Inflammation + your Shadow

it stops through you.

Something occurred to me the today. In regard to inflammation in the body, I think Carl Jung would have called it the Shadow. Let me explain what I mean, and of course we should address the fact that Shadow Work is a term that is showing up more now than ever before.

Shadow Work is not really some trendy thing you can “do” because re-writing your entire thought process and perception is painful. It aches. It causes poor digestion and assimilation. It asks you to grieve, to release, to purge. It can make you feel sick. And this is something that is the opposite of what you probably want to do when you aren’t feeling well to begin with.

There is an epidemic right now. It is of the Women who woke up and realized they weren’t inhabiting their lives, like ghosts doing dishes and laundry. The Women are tired. Inflamed. Nauseous. Over stimulated. Women are seeing that this way of life is not sustainable. Women are seeing how their Mothers and Grandmothers suffered in normal life ways, or what was called “normal.” And unfortunately, it never was. It was simply a program installed by our culture and ancestors that made it seem honorable to burn yourself out, to not have money saved, to be housewives and get literally nothing in return. Women are seeing that raising children is hard, especially in this world we live in now and they are left with the shell of themselves that began when she she started feeling like a maid in her own home.

How could there be any energy left for “Shadow Work?”

Here is the exact reason there is always energy for Shadow Work…

The Shadow is the unconscious part of your personality that contains fears, weaknesses, hidden instincts and unlived potentials and this is THE reason why generations before treated people the way they did when there was toxic behavior.

This is why Women have been treated how they have. This is why it stuck. The collective Shadow, and the Women who didn’t know this method were victims to circumstance. They never imagined power, control, emotional intelligence, structural wisdom…

This is why anger, jealousy, shame, addictions, abuse and selfishness were such big elephants in some households.

In my ancestral line… all of it was present.

So, the reason I personally do Shadow Work and recommend it to all of my clients? Because I want our ancestors to continue the healing done here so we can make a better world for those that come after us. I do not want my children to need to heal from abuse, addictions and selfishness like I have.

Does this mean it’s my responsibility to heal those who were responsible for such pain? No.

It means that it is my responsibility to make sure they were the last ones to attempt and fail to continue that line.

When my labs came back and my Systemic Inflammation was extremely high, I realized all of the pain, suffering, abuse, fear, and grief hadn’t processed yet, even from decades ago. This is my Shadow running my body, making me feel like I constantly live in a war zone.

Thinking about my Shadow like an inflammatory response makes sense because the Shadow is what rubs us the wrong way. And rightfully so. It creates an alarm when things in our outer worlds are not right or safe. It causes irritation to get our attention.

As they say… be bitchy or get an auto-immune disorder.

And also interestingly enough, in being afraid of rubbing others the wrong way… we give the inflammation and shadow right back to ourselves to digest and deal with. We think it diffuses if we diffuse the situation. Our body writes a different story. Our thoughts become fiery and repetitive. We get migraines. We retain water, we can’t lose the weight even though we are eating less. Our periods get worse. Exhaustion runs the day.

So, do you think there is energy left for Shadow Work or is it being spent elsewhere like scrolling to decompress when you could be moving it through, digesting it and turning the lesson into gold? You tell me…

Women are ORACLES. Women are the ALTAR, not the sacrifice…

And we have let everyone around us forget because we are too busy washing the dishes and carrying the entire world.

Would you like to know who thrives in this exact environment? Who turns it on its head? Who knows she is an Oracle who does not “do dishes?”

Datura. She contains the blueprint for us to simply be. I have spent years worth of summers learning from her. Listening to her harsh, but true wisdom. She knows Women are not meant to disappear inside their own lives. She knows that Women do not ever choose between their wildness and being a wife, sister, mother, girlfriend, friend. She is not a tired woman. She is alive, nourished through her own wildness, and is able to be in the world that may not understand her, but they know her energy signature the second she walks in and they would NEVER expect her to do dishes. Unless of course she was called to and it was meant to be done. She walks differently. If she is tired, she rests. If she wants to play with her children, she has the energy for it. If she wants to write a Substack article- she does. She understand how her energy affects others and she doesn’t feel the need to fix anyone else’s shitty day.

Women used to create, being in devotion to the Altar, singing, rocking our babies without phones, lighting candles because they make us feel good, speaking to our best friends like they were more precious than diamonds.

Shadow Work is exactly what creates Beauty for Inner Space. And… it also literally creates space. In your mind, body, spirit. It allows for the truth to come through clearly without story. Without narrative. Without the need to tear it apart and run to text your friend about it for validation.

I recently wrote an E-Book titled

Botanical Blueprints ( basecampbotanicals.us ) written through the lens of Sacred Datura as a living prayer, a poem, something to be read out loud in the bathtub or returned to when you need a moment to create Beauty for Inner Space. The truth can be found through the shape of the flower, through her environment, through the conditions she has grown in which are probably the conditions you haven’t figured out how to thrive in yet. This is for the Woman who has a perfect to do list that seems to never finish, who feels overwhelmed, overstimulated in motherhood, the eldest daughter, the one who takes care of everyone else and keeps asking “When is it my turn?”

It is always your turn.

This book was the key to my healing, and it might be the key to yours too.

Talk soon,

Danielle at Ghostflower Journal