Embracing Your Wholeness: Demystifying the Shadow Self
Hi, I’m Doctor Mary Newstrom.
Speaker 2
And I’m Dawn Morningstar, welcome to Soul Fire Sisters, a sacred space where we ignite women’s inner fire, awaken their truth, and share soulful conversations that inspire, heal, and empower.
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Each episode we dive deep into themes of self discovery, intuition, feminine wisdom, and spiritual growth, guided by raw stories, fierce honesty, and a shared desire to live boldly and authentically.
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Whether you’re on a healing journey, seeking deeper connection, or ready to rise in your power, you are not alone.
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Dawn Morningstar, which is her given name, has been a Women’s Self Empowerment Coach for 37 years, is the award-winning author of Venerable Women Transform Our Self.
Transform the World is a former radio talk show host, a podcast host, Ted X Speaker, the creator of Radiant Face 18 and Co founder of New World Women.
Speaker 2
Doctor Mary Newstrom is an internationally known shamanic teacher, a spiritual minister, and a keynote speaker.
She founded Zenith High LLC and created Spirit Flower, a shamanic study program for women.
She’s committed to helping women and men develop a strong sense of purpose as they examine and understand how to stand clearly in their power.
Speaker 1
Welcome to the sisterhood, Your soul showed up for a reason.
Speaker 2
Welcome back, Soul Fire sisters.
We’re so glad you’re here.
Speaker 1
We are, and before we begin, let’s just take a minute to land.
Take a breath with us in and outlet yourself arrive.
Speaker 2
Today we’re going somewhere a little tender and a little brave.
We are going into the shadow.
Speaker 1
And I want to say right away, it’s not going to be a scary conversation.
In fact, actually it’s a liberating 1.
Speaker 2
Sure is.
Because what most of us have been taught is that the shadow is something like to be ashamed of or something to keep hidden, something that makes us bad or broken or too much.
And what we’re here to say today is that’s not the truth.
Speaker 1
The shadow is not necessarily your darkness, it’s actually your wholeness waiting to be integrated.
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And sisters, integration is where the real power lives, unifying our human selves with our divine selves.
That’s the work.
Yeah.
So, Mary, let’s start at the very beginning.
When people hear shadow work, sometimes they think it sounds really intense or even clinical or like something that’s going to take years and years and years of therapy to approach.
Can you just demystify this for us a little bit?
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
And I want to just say right away, we’re not going to take years on this.
Speaker 2
No, we’re not, No.
Speaker 1
No, the but the concept of the shadow comes from Carl Jung and the idea that every human being has a shadow self, which is essentially the collection of parts of ourselves that we’ve learned to hide or suppress or reject.
And not because those parts are bad or evil, but because at some point in our lives we were taught they were.
Speaker 2
Unacceptable.
Yes, we were.
So it’s less about darkness and more about hidden aspects that are wanting to come to light.
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
And by the way, they always do come to light.
That’s why people work on them.
Speaker 2
One way or another, they’re going to.
Speaker 1
Come to light.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
They’re coming, they’re coming.
They want it this way.
Unveiling Triggers, Projections, and the Golden Shadow
As little girls, girls.
Many of us were told directly, or probably more indirectly that certain things weren’t OK to express.
Maybe it was the anger, ambition.
Maybe it was grief or sensuality or the desire to take up space.
So we’ve really shrunk and took those parts away and we put them in what is called the shadow.
Speaker 2
And they don’t disappear.
Speaker 1
No, no, they absolutely don’t disappear and they’ll come out some way.
We’ve already talked about a little bit about that.
In fact, in shamanic practices, we understand that energy, it obviously never goes away, just changes form and it might go underground, it might go sideways.
The shadows going to show up in our lives in ways we may not recognize.
It patterns, triggers, projections, the things that bother us most, maybe in other people, because it becomes a mirror.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that one really lands.
I think every woman listening just felt something when you said that about, you know, how that can really trigger us is the things that we see in others can really trigger us.
But it’s something that we’re to be looking at.
Speaker 1
Totally.
And I think that might be one of the harder ones to look at because, you know, no one wants to admit that one.
But the shadows, not our enemy, it can really help us grow.
It can help us explore.
And when we’re look looking at it with compassion instead of shame or disgust, it becomes one of the most profound sources of self knowledge we have.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it kind of goes back to our be the good girl.
Remember the episode back in in season 1 just being that good girl?
