Leslie Priscilla 🌵🦋

(Disclaimer for non-bilingual friends: some words en español.)

Last night I had a dream that I had been given the diagnosis of being terminally ill and   given the option then and there to die by injection. I didn’t feel ill. I initially said yes, that I didn’t want to even begin to experience what dying slowly was like. It sounded like pain, even though I wasn’t feeling pain. Getting this injection would have just put me to sleep and cannonballed my alma right back into the sparkly fluidity of cosmos, flying free of the enredos of my human incarnation.

But right before they were going to do it, I panicked and told them to stop. I changed my mind. I said I wanted to live. I wanted to spend every last second with my family. If dying slowly, and maybe painfully, meant I could spend more time, having more carcajadas, giving more abrazos, then it was fine to die slow. No, ya no me piquen!

I woke up reflecting not on that sweet and easy realization at the end. I wanted to know what made me say yes initially, and what led me to feel comfortable with that for a while. I was wanting algo to end, something about being in this body to stop, that made me forget the beauty of it all for a second. This morning I’ve been sorting through it, and I think I have recognized lo que es.

The Shadow Self

It was, as Dexter would have called it, my “Dark Passenger”, the Id and Ego’s baby, the unconscious, the hooded Kermit, and what I like to call—the Shadow Self. For some of us, the Shadow Self is the part of us that tells us that some expressions and emotions (fear, heartbreak, mental exhaustion, fill in the blank), are not survivable. They’re too threatening, too heavy, we’re too weak, they’re too ugly, we’re losers, desgraciados.

I first learned about Shadow Work through Debbie Ford’s conversations with Michael Bernard Beckwith on his radio show, the Sound of Transformation, in early 2010. I remember taking notes furiously and wanting to absorb the information más profundo.  Our Shadow Self is this aspect of darkness found in us all. It’s kept, like its name, in the sombras of our whole being because it’s attached to shame. She shared that our Shadow Self is often feared, neglected, even actively pushed away because it requires for us to have the vulnerability to face it and bring it to light. That vulnerability, reasonably, hasn’t felt very protective for most of us throughout our lives, so we’d rather side step in in favor of keeping our Shadow Self away from the general public if we can. It’s possible that many of us haven’t yet discovered we have one, and that it’s manejando the car more often than we’d like to admit.

Debbie wrote: “It contains all the parts of ourselves that we have tried to hide or deny. It contains those dark aspects that we believe are not acceptable to our family, friends, and most important, ourselves. The dark side is stuffed deeply within our consciousness, hidden from ourselves and others. The message we get from this hidden place is simple: there is something wrong with me. I’m not okay. I’m not lovable. I’m not deserving. I’m not worthy.”

How the Shadow Self Appears

When our shadow appears, usually unexpectedly and around those we feel safest with or by ourselves, it can express itself in confusing ways. If we’re not conscious of what is happening, as it’s happening, it can be destructive to our relationships, our mental health, and to our potential for giving and receiving Love.

One way I’ve noticed it appear for me is as absolutes in my vocabulary and as labels. For example: “You ALWAYS prioritize other things over my needs”; “I’m NEVER able to follow through”. These words are judgments and evaluations that are inaccurate and make us or another person feel inadequate instantly. Really, they aren’t true. Really, they’re hurtful. Lastimanfeo.

We know it hurts to hear judgments made about us. We might speak up then, in defense of any given part of ourselves we want to preserve. But who is speaking up for us when our Shadow places Self-judgment on ourselves? Recently I called myself a Bitch. I’ve always fought to not label myself lazy. Being “huevona” is only the worst thing one can be has been the cultural and family imprint. I’ve had the urge to self-harm when I hear something inside calling me useless, unloved, ungrateful, better off gone. There is no one saying this to me. I repeat, no one is saying this to me but my Shadow Self. It fuels itself. It seeks reinforcement for these toxic affirmations, and it can easily get it when we’re slipping.

When these words are erupting, either causing us to implode or explode, they are usually paired with an inflection that gives it away and some kind of tense body language. Our body reacts as if there’s a finger pointed at our nariz. Noticing this signal can help us to see that we’ve retreated somewhere within and let our sombra take over for a bit. If this happens frequently in a partnership, it can begin to erode in subtle ways initially, and then larger and more stormy ones later. Similarly, and quizás more dangerously, if this happens frequently in our relationship with ourselves, it can chisel away at our capacity for resilience. We can feel like the  bad pecadores we were told not to be. That is why Shadow Work is so needed. 

Shadow Work is Hard AND Important  

Shadow Work to me feels like I’m diving into a puddle of lodo. But it can also feel extremely freeing and opening, if I’m aware I’m about to jump off, and if I’m aware that when I turn my sombra towards the sun, my eyes may want to close. I may want that injection to end it again because.. well, it isn’t a magnificent glowing light at first. It could be the absolutes or labels, or maybe we catch ourselves lying, or accusing, or deflecting,  gossiping, not living within integrity, not practicing our intentions. Our “sins”, our flaws and imperfections, our Shadow Selves are only as influencing as we help them to be, but we may need some guidance in reframing and redirecting, translating and  transforming, our sombras. This is where the tools at our disposal need to be considered, like maybe therapy or... maybe even.. therapy. The choice is ours.

