Working Episode Title

Reclaiming the Hidden Self Through Shadow Work and Unbecoming

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Host: Identified from the host’s self-introduction as Jennifer Elizabeth Masters, host of SOS for the Soul: Coming Home.

Speaker 2 – Music / Lyric Segment: Identified as brief sung or musical opening and closing lines that are separate from the spoken host commentary.

Speaker 2 – Music / Lyric Segment:
Coming home.
Coming home.
I remember who I am.
I don’t have to hide.

Speaker 1 – Host:
Welcome, everyone. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I am your host for this next hour, Jennifer Elizabeth Masters, and this is SOS for the Soul: Coming Home.

Whether you’re listening live on BBS Radio, which I hope you are, or listening to the replay later, watching on YouTube, or listening months from now, I want to thank you so much for being here. I never take your time for granted. I know there are a thousand things you could be doing besides scrolling on your phone and looking at funny cat and dog videos, but I am so glad you’re here.

One of the things that touches me most is when listeners write in and tell me that after listening to my show, they had the best sleep they’d had in months. That has come in from a couple of people, two Rebeccas, actually. So thank you. I love hearing that. I love hearing from you. Thanks so much.

I think that is what happens when we stop fighting ourselves.

We are going to be talking about shadow work. Shadow. What is the shadow? You’ve heard about doing shadow work. Maybe you’ve heard, “Well, you need to do your work.” Here is what this is about: you’re going to learn what shadow is, what it isn’t, how to do it, and you know what? Most of us are already doing it.

When we stop pretending, stop carrying the burdens that we’ve been carrying for decades, and finally tell ourselves the truth, that is what shadow work is. Tonight, that is what we’re talking about.

Before anybody changes the channel thinking this is dark, heavy, psychological, or intimidating, let me reassure you: shadow work is not about becoming darker. It is not about becoming more serious. It could be serious, but it is not about endlessly dissecting your childhood. Shadow work is actually about becoming whole. And it is about something else. It is about unbecoming.

You’ve heard me say that before. It is my new book coming out and my new app, which I’m really excited to share with you. I’ll say that again: unbecoming.

Tonight, I want to talk to you about both, because I think many of us have been taught that healing means adding more: more tools, more techniques, more healing modalities, more spiritual practices, more self-improvement. While those things may be helpful, there is another truth. Sometimes the most profound healing isn’t about adding anything at all. I know some of you are going to be relieved about that. Sometimes it is about letting go of what was never you in the first place.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who introduced the concept of the shadow, said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

As a person who hears people’s subconscious minds, and that is what I do, I had a session with a couple of parents just the other day who were worried about a child and what their child’s body was telling me. I’m going to say that again because it is worth hearing: what their child’s body was telling me, what their unconscious mind was telling me, was, “Foods are killing me. Foods are not good for me. Foods make me sick.”

Your subconscious mind could be telling you all kinds of things, and we need to get to the bottom of those things so that we can feel whole.

Why would we want to know ourselves? The ancient Greeks inscribed the words “Know thyself” at the Temple of Apollo thousands of years ago. Why? Because the more we know ourselves, the more freedom we have. When we understand our fears, they stop controlling us. When we understand our wounds and know what they are, they stop driving our choices. When we understand our patterns, we stop repeating them unconsciously.

Awareness shines light into the places we have avoided, and what we bring into the light cannot remain the same. The shadow survives in darkness. Healing begins in awareness.

Bringing our shadow into the light is how we begin reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have hidden. Are we going to have to pull out a magnifying glass and a flashlight? No. You don’t need any tools at this time, but I will tell you, there might be some fun here tonight. I hope you will listen to this again and again, because we are talking about deep subjects, and maybe hearing them more than once will help you.

So bringing our shadow into the light is what we are talking about, and that is what we are going to be doing.

You might be wondering: Why do I keep attracting the same person? I have thought that multiple times. Why do I keep ending up in the same relationship with a different face? Why do I keep sabotaging myself? Why do I keep feeling this way? Why do I keep repeating the same pattern?

What if it isn’t fate? What if it is the unconscious mind?

