Diving Deeper
Reflections
This full moon has really brought to light some core struggles I’m working through and while one remains a mystery as to how I will manage it, the other one I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. I’m here to share some personal stories about both situations in order to hold myself accountable.
I have been sharing a lot about doing the inner-work and the importance this has on how we co-create and experience our outer world. It is my belief that we can all alchemize our shadows into inspiration and light that will extend beyond our personal world and ripple out into the collective. I have become painfully aware of things I need to alchemize myself and this is how it’s going.
Struggle
After hearing friends without children discuss physical discipline as acceptable, I experimented with being more physically directive with my kids—firm touch, guiding them physically into rooms. Nothing abusive, but it went against my instincts. As I expected, it didn't work out well. And while my mother friends validated my desperation and saw me, I needed to understand the root cause of why I was reacting this way at all.
This is the struggle where I've found a breakthrough—and I'll share that journey. But first, let me name the struggle I'm still working through, the one still shrouded in darkness.
Root Causes: The Mirror & The Shadow Behind the Shadow
The mirror
Upon further reflection I have come to notice that in these moments where I am feeling disrespected by my children, I am being triggered into feeling abused by them. It is awakening in me the same feelings of past relationships where emotional abuse has occurred with another adult.
My default to protect myself has always been anger as a means to defend and block whatever may be coming next.
The shadow behind the shadow
And while I have indeed been experiencing emotional and psychological warfare from my ex husband, (the details aren’t necessary, but this is an ongoing situation) I am not interacting with him here in my home, it is my children I am dealing with. My reactions should not mirror the experiences that I had with an adult, when I’m working with young developing brains. Deep sigh.
This realization though, is a big part of understanding myself and knowing the correct way to care for myself in these moments.
But that being said, the adult to adult struggle is happening in the background of my life (via phone texts and calls) simultaneously and it is really throwing me off my balance and out of harmony in many areas of my life, in particular how I’m relating to my children.
Seeking
So, I began asking friends for help to see how can I transform this experience that feels oppressive and very upsetting into something that feels good? Returning to this idea of alchemy.
And while they all had thoughtful responses and validated my experience with the gift of their listening, they were not providing the alchemical formula I was looking for. I realized this was not something that many people are familiar with and so here I am sharing a bit of my process of a real time transformation in my life. I also think this metaphor for turning what feels heavy and burdensome in our lives, into something that serves our growth is the work of our time.
So after that conversation with my friends I knew this was a situation where the answer would only be found inside myself and I was going to need to return to the parts of myself that managed to make previous hellscapes into opportunities for discovery, growth, magic and beauty. (I will share more about the those in another article). This was going to be another deep dive into my shadows to bring to light what needs to be illuminated in order for it to transform.
Descent
The descent within myself has begun and I think it’s safe to say I am in the trenches. Yet, having come here before into what I have recently learned is called Nigredo or Blackening - the first stage of the alchemical process of transformation - I know this place, I am familiar with it and I know that the other side is absolutely worth this journey.
It is in “here”, in this space of darkening, of death of what must die in order to birth ‘the new me’, to transform the lead to gold, that I had a breakthrough moment almost overnight. I have spent months in this space without clarity so I was very pleased to have something come up so fast. This doesn’t often happen so quickly and I know there will be other breakthroughs necessary to fully transform this, but alas, here is my process.
Breakthrough
To get there, I wrote down answers from a prompt I created that was inspired by Elianne El-Amyouni’s prompt questions in her alchemy workbook and turned it into specific parenting questions that asked about the ‘secret parent self’.
I asked questions like what doesn’t anyone know about your parenting? What are your darkest thoughts about parenting? If people knew, how would they feel about you? My biggest fears about parenting are…
Doing an exercise like this will open a gate to a place you may keep closed beneath the depths, but this is exactly where I needed to go. So while this may seem painfully obvious to an outsider, I recognized I am mirroring my children and they are mirroring me. While in my moments of “losing my cool” in response to their behavior, I am feeling completely justified - it’s the end of a long day, having no support in my home, while myself and my children all navigate complicated feelings etc etc.- I am ending up having a tantrum just like them. (In case you needed that reminder, losing your cool is an adult temper tantrum.) So this cycle is just repeating!
