Mirror Work Blog
I’ve been on a healing journey for a few years now. First Lyme and co-infections kicked it off, and from there I have sort of spring-boarded. For the past few months, no, honestly probably the last year, my mind has felt suspended in air. With no clear direction of where I’m going, and no real way of knowing up from down or left from right. I felt frozen while life moved on passed me.
One of the practices that I love doing is mirror exercises. And I’ve done so much of that this past year. During one of these sessions is when I really came to terms with why I’ve felt so stuck and in this limbotic state. I’m going to share this experience with you.
(Picture it, Sicily 1912) :
I was staring into my eyes in the bathroom mirror. As of late, this has been the peaceful place I’ve found to truly do this shadow work because, well, my apartment is so unbelievably tiny that there’s nowhere else to really do it. I was only looking into myself for a minute before I noticed a tear rolling down my face.
At first I was like ‘But why? You’re so happy. You’ve done so much. You’ve climbed mountains you never dreamed of climbing!’ I audibly sighed, and then it’s like my higher self slapped me across the face. ‘Listen to yourself’ roared in my head. It took me aback because it came from literally nowhere but also everywhere at the same time.
I closed my eyes and more tears came. ‘Listen to myself. Listen to my self. Listen to myself’ (this is an eye roll moment looking back on it, because who processes like this, but I digress). I opened my eyes and stared right into my own pupils again.
‘Inner Willow, What Do You Need?’
I said it out loud. I sort of startled myself because I audibly heard myself, and it didn’t register that it was me talking to myself. I don’t remember thinking those words, they just sort of, well, came out.
I more intensely gazed at myself. At this point, reality started to become subjective, and I watched my glasses disappear, my face become thinner, my hair longer, and my eyes sadder. I was looking at my 21 year old self, staring back at me in the mirror.
All these feelings flooded back. At this time in my life, I was married and divorced, sued by my ex-mother in law, and in a very messy, emotionally draining, and ultimately life changing child custody case.
It was incredibly overwhelming.
Feelings that I haven’t felt in years, thoughts that I had burrowed to the shadowy corners of my mind flashed before me. I could see myself, in the darkest time of my life, completely alone. Feeling like not one other soul cared about my pitiful existence.
I saw myself laying in the bathtub of my first apartment, fully clothed and drenched in tears. I could hear my sobs and gasps for air like I was watching a twisted self made movie of my own nightmares. I heard the thoughts in my mind at that time:
“You can’t, Willie. No one even calls you. No one cares about you. No one is going to come looking for you. You’ll only be found when the cops are called for a foul smell coming from your apartment. You can’t do this to your son”
All of the sudden it felt like someone punched me in the ribs.
My head hurt so bad. I opened my eyes and I realized that I fell to the floor and was sitting in the fetal position, rocking myself back and forth. My head hurt because I wacked it on the sink on the way down to the floor.
I took deep breaths and I began tapping, (EFT tapping if you’re interested – it’s amazing). ‘Even though my mind is showing me really hard parts of my life, and it’s really scaring me, I fully and completely accept myself’ I repeated to myself out loud while tapping on my collar bone. Big deep breaths filled me. Once I was ready, I opened my eyes and stood back up.
Staring into my eyes at the mirror again, I said to myself ‘Little Willow, none of that was or is your fault. The world is unfair. Things happen that we can’t explain reasonings for. Some people are evil. And their evil is not yours. Your light intimidates them. Keep shining. You are an incredibly beautiful person, and I believe in you. Im here now, and we’ve made it’
Tears flowed from my eyes,
But a smile peeked through to my cheek. I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged myself tightly. I took deep breaths in and felt the healing warmth envelop me.
“I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you” I repeated (Ho’oponopono, again, if you’re interested), as I hugged myself and smiled and twisted my upper body back and forth. All while tears still streamed down my face. Except, those tears no longer felt heavy. They didn’t feel immovable. They didn’t sting. They felt light. They felt air-ey, they felt, well, healing.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in my current apartment’s bathroom. My hair was a bit disheveled. I had a bright red bump on my forehead that later needed ice. My eyes were puffy and red from crying. But there was a smile on my face. I felt so much lighter and movement felt faster. My brain felt different.
Shadow work is messy.
It’s raw. It pops up unexpectedly, and pushes you in ways that you couldn’t imagine. It will make you feel crazy if you tell someone about it (fyi: I told my therapist about this experience thinking she was going to tell me I was schizophrenic or something, and she smiled and told me that trauma will surface when the brain is ready for it to. Everyone processes differently, and this is how I’ve grown to process mine. It felt amazing to feel validated).
Shadow work forces you to take deep, introspective looks at the parts of yourself that you’re terrified of. So much so that your mind represses it, as if it never happened. But, it did happen, and that trauma is still stored within you, wether you’re conscious of it or not.
Shadow work heals you, from the inside out. It brings you back through your own hellish experiences and forces you to understand your own feelings. Its a deeply personal and profound practice that blooms beautiful gardens over those once barren wastelands deep in the recesses of your mind. It brings new depths to your spiritual awakening journey, and opens new sights to your inner eye.
This experience is ultimately what made me begin Whisper of the Willow.
Because I know other people have traumas like me, and they need help transmuting them too. I am creating what i wish 21 year old Willow had. My newest venture is the next step of the path on my spiritual journey that my soul has wanted to take, and I am so grateful that I was finally ready to see it.
This experience was around the beginning of 2024. I’m still processing a lot of what happened to me during that dark time period of my younger self, because so much more has come up to the surface since. I’m still holding my younger self’s hand through abandonment and sorrow, powerlessness and inner turmoil. I’m still forgiving the people in my life who were supposed to be there with me, but weren’t. I’m still forgiving myself, and boy, that’s even harder than forgiving others. It’s a long and difficult process that changes who you are at your core of your being by the end of it.
For all my faults.
For all my mistakes. For all my insecurities and traumas, I completely and fully accept myself.
Be well, friends. I see you, I hear you. Your progress, no matter how small, is remarkable. You matter. And I love you so much.
If You Are Looking for More
If you’re looking for more on Shadow Self help and development, check out The Shadow Self section of my site.