I don’t know if you know this, but being a hypnotherapist since 1998, I’ve studied the brain extensively. The unconscious mind is on alert and active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It never rests. It is even active while you are dreaming. That is an interesting little fact.

Most people think shadow is evil. You think shadow, dark, bad, dangerous, shameful. Well, it’s not. It is actually part of you. It is part of you that you may grow to embrace and surround with a big hug, because that is really what it needs.

The shadow is simply the collection of parts of ourselves that we learned were unacceptable: the emotions, the desires, the needs, the truths, the dreams, the wounds, the gifts, our vulnerability, anger, sadness, grief, the voice, and the parts we pushed underground in order to survive.

Here is what I want you to remember tonight: the goal of shadow work is not to become perfect. I’ve tried to do that. It is kind of impossible. We can be the best version of ourselves, but we don’t want to be perfect. That is not the goal here. The goal is to reach the place where nothing inside of you has to hide anymore.

Can you imagine nothing inside of you having to hide anymore? The goal of shadow work is to reach that place where there isn’t anything hiding, where you understand the shadow. That is wholeness. When we embrace wholeness, when we love those parts of ourselves, that is wholeness, not perfection.

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about healing was that eventually I would become enlightened, and I did that in 2012. I was deeply surprised that all the uncomfortable parts of myself did not disappear. In fact, I began to feel more deeply and love more deeply. My heart was open.

When I was sixteen, I read Siddhartha. That book changed me, and I became fascinated with enlightenment. I wanted peace. I wanted freedom. I wanted to transcend suffering. Maybe you do too. Or maybe you just want to feel good and happy, and that is okay too. But I wanted to become the highest version of myself.

Somewhere along the way, I developed a misunderstanding. I thought that if I meditated enough, prayed enough, healed enough, studied enough, forgave myself enough, and forgave others enough, eventually all the uncomfortable emotions would just disappear. No more anger, no more jealousy, no more fear, no more insecurity, codependence, grief, judgment, no more triggers. I thought enlightenment meant becoming immune to being human.

I was wrong. Very wrong. Life kept presenting opportunities for me to meet myself. Someone would criticize me. Someone would disappoint me. Someone would reject me. Someone would trigger me. Someone would anger me. And there they were: the very emotions I thought I had transcended.

For years, I didn’t understand. Now I do. Healing didn’t remove the emotions. Healing changed my relationship to them. Instead of judging them, I became curious. If anger showed up, I listened. If jealousy showed up, I paid attention. If fear showed up, I got curious. If judgment showed up, I was careful, and I asked questions. The shadow was introducing itself to me again and again, and that changed everything.

Now I want to talk to you about something I have been sitting with for a very long time: unbecoming. I’m not talking about, “Oh, that’s unbecoming of you,” meaning it’s not good. No. This unbecoming is about shedding what we never were meant to be.

We talk about becoming our best self, becoming more conscious, becoming more evolved, and yes, there is a place for that. We talk about those things in spiritual circles, but I think we’ve been missing something along the way. I think the deeper work isn’t becoming someone new. I think the deeper work is shedding what we were never meant to be.

Think about this: from the time we were small children, the world began layering things onto us. Beliefs that weren’t ours. Roles that we didn’t choose. Identities that were assigned. Fears that were inherited. Shame that was handed down. Masks that we put on to survive.

We became the peacekeeper, the responsible one, the invisible one, the strong one, the difficult one. We became whatever the family needed us to become. Over time, we forgot which parts of us were real and which parts were costumes. We forgot who we were before the world told us who to be.

That is what shadow work ultimately reveals, not just the wounds, but the layers, the performances, the accommodations, and the beliefs that were never true. We carried them anyway because no one told us we could put them down.

“I am too much.” “I am not enough.” “I am broken.” “I am unlovable.” “I am too sensitive.” “I’m too emotional.” “I’m too needy.” “I’m too codependent.” These are not truths. Cancel, cancel, universe. Cancel, cancel. These are things we were told. These were things we absorbed, things we became.