So let’s discuss what’s in our shadow.
Because by definition, shadow is the stuff we can’t easily see, right?
Speaker 1
That is true, but we can, if you’re self aware, see it through a few different angles or doorways.
And the most obvious one is also maybe projection.
When you have a strong reaction to someone else’s behavior, that might be a signal to reflect, to see if it’s something in your shadow.
No, of course, nothing’s 100%, but a lot of times it is.
And for example, if someone’s confident, that might irritate you.
But you might want to ask yourself, where am I not allowing myself to be confident?
Speaker 2
For sure.
Yeah, I’ve experienced that one myself many, many years ago.
Or the reverse of that can be true.
Sometimes we project our light on to others, not remembering or owning the light that’s in ourselves.
So we put people on pedestals because we haven’t gotten to the point yet where we own the gifts that we see in them or ourselves.
So we don’t own them in ourselves.
And so it makes us uncomfortable when we see that in others.
Speaker 1
Well, and that’s true because it’s interesting because that definitely is a shadow of I’m not good enough.
But then projecting it onto someone else.
Sometimes the term golden shadow, the part of ourselves where we taught, taught our might be we might be too bright too too much.
And oh, I could never do what she does.
And it basically that’s a shadow conversation because you’re not allowing yourself really to shine.
Speaker 2
Exactly.
Exactly.
And in my coaching work and in New World women, this comes up a lot, women who are still playing small after all these years.
And that comes out in interesting and funny ways like, but does that make sense?
They’ll ask, they’ll say something pretty profound and say, does that make sense?
Or I’m sorry?
Or it’s like, hey, just like be that thing, you know, and stop playing small.
And it’s not because they lack the gifts.
It’s because some old voice told them that the gift wasn’t safe to express or they shouldn’t do it.
It wasn’t appropriate, wasn’t lady like, it wasn’t humble enough.
And we need to understand that the stories that we’ve been told about who and how we are or how we should be rather, are made-up stories.
Please take that in.
They are made-up stories.
There is no expert on our own lives but us.
It may say seem cliche to say this, but it’s really true.
Rewrite your story.
You have that power.
You are the expert of your own life.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
And we talked about this a lot in my programs, my shamanic programs and workshops.
And it’s really sitting with the parts of ourselves we’ve maybe wanted to downplay or reject.
And not to by judging them, but by trying to understand them so that we can stand in our power and to hear or see or sense what they’re trying to protect us from.
It’s one thing.
The Shadow is developed for a reason and it’s if we were told as little girls or we picked up, I want to go back.
I think it’s mostly we’re picking it up, then being told, but but sometimes being told, it’s like, you know, to it just be safe.
We have to stay small and not be recognized.
And so shadow has protected us in the past.
And it’s like, what?
Quite?
The question is whether that protection is still serving us, and probably not not.
Speaker 2
Most cases, definitely not.
I love that framing Mary the Shadow as a protector, that it it might have outlived its purpose, as you say.
And New World Women’s Book Circle is featuring Doctor Sue Mortar’s book called The Anatomy of Awakening.
Dr. Mortar is the author of the Energy Codes, which many people read a year a few years ago.
But she she has a very interesting way of describing the ego.
She calls the ego the protective personality so that we’re not condemning the ego, but putting it into the proper role it can have in our lives.
And the other part of us is what Doctor Sue calls the soulful self.
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, if anybody that studied with me knows that, I say you have to have an ego.
If you don’t have an ego, it’s not going to work.
And because you’ll be more of, I want to use the word doormat, but whatever.
Speaker 2
Sometimes it is doormat.
Speaker 1
It’s kind of like you have to have an ego, but also it’s like the understanding that how to it’s counteract that as well.
So we aren’t going to be destroying anything.
We’re going to be more updating your shadow so that you can stand profoundly in your power and say thank you for keeping me safe.
But here’s what I need.
I know now, and here’s how I’m going to acknowledge you right now and work with you.
Unpacking Cultural Conditioning and Lineage Healing
Yes, yes, I want to go a bit deeper on this because I think that there are some things that live specifically in women shadows culturally, historically and universally.
And you know, the reason that this work is so critical to all of us right now, everyone is that we’re able to live whole and happy lives.
And and we in order to rise up, many of us want to be in that floaty space, as we call it, where we want to, you know, be in that meditative state and in that high frequency state, which is fabulous.
But we have to be rooted in order to rise.
