Healing with help from your shadow

Amy Terepka
Oct 4
6 min read

This article is Part 2 in a series about healing. You can read Part 1 here: "Are you healed enough yet?"

I have so much to say on this topic, and will have at least one more blog in this series! Bookmark this page so you can come back next week to read more.

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Rather listen? Play below to have me read you the post.

Do you know the story of Chiron? The wounded healer?

Chiron, a master of the healing arts, was accidentally struck by one of Hercules’s venomous arrows, causing him incurable, excruciating pain. As he was immortal, he was subject to live with his pain in perpetuity.

Yet, as a healer himself, Chiron’s wound allowed him to cultivate empathy and understanding for those he served. His pain allowed him to develop strength of character, and offer compassion to those he would help as a healer. Though this wound was the source of his pain, it was also his endless well of wisdom, strength, empathy, and power.

So it is said that in the center of our own core wounds lies our power and our gifts for the world. As we face our shadow, as we come to know ourselves and our endless depth, we gather wisdom.

Against a pale purple and orange sunset, a blurry shadow of a person stands in a field.

Your wound is also your medicine

As we meet our inner wounds with curiosity and compassion, we endure alchemical transformations that allow us to drink in the bitter-sweet nectar of these wounds as gifts. If we allow ourselves to cozy up next to them… If we don’t push them away or make them wrong... If we can stay with our perfectly imperfect humanness and not have to find permanent resolution to them…

It is so very important for us to stay close to these wounded ones within. To learn to listen to them and integrate the power that lies there.

Now, staying close to these wounds certainly doesn’t mean identifying as the wounded one, nor focusing on our pain. It means understanding ourselves as multidimensional and complex beings, and loving the Self that we find, wounds and all. This is the ultimate freedom. The ultimate experience of wholeness.

When we make our shadow conscious, it doesn’t mean we resolve everything or that we’ll never have to feel grief, fear, or unworthiness, again. But it does mean that we can be in honest conversation with these parts of ourselves, and that the power and energy that’s been bound to them can become integrated into our conscious self.

The myth of "being finished" with healing

In my priestess training in 2017 I was taught that the more light we accumulate, the larger our shadow can become. That we always need to have an eye on our “tail,” so to speak, so that we don’t unconsciously whip it around and harm someone.

I believe this is why so many spiritual gurus end up becoming corrupt or causing harm, however subtle.

I see it as a type of spiritual egoism when gurus believe that they’ve gained enough spiritual insight and wisdom to land on a mountain of attainment where there’s no more healing to do. That the idea of admitting more healing somehow makes them less whole. They aren’t in humble conversation with their shadow, knowing there’s more they cannot see. They don’t allow the “less-than-perfect” parts of themselves to have place within their vast wholeness, or admit that they go through periods of struggle like all humans. If there is someone like this, this is where the danger lurks.

I am wary of anyone that believes they are finished with their healing. Or that that’s even possible. I find that the more we push our wounds away, or the more we believe that we’ve finished with our healing, the more dangerous we can become.

When we’re not practiced in welcoming in our pain, we’re not adept at understanding that our wholeness includes these less-beautiful parts of ourselves. They will never disappear. Because they are us. We will spiral around to greet them again and again and again over the course of our lifetime. And this is the path of healing. The path of Life.

A bearded man appears to be a shadow as pale sunlight shines behind him and illuminated the yellow leaves of the tree he stands under.

Just as the seasons teach us, we move through cycles in our lives. Perhaps you’re in one right now that’s breaking you open, asking you to unravel or excavate deep shadow parts. Or perhaps you’re in one that’s luring out your shining joy, or helping you stand confidently in all of your wholeness.

Neither of these is better than the other. But both are indeed part of the healing path. And they each require the other. For to forget one aspect of the cycle of life is to suppress something to the realm of shadow.

Healing is the acknowledgement of wholeness. The recognition that we contain a blueprint of wholeness within us that is always welcoming us home to a greater and greater degree (I’ll expand on this next week!). And we get to continue to say yes to that wholeness and get curious about what is getting in the way of our experience of that wholeness.

Because we are so multidimensional and vast, there is no way we could possibly know the fullness of ourselves over the course of this lifetime.

There’s always more I’m learning about myself. There’s always parts of me that could use my love and attention. There’s always aspects of my shadow that I get to welcome back into the light of consciousness.

Like Chiron, I believe it’s important for healers, guides, and spiritual teachers (and everyone for that matter) to always be learning from their less-than-flattering parts, and curious about what may be hidden beneath the surface of consciousness awareness.

Two hands are lifted in prayer pose, and behind them a shadow of a person in meditation with their hands raised the same way.

How do you approach your healing and wholeness?

As I talked about in Part 1, what's key here is the approach.

Do you have a ravenous need to better yourself or excavate more of your shadow or feel like there’s always more to do in order to improve yourself? Because this isn’t actually healing.

Are you pushing the idea of healing away because you think somehow it’s not worthy or good enough or high enough frequency? Because this isn’t actually spirituality or wholeness.

Neither of these are truth. They are two sides of the same coin. A push and pull dynamic with a false and colonized healing god.

When we are comfortable accepting that this human experience is one of healing, we can feel at peace knowing that there will always be more to heal and learn. That healing doesn’t make you less spiritual, or living at a lower level of frequency. And healing certainly doesn’t mean you’re not tapped into wholeness. (Again, more on this next week).

I do understand that some people are in a space where they don’t feel ok. Where they feel broken, and unworthy. You can’t force yourself to believe or feel that you’re whole. That’s equally as harmful. And when you’re in a state of trauma, it can feel desperate and dire.

Everyone is at a different stage on their journey, and the journey certainly is not linear. No one is “farther along” than you. You are experiencing and learning and evolving exactly how you need to be. And when we accept where we are on our healing path, we actually find the path of the soul, and spiritual awakening itself.

My prayer is for us to approach life and our healing path with humility, allowing the plants and the earth and our relationship with our guides to shine light on our blindspots, and also help us receive ourselves and our joy more fully every day.

When we approach our healing from this place of awe, knowing that there’s more inside us than we could ever know about ourselves in this one lifetime, life becomes more magical. And through the process of uncovering and integrating more of ourselves, we learn more about the entire Universe.

Everything has its shadow. Healing does as well. And as with all of Life, how we approach our path means more than what we’re actually doing on that path.

So, what is your relationship with healing?

This is likely to be complex and worthy of contemplation. But wherever you land, give yourself some grace. And choose how you want to orient yourself towards healing, life, and the multidimensional magic of existence.