Unbecoming means setting them down, one by one, layer by layer, and asking yourself: Is this mine? Did I choose this belief? Did I choose this identity? Does this belong to me, or does it belong to my mother? That is often the place. Does it belong to my father, my church, my culture, my ex-partner, or the trauma that happened in my childhood?

Here is what I know after decades of doing this work: underneath all those layers, underneath the wounds, underneath the masks, underneath the survival strategies, underneath the beliefs, underneath the rules, there is you. The original you. The one who was here before the world began editing you. The one who had dreams before somebody dismissed them. The one who loved freely before somebody told you that you were too loud. The one who asked questions before somebody told you that you were too much. The one who loved freely before somebody broke your heart.

That person is still there. Shadow work finds them. Unbecoming brings them home.

Now let’s talk about what happens when emotions are not allowed. You may be wondering, how could that be? I think this is really where shadow work begins. Most of us were not taught how to feel. In my household, if I started to cry, and in that era it was commonplace for parents to say this, I heard, “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Today, I think that is probably not so common, thank goodness.

We were taught how to suppress. We were taught how to behave. We were taught how to make other people comfortable and look good. We were taught how to keep the peace, but we were not taught how to feel.

Many of us learned very early which emotions were acceptable and which emotions were not. Happiness was acceptable. Being helpful was very, very accepted. Being agreeable was acceptable. Being angry, not so much. Being sad, not so much. Being disappointed, definitely not. Being afraid, not acceptable. Having needs, usually not acceptable.

Children learn very quickly. We become little emotional detectives. We learn what gets us love. We learn what gets us approval. We learn what gets us punished. Then we adapt. The problem is that adaptation often becomes self-abandonment.

You’ve heard me talk about this before. As a child, I wasn’t allowed to express anger. Looking back, I had a lot to be angry about. When I was around nine years old, I started wetting the bed. Think about that. I hadn’t been wetting the bed before. Something changed. Something was wrong. My mother knew something was wrong. What she didn’t know was that I was being molested. I wasn’t safe in my own bed.

Imagine being a child and being afraid to go to sleep. Imagine lying in your bed at night, waiting, listening, wondering, worrying, bracing yourself, knowing that your own bed isn’t safe. That creates terror. It also creates shame. It creates confusion. It creates deep, deep anger and rage.

I had every right to be angry. Anyone who has ever been violated, abandoned, neglected, betrayed, rejected, humiliated, or abused has every right to be angry. Anger is not the problem. I’m going to say that again. Anger is not the problem. The inability to process anger becomes the problem. The inability to process our emotions is the problem. We were never taught how.

But I wasn’t allowed to have anger. I wasn’t allowed to cry either. How many have heard that version growing up? “Stop crying.” “Don’t be a baby.” “You’re too sensitive.” “Get over it.” I said earlier, and it’s shocking, but I heard it: “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Many years later, I realized what this teaches a child. It teaches a child that sadness isn’t welcome. It teaches a child that vulnerability isn’t safe. It teaches a child that emotions are dangerous. So the child learns to suppress.

The tears don’t just disappear. The anger doesn’t disappear. The grief doesn’t disappear. If you’ve ever lost anyone, you know it is there underground. That is the shadow. The shadow isn’t the emotion. The shadow is the emotion we were not allowed to have.

Think about that. The shadow isn’t your anger. The shadow is the rejection of your anger. The shadow isn’t your grief. The shadow is the belief that grief is weakness. The shadow isn’t your fear. The shadow is pretending you aren’t afraid.

When we suppress emotions long enough, they begin speaking through the body. My body spoke loudly: fibromyalgia, TMJ, chronic sinus infections, anxiety, depression for decades, recurring illness. I spent years trying to fix the symptoms. Years. What I didn’t understand was that my body, and yours too, was carrying what my heart could not express. My body was holding what my voice could not say.

One of the biggest revelations of my life was realizing that symptoms are messages. As Bessel van der Kolk says, the body keeps the score. Why? Because the body remembers, and the body is always listening. We need to be careful what we tell our body. Our body tells the truth even when we don’t.

I remember talking to my mother on the phone, and she had this particular tone. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. That tone. She also had a look. Boy, she could stop a clock with that look. It was the one that instantly transports you back to being twelve years old.

