Daryl Wood's Blog

Stress will do that to you. It does it to me. I have been a teacher of Shadow Work for 20+ years. Mostly I admit to my shadow side and continue to face the gravitational pull to thoughts and behaviours that don’t serve me. It’s especially hard right now while grieving.

What I taught in my women’s retreats and coaching partnerships was the basic premise that there is a ‘light’ and ‘shadow’ to everything. No matter what you are feeling: joy, sorrow, anger, frustration, optimism, imbalance; or what behaviour you are acting out: selfish, kindness, revenge, forgiveness, procrastination, patience, etc. there is a light and shadow. For example, the ‘light’ side of courage might be that we push ourselves to try new things, take advantage of opportunities and surpass our limits to grow and learn. The ‘shadow’ side of courage might be that we take unnecessary risks, act impulsively or believe we must do something to be courageous. Most of us fall somewhere on the shadow continuum for all our thoughts and behaviours in our daily lives.

Consider now one of my favourite words: judgement. The majority of people I talk to quickly resist being called judgemental. It has such a negative connotation. Most of us associate judgement from the shadow side which sounds like: harsh criticisms of others, finding fault, pointing fingers and making assumptions. What about the light side of judgement when you discern what is safe in a given moment, decide which option is best for you or open a door to connection with someone else in order to understand?

Having trained with Debbie Ford decades ago I know that her teaching of ‘whatever you admire or despise in others is also within you.’ If you don’t own your shadow, it owns you and you will see it in others as a mirror of what you can’t be with. If you are falling into the shadow side of anything you can choose to change. And we all know that you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.

Teaching this work and following the principles doesn’t make me immune to falling into the shadow side. And nothing has plunged me deeper into this abyss than the experience of grief. One of my friends commented that since I’m in acute grief I get a free pass to ‘be’ whatever I need to be in the moment. At first, that seemed like a relief because I had so little control over my emotions. Now, 11 weeks in (today is another marker) I am realizing that for the past few weeks this doesn’t sit well with me. And judgement is a good place to start.

Now here is where the ‘Everybody’s bad behaviour just gets worse’ part comes in. My own habit of being on the shadow side of judging others (and we ALL do it) came bursting out when I was under the heavy stress of my loss. Temporarily, that might have been the best I could do and thankfully I am well loved and supported by people who know that’s not my typical operating system. As the intensity slightly eases I am reclaiming that part of myself that uses judgement in a healthy way. I make good decisions for myself and what is most significant is that I am empathetic and accepting and understanding and forgiving. With this comes a calming sense of finding my way home to my soul self.

I wasn’t rampant in my negative judgements but it was enough of a tilt in that direction that I wondered if I had forever lost that capacity of welcoming myself and others just as they are. I remind myself as I do others, often, that everyone, and I mean everyone, is doing the best they can.