I grew up trying to be the quintessential good girl. I tried to do everything right.

I worked hard to get straight As at school. I said yes when people asked for help. I tried to be a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend, and later, a good wife. I did what I was expected to do – study hard, go to university, get a degree, get a job at a big, stable company, get married, settle down.

I was always trying to be the nice one, the trustworthy one, the hard working one. The one who agrees with everyone, the one people like. The one who always keeps her promises and hits every deadline.

The one you can depend on no matter what.

As I grew older, I realized that “no matter what” isn’t the end of that sentence. The real end of that sentence is, “no matter what the cost.”

And very often, the cost was high. The cost was excessive, really… astronomical.

The cost was not doing what felt right to me and not taking the path that I wanted to take in my life.

The cost was giving up on my dreams, my creativity, my beliefs… it meant giving up on who I truly am to be who I was supposed to be and goodness knows it fed something dark within me… it fed my Dark Shadow in an unhealthy way.

Wearing the mask of the Good Girl made my Dark Shadow rise up. It made me feel secretly resentful, angry and misunderstood a lot of the time and it also made me feel scared. I believed if I were to be my True Self, if I expressed myself, if I said “no” more often, if I dared to set boundaries, if I shared my magical gifts, if I destroyed the mask of the Good Girl, people would stop liking me, they would stop loving me and I was terrified.

So, I continued to do what I was “supposed” to do for the longest time and my Dark Shadow grew bigger and stronger. I was short-tempered and irritable with myself and with the people I loved. I developed mysterious aches and pains. I started to lose interest in my work.

I didn’t like who I was becoming.

I’d taken psychology classes at university and I knew a little bit about Carl Jung’s work on the Shadow. Now I dived into Jung’s teachings as well as other master teachers who talked about the Shadow, like my life depended on it… and I guess in a way it did.

Everything I discovered resonated within as a deep truth that I somehow already knew…

Being who we are, expressing ourselves as we are, and connecting to our True Self means embracing our Light AND our Shadow self (and there are often incredibly powerful, positive gifts hidden in our Shadow something I call the Light Shadow)

Recognizing my Shadow and making friends with the part of me that I was trying to hide – the part of me that felt envious, that played the blame game, that experienced schadenfreude (that’s a German word and there’s no English equivalent… trust me, it’s worth looking up!), that had intuitive, “unrealistic” gifts, created unexpected shifts. I found myself making radically different decisions in my life and my work.

I started to speak up for myself and show up as myself. I released clients who felt inauthentic no matter how much they were willing to pay me to do the work. I found the more I let go of that which is NOT me, the more money, time, love, peace, and satisfaction started flowing into my life… and amazing new friends, and clients started showing up!

Shadow work made way for my True Self to emerge. It’s allowed me to show up wholly and fully so when I help, when I support, when I love… it’s with my whole heart and my whole being. No secret resentment. No anger. No shame in having intuitive, spiritual gifts. No trace of schadenfreude.

Shadow Work has also allowed me to find courage in so many areas of my life and that includes my creative work.

Great writing is brave writing and brave writing demands vulnerability… I love Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly and her amazing work on the power of vulnerability but I could not apply any of it until I began to embrace my Shadow (sharing this post about my personal experiences, is a direct result of working with my Shadow. If you’d asked me to write this a couple of years ago, I’d have said, “Sure… when hell freezes over!”)

Shadow work opened the door to finally accepting ALL of me, and walking down the path to loving all of me. It helped me find the courage to find myself – my True Self – and to give myself the nurturing, love and support that I longed for. The things that I believed others would give me if I played The Good Girl.

Examining the Shadow is now a part of the work I do as an Intuitive Spiritual Expression coach and in my work as a book coach and writing coach.

If you’ve taken the Intuitive Spiritual Expression quiz, and you know your Archetype and you’re curious about your Shadow, take a look at the list below. It’s an overview of the dark Shadow side of each of the 6 Archetypes. Please note… you might find that you resonate with Shadow traits of Archetypes other than your own and this isn’t unusual… we all have parts of all 6 Archetypes within us. Your quiz result is your primary Archetype.

Key Dark Shadow Traits of the Divine Nurturer

• Stubborn
• Judgmental
• Obsessive

Key Dark Shadow Traits of The Earth Angel

• Possessive
• Insecure
• Self-sacrificial

Key Dark Shadow Traits of the Incarnated Goddess

• Self-centered
• Overachiever
• Controlling

Key Dark Shadow Traits of the Cosmic Spirit

• Unsatisfied
• Reckless
• Distracted

Key Dark Shadow Traits of the Spiritual Warrior

• Insensitive
• Pushy
• Cynical

Key Dark Shadow Traits of the Sacred Seeker

• Critical
• Overly detached
• Distrustful

I recommend that you just sit with these Shadow traits for a few, deep, cleansing breaths. Then tune into yourself and ask, “How are these Shadow traits showing up in my life?”

Be gentle. Allow whatever comes up to come up. Watch. Observe. Imagine yourself as a 3-year-old and give yourself the love and understanding you’ve always wanted. Wrap your arms around yourself. Hold yourself close.

You don’t need to do anything other than that for now. Just bringing the light of loving attention and awareness to your Shadow is a huge step toward connecting to unimaginable creative power that’s hidden within you right now.

It will help you to embrace and love and express yourself fully, wholly and unapologetically so you can FINALLY bring all of that power, all of that creativity, all of your unique, mysterious, one-of-a-kind-and-never-to-be-seen-again-in-all-of-Creation Self into the light.

Isn’t that what we’re here for? Isn’t that what our one and only true “job” is? To be ourselves, to express ourselves, to share our creativity and our gifts with the world?

As Mary Oliver says in one of my favorite poems of all time…

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Have You Taken The Quiz to Discover Your Intuitive Spiritual Expression Archetype?