Bringing the Shadow Home
Shadow Series 1.4
Over the last three Musings, we’ve been exploring Robert Bly’s idea of the shadow. We started with his wonderful image of the long bag, the invisible bag we create during the first twenty years of our lives as we put away the parts of ourselves that don’t seem acceptable, welcome or safe. Then we looked at the shadow as a mirror, and how we can sometimes project those disowned qualities onto other people. And then we explored what happens when we begin to take some of those qualities back and our increased confidence, creativity, freedom or authenticity triggers an envy attack in somebody else.
So where does all of this take us? Because it would be rather depressing if the answer to shadow work was simply, “Discover all the things you’ve hidden, notice them in other people, and then learn to defend yourself when people don’t like you.” I think Bly is pointing towards something much more interesting than that. The purpose isn’t simply to identify our shadow. It is to reclaim what we have put away and bring some of that lost energy back into our lives.
Bly uses a rather extraordinary phrase for this. He talks about “eating the shadow.” It’s a striking image, and perhaps a slightly uncomfortable one, but I think it captures something important. We don’t just want to look at our shadow from a safe distance and say, “Oh yes, apparently I have an angry side.” We want to digest it. We want to take back the energy that has been locked away in it and make it available to ourselves. The shadow isn’t simply something we need to understand intellectually. There is something in it that needs to become part of our lived experience.
Think about what happens when we spend decades keeping our anger out of our conscious lives. We might become incredibly accommodating, but underneath there is all this energy that has nowhere to go. Or perhaps we have put our ambition into the bag because we learned that wanting too much was unattractive. We might then tell ourselves that we don’t really care about success, while secretly feeling envious of everyone who achieves it. Or perhaps we’ve put our neediness away because we learned that needing other people was weak. We become fiercely independent, but struggle to receive love, comfort or help. What looked like a strength can sometimes contain a shadow cost.
And this is where I think it is important to make a distinction. Reclaiming a part of our shadow doesn’t mean acting it out. If I’ve put my anger in the bag, bringing it back doesn’t mean becoming aggressive or cruel. It means becoming capable of knowing when I’m angry, listening to what my anger might be telling me and being able to express it appropriately. If I’ve put my selfishness in the bag, I don’t need to become inconsiderate. I may simply need to develop the capacity to recognise that my needs matter too. If I’ve put my power in the bag, I don’t need to dominate anybody. I may simply need to stop giving my power away.
This distinction matters because sometimes, when people first discover a disowned part of themselves, there can be a temptation to swing to the opposite extreme. The person who has always been quiet suddenly thinks they must become loud. The person who has always put everybody else first decides they are never going to compromise again. The person who has suppressed their anger starts believing that everybody needs to hear exactly what they think. But that isn’t integration. That’s simply moving from one extreme to another.
The aim is not to become the shadow.
The aim is to be able to include it.
If I’ve put my assertiveness away, reclaiming it doesn’t mean dominating other people. It might mean being able to say, “No, that doesn’t work for me.” If I’ve put my creativity away, it doesn’t mean I have to become an artist. It might mean allowing myself to make something, try something new, write something badly, sing, dance, decorate the room or simply follow an idea without immediately judging whether it is useful. If I’ve put my vulnerability away, it might mean allowing someone I trust to see that I don’t have everything under control.
This is where I think shadow work becomes much more hopeful. We aren’t trying to become everything we have previously rejected. We are trying to become more whole.
And becoming more whole can be surprisingly uncomfortable. If you’ve spent your whole life being the nice person, discovering your anger can feel frightening. If you’ve always been modest, discovering your ambition can feel almost shameful. If you’ve been fiercely independent, allowing yourself to need somebody else can feel vulnerable. Sometimes the very quality that would make us more whole is the quality we have the strongest resistance to.
You might even notice yourself saying, “That’s just not me.” And sometimes I wonder whether that sentence is worth questioning. “That’s just not me.” Or is it a part of me that I have never allowed to develop? There is a difference. Perhaps you’ve spent years saying, “I’m not confident.” But maybe confidence isn’t something some people are simply born with and others aren’t. Maybe there is a confident part of you that hasn’t had much opportunity to come forward. Perhaps you’ve always said, “I’m not ambitious.” But maybe ambition was put in your bag because you learned that wanting more would make other people uncomfortable. Perhaps you’ve said, “I’m not creative.” But maybe creativity is one of those things you learned to stop expressing because it wasn’t practical, wasn’t good enough or wasn’t taken seriously.
