One of my favorite aspects of driving my son to school in the morning is the great conversations we have; they are entertaining and often enlightening. This morning my son completely shocked me because the words he said echoed so perfectly thoughts I had shared with a friend just hours before. He said, "You know Mom a lot of times I'm afraid that Grumpy will come back. I'm afraid that he will convince the apartment people to give him a key and that we will come home and find him waiting for us. I dreamed last night that he came back and I kept throwing my throwing knives at him but he just stood there with the knives sticking out of him asking me what was wrong." I too am afraid that man will show up again one day and haunt our doorstep and all I can say about that is that's trauma.
Even though I could look at the relationship and see that it had abusive aspects to it, I couldn't own that I had been in an emotionally and financially abusive relationship for 8 years. I didn't want to say the words that I had lived with domestic violence. When anyone would mention anything that came close to identifying abuse in our relationship my face would turn white and my stomach would drop to the floor. I would be filled with shame because I knew that they knew my awful secret. The surprising thing is that the secret I carried wasn't that our relationship was abusive. The secret I carried was that I was in an abusive relationship because I had abandoned myself. I sacrificed my happiness and well-being on the altar of our relationship in hopes that the sacrifice would bring about the healing I so desperately desired.
The fields of sexual assault and domestic violence are closely intertwined. I know all the danger signs. I knew what I needed to do. But for reasons I still don't fully understand I ignored them. I am only beginning to explore what it is that led to that self-betrayal. The lesson I need to learn is not why there was emotional abuse...the why of the abuse is secondary. The lesson I need to learn is why I stayed even when I knew that my son and I were both being hurt on a daily basis by this very sick man.
That is the shadow. The entire time I stayed in that relationship and until very recently I was running from that shadow. Now as I begin to work on deepening my spirituality I understand that I have to stop running but I don't need to confront the shadow, what I need to do is turn and embrace the shadow. I have to open myself up to the part of myself that couldn't leave and I have to accept that dark, hidden part of me. I have to embrace it with all my might so I can learn to love and understand the shadow within me, because only then can I begin to let it all go...the fear, the shame, the guilt and the sadness. Until I do that he will have his hook in me and I will have the fear that makes me jump every time my hot water heater makes a noise. I don't want to live in the shadow of fear, I want to live in the luminous light of joy and peace.
No one wants to embrace their shadow but it is the most important work a person can do. The scariest things in the world are not outside of ourselves, but lie within us. And until we can accept that reality, we aren't going to deepen at all.
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