More recently, when I was talking about working and healing with clients, healing clients, coaching clients through trauma, she would say, “You’re not a doctor. You’re not a doctor.” She would say it over and over, completely dismissing what I’d learned, completely dismissing my experience, completely dismissing my wisdom.

I would get angry, really angry, but I wouldn’t express it. I wouldn’t tell her what I was really feeling. Maybe you had a mother you couldn’t express your anger to. I wouldn’t tell her how hurt I was. I wouldn’t tell her how dismissed I felt. I swallowed it. I stuffed it, and my body swallowed it too.

This may sound like you. Maybe you’ve done this too. Many times I would end up with a sinus infection afterward, sometimes within twenty-four hours. I knew exactly what it was. Today, I see it differently. The anger wasn’t trying to hurt me. The anger was trying to help me. It was sending me a message. The anger was saying, “Speak. Tell your truth. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop pretending you’re okay when you’re not.”

Listen carefully to this: anger is not a character flaw. Anger is a boundary trying to be born. When we get angry, it is usually because someone is crossing our boundary. Anger is often self-respect trying to wake up. Anger is often the soul saying, “Enough. Enough. Enough.”

The tragedy is that many women have been taught to fear their anger. Boys are allowed to express it. Men are allowed to express it. In fact, I think anger is one of the only emotions men are allowed to express safely. Women, instead of expressing it, often internalize it. Internalized anger often becomes depression.

I know something about depression. I lived with it for over thirty years. You’re going to love this one. Depression can show up as physical symptoms: body pain, irritation, sleeping too much, or not sleeping at all. When I realized I was depressed, it was a state of being. I had been there for thirty years, so it became normal.

One day I told my mom, “I think I’m depressed.” Her response was immediate: “Oh, nonsense.” Not, “Tell me more.” Not, “How can I help?” Not, “That must be difficult.” Just, “Oh, nonsense.”

That is what emotional invalidation sounds like. Maybe you’ve had a partner who dismissed you, your needs, or your emotions. If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, chances are you’ve heard something very similar. Your feelings were not validated. Your reality wasn’t validated. Your pain wasn’t validated. Eventually, you start doing it to yourself. You stop trusting your feelings. You stop trusting your instincts. You stop trusting your own experience.

That is one of the greatest costs of growing up in a dysfunctional home. You lose trust in yourself. You were just trying to survive. It’s okay, and I’m sorry that you experienced it. Shadow work is how we begin getting it back. Not by becoming perfect, not by becoming enlightened, although that’s wonderful too, but by becoming honest: honest about what we feel, honest about what hurts, honest about what makes us angry, honest about what matters. Honesty is where healing begins.

It’s going to get better. This is going to get much, much better.

Let’s go a little deeper, because for many of us, it wasn’t just emotions that weren’t allowed. Our needs weren’t allowed. Our desires weren’t allowed. Our opinions weren’t allowed. Our “no” wasn’t allowed.

I still have a hard time saying no. Don’t tell the men around here. I have a hard time saying no to this day. I wasn’t allowed to say no. If you grow up in an environment where your needs constantly come second, eventually you stop recognizing that you have needs at all. You become highly attuned to everyone else. You know what your mother wants. You know what your father wants. You know what your spouse wants. You know what your children want. You know what your boss wants. You know what everybody else wants.

But if I ask you a simple question, “What do you want?” what happens? What do you want, Lynn? How about you, Becky? Do you know what you want? Rebecca? Not because you’re incapable, but because you stopped asking questions years ago.

I know I did. I learned very early that what I wanted wasn’t nearly as important as what everybody else wanted, or what somebody else wanted. I wasn’t allowed to say no. I couldn’t disagree. I remember arguing at the dinner table with my father. I had opinions. I had thoughts. I had feelings. Eventually, he would become so angry that he would yell.

Children learn very quickly. If expressing yourself creates conflict, you stop expressing yourself. If disagreeing creates punishment, you stop disagreeing. If saying no creates rejection, you stop saying no. That is not weakness. That is adaptation. That is survival. But survival strategies have expiration dates, just like your can of tuna. What helps you survive childhood can destroy your adulthood. That is why so many people end up getting divorced.

