Let’s Stop Calling It “Shadow Work”

There was a time when calling it “shadow work” made me feel powerful. Rebellious. Like I was finally giving voice to the parts of me that had been hidden, exiled, or shamed—by religion, by culture, by family, by my own inner conditioning.

It felt edgy. Sexy. Like I was finally part of something real—not sanitized “love and light” spirituality, but the messy, raw, glorious truth of what it means to be human.

And that served me… until it didn’t.

Because once you go deep enough into yourself, once you truly begin to meet every layer of your being, not just heal it or fix it, but become it... you realize something very simple and very radical:

There is no shadow.

There is no darkness to cast out, no monster in the basement of your psyche that needs to be slayed. There is only you—your infinite self—layered, encoded, complex, tender, powerful, radiant.

The idea of “shadow” presupposes that something is hidden. Wrong. Bad. That something must be dragged out of the dark and made “acceptable.” And while that metaphor might feel helpful early in your journey, it becomes a cage if you stay there too long.

It reinforces the idea that there are parts of you that must be worked on rather than honored.

It keeps people locked in a loop of victim-perpetrator within their own inner landscape—trying to excavate, fix, or purge something that was never wrong to begin with.

I don’t believe in shadow work anymore.

I believe in PURIFICATION—but not in the way that word has been used to shame or silence desire. I’m not talking about purity culture or “pure” thoughts. I’m talking about the kind of purification that occurs when you stop fragmenting yourself. When you see everything within you as sacred.

When you don’t have to make something “light” in order to love it.
When your rage is holy.
Your jealousy is informative.
Your hunger, allowed.
When your grief is not something to be fixed, but worshipped.

That’s the real alchemy.

Not swinging between poles of good and bad, light and dark, but dissolving the poles entirely. Letting go of the idea that you are here to be better and embracing the truth that you are here to be WHOLE.

So if the language of shadow still feels helpful to you, use it. But know this:
You were never broken.
Or too much.
You were never in need of fixing.

That’s sovereignty.

In sovereign pleasure,
Sharon

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