my own specific way. I have to convince myself that constantly thinking and analyzing and pushing has never worked for me; in fact, it’s always led me into the fire.
Burning’s necessary… sometimes. Not all the time. I feel like this last week has been a really intense assimilation process. Like the rewiring I’ve been envisioning is actually happening, and my body and brain are both exhausted.
And there’s been a stillness, especially today. Total exhaustion, and for the first time, I’m allowing myself to experience it rather than fight it.
It’s happening for a reason, and my main issue is that I never listen to my body — I always push through. I never listen to my mind — I always push through. I never listen to my soul — I always push through.
Today, I listened. I wasn’t happy about it, but I listened. I worked a little slower, thought a little less. Sunk into the void of I-have-no-idea-what’s-happening-right-now and made the decision to trust whatever is on the other end of this unknowing.
And this is what presents itself on the other end: I feel like I’m becoming even more attuned to the moon cycles, and I feel like I’m in the middle of some metaphoric labor. I feel like I’ve seen some ugly sides of myself recently. I’ve spoken with the shadows, and I’ve not liked what they’ve had to say… because they’ve told me what I’ve yet to heal. What’s been holding me back, and I haven’t liked the answers at all.
No matter what’s happened to us, we make a choice — sometimes, most times, unconsciously — to continue punishing and torturing ourselves.
I can’t believe I’ve never realized this before, and it hit me so hard because it’s the deconstruction of the victim mentality that I’ve been holding on to, as much as I rage against those who relentlessly live by its code.
I’ve been victimizing myself by keeping myself small. By repeating the scrutinizing, demoralizing words that were ingrained in me. By sabotaging myself so I would stay at the bottom of the black hole, because I continued to reaffirm that this hole was — and is — exactly where I belong.
As I write this, my hands feel light. My face feels light. An energetic weight is dissipating. A legacy is disintegrating.
This is the road. This is the work: to walk alongside your shadow. To let it say what it needs to say. To look it in the eye, and realize you’re simply looking at yourself clearly, because you’re seeing a side of you that you had formerly denied.
You need to be still to have this conversation. You need to allow it in order to see it. You have to uncoil in order to release it. If you don’t, it’ll strangle your essence, your energy, your vitality. Your life.
This isn’t easy, this is birthing. This is labor. This is new life — your new life. Your true self. The essence you were born with, and the sight and trust you lost along the way. This is you in your pure, raw form. This is soul excavation. And this is so absolutely, unquestionably necessary to your primal, raw, stripped-down and destined existence.
This is your soul destiny. This is your purpose. We stress and strain to find our purpose in this life, but maybe it starts right here, in this moment of realization. We already know why we’re here; the answer is burning in our root’s hearth. The more we ignore it, the more it incinerates us from the inside out. Maybe it all begins with a willingness to stop, surrender and listen to the whispers in the silence. The sentences floating through the void, waiting to be formed.
Now we’ve arrived at the Full Moon in Capricorn. This cycle is providing a portal of release, an opportunity to burn the pages bearing the faded ghosts of your old alphabet. Don’t worry, new letters will appear, but this time they’ll come in the form of symbols… the symbols that you used to speak. The language you forgot.
This is our chance to remember. This is our reclamation. Our salvation.
This is the shadow labor of our collective soul. This is regenerative death. This is elevated living.
It won’t be easy. At. All. But remember: we’re all connected on this road. We’re all joined in this struggle. And we are never, ever… ever, alone.
Let’s walk.
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Jillian Kristina is writing the best chapter of her life, right now. Having just taken the leap of her life from grid-based city living to off-grid nature immersion, the words of this new chapter are spelling out a radical journey of extreme release, self-discovery and, for the first time in her life, a sense of pace and connection that can only be likened to ‘home’. Her renewed connection with nature has also inspired her to finally begin her Holistic Coaching business. Connect with her via her website, Instagram or Facebook.
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