One of the stories that has stayed with me for decades happened when I was a little girl. My mother gave me five dollars. We were going to the church for a bazaar, and I was so excited. Five dollars back then was probably about thirty or forty dollars today. She never gave me five dollars. Maybe it was birthday money. I don’t remember. But I do remember this: if you’re a little child, five dollars is a lot. Today, if you’re younger than me, five dollars doesn’t sound like much. It doesn’t even buy you a coffee at Starbucks. But at that time, it was a fortune.

My mother said something magical. She gave me permission: “Spend it on whatever you want.” Whatever I want. Imagine that.

We were at this church bazaar. My mother was wandering around because she knew everybody. She was talking to people, and I was left to explore, looking and dreaming. Then I saw it: a little concertina, a little squeeze box, a little handheld squeeze box. I fell in love with it instantly. I knew exactly what I wanted.

Isn’t it interesting how children know? Children know what they want. They know what they love. They know what lights them up, until somebody tells them they’re wrong. I picked up the concertina. I was excited. I had my money. I had permission. I had made my choice. Then my mother appeared. As I reached to buy it, she took the money out of my hand and said, “No, you can’t have that.” Just like that, the thing I wanted, the thing I chose, the thing I had permission to buy, was gone.

Looking back, I realize it wasn’t about the concertina. It was the message. The message was, “What you want doesn’t matter. Somebody else will decide for you. Somebody else knows better than you. Someone else gets the final vote.”

Many of us grew up with that message. Maybe not with a concertina, but with something else. You want to play with this friend? No. You want to become that? No. You want to wear that? No. You want to study that? No. You want to go to vet school? No. You want to become a chef? No. You want to marry that person? You can’t marry him. You can’t date him. You want to move away? No. You want? No.

After enough noes, something happens. We stop wanting, or more accurately, we stop dreaming. We stop admitting what we want. We stop thinking that we can have what we want. That becomes shadow: the desire buried alive, the forgotten dream, the abandoned self.

I see this all the time with women. I ask them, “What do you want?” and immediately they tell me what they don’t want. Then they tell me, “My daughter wants this. My son wants this. My husband wants that. My boss wants this.” Their mother, their ex, everybody except themselves.

I understand because I was that woman. Many women have become experts at anticipating everyone else’s needs while remaining strangers to their own. That is not love. That is self-abandonment, and it usually begins in childhood.

For years, I believed my job was to make everyone happy. Make my mother happy. How many of you can relate to that? Maybe not your mom. Maybe your father, your sibling, a child, but somebody. Somebody whose emotional state became your responsibility.

Did you spend years trying to please someone who could not be pleased? Trying to earn approval? Trying to earn love from somebody who couldn’t give it? Trying to earn kindness? Trying to earn compassion? Believing that if you just did enough, if you were just good enough, agreeable enough, if you sacrificed enough, then finally you would receive the thing you were longing for?

And what did you receive? Were you like me? Did you receive criticism? Correction? Disapproval? Control?

Here is where shadow work gets interesting, because eventually I had to ask myself a very uncomfortable question: What if the problem wasn’t that I’m not lovable?

I’m going to let that sink in. Have you ever asked yourself that one? What if the problem is, and was, that I was trying to receive love from someone who didn’t have it to give?

That question changed my life, because many of us spend decades standing in front of an empty well, asking for water. The well is dry, my friend. The well was dry when we were six. The well was dry when we were sixteen. The well was dry when we were forty-six. The well is still dry.

The greatest act of maturity may be recognizing that reality and turning elsewhere for nourishment. Not bitterly. Not angrily. Not with resentment. Just with truth. Every minute we spend demanding water from an empty well is a minute we are not finding a river.

That river may be God. It may be nature. It may be friendship. It may be a community. It may be your dog. It may be a prayer. It may be your own heart. Somewhere along the way, we have to stop begging the empty well to become a river.

