My daughter is currently obsessed with shadows. We often play a game, when we’re outside, in which I make her shadow “disappear” simply by casting my obviously larger shadow over hers.

In my twenties, I unknowingly played this game all the time. I dated people who casted larger more complicated shadows and I constantly disappeared into their shadows. Now, it took YEEEEEEARS of work to identify while I disappeared in those casted shadows, it also became an uncomfortably comfortable spot to hid. Top that with feeling unseen and man, what a casserole of irony, huh? 

This all was an unintentional creation. I didn’t consciously scheme to have this be my plight. I dated people with large wounds and I wanted to love them so much that they started loving themselves and seeing in themselves what I saw in them. And y’all can guess exactly how that turned out. Or you can read anything I write about because I talk about it all the damn time. I was lost in the sauce. Searching for love and some sort of completion external of me; through my boyfriends. With the beauty of hindsight, I was giving all the love I was seeking a way to people I felt needed it more. Never factoring in that they wouldn’t be capable of reciprocating love because they didn’t even have it for themselves. So I eventually found myself out of gas with no one to help me out. DISAPPOINTED.

Coming out of the shadows, means casting light which exposes EVERYTHING. It means dusting yourself off, getting burned, and finally seeing yourself, for better and for worse. While I was definitely on the receiving end of a lot of terrible crap, being in the shadow didn’t allow me to see myself as anything other than a victim. Someone who was at the mercy of another person’s actions. I never fully realized that I could move out of the shadows – I literally had to be forced out. 

And it’s the best thing that has ever happened. I am grateful every day for the opportunity to see myself more clearly. I’m grateful to all the boyfriends who unknowingly taught me more about myself than I could’ve ever imagined knowing. 

If this resonates with you, let me know. As always, feel free to share – it helps according to marketing people. 

All love. 

Ashley