When the Shadow Meets the Light

Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Nothing is certain, and change is the most constant thing in our lives, because truly nothing ever stays the same. We are not the same person today as we were yesterday, nor will we be tomorrow.

The last two months have been a time of deep healing for me. Truthfully, much of my life has been spent trying my hardest to avoid change, both in my external landscape and in my internal environment.

Today I want to write about the changes I have been going through on my own healing path the last couple of months. It is a unique dynamic, this interconnectedness between internal and external change. They swim hand in hand through this journey we call life, and when there is tension between them, life becomes tricky, difficult, and strenuous. Like swimming against the current and not seeming to get anywhere.

I recall a time in my late teens at the beach while visiting a friend. The waves were large, and I was maneuvering in the water as they pounded toward the shore one after another. To swim directly into the force of the wave was a losing battle. I kept finding myself caught in the current with no solid footing, swept up and propelled toward the shore beneath the white caps of the wave’s crest. Eventually, I felt the pull of the wave, beckoning me to move in rhythm with it. I planted my feet in the sandy ground at the trough of the wave. As the wave rolled toward me, I would jump in tandem with its incline, my body gently gliding up to meet the peak, then sliding down the back slope of the wave, cradled once again in the shallow valley, feet planted in the sand once more, waiting for the next wave to arrive. We moved in unison, me and the water. No fight, no force, just natural harmony. I stayed in that rhythm for some time, until cold and time told me this was enough.

Through this experience, the ocean was teaching me about trust and flow amidst chaos. The universe has our back, holding us safely through times of transition, both in our lives and in our hearts along our healing path. I have heard this truth many times, but hearing this wisdom is different than feeling the truth of something within our bones.

In November of 2025 I left my job as an Oncology Nurse. This had been my profession for the past 18 years. You can read more details about this part of my story in this blog post HERE. In my mind, I had created the perfect plan with a clear easy shot forward. My husband had a secure job at John Deere where he has worked for the last almost 13 years and he would support my and our family as I build my business.

Then December 2^nd arrived, and my well laid plan came crumbling to the ground. My husband had a meeting with his boss that day and they informed him that he was being laid off from his job. I also share more about this here in this blog post, I won’t rehash the details as I share this part of my story in this blog post HERE. What I want to share in this blog is not the event themselves, but the inner experience that transpired as I moved through this process and what it taught me.

Stop, Look & Listen

When a train is moving at high speed, there’s a certain momentum that builds, and it takes time to come to a complete stop. Moments of high stress or fear, such as times of change, can set our reactive nature in motion like a high-speed train.

What is our reactive nature? It is our fear response, our fight, flight, or freeze instinct. Our nervous system is triggered in some way, and we have certain habits, thoughts, and emotions that begin to surface. When past wounds and old traumas are still lingering in the shadows of our being, moments like this call them forward.

We often find ourselves stuck in this cycle of change, reactivity, and then trying to push through, avoid, or fix what is happening. We see change as the enemy that must be defeated. We fight the change, and this keeps us locked in pain and suffering.

When my husband told me about losing his job, my reactive nature kicked in full gear. I was crying, upset, thinking the worst, both about our situation and also about myself. Especially about myself. My thoughts quickly spiraled into old, familiar narratives: “I’m not good enough”, “what do I really have to offer to the world”, “who will want me”, “this job won’t be able to support me”.

In this moment, I believed all of this to be true. The world around me was certainly supporting these beliefs, of course it must be true.

One week fell into another, and then another. My whole family got sick at Christmas time, which forced me to slow down. It was exactly what I needed to bring my speeding train to a halt. Life was swooping in to support me when I was having trouble supporting myself.

I began to question those thoughts that were cycling in my mind. What if I saw this change in my life as a partner on my healing path instead of the enemy? How could I glide through change, like rolling with the waves of the ocean, instead of fighting the current when life shifts?

Change can be the guide. Our reaction is the map. And a map is only useful if we take the time to study it.

When we slow down and observe our thoughts and feelings, when we hold space for our emotions and listen for our soul’s wisdom, we begin to cut through the fear. As we soften, small cracks begin to form, allowing the deep wounds we have held in the shadows to step into the light. And from there, healing and transformation begins.

The Voice From The Depths

I can always tell when I am on the verge of a big shift on my healing path. When we answer the call to change the direction of our lives in a way that aligns with our Spirit rather than fear, as I did when I left my nursing job, our energy begins to shift. It becomes lighter, and certain things of a lower frequency just cannot come with us. They are no longer in alignment with our new energy and must fall away.

Have you ever had a moment when your back is turned and you feel like someone is watching you? You cannot see them, but you sense their gaze. You feel the presence of their energy taking up space in the room. This feeling is accompanied by a sort of pressure, as if I were trying to force a beachball beneath the surface of the water.

This is how it feels for me when something I’ve been holding beneath the surface can no longer be ignored and is ready to fall away. The truth is, I sensed its presence long before my husband lost his job. Even though I could feel it calling to me, I started the train and didn’t look back. Humans don’t like discomfort. We tend to avoid it, sometimes on purpose, more often unconsciously, as I did in these last few months. I thought that if I just got to work, followed my new job tasks day by day, things would proceed at a steady incline and all would be well.

But now, in this moment of forced slow down, I knew I had to face this wound. I set aside time and marked it on my calendar. I would shamanic journey in quiet silence, in darkness, and connect with these painful feelings as they emerged. For me, there’s something about doing this in a darkened room that helps me feel safe. It creates a sort of cocoon, a blanket, making it easier for me to open up to this process of release.