That realization was one of the most painful lessons of my life. If you’re listening for the first time, in about three weeks my mother, who I thought had borderline personality disorder, has shown herself to be a very vulnerable narcissist. When I realized she couldn’t love me in the way I needed and that I needed to stop trying to be loved by her, it was the most liberating moment of my life. When I stopped trying to earn love, that was the moment I could finally begin receiving it. That is where shadow work starts to become freedom.

This is about you becoming free.

I want to talk to you about something that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough. Most people, when they hear the word shadow, immediately think, “Those are the parts I’m scared of. I don’t want to look. The parts I’m ashamed of. The darkest part of me. The parts I’ve hidden. The parts I’m not proud of.”

But Carl Jung talked about something else too. He called it the golden shadow. I like that terminology, and I think for many of us, this is the most important shadow work of all.

The golden shadow is everything we buried that was good: your gifts, your talents, your creativity, your intelligence, your beautiful heart, your sensitivity, your empathy, your compassion, your power, your vision, your voice. Not the parts we are ashamed of, but the parts other people were threatened by.

Think about that. How many of us were told, in not so many words, “Dim your light. Don’t be so dramatic. Don’t be so intense. Don’t be such a know-it-all. Why do you always have to be different? Who do you think you are?”

So we hid. We buried the very things that made us remarkable. Maybe you were told from a very early age that you were too sensitive, too emotional, too much. For years, I believed that. I tried to be less. I shrank myself. I made myself small. I was afraid to take up space. Let’s take up more space, everyone. I became less expressive, less passionate, less myself.

What I didn’t know then was that my sensitivity is my greatest gift. My emotional depth is my greatest gift. My passion is my greatest gift. I have a lot of greatest gifts. Maybe that is yours too.

The very things I was shamed for are the things that allow me to sit with other people in their pain, in the fire, to feel what they feel, to hold space, to understand, to see. The golden shadow says the parts you buried weren’t flaws. They were your features. They were the gifts the world tried to convince you were problems. Shadow work is how we find them again.

I remember the first time someone told me, “You’re not too much. You’re just with the wrong people.” I cried. I actually cried, because I had spent so many years believing I was the problem, that my intensity was a deficit, that my feelings needed to be managed, contained, hidden.

What if you’re not too much? What if we’re not too much? What if we’ve just been in rooms that were too small? What if you’ve been surrounded by people who were threatened by your light? What if the very thing you’ve been apologizing for your entire life is your greatest attribute, your greatest strength?

That is golden shadow work. These places within you are gold. Some people will never tell you these things. Some people want to keep you small, keep you quiet, keep you from expressing, keep you from stepping into your gifts.

I think one of the deepest shadows I ever had to face wasn’t anger, jealousy, resentment, or even grief. For those of you who had a mother who was a narcissist, I think you’ll understand this. My greatest shadow was fantasy.

When I say fantasy, I’m not talking about imagination. I’m talking about the stories we tell ourselves about how life is eventually going to turn out, the stories we cling to because they are too painful to let go.

My oldest brother, Tim, used to tell me something over and over again. If he said it a hundred times, he said it once: “Jennifer, she’s never going to change.” It was so hard for me to accept. He said it for years and years. He was the first one to hand me the book Toxic Parents. Boy, did that open my eyes to who my mother was. Wow. I think it’s still in print.

I heard him. I really did. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t hear him. The problem was that I didn’t want to believe him, because if he was right, I would have to let go of something. I would have to let go of the fantasy that one day my mother would become the mother I needed. The fantasy that one day she would understand. One day she would acknowledge the pain. One day she would stop blaming me for my own molestation.

“Have you forgiven your brother?” Oh my gosh, in that tone. I swear she was riding on a broom when she said that. I had a fantasy that she would see me, understand me, and acknowledge me.

I think many of us carry that, and I don’t blame you for doing it. If you’ve ever done the Gene Keys, look it up. You can get your free Gene Keys. It is very revealing. When I did it, I laughed because I had done so much inner work. Yes, my Gene Key was fantasy. I already knew. I had discovered it myself. I was living in a fantasy my entire life about my mother.

