Harvesting the Raw: A Shadow Work Series from Port Ludlow Part 3
My last night of the 5-day deep shadow work surrounded by healing water fell on the new moon in Leo.
My intention was to receive the next truth, root, or direction. This was a sacred beginning. But as I opened sacred space the next plant medicine journey, still giddy from my last journey two nights prior, I wasn’t prepared for what wanted to be planted in me now.
This isn’t a retreat. This is my life. I live it as ritual.
Each ritual strips away another layer. Alters my view. Ends in a soul reckoning that I need days—sometimes weeks—to integrate.
This one went even deeper.
This night wasn’t luminous. It wasn’t a clear vision or clean release. It was a seed dropped into a dark, nutrient-rich pool of confusion.
This is my reflection.
What’s the Point?
It feels like everything has been stripped back. Like a Tsunami washed through me, and all that’s left are the bones.
The last card I pulled before my journey was from Rebecca Campbell’s Healing Waters Oracle deck. “Into the Unknown: Underworld. Depth. Courage. Facing your fears.”
Through a series of what felt like the ghost of every past I’ve lived, I realized that 90% of my life has been built on a lie.
Various versions of me that were never me. Someone else. Created for someone else. For their benefit, their badge of honor, their pleasure. To make them feel good about themselves. To get something fulfilled within them.
This isn’t unique. This is how I was raised. How most of us were.
This is how our caretakers were raised, too. Wounded, fractured people created by another wounded fractured person, who then creates another, and another.
Seeded and grown to be what everyone else wants or needs us to be.
The doting child, the supportive sibling, the best friend, the hard-working employee, the loving partner, and self-sacrificing woman that society needs women to be.
But never…me.
And you? You might not be you.
I used to think I understood this. That what I did, what I created, was built on what I thought I should do and who I thought I should be based on what everyone else wanted or needed from me.
How if I was “good”, then my parents would feel like they were good. I learned what I had to be and do to stay safe.
I thought I understood how that ripples through the generations.
But the truth is, I wasn’t good. And I wasn’t safe.
I haven’t been either—because I’ve never actually been me. From my parents to my siblings, to my friends, teachers, bosses, mentors, partners. Everyone. And that put in in places and spaces where I got hurt. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically.
I was a puppet, following the strings attached to me. Moving as I was pulled to. Any illusion that I created this life consciously is gone. Washed away with the tide.
I was really good at accepting people. All parts. The ones who were too much. Too harsh. Too loud. Too strange. Too aggressive. Too angry. Too sad. Too happy. Too…you name it.
I have always been able to see through to a person’s soul, and that’s where I found it easy to accept them. Forgive them for their faults. For hurting me.
But I didn’t know how to see myself. To accept myself.
I followed what felt ‘safe’—the ‘right’ person, place, or job.
Even after breaking from that programming, I still picked the things that would make people nod and say, “Smart choice.”
Moving away from home gave me the space and freedom to start hearing my soul speak through the noise.
But what I did from there, under the weight and pressure of “You’ll never amount to anything.” And “You’ll just be another loser.” I chose things based on what others wanted from me. And then, when I wasn’t happy, people looked at me like I had 4 heads and tentacles.
I hid so many parts of myself from my first husband. No wonder I was rageful. No wonder I was never happy with how things were. We bonded over shared trauma and pain. Saw and accepted each other in that space. But never learning to accept who each of us really was because I didn’t know who I was.
My current partner has been with me through the arduous process of un-becoming. Layers upon layers – he’s been accepting of my parts and pieces that I’ve revealed to him over the years. He knows me about as deeply as one person can know someone who has lied to themselves their whole life to survive a family and a world that wasn’t built for them.
The truth is, I don’t really know who I am because I am constantly un-becoming. In an ever-changing identity that makes people uncomfortable because they want certainty and consistency. But I don’t mind. In fact, I love being an unfinished human.
That doesn’t mean that it isn’t uncomfortable. It is. Sometimes, it feels like torture. Not fitting in with the normy world. Not fitting in with societal standards. But also not “fringe” enough to fit in with others who have “identified” themselves.
Each peeled-back layer leaves me raw. And maybe that’s good. But it feels like hell.
When you realize that 90% of your choices in life weren’t made by “you”. When you realize that who and what you project is 90% NOT you.
And this 10%, this little sliver that I’ve been carving out with The Unfinished Human, this feels true.
I know that because I’ve hidden it from most. I didn’t use my name at first. I didn’t connect it to my “old” website that was all about another manufactured version of me. I only shared it with those closest to me and those that I can be open and free with.
I wanted a space where I could be totally me.
Unpolished. Unapologetic. Unfinished.
But, in order to be unapologetically me…I need to be me.
Without hiding.
Without filtering.
Without pretending to be or not be anything other than I am.
And I’m still figuring that out. At 46.
By the end of my 5-days in deep ritual, I feel crushed under the weight of the waves of truth that keep coming
What was the point of any of this (life) if we’re all just fucked up puzzle pieces fitting into each other’s wounds to create other puzzle pieces that create new wounds?
If 90% isn’t really who we are on a soul level, meaning most of what we tell ourselves and each other is a lie that we can’t even recognize…then what’s the fucking point?
But then I remember. That IS the point.
To remember who we are. Our truth in all forms.
To be free from the judgments and projections that are not us.
To remember my wrecked, wild, and full of wonder self.
And now, I wait in the dark.
Water still in my bones.
Hands muddy from the digging.
Let’s see what grows.
I also made a playlist that helped me move through this descent. If you’re sitting in the thick of your own un-becoming—maybe it’ll hold you, too.
→ Seed Ceremony Spotify Playlist
Author’s Note: This is Part 3 of the Harvesting the Raw: Port Ludlow Shadow Work series. I’m not publishing them in order—because healing rarely happens in order. Subscribe to get When the Forgotten Parts Speak (Part 1) and The Body Remembers First (Part 2) when they’re released.