And this brings us back to projection. Sometimes the people we admire or envy can give us clues about what is waiting in our own bag. We see someone else’s confidence and think, I wish I could be like that. Perhaps instead of simply wishing, we could become curious about the quality we are seeing. What is it about them that attracts me? What are they allowing themselves to do that I don’t? What would it be like for me to take one teaspoon of that quality out of my own bag?
I rather like the idea of starting with a teaspoon. We don’t have to transform ourselves overnight. If you admire somebody’s assertiveness, perhaps you don’t need to become radically assertive tomorrow. You could simply say no to something you genuinely don’t want to do. If you admire someone’s creativity, perhaps you don’t need to write a novel. You could spend an hour doing something creative without needing it to produce anything. If you admire someone’s freedom, perhaps you could make one decision based on what you actually want rather than what you think everyone else expects of you. A teaspoon is enough to begin.
There is another part of reclaiming the shadow that I think we don’t talk about enough. Sometimes when we take something out of the bag, we change the relationships around us. The person who was always accommodating may become less accommodating. The person who never complained may begin to speak up. The person who never wanted anything may suddenly have desires and preferences. The person who was always available may begin to say, “Actually, I can’t do that.”
And other people may not like it.
This can be particularly difficult because we may have built our identity around being the person who keeps everyone happy. When we change, other people can experience it as though we have changed the rules. They may say, “You’re not like you used to be.” And sometimes they’re absolutely right.
We’re not.
We’re changing.
That doesn’t automatically mean we’re becoming selfish, difficult or uncaring. It may simply mean that a part of us that has been absent from the relationship is finally arriving.
This takes us straight back to the envy attack we talked about in the last Musing. Sometimes reclaiming ourselves changes the relationships around us. Sometimes another person’s discomfort tells us something important about the relationship. And sometimes their discomfort is simply theirs. We don’t have to put ourselves back in the bag because somebody preferred us when we were smaller.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that every change we make is automatically healthy. Shadow work isn’t a licence to behave however we want and then say, “This is just me reclaiming my shadow.” We still have responsibility for how we behave. We still need to be able to hear feedback. We still need to repair relationships when we’ve caused harm. Integration isn’t about becoming immune to other people’s opinions. It is about becoming less dependent on those opinions to know who we are.
And I think this is where I would like to finish this little journey through Bly’s shadow.
The aim isn’t to empty the bag completely. I’m not sure that’s even possible. We are complicated creatures, and there will probably always be parts of ourselves we are still discovering. The aim is to become increasingly curious about what we’ve put away, what we’ve projected onto others, what we’ve envied, what we’ve feared and what we’ve denied ourselves.
And then, little by little, to reclaim the energy.
Your anger can come home. Your ambition can come home. Your creativity can come home. Your sexuality can come home. Your vulnerability can come home. Your need for other people can come home. Your capacity to say no can come home. Your joy can come home.
Perhaps the deepest message in Bly’s work is that the shadow isn’t simply a collection of things that are wrong with us. It can contain life that we have had to leave behind in order to belong. And perhaps becoming more fully ourselves is partly the process of going back for it.
Not dragging the whole bag around forever. Not throwing it away. But opening it, looking inside, and asking ourselves with curiosity rather than judgement, “What have I left in here? What did I once have to hide? And what of it might I be ready for now?”
Because perhaps the things we put into the bag when we were six, twelve or eighteen aren’t necessarily the things we need to keep hidden at forty, fifty or seventy.
We have changed.
Our circumstances have changed.
We have more choices now.
And perhaps some of those qualities have been waiting patiently for us all this time.
So maybe the invitation isn’t to get rid of our shadow.
Maybe it is to stop being frightened of it.
To open the bag.
To reach inside.
To take out one small piece of ourselves and look at it properly.
And perhaps, after all these years, to say:
“I think it’s time you came home.”
And maybe that is what becoming whole really means. Not becoming perfect. Not getting rid of the parts of ourselves we don’t like. But becoming big enough to make room for more of who we actually are.
Juliet Grayson
September 2026
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