The Gift in the Dark
How shadow work helps us reclaim what we once hid to survive
Every year, when the air shifts and the daylight starts slipping away earlier, I can feel something in me begin to retreat.
I call it my time of hibernation.
Around mid-October, I start to crave silence like it’s oxygen. I want soft sweaters, long nights, candlelight, and nothing that requires small talk. I move slower. I think deeper. My inner world starts humming louder than the outer one.
It’s the time when I stop pretending I have endless energy or a bottomless well of optimism. My body wants to rest. My spirit wants to listen. My mind wants to wander into the places I’ve ignored all year, the parts of me that live just beneath the surface, waiting to be acknowledged.
This season always brings me home to the truth of shadow work.
Because shadow work isn’t something you schedule into your self-care routine. It’s something that calls to you when the world gets quiet enough to hear it.
We live in a culture that loves the light.
The brighter, the better.
Be positive. Be productive. Be healed.
I spent a lot of years chasing that light. The kind that promises certainty, control, and a neat little bow around every hard thing. But what I’ve learned in my own healing work, and in walking alongside others, is that too much light can blind you.
The real illumination comes from what we’re willing to see in the dark.
That’s what shadow work is to me.
It’s the practice of remembering the parts of ourselves we tucked away to survive.
When I first started exploring my shadow, I thought it meant digging for trauma or uncovering something sinister. I imagined it would feel like an interrogation. Instead, it felt like coming home.
The shadow isn’t the villain of our story.
It’s the keeper of our lost language — the feelings, instincts, and truths that once made us too much for someone else.
The anger that flares when you feel unheard.
The jealousy that pinches when someone has what you’ve been told you don’t deserve.
The shame that whispers you should know better by now.
All of it has roots in love. Each one of those feelings began as protection.
When I was young, I learned how to disappear. It wasn’t something I was told to do. It was something I knew instinctively. I watched how people responded when I took up space, how attention often came with consequence, and so I became small, quiet, and accommodating.
My shadow grew out of the silence that kept me safe.
But as an adult, that same silence became a cage. I realized that what once protected me was now keeping me from being fully alive.
That’s the paradox of the shadow. What once kept you safe can later keep you stuck.
Shadow work, at its heart, is an act of love.
It’s the practice of sitting beside the parts of yourself that never felt welcome. It’s asking your fear what it’s trying to protect. It’s telling your anger that it’s safe to rest.
It’s a self-return of sorts.
There’s a gentleness to this kind of work. A kind of sacred slowness that fits the rhythm of autumn perfectly. The world around us begins to soften. Trees release what they no longer need. The light itself becomes less demanding.
Maybe that’s why I always feel most at home in this season. It gives me permission to stop striving and start listening.
If you feel that same pull inward this time of year,
I created the Shadow Work Journal as a companion for this very season.
It’s a Samhain-inspired guide filled with prompts, rituals, and reflections to help you meet what’s been waiting in the dark. It invites you to slow down, to listen, to honor the parts of yourself that once had to hide.
When I’m in my hibernation mode, my rituals become simple. I light a candle before I write. I take long baths without needing to solve anything. I listen to the quiet between thoughts.
Some nights, I’ll sit on the floor with a notebook and ask myself the questions that make me squirm:
Where am I pretending I’m fine?
What truth have I been avoiding?
What am I still carrying that doesn’t belong to me?
Sometimes I get answers. Sometimes I just get tears. But both feel like a kind of release.
This is what shadow work looks like for me; not grand transformation, but a gentle returning.
The point isn’t to fix what’s broken. The point is to remember that the parts we once hid still belong.
Over the years, I’ve met many faces of my shadow: the perfectionist who never feels good enough, the caretaker who forgets her own needs, the one who avoids joy because it feels too risky.
They still visit. They’re quieter now, but still protective in their own ways.
And every time they appear, I try to remember this:
They only show up because they want to be seen.
The shadow doesn’t demand punishment. It asks for compassion.
When we meet it with curiosity rather than fear, it begins to reveal its gift. Beneath my perfectionism lives a deep desire for excellence and integrity. Beneath my caretaker lives a longing for connection. Beneath my fear of joy lives a heart that still believes in wonder.
This is what I mean when I say shadow work is a love story. It’s a reunion with the forgotten parts of yourself.
There’s a ritual I return to every autumn, what I call the Fire of Release.
I’ll write the thing I’m ready to let go of on a small piece of paper. Sometimes it’s a feeling, sometimes a belief, sometimes a name. Then I light it and watch it burn.
The smoke curls upward like a prayer, and for a brief moment, I feel the invisible alchemy of transformation; grief turning to light, resistance turning to breath.
Fire has always been a teacher for me. It reminds me that release is an act of faith. You have to trust that letting go creates space for something new.
Every year, when I finish, I whisper the same words that close my Shadow Work Journal:
I walk through the veil not to escape myself, but to remember all that I am.
If this season is calling you inward, the Shadow Work Journal can be your guide through that quiet journey.
It’s a space to write what can’t be spoken, to see what’s been hidden, and to walk back through the veil carrying more of yourself than before.
This is the gift of the dark. It teaches us that we are never truly lost, only layered.
Every version of us, even the messy ones, is still waiting somewhere inside for the warmth of our own acceptance.
As I move deeper into my season of hibernation, I feel gratitude for the shadows that once frightened me. They’ve become my compass — always guiding me back to what’s real.
The light I used to chase has settled inside me now. It flickers when I write, when I rest, when I forgive myself for needing both.
And as the days grow shorter, I remember that darkness isn’t something to escape. It’s the place where we finally begin to see.
Love today,
Heather 🌸