Welcome to In Her Shadow!
This is my commitment to writing and this blog. Through personal essays and short stories, I am taking the first step towards facing my shadow.
I started this page to get my creativity flowing in a fun and communal way. I love to write, and Instagram captions only allow so many characters. I started sharing my healing journey on Instagram through my Reiki account, and what I draft versus what I can post are very different. I've had to condense my feelings to fit the caption. It's felt like another box I've been forcing myself to fit into. I want to share my experience without restrictions.
Every time I quit a job, I said I would be a writer. One of my grammar professors once said there are two types of writers: those who write to live and those who live to write. I wanted to write to live, but my expectations held me back every time I tried. Structure is something I've had to build for myself over the last decade, and I still struggle with it. To financially support yourself through selling your writing takes a lot of structure. Mix that in with my self-doubt, and you get a pile of drafts tossed aside.
At 28, I am finally making writing work for me. Once again, I quit my job, but writing wasn't what I thought I would be doing. Since it wasn't my expectation this time, it's given me the space to have fun with it.
Growing up, I was a lonely child. Creating stories in my head was a way to disassociate from the chaos in my life. Until my junior year of college, I found my best friends in books. I would stay up until two in the morning telling myself, "Just one more chapter." Writing created an outlet for my loneliness. I started writing characters that became my friends, almost as if I were rewriting my experience.
My first novel was about a girl who was best friends with a manatee in Florida. She would visit him at the dock daily and talk to him because no one understood her. Why was this my first novel? I just saw Flipper and did a project about manatees. They have no aggression and are naturally trusting. They seemed like the perfect friends to talk to. The novel didn't have an ending, but it was my beginning.
Over the years, I would write things that died in a journal or on my laptop. Half-written stories and articles piled up because I never believed I was good enough to try to be published. Who did I think I was? Not being good enough is a theme in my life and something I still face whenever I take a risk. Thinking I wasn't worthy of a talent kept me from following through with most projects.
I had low self-esteem for most of my life, but I also created a happy mask for survival. My biggest fear was to be bad, so I people pleased to ensure I was good. I felt I could never be loved, and everything I found interesting was stupid. Not being enough has held me back from living and experiencing things my entire life. I wasn't smart enough, pretty enough, cool enough, or witty enough. I held myself to expectations that no one could reach.
As an adult who has gone through many years of therapy, I can finally look back at that time instead of still living in it. I've processed trauma, healed parts of me, and learned to love myself. Though 25 years of self-hatred doesn't go away quickly, I now know how to face that part of me with sympathy and compassion. I find it easy to do lately because she's typically seven years old whenever I turn to that part of me. Seeing my inner child sad, scared, or lonely breaks my heart.
When I sit with my inner child, I allow her to feel without judgment and hold space for her to vent honestly. I sit at the lunch table with her and let her cry about feeling left out. We hide in our bedroom together, upset that we always make everyone angry. I validate her fear of spiders and nurture her back to a calm state. I love her, and I make sure she feels it. I do all of this to reprogram her brain and reactions to our big emotions. I regulate her and give her hope. I show her our life now and how awesome we grew up to be despite the pain caused by equally broken people.
As a child, I didn't know that people projected their insecurities onto others. I collected those insecurities as if they were rare coins. I took everything personally and could not determine if what they were saying was true. I allowed people to make me feel stupid because it made them feel better about themselves. I was a sensitive kid with no autonomy over my body or mind, so I let others pile on.
In survival mode, I absorbed so many insecurities from other people I didn't know who I really was. I held myself back based on ideas that weren't mine. Digging through them in therapy and learning that not everything was my fault relieved me. Not every bad thought or insecure moment was my own. It was also frustrating knowing I spent so much energy dealing with these things that weren't even mine, and I would have to spend more healing from them.
I had no attachment to reality because I didn't feel like I fit in, so I romanticized what life would be like. I wanted to live in the novels I loved, but holding on to these expectations kept me from real experiences. I thought life was supposed to be a certain way, and when my life fell short of it, I spiraled. I always felt like I was behind or missing out on "what it was supposed to be like." Releasing these expectations has been difficult, but I've found, in this supported state, that every time I step off the "right path," I find the most beautiful experiences filled with magic.
Something I wrote in my journal made me laugh:
"My perception of reality is as romanticized as Jack Kerouac's ideas of the West. Living a romanticized life is disappointing and unrealistic. When it comes to love, we expect Mr. Darcy, and what we get is a boy rolling a joint, who you may or may not actually like."
I was 22 when I wrote that, and it makes me love her so much. When I sit down with her in my heart, I tell her to keep dreaming even if life keeps pushing her down. Then I yell at her for wanting a Mr. Darcy love affair because hiding from your feelings is tumultuous. That stoner boy melted our heart, and we just didn't want to give in to the unknown feeling of love. After our talks, I hug her and thank her for being such a romantic.
Maybe it took me 28 years to finally sit down and finish a project, but she loved hard and opened herself to scary situations so that I could sit here and be brave. She traveled Europe and the States, broke generational cycles, found a deep, passionate love she'd always wanted, and set me up for the adventure I am currently on.
She wrote, "[Living a romanticized life] doesn't make sense to conformists. Our parents don't understand, and we are the wandering friend."
She started the deprogramming by deciding to live an unconventional life. When I find myself in my darker and self-doubting moments, I need to reach out to her and feel what she wants from the world. I need her bravery to remind me to live how I want and for myself before anyone else. She jumped at opportunities even when she was scared, and now I've been battered down by living day to day.
She could do so much and live so brightly, yet in her darkest moments, she still wanted to die. I lived in constant anxiety and depression for most of my life. I truly felt like dying would just be easier. Luckily, these thoughts only stayed in my head. However, I did hurt myself through eating, alcohol, and self-sabotage. Knowing how bright and magic life could be was difficult while feeling like I would never find true happiness. Everything was fleeting, and when I was still, I wasn't happy. Somehow, 22-year-old me decided she was done living like that, and even though it was hard, and the high highs made the lows so much worse, she persevered.
She had to fight hard for me to be here, and I am so grateful for her courage and resilience. She could have easily succumbed to despair but left the country and found life.
My healing journey is ongoing, and I'm unsure if it will ever end. The process doesn't scare me anymore because every time I find another broken part of me, it's an opportunity to learn how to love myself deeper. It expands my compassion for myself and others. Loving the dark parts of me helps my confidence grow, and my self-doubt is challenged instead of taken as truth. This journey has brought me to so many magical corners of the world.
Healing and stepping into my spirituality showed me that not only am I enough, I am too much for small people. I always walked a different path from others and radiated confidence even when I felt like nothing. I've always had these talents and power within me. I just didn't believe in myself. Becoming a holistic healer and publishing my novel showed me that the universe guides me to my highest self when I trust her.
Now that I want to live, I have a lot to say and do. I have stories to tell, and I hope you grow with me. I am challenging myself to be consistent with this page. I plan on writing in as many different styles as possible. Still, it will all be rooted in healing and dealing with being a human. It'll be emotional, honest, and hopefully fun for all of us. My goal is to create a community.
I just ask that you please remember I am still a broken human who can't help but romanticize her life. I mean, I am a writer…