Pariah | Muse

(Photo by youareluminous on IG)

I read a quote this morning that really resonated with me… it said, “integrate your shadow, or you’ll end up dating it”. 

Because I’m me, the first thing I did was Google search “integrate” though I know fully well what it means. I have to confirm though, always. The definition of “integrate” in its verb form is to “combine one thing with another so that they become whole”. 

So, integrating your shadow with your ego is an intentional act… and a difficult one, at that. The person you healed so hard to present as has to mesh with your wounds in order for you to fully flourish in love, because this type of integration activates things like empathy and understanding, self esteem and confidence, humility… but also discernment, so that you know the types of souls and situations you need to avoid in order to live harmoniously. In order to live wholly. 

You have to be able to discern which type of situations trigger you after you’ve spent all of that time healing.  

Now, we talked in a previous post about discernment in love and why that’s such an important skill for true lover girls and boys to acquire. But admittedly, even I wasn’t able to break it down quite like this quote did early this morning as I lay doom scrolling. I wasn’t ready for allat. 

Integrate your shadow, or you’ll end up dating it… wow. I’ve seen my own wounds in others that I’ve dated, and it was always the demise of those relationships. We could never seem to escape ourselves, no matter how hard we tried as a unit, to bloom into love. No matter how genuine the intention, when we fell, we fell hard. No matter how much I felt I’d healed on my own, I always seemed to attract the broken parts of myself and those parts kept right on breaking me inside, and then in the mirror, too. My healing wasn’t… isn’t, finished. 

The point of love is to heal those wounds, not double them. We, typically, don’t look into mirrors to mess ourselves more, so, intentionally settling into a situation that actively mirrors every part of yourself that you are trying to heal is, well, silly. No one can grow that way. 

Ever heard of a trauma bond? That’s it. ^

Understanding this concept is one thing, but putting it into action is another. There are so many questions, like “how do I figure out what those parts of myself are?” or “how do I put discernment into action?”. The simple answer is shadow work. The long answer…

will be on the next ‘Lover Girl Talk’. Meet me on YouTube on March 15th to watch the podcast. Thank you for reading!