They tantrum, I tantrum, they tantrum around and around.
So now what!?
Well, awareness is key, and now that I know this and can see it with such clarity, there’s no going back. No matter where I’m at energetically, it is my responsibility to nourish myself in any means possible so that I do not have a tantrum, so that I do not break at the pressures of motherhood. It is my job as the adult to be regulated for them, and/or model how I get regulated after being clearly triggered.
My intention in motherhood is to create a safe space for my children to be unapologetically themselves, to know authenticity and be welcomed and loved and accepted for exactly who they are. All parts of them.
Solutions
This recognition changed everything. I can feel myself shifting from Nigredo’s darkness to Albedo - “the whitening” stage where further purification will occur.
My work is acceptance of self and what’s really amazing is especially how fast this work can be implemented. Once a pattern is recognized, I can accept that this exists inside me, but I now have instant access to choose a new way to respond. In my opinion, having this clarity is an immediate upgrade.
With the newfound awareness about my “shadow patterns”, I can pause when I feel myself being stretched too thin and switch gears.
If I am feeling like I will “lose it” I have an unmet need and it is my responsibility to meet that need, not expect my children to meet it or even understand, though I will often talk them through these types of things.
After gaining my new clarity the energy in my home has shifted. Despite the continuance of unwanted behavior, my response has drastically changed. Instead of being worked up into a tantrum, I am calmly holding space for big emotions, including disrespectful words, but maintaining much tighter boundaries for the consequences of these actions.
There’s no more yelling on my end, only listening and a collected response. I do not expect them to change overnight and this has only been implemented these last couple days, but just as intense as the not so great moments are, we are experiencing an increase in the really great moments that do tend to dominate our days together. Speaking for myself anyway, I feel a deeper connection as well.
As I am talking them through my experience, I have apologized for yelling and for “losing my cool”. I said that I am not proud of myself when I behave that way and I will do my absolute best to change my responses to them.
I asked what would be a better consequence than for example picking you up and making you go into your room?
They suggested taking things away. And that's exactly what I've done—followed through with taking privileges away. Do they like that I am following through with this? Absolutely not. However it is my hope that they understand me when I say that I would rather risk them not liking me, than allow them to grow up without boundaries and a sense of accountability and responsibility.
Parenting is not for the weak! Never have I ever in my life needed to face the faults inside myself as much as I have as a mother.
And as for the deeper root cause of all of this - the difficult circumstances with their father, well, there is still work to be done, but I am in it. When I have a breakthrough in my journey of the darkness I will report back.
Purpose
You may be wondering why am I sharing something personal like this? Again, my answer is accountability.
I have no business writing about the powers of collective transformation through doing the inner work if I cannot recognize when work is needed in my own home. It is by sharing that I hope to model this work and possibly trigger inspiration within yourself to do this inner work as well.
To be continued…
This is a story I will return to as I continue my descent into my shadow. I know there are parts of me that must die off in order to birth the next version of myself. It is a cycle that will continue throughout my lifetime and death is once again in my corner. I think a lot of us avoid facing the ugly parts inside ourselves, but we all have them.
I ask: what greater work can there be from our humanity than to dive deeper and bring these aspects of shame and guilt and anger to the light? To transform our lead into gold. To illuminate our inner worlds in such a way that we reflect the outer world we want to create. We must acknowledge the outer world is a mirror to our inner world.
By sharing my journey here, I am showing you how I do “the work”.
I invite you to ask yourself some shadow questions to illuminate pieces that may be hidden:
What are my darkest thoughts?
What would people think of me if they knew?
What is my biggest fear and why?