That means we need to go down into the depth of our roots and address, face, love, everything that’s there, and then we can rise up.
All emotions that arise from these deep explorations into our being, they’re all valid.
Every one of them.
Speaker 1
Oh, of course.
And you know what?
With our with shadow, anger is a big one.
And I’ve been told for centuries that anger’s dangerous, unfeminine, unattractive, and so it goes underground.
Or as I already said, out sideways.
Maybe passive aggressive depression, resentment maybe shows up in your body as physical symptoms and you know, the Don.
The body keeps score, as they say.
Speaker 2
It sure does.
Sure does.
Let’s talk a little bit about women and ambition.
Women and desire, you know, wanting to live a greater, truer version of yourself.
There’s a particular shame that lives around feminine ambition, like wanting anything better than what you have, or more than what you have makes you greedy or ungrateful or too damn much.
Speaker 1
And let’s go back to what you already said.
Someone else made those stories up.
Yes, probably, obviously to feed the patriarchy.
Speaker 2
Yeah, or to protect us.
I mean, I was raised by my grandmother and she taught me all those things because she thought it would keep me safe and keep me, you know, like in my proper place in society and culture, you know?
Speaker 1
You know, even if we even women have been taught if you’re joyful, if you you really express happiness, it can feel unsafe.
Speaker 2
And.
Speaker 1
Abstract envy and can be things can be taken away.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I had somebody say to me a few years back, you’re just too darn positive.
And I was like, oh, sorry, not sorry.
I did not say sorry, but that’s what I was probably thinking.
So part of shadow work for women is also unpacking this cultural conditioning that we’re talking about that created shadows within us in the 1st place.
And it’s not just personal, it’s really ancestral and it’s collective.
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
We can look at our ancestral lineage and know that we care, carry the shadow that may be passed down through generations, through our lineage of women and who have suppressed the same things or more to survive.
So, for example, your mother’s unexpressed rage, your grandmother’s silenced voice, you may be carrying all that, and it doesn’t even fully belong to you in this time, in this moment.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
It’s so important and so freeing.
Don’t we want to be liberated from this?
Because it means that when we do this work, we’re not just healing ourselves, we’re also healing something much larger.
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
And it we’re also healing our lineage that is lived before, but also there’s thoughts that we’re creating in healings that will go forward with our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and so on.
And that’s why we really want to integrate the shadow to free all of you and free the women that have become before you and come after you.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
So do you have any kind of a shamanic perspective on Ancestral?
Why am I saying do you, of course you do.
What would you like to share about that?
Well.
Speaker 1
You know, we do a lot of ancestral healing in my program, particularly in the first year, because it really guides everything.
And it is possible to to heal and work with ants healed ancestors as spirit guides to heal your lineage.
And so we look at the four primary bloodlines that a person has and then it can go endless from there.
But it’s so important.
And once you’ve worked on the shadow, but you also get a chance to look at the blessings.
What are all the positive things that your lineage has brought into your life.
So it’s really.
Speaker 2
Profound it truly is, you know, and in thinking about doing this shadow work and, you know, claiming these higher and more, you know, developed parts of ourselves, if you don’t yet feel comfortable doing it for yourself, know that you’re doing it for others.
That’s a great portal.
It’s kind of a little trick that I’ve used over the years is if I didn’t feel comfortable doing it for myself, there somehow was an opening when I knew I was helping others.
And for many of us, we can be better at wanting to help others than help ourselves.
But it’s a good way to get us in the practice.
When I spent 21 days in silence in India being taught by enlightened monks, we had a session with one of our master teachers and a woman asked, Oh my gosh, how can I help my adult children in their lives?
They’re really suffering.
And the teacher very simply said, heal yourself, heal yourself.
And it’s interesting because many times when, like you had said, Mary, we’re healing backwards and forwards when we heal ourselves.
So OK, sisters, I know some of you might be feeling a little stirred up right now, like something has just moved inside of you and actually, that’s the work starting.
Practical Steps for Compassionate Shadow Integration
So let’s talk about how to do this practically, gently, without needing to go to war with yourself.
Speaker 1
Oh, absolutely, totally.
This is moving forward with compassion.
The one of the first things I always say is start with curiosity.
Be curious, lean in.
The shadow does not respond well to force anyway, so it responds to a curiosity, A warmth instead of of what’s wrong with me.
It’s like, hey, what part of me is trying to be seen right now?
