Have you ever felt the weight of your past pulling you down? In this series, I’m opening up my heart and sharing a collection of deeply personal stories and cultural anecdotes. These tales, written during a time of profound deconstruction and healing, were first shared at a Druid Gathering in Louisiana in 2022. Through the lens of Shadow Work, I hope to inspire healing and renewal in a world that desperately needs it.

Join me on this journey of reflection and growth. Let’s dive into these stories together and find the light within the shadows.

Introduction

I was lucky to grow up in a place where a lot of the old ways are still alive. We did a lot of things by the moon–like forecasting storms and cutting our hair. We connected to the land and all her creatures, too. We had to because winters in the area could be long and unpredictable. For my people, surviving harsh winter storms was just the way of things. We were built for it.

Through evolution and shared experiences, we learned how to forecast, prepare, and hunker down when things got bad. We knew how to keep an eye out for one another through it, too. After all, there was no guarantee that outside help would come, even on the darkest nights in the middle of a harsh and unrelenting winter.

Shoot-we didn’t even have a police station! We didn’t need one. All we needed was Jesus, our guns and a good aim.

The town I grew up in wasn’t even a town. If you look it up on the Google, you’ll see that it’s called an “Unincorporated Community”–whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. It’s small and simple, but it’s a beautiful place–and wild, too.

For most of my time there, the locals were good about ethical logging, and most houses were built in small clearings. We did not clear cut the land and there are no subdivisions there–even to this day. The point is that we tried to take from the land without changing her nature.

The Darkness of Winter

I must warn you, though, that it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. There is a deeper darkness that looms at the ends of the hollers of my youth. You see, I’ve felt the emotional destruction that comes from people who hold the darkness of winter too deeply in their hearts.

I’ve gone toe to toe with generational cycles of abuse that are too common in the area to be a coincidence, and I know what happens when hibernation settles in deep–when it becomes a way of life.

Sharing these types of stories is always nerve racking. Something inside of me still freezes up when I try to talk about my childhood. Even looking at the good things can be a landmine for all the guilt, shame and pain I have yet to deal with.

…and I’m not the only one who experiences that. We all have trauma. We all go through storms. And we all need help to transmute that energy into something positive and powerful.

Society’s View on Darkness

To make matters worse, we live in a society that values the light over the dark. They tell us to wipe the tears from our eyes, put a smile on our face, and keep moving on. We see this in platitudes like: “Look on the bright side”; “Focus on the Positive”;

….and my least favorite of all

“Everything happens for a Reason”

No. Some things have no reason. We may give them purpose IF we have the tools to do so but the word ‘reason’ implies justification, and some things should never be justified.

What is Shadow work?

Shadow Work is important work–especially since we’re in a period of great deconstruction. I’m going to keep it pretty metaphorical, because I am a storyteller after all, but I want to give a quick primer before I dive in.

Throughout our lives, we experience all kinds of things. The not-so-great things; trauma, abuse, bullying, shame, indoctrination, etc. Well, those things create ‘fragments’ inside of us. In psychology, they’re often referred to as ‘parts’. For the purposes of these stories, we’ll stick to calling them Shadows.

Inside the shadows are tiny fragments of light. Those are the missing pieces of our sacred selves. Without them, we can’t be whole…and so Shadow Work is the work of integrating that light back into ourselves. The hard part is that we have to face the cold dark reality contained within those shadows. We have to get to know those truths, acknowledge how they affect our lives, and get skills to minimize their negative impacts.

If we do not do this work-–if we ignore the shadows and shy away from the darkness, they grow inside of us. We’re essentially granting them power over our thoughts–and as a result our lives.

What I have found is that the power to clear out the shadows and claim our light comes right from the darkest time of the year–Alban Arthan–the time of the Cailleach; the bringer of cold winter storms.

The Power of Stories

Now, I understand a thing or two about darkness, and I know how to harness the transformational energy of the season to re-invent and evolve. After all, I’ve died more times than some folks have lived and I’ve risen above my mental health struggles, poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. Today, I have a life and a career that-by all accounts-I was not supposed to have.

To be honest, I have stories to thank for that. When I was a child and things were bad, I always retreated to a book. Over time, I became an avid ‘daydreamer’. I was always lost in the clouds; continuously writing stories in my head.

It was my way of reclaiming my power, of changing the narrative, and of finding hope. Through stories, I was able to create a vision for a better life and work toward it.

West Virginia culture acknowledges the power of stories, too. Appalachian Storytelling is alive and well today and I’m honored to carry that tradition on and out into the broader world.

The stories I tell are the stories of ‘us’. They’re the stories about my life and my ancestor’s lives. They’re stories about the people I meet and even stories about strangers. I record them all in my ‘Book of Life’. My people believe that in the end, ‘Every ear shall hear, and every knee shall bow’. But I say why wait? We all know that time is no friend to truth, after all.

So, in the next few posts, I will tell you three stories of my own survival of the bitter winters. Each story contains a lesson…and a gift of understanding. These gifts are:

1. Strength
2. Hope and
3. Rot

…and because I’m a scary b*tch, let’s start with rot.