Maybe you carry a fantasy like that about a parent, a spouse, a child, or somebody who already died. Somewhere inside us, there is a little voice saying, “Maybe someday. Maybe someday they’ll understand. Maybe someday they’ll apologize. Maybe someday they’ll appreciate me. Maybe someday they’ll love me the way I’ve always wanted to be loved.”

While we are waiting, our life is put on hold. I know mine was.

Recently, when I visited my mother and she asked me, “Have you forgiven your brother?” I remember what my entire body said. I did not sleep that night. I got up the next morning and spent forty minutes telling her what I had endured for seven years.

“You put me in harm’s way. You peeled me off you when I was crying, ‘Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.’ You told me to stop being a baby. How many times do I have to forgive him? I have forgiven him again and again and again. I’ve forgiven you too.”

At some point, I realized something. The question underneath the question was, “Who’s going to save me? Who’s going to make this right? Who’s going to give me back what was taken?” I know you’re all asking the same question. Who is going to protect that little girl? Who is going to tell her, “None of this was your fault”? None of it was your fault.

The answer was painful: nobody. Nobody was coming. Not my mother, not my father, not my brother, not my husband, not a guru, not enlightenment, not anybody. Strangely enough, that realization didn’t make me hopeless. It made me free. The moment I stopped waiting for someone to come rescue me, waiting for that knight on the shiny white horse to come rescue me, was the moment I reclaimed my own life.

Now, let me tell you another story. Maybe this story will give you a little insight into what you need to hear. Maybe this will be a mirror for you.

My mother absolutely adored my niece. I heard so many times how wonderful she was. I don’t say that with bitterness. It is an observation. “She’s so wonderful. She’s got this great job. Maybe you could someday do what she does. She’s so wonderful.” Over and over again.

Every time I heard it, a little part of me noticed something. I never heard those words about me. Not in the same way. Not with the same delight. Not with that enthusiasm. Not with that sparkle in her voice.

Then came the day she began giving away her prized possessions. One of them was her beautiful, tailored mink coat. Now, you might think this story is about a mink coat, but it isn’t. It never was. She gave the coat to my niece, not to her only daughter, but to her granddaughter.

I remember saying, “Well, it’s obvious who you love more.” For perhaps the first time in my life, she heard me. She really heard me, because ever since then, every time I’m on the phone with her and every time I see her, and she is a hundred and four, granted, so she has had time to hear this a few times, she says to me, “I wish you knew how much I loved you. I love you.”

I believe she means that. I do. But here is the difficult truth: there are some things that cannot be repaired by words alone. There are some wounds that don’t disappear because somebody finally says what you have waited seventy-one years to hear.

Part of me wanted those words. Part of me had been waiting my entire life to hear them. But part of me realized something else. I wasn’t grieving my mother. I was grieving the mother I wished I had. That is a very different thing.

My mother was cruel. She was mean. She was competitive. She was jealous. All the things that no mother should be. Maybe your mother was like mine. I tell my story so maybe you can see yours in mine.

Maybe this is one of the deepest forms of shadow work there is: grieving what never happened. Grieving the apology you never received. The love you never received. The protection you never received. Grieving the praise you never received for your A’s on your report card. Grieving the praise you never received for graduating, for getting that certification, for having your child, for being a good mother or a good father. Grieving the love you deserved but never fully experienced.

Healing isn’t always about recovering what was lost. Sometimes healing is about accepting what never was. That acceptance is not giving up. It is not defeat. It is not weakness. It is reality. Reality is where freedom begins. Fantasy keeps us stuck. Reality is the fire that sets us free.

That is why shadow work is so powerful. It doesn’t ask us to be someone else. It asks us to stop fighting. It asks us to stop negotiating with reality. It asks us to stop demanding that the past become different. Instead, it asks a very simple question: Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?

That question changed everything for me.

On my seventieth birthday, my children, I think it was David, rented a beautiful mountain home near Breckenridge, Colorado. My entire family was there: my children, my grandson Emmett, my daughter-in-law, and little Cameron. We went shopping. My sons Adam and David were there, and Ariel. We laughed. We had lunch. We played. We generally had a wonderful time. It was heavenly.