Speaker 2
I love that so much.
It’s a total game changer.
And I’d add, though, there are times when it’s appropriate to do our inner work on our own, we don’t have to do it alone completely.
Whether that’s with a therapist, a coach, some of the work you do, marry, a spiritual mentor, a circle of trusted sisters, having witnesses and partners along the way, it matters.
And having a circle that’s doing similar work can also be really helpful, because the shadow loves the dark, and darkness has its place.
But when this work is brought into sunlight and witnessed with love, its power to keep sabotaging us just disappears.
Speaker 1
Totally.
And so self-awareness and understanding is a good step in doing starting out.
Maybe journaling is a good entry point for connecting those dots and acknowledging, and you might even want to try a technique where you are writing to the part of the shadow, such as Dear Anger, I know I’ve been afraid of you.
Tell me what you need from me right now.
Just let it flow, Let it come out and see what happens.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and if you don’t like to journal, what else could you do?
I know we’ve got some sisters who don’t love journaling.
Speaker 1
Yeah, and you know, I’m not, I, I’m not going to sit and do endless journaling either.
So you might want to just do bullet points or you know what, pull up that recorder on your your phone and do maybe just voice recordings or create some art.
Maybe a beautiful picture that kind of expresses what you’re thinking.
Speaker 2
A beautiful or an ugly picture even, right?
Speaker 1
Well, yes.
Speaker 2
It could be like Ziggy Zaggy crazy.
Speaker 1
I know all our our listeners create beautiful art like.
Speaker 2
Well, I say that because a friend of mine who isn’t an artist, when we’ve gone through some challenging times in our country, she was creating some art that wouldn’t necessarily be seen as beautiful, but it was powerful because it got people to think in a certain way.
So, you know, and in New World Women, we create spaces for exactly this kind of witnessing among women, because when women are healing together, a circle of trust or container of trust gets created.
And there’s not much that’s more powerful than that.
A lot of us haven’t had those kinds of groups or circles in our lives.
And the shadow work that might take years in isolation can move so much faster in Sacred Circle.
And in The Anatomy of Awakening, Doctor Sue teaches us how to build circuits from those unhealed parts of us into wholeness by truly loving ourselves so, so many times.
Have you heard like people say, just love yourself?
Just love yourself?
Does anybody freaking really know how to do that?
I’m not sure.
It seems a bit vague to me.
But when I’m able to look at those denser, darker parts of myself and build a circuit of love from them to my soulful self, everything changes, and it’s not hard at all.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I’d say start out by let’s let’s go into nature, take a walk in the beautiful park forest and really look for those messages, which we call omens.
In shamanic terms, It’s So what is the river, the forest?
What is the moon saying to you?
And just really tapping in, what messages are you getting of light and dark and life and death?
And you know, go from there.
That’s really where you want to start.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and Please be patient with yourself.
This isn’t like a one session project.
Shadow work is a lifelong practice.
And by that I mean, even though things will get easier and you will be able to reclaim those parts of yourself, you’ll be able to do it quicker.
The the more you do it, the more aware you are you’ll be like, oh, there’s that anger coming up again and you can do it pretty quickly.
And the reward isn’t perfection.
No, not perfection.
It’s wholeness which is so much better.
Speaker 1
And I also want to start, say one thing is when you start working on shadow work and that you might have some setbacks, so you might be working on it, then you have to start again.
So just keep that in mind.
It’s a work in progress.
Speaker 2
And it’s so worth it.
Vulnerable Journeys and the SoulFire Spark Invitation
OK, Soul Fire Sisters story time.
Because this theory is nice to talk about, beautiful and so on.
But stories are real, the where the real medicine lies.
So Don, I want to ask you something personal.
Is there a part of yourself you once kept in the shadow?
Something you’ve since reclaimed and that you’re willing to share.
Speaker 2
Yeah, Mary, I’m going to be very vulnerable right now because not only did I keep it in the shadow for myself, but I hid it from others too.
So many, many years ago, I had been married for 24 years and I knew that the relationship was coming to an end.
There was a lot of pain in that relationship and even though I received spiritual counselling, I went to a therapist, I did all the things, I found that I was drinking more alcohol than normal.
And I don’t believe I ever got to a point of being an alcoholic, but I think I was getting close.
But what I learned later from Doctor Carla McLaren’s book The Language of Emotions, is that inside each addictive substance, there’s some specific quality that can help us alleviate our specific turmoil at that time.