I was struggling to remember this morning the ways in which Debbie, and Carl Jung who initiated understanding of Shadow Work, suggested integrating the Shadow Self. It isn’t so much about not making any evaluations about the Shadow at all, because those evaluations done self-compassionately can be useful, but rather looking at what it is here to teach us. We all have programming to rewire, layers to shed, cocoons to crack. We all must have to face the devil in the desert, so to speak, at one point or another. Some of us can take 40 days, some of us can take 40 years. Our sombras are trying to alert us, not destroy us.

Even if it sounds counterintuitive, the sombra a sol process wants to be a healing experience, because it wants us to experience the warmth of our verdadera verdad, yes our truest truth!, on our faces. Blockages have the ability to clear with this effort and integration. We don’t have to feel vergüenza in taking responsibility for our Shadow, it comes with helpful mensajes and further instructions about where we can grow, how we can grow, and where we have already grown.

Debbie writes: “Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self.”

 I wrote a letter to myself. (I wrote!) For me, the theme of 2017 was releasing all expectations m I had about motherhood. I didn’t realize how firm, inflexible and impatient I’ve been with myself until this year. I didn’t know how to release until the end (like, today!) and I’m still learning. This letter is partially about a second unplanned pregnancy, an unplanned trauma from a toxic work environment, an unplanned dark journey through perinatal depression and anxiety, an unplanned hospital birth, an underplanned return to school, and a necessarily planned break from it because... motherhood. I’m unlearning the need to have expectations, processing and integrating things as they come with pause, restructuring priorities, and finding more meaning at the beginning of my 30’s as a Chicana mother of two children who tries to practice Nonviolent Communication with all but mostly can’t remember to brush her teeth. Here’s the letter. 

Dear Leslie, or Prisci, whoever you feel you want to be today, 

Your question out loud lately has been whether you have failed, whether you are failing or will fail. 

I come bearing gifts in the form of an answer for all three parts of the same question: No, no and no.

It’s fine to ask this, though, because everyone else has asked themselves too, I’m sure. Oprah, Nadine, Shefali, Beyoncé, Iyanla, America, Ruth B. Know that it’s fine, they do. But don’t dwell on the question. There are better to ask.

As a more obvious reassurance comes to you, you will see that you’ve been just like sister caterpillar - but unlike the caterpillar you worry and fret too much over when you might emerge. Look at what you have come from: life cycles of rage, survival, sadness, stuckness, suck-ness and time and time again, ultimate surrender. All rich manure necessary for you to get here, slowly and patiently emerge from cocoon, to the present. 

You are like a mariposa. Or a mami-posa. You are now able to bask in the simplicity of growing  small human beings. I’m that simplicity you’ve felt joy in the pools of sunshine in their eyes. It’s where there are endless opportunities for growing you along with them. You noticed that when you hear the phrase “They’re not always going to need you”, you burst into tears.

You also know (yes you do) that the confusion of not knowing how to be, who to be, or sometimes whether to be, stems from the comparisons to everyone else. You forget that there is no other to compare to, just you: Mother.

Mother. A mother who is trying and for whom, for EVERYone else, trying is enough, so.. why not the mother in the mirror?

You are Mother. A daughter that has become Mother, steadily building a bridge between the inner needy little girl and the inner big Mother. Both live in you, one is a trickster that giggles facetiously as she tricks you into believing you’re not enough. The other has long white trenzas and many deep arrugas, tiny skin tags scattered across her chest and wears a calm smile, always. She doesn’t apologize for the pressures that squeezed her into a diamond, she doesn’t apologize for meeting her needs. Her hands are wide, worn, and soft. She’s a chingona comadre, too.

And well, that is now unlocked to be accessed by you every damn day, did you know? The inner wise woman, the inner knowing. Don’t let it pass you by, mijita. Don’t let the present, with all of its heavy sighs and belly carcajadas, pass you by. That is where your ancestral mother wisdom lives. That is where you will Remember. 

Mami-hood. You’re doing it right now, and you’ll keep doing it different. You will probably mess up again, don’t expect yourself not to. You will probably again take windy roads that leave you lost. And then your viejita and your comadres will come find you and lead you back. But your children will know that it was you who took that journey. And that it was pretty damn brave. 

Love,

Let’s try this, at home. Manos mias feel cansadas, no se que pasa con mi corazon y mi cuerpo en general.

Hallie sleeps and I miss her. I want everyone to sleep. To sleep and to eat well enough. That means - cooking. 

apparently i will come back in months and months and not remember this.

apparently it is entirely possible to mourn a friend, and reconnect with that friend what three four years later. like nothing. like everything.

apparently that friend will still want to talk to you, will still pick off where friend left off, you will pick up where you left off, and it will confuse the shit out of you because square one is fucking weird.

apparently it is okay to mope around the house all day unless it’s someone else doing it. because apparently we are built for judgment and the overcoming of it.

my text don’t need no style my text IS style.