Of course, I kept joking with my coworkers at our little part-time job. I kept saying, “Well, they’re going to take me up to this cabin and leave me there,” because I could feel the underlying currents in a wonderful time.

Around the table, my daughter-in-law, Dani, what a wonderful woman she is, said, “Let’s go around the table and tell Jennifer what we love about her.” Something happened inside me. It wasn’t because I didn’t think my children loved me. I know they loved me. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether they loved all of me.

Do you understand the difference? Many of us grew up receiving conditional acceptance. “We love you, but don’t be angry. We love you, but don’t cry. We love you, but don’t be so sensitive. We love you, but don’t disagree. We love you, but don’t be emotional. We love you, but don’t share your opinion. We love you, but don’t be you.”

I realized something. Most of my life I have been working toward authenticity, toward becoming fully myself. Not the edited version. Not the acceptable version. Not the version that makes everyone comfortable. The real version. The version who cries when she’s moved. The version who talks to strangers. The version who shares her opinions. The version who loves and believes in God. The version who believes healing is possible. The version who loves deeply, feels deeply, laughs aloud, and occasionally says, “Fuck that.”

Here is what I discovered: the closer you get to authenticity, the more uncomfortable it becomes for the people who preferred the edited version of you. Not because you are doing anything wrong, but because you are no longer participating in an old agreement. The agreement that says, “Shrink. Tone it down. Make us comfortable. Don’t shine too brightly. Don’t feel too deeply. Don’t speak too honestly.”

Eventually, something inside of you says, “Hell no. I worked too hard to become silent again.”

Maybe your family loves you, but only certain parts of you. Maybe your spouse loves you, but only when you agree. Maybe your friends love you, but only when you don’t challenge them. The question shadow work eventually asks is this: Are you willing to be fully yourself even when not everyone approves? Authenticity always costs something, but self-abandonment costs far more.

One of the deepest wounds many of us carry is not the fear that we aren’t loved. It is the fear that we won’t be loved for being fully ourselves. Do you understand the difference? It is one thing to be loved for the version of yourself that pleases everyone. It is another thing to be loved for being completely you, completely authentic. That is what we are all longing for: to be known and loved anyway.

I have a quick story to share. My son wanted hot chocolate. I brought hot chocolate, and I was going to make it on the stove. He said, “No, make it in the cup. This is what the Starbucks recipe says on the container.”

I said, “David, it will be less lumpy. It won’t be lumpy at all if I make it on the stove.”

“No, make it in the cup, Mom.”

I made it on the stove. He was pissed. At the end of the night, when he said, “Yeah, it was a great night, Mom, but the hot chocolate was lumpy,” it wasn’t. It was bullshit.

So I had to ask myself a very important question: Do I want to be right, or do I want to be connected? Those are not the same thing. My adult children have a right to their own opinions, their own beliefs, their parenting style, their decisions. My truth does not make it their truth. Real wisdom is knowing the difference.

I can still be me. I can still be authentic. I can still be honest. But I cannot tell them how to live their lives. I cannot tell them how to raise their children. That is respect. That is maturity. That is love.

Shadow work showed me that. My mother showed me that day. She had strong opinions, very strong opinions. She criticized people’s weight. She criticized her daughters-in-law. But you know what? She is dying alone. Her grandchildren aren’t coming to see her. I don’t want to be her. I am ending the cycle.

The gift is not just healing yourself. The gift is ending the cycle.

My mother is almost a hundred and four. What she says to me is, “When you see your children, don’t bring up the past. Let it go. Don’t tell them what to do. Don’t give them your opinion. Don’t criticize them. Accept them as they are.”

When she said that, I had to smile, because criticism has been one of the greatest challenges of her life.

I hope this was helpful. I hope you’ll visit my website, jenniferelizabethmasters.com. Get my books on Amazon. But know this: coming home to you is the greatest gift of your life.

I love you. Thank you for sharing this time with me. I love you. Good night.

Speaker 2 – Music / Lyric Segment:
I’m coming home to you.
I don’t have to disappear.
I don’t have to leave.