So for example, alcohol irrigates the system emotionally.
It brings a moment of flow to us when we can’t balance like water in our psyches, we can’t balance the flow of our own emotions or allow that flow.
It’s like stuffed.
And so when people over drink or drink alcohol, it can help release them.
And I’m pretty sure that I had lots of repressed emotions during that time.
And I realized that I really needed to feel my feelings.
I wasn’t letting myself feel my feelings and do the shadow work because I wanted to make it look like everything was great right in the outside world.
Oh, everything’s fine.
Perfect marriage, perfect family, perfect all the things, you know.
But then I was able to heal and I really, I lost my desire for alcohol because I didn’t need it anymore.
And I just thought that was really profound and a real example of how that worked in my life.
And Mary, I know you do this work so deeply with your students in Spirit Flow.
Is there anything that you’d like to share by your own shadow journey with us right now?
Speaker 1
Well, and mine is going to be on a little lighter note, but when I use all the time is one of my and I think people can relate to this one as well-being impatient.
They’re just everybody else making joke about this, but everybody else is just moving too damn slow.
Well, it’s like they are.
And, you know, the car in front of me is deliberately going slow to irritate me.
And I’ve had to work through that because what the universe does is brings you opportunities to bring these shadows out in the open.
So as I’ve been working through my shadow of being impatient, some of my closest and dearest friends, they run it on a different timeline than I do.
And sometimes they run late and they’re slower.
And so I’ve really had the opportunity to acknowledge that this is such a great opportunity for me to work on my own stuff.
No, this is where I wanted to bring in.
Am I perfect every time?
No.
So if I slip into, they’re just moving too damn slow.
I have to give myself forgiveness and just start on and give myself grace.
Though this is where compassion’s really important.
When you work with shadow work that you’re not going to be perfect.
If you were perfect, you wouldn’t be here.
You wouldn’t be human.
And then two, it’s, it really is, like I said, it’s like you’re given opportunities to keep working on it, keep trying and resolving.
And just acknowledging that I know this is a learning lesson is where I go with my shadow work with being impatient.
Speaker 2
And loving ourselves right through it.
So this week, Soul Fire Spark is an invitation.
It’s not an assignment.
And so you can just come to it with softness.
Here it is.
Choose one quality in yourself that you’ve judged, hidden, or even been ashamed of.
Just one and instead of analyzing it or trying to fix it.
Speaker 1
Oh, absolutely.
You want to just write it a letter?
Start with dear.
In my case, dear impatience.
I know I’ve been afraid of you.
Speaker 2
And then, yeah, just just listen.
Write whatever comes.
It doesn’t even have to make any sense, and it doesn’t have to be pretty.
Let the hidden part of you speak.
Speaker 1
Absolutely, because if it might not make sense now, but it will.
And so when you’re done and it though with, I’m ready to know you.
That’s all Shadow really is, a willingness to know yourself more fully than you have before.
Integrating Your Whole Self and Living from SoulFire
Your shadow isn’t your enemy, my dear ones, it’s the part of you that’s still waiting to come home.
Speaker 1
And home, your whole, integrated, fiercely human self is worth coming back to.
Hey Soul Fire sisters, we hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.
And oh, we are so glad you’re here for Season 2.
Speaker 2
Until we meet again, feel the fire in your soul and live from it.
Speaker 1
Our world needs your passion, your gifts and your heart.
Don’t wait, lean in now, do it now.
Whatever your it is, do it now.
Speaker 2
Let’s create a new world for ourselves and for future generations.
Thank you, dear listeners, for sharing this sacred space with us today.
Soul Fire Sisters is lovingly created and produced by me, Don Morningstar and Doctor Mary Newstrom with editing and publishing by Sean Fujo.
You can find all the ways to connect with us in the show notes.
Farewell for now and remember your soul fire knows the way.
Speaker 1
Bye everyone.
Speaker 2
Bye, take care.
Speaker 1
Hey Soul Fire Sisters, we hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.
Please share Soul Fire Sisters with your friends.
Speaker 2
Until we meet again, reflect on the changes you want to make, feel the fire in your soul, and live from that fire.
Speaker 1
Our world needs your passion, your gifts, your heart.
Don’t wait, do it now.
Whatever your it is, do it now.
Speaker 2
Let’s use our power to create a world we actually want to live in, a loving new world for ourselves and for future generations.
We’ve got this.