So here I was, my drum, my body, my Spirit, my pain, and the darkness, merging as one. As I settled into the steady beat of the drum, I could feel the sadness begin to stir in the pit of my stomach. There was a familiar tightness clenching the muscles in my abdomen, constricting its way up to my throat. And then the tears came, the flow of healing water streaming down my cheeks. I began to cry out, my voice cracking through the fear and the tight grip it held. It felt almost like a snap, like pulling a string with so much force that it finally breaks. The crack had appeared, and it was then that the message from my inner voice rose from the depths of my pain:

“My fear is that I have been left behind so many times in my life that the world has forgotten about me and I won’t be supported or taken care of”

This is the wound, and I felt it in every part of my body. I had to allow this part of me to fully express itself. I felt the pain of all the times I was left behind: dropped off at a stranger’s house while my mom was giving birth to my brother; countless childhood summers left with my grandparents for long stretches of time; sent alone to live with my mom’s friend to finish out seventh grade while my family moved out of state; left with my sister while my mom moved to her boyfriend’s house in a different town; arriving home from a study abroad program to find no one at the airport waiting for me; graduating from high school and finding my mom gone, leaving me alone at the post-ceremony celebration; and being dropped off at college, watching all the other students’ parents stay to settle them in while I was left alone.

The Light From Within The Shadows

I have spent so much of my life navigating the waters of life alone that I didn’t realize there was another way. I was so locked into the cycle of trying to feel safe within the world around me that I believed fighting against the current was simply how life worked. I thought tightening my grip and trying to control every possible outcome was the only way to survive. It never occurred to me that safety might not come from force, but from surrender. This recent healing moment along my path showed me that there is another way to move through life, one that requires me to follow its rhythm rather than resist it, the way I once moved with the waves at the beach.

On the other side of this healing, my body felt lighter in a way I cannot fully explain. The constant undercurrent of worry and anxiety about the future had nearly vanished. I could feel the muscles in my body soften, and my mind felt clear. I was no longer scrambling to try and fix my situation. Within the shadow of this wound lived control, confusion, and constriction. Yet within the light that was now emerging in its place, I could feel something entirely different: strength without control, clarity without needing certainty, and patience that is not attached to the outcome.

I remember one particular moment in the height of my sadness. I sat in the bottom of the shower crying, feeling hopeless and afraid of the future. It was in that moment that an image appeared in my mind’s eye, almost like a scene from a movie playing out. I saw my husband losing his job. But what startled me was not the image itself, but the sudden recognition that I had seen this before. It felt like déjà vu washing over me. Then I sensed the presence of my Spirit Guide and heard the quiet inner knowing: “You knew this moment would come. We showed you this months ago.”

This process was bringing me into sync with the changes in my outer world and the shifts within my inner world. As the outer world changes, our inner world responds. And in turn, as we change our inner world, our outer experience begins to shift to match it. As we heal and connect more deeply with our Spirit Within, our life and everything in it syncs at a higher frequency. It is the alchemical process of turning metal into gold, shadow into light, wound into wisdom.

Now in retrospect, I can see clearly that this is how my path was meant to unfold. If my husband had lost his job before I left my nursing career, fear would have kept me stuck and wandering far from my path. The shift did not come from circumstances changing. It came from my relationship to them changing.

Tending the New Light

In the early days of my first shamanic training, after receiving the Munay Ki rites, we were asked to go to a candle and feed the newly shifted energy with light. I used to wonder about the purpose of this. Does it even matter? Now I understand the importance of that seemingly small step.

When we shift from shadow to light, from low frequency to high frequency through healing, it is new to our body. There are still echoes of the past remaining. Old habits built over many years do not disappear overnight. The echo lingers. This is why we must feed the new light within us, to stoke the fire we have just started. If we do not tend to it, it risks fizzling out and we may return to our old ways. We would have to restart the fire.

This phase of the healing cycle in energy work is often called the integration period. We integrate by showing ourselves love, attention, and care as we continue on our healing path. There are many ways to do this: meditation, writing, time in nature, music, art, hobbies, affirmations, resting, eating well, and so many other ways.

After this healing, I understood what my Spirit was asking of me in order to integrate this new light. I had made so much progress in making better choices and putting myself first, but what was missing was self-love at a deeper level. The love I feel for my children, I cannot say I felt that for myself. I had been leaving myself behind in this one important way. I was taking loving action and making loving choices, but I was not loving myself with my heart. I was waiting for all the outside changes I had made in my life to fill the void within me.

The very first book I read when I began my shamanic training and healing path back in 2022 was You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Her message is simple: love yourself first, and healing will follow. So simple, yet one of the most difficult things for many of us to do.

So here I am again, back at the beginning. It is funny how life works sometimes. But this time I am not just reading the words on the page. I am reading the book with my heart, and I am doing the work. For real this time. I am ready. All of the changes leading up to now have prepared the ground for me to love myself. I am lovingly brushing my hair in the evening as I tell myself how loved I am, that I am enough, that I am valued. I am taking time to express gratitude for all the good things in my life, those that are here and those that have yet to appear. I am thankful because I know in my heart that I am supported. The world has not left me behind, and neither will I. I am beginning to feel it, that spark in my chest that lights up the same way it does for my children.

I have always wondered, where do the waves go once they reach the shore? It feels like nature’s magic trick, watching them curl as they reach the shallow waters, crash onto the sand, then slowly    recede until they disappear. I suppose they retreat back into themselves, back into the vast ocean, merging again as one.

Perhaps that is our own journey here on earth. Separate waves moving toward the shore, and at the end merging back into oneness, leaving only faint remnants of our time etched in the sand. But even those fade…for in this world, nothing can be said to be certain.

Know that you are loved and you are enough. Wishing you strength and courage on your healing path.

All my love,