Why Shadow Work Matters: How to Embrace Your Dark Feminine Power

Shadow work has had a sexy makeover in the recent years. It’s been re-branded from work that is very difficult and emotionally challenging, to work that is your ally in self-acceptance. For women on their path to awakening to their divine feminine energy pairing shadow work with the dark feminine is next level.

For those who don’t know, shadow work is the process of integrating the parts of the self that have been exiled, rejected, or hidden because they don’t fit our self-concept, or because they are painful to look at. Through exploration, acknowledgement, and ultimately acceptance of these parts, you can create powerful personal transformation. Carl Jung conceptualized as the unconscious self. Doing the work isn’t about fixing things you think are broken about yourself, but rather about integrating these parts to become a more whole version of yourself.

But shadow work is hard because it asks us to see parts of ourselves that we don’t like, or are ashamed of. So why would anyone willingly stir the cauldron of the soul so our repressed secret selves bubble up to the surface? The reason is because what rises into the light can be processed and transformed. So we have a deeper sense of self love.

For modern women, this often painful work can be explored using dark feminine archetypes. But what exactly are dark feminine archetypes? It’s the mythic embodiment of archetypal energy that holds things like mystery, intuition, rage, sensuality, grief and wild, unabandoned power. We see these energies expressed in mythic figures such as Hekate, Lilith, Kali, and the Cailleach or Crone. Working with these energies as women helps us reclaim what has been taken by societal conditioning—sovereignty, power and the ability to express anger or sexuality.

Emotional honesty and personal sovereignty are goals, but along the way, by doing this work we learn to shed expectations of the ‘good girl’ narrative—the concept that good women must be silent, and pleasing—along with deepening our understanding of the death and rebirth cycles. We learn to align with ancestral patterns of internalized shame of the feminine to create deep emotional healing for not only ourselves, but for our daughters.

There are some powerful key outcomes of working with the shadow as well:

• We unlock buried creative potential by unearthing the masks and blocks smothering it.
• We deepen our relationship to the subconscious mind to grow our intuition.
• We create an unshakable relationship to self-acceptance, which strengthens our personal power. 
• We learn where we have betrayed ourselves, or allowed others to, or where we have unknowingly aligned with internalized misogyny.

So, how do we begin to explore our shadow with the dark feminine energy?

Here is a tool box you can start to build and over time, the insights become stronger.

• Journaling with prompts is always my go to, especially if you are a fan of flow journaling or morning pages where you just gently allow whatever needs to flow onto the page. (Find some prompts at the end of this post).
• You can also create tarot spreads along with your daily journaling for more focused exploration. I like to use a dark feminine deck such as the Witches of Legend Oracle Deck, (my fave) or the Witches Tarot by Burning Paper Hearts.
• Explore stories, myths and goddesses that reflect or mirror the stage of the journey you are on. For example, if you are wanting to explore you fear of aging, read about the Cailleach, or Crone stories from Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
• If you are exploring buried trauma, you can work with a licensed practitioner to do body work, or other somatic practices.
• Work with daily mantras to strengthen this exploration such as, “I am whole, even in my darkness, I reclaim all that I am.”

The most difficult shadow work I have ever done, and it’s still unfolding, is the work around my mother wound. Exploring the areas that I am like my. mother forced me to acknowledge parts of her that were positive when I had a very negative narrative (rightfully so) around our relationship. But in doing so, I learned not to hate those parts of myself, and to soften the narrative I had about her, ultimately resulting in powerful healing. I used the archetype of the rebel, and journeyed with Demeter, and Persephone and the wild woman and Lilith, and it truly helped me to break my relationship with the good, agreeable girl and to create powerful boundaries.

Journeying into the dark might create discomfort, but not doing so would cut you off from the wisdom in the shadows that is waiting to be claimed. Shadow work isn’t a quick fix, but it’s precious, sacred work in building the relationship with your soulful self. 

A few journaling prompts to get you started:

1. What parts of myself do I feel compelled to hide from people?
2. What parts of myself have I been conditioned to change to be loved or accepted?
3. What am I most afraid that I will discover if I go deep into my shadow?
4. If I gave myself full permission to be the wild, untamed, or sovereign how would I be different?
5. The dark feminine can be awakened by exploring where you are holding trauma in the body. What messages does my body hold that I have been ignoring or minimizing?
6. Instead of honoring my shadow as flawed parts of myself, how can I honor it as a sacred teacher?

I offer support tarot readings, coaching and mentoring for women and femmes looking for a guide on their journey. But even if you go it alone, take a gentle approach and allow yourself plenty of time for this life changing transformation.