The Shadow that Fuels the Light
The past… it can haunt us. We remember those moments when opportunity stood before us, radiant and trembling with possibility, and how, in a heartbeat of immaturity, naivety, or fear, we turned away. Those moments slip through our fingers, and though life moves forward, something within us is marked by their passing. But perhaps the haunting is not a curse. Perhaps the ghost that walks beside us is not punishment but purpose, the quiet companion that drives us to grow, to become. Carl Jung once wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” The shadows we carry, rejection, loss, loneliness… are not our enemies; they are the very material of transformation. When I look back, I remember a relationship that broke me open. She was unlike anyone I had ever known… radiant, intelligent, and composed in a way that felt almost otherworldly to me. She seemed to belong to a realm of brilliance and possibility far beyond...
