Disclaimer: The following blog makes Twin Peaks references, but contains no spoilers.
You all probably think I am deviating from my usual musings on the perennial existential crisis that is called life, but trust me – we will get there. But in order to do that, I need to talk about a legendary visionary first: David Lynch, who on January 15th, 2025, left our known world to embark on a new journey elsewhere in the cosmos.
Although I am not an avid fan, I am still part of a generation that was glued to the TV screen whenever Twin Peaks came on. Back then – 1990 to be exact – streaming wasn’t a thing and every single household watched the same TV show as a family. We waited an entire week for the next episode to drop while perusing the latest mystery – each one more obscure than the last.
Although David Lynch (and Mark Frost) didn’t necessarily inspire my writing style, he did plant fear and questions into my psyche. I would walk out of the room every single time Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting opening sequence came on – not to say that the rest of the show was an easy watch. And even if we had no clue what the fuck was going on, we couldn’t keep our eyes off of the idiot box either. We were drawn in, and it wasn’t just who killed Laura Palmer. It was everything.
This blog isn’t solely about Twin Peaks or David Lynch, however. This blog is about balance – light and dark, yin and yang. It is also about how we as a consumer driven society have become caricatures of ourselves, presenting as humans going through the grind like puppets because that’s what we were instructed to do.
Ah, what an intro. You know me. Very upbeat.
Lezgow!
I was 8 years old when Twin Peaks came out. And I’m pretty sure over the course of the last month there have been countless of articles and podcasts depicting with more accuracy the genius of David Lynch.
You see, without Twin Peaks there wouldn’t be shows like The X-Files or Lost. There wouldn’t be slow burn mysteries with enormous character development, nor would there be shows that dared to never expose the truth. Until this very day, we have no bloody clue what Bill Murray whispered into Scarlett Johansson’s ear at the end of Lost in Translation. And that’s what makes it so perfect.
We aren’t supposed to know.
Twin Peaks was dripping with symbolisms and imagery – chaotic, poetic, sometimes literal but mostly incomprehensible to an audience that had been spoon-fed mindless TV, where everything was resolved by the end of the half hour. We weren’t taught to think for ourselves because before the 90s, we had sitcoms, soap operas and “consumable crime” where we didn’t get to connect with the victim at all.
But by 1991, we all knew who Laura Palmer was. And we wanted to know who killed her.
We demanded it.
I once had a very interesting client. I remember her first session with me as she basically announced “I don’t know myself.”
Going deeper into her subconscious, I was revealing to her more about her inner psyche and environment than she knew what to do with. Her reaction to everything I said was disbelief – not because she didn’t believe me, but because she honestly had no clue. That session served as an introduction to herself and the start to leading a more authentic life.
But what I uncovered was unlike any other client I’ve had in the past: She wasn’t just afraid to let others in. She didn’t even want to let herself in.
Escapism wasn’t just a defense mechanism for traumatic situations. She escaped everything – the light and the dark.
Now. We all have heard about Jungian Psychology and how “one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is” (It’s okay, read that again) – and this includes embracing the shadow.
When I started my healing practice, I was a magnet to clients as it was easy to absorb my Unicorn method to life. Crystals, love and light was basically my brand and everyone ate it up.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
– Carl Jung
But by mid 2023, I began my Dark Unicorn Era. I started questioning a lot of the practices I had been taught and began paving a new path – not by rejecting the poison, but by incorporating it into my Unicorn blood.
I realized my happy face was a touch of deluding, compartmentalizing and focusing on what glitters but isn’t gold. And while it was an approach that worked for a very long time, I knew it wasn’t one I could continue using.
As a society, we’ve been trained from conception to follow the model of “good”. We too have been warned against what is “bad” – and oh, this is what we must hide, remove, delete, obscure, shut out and keep silent at all costs.
But, what if we were taught wrong?
What if by shutting out what we think is bad, we are lying not just to the world, but more importantly, to ourselves? What if by seducing (or allowing ourselves to be seduced by) this perceived bad, we actually find our salvation?
It is crucial for one to embrace the shadow. We cannot escape it, stuff it down the toilet, chuck it out into the garbage, or sweep it under a rug. It is a monster that will continue to haunt us, threatening to take over until we finally give it the platform it needs to be heard.
That’s right, our shadow deserves acknowledgement. You see, it isn’t a monster after all.
It is a part of us.
I’ll get back to the monster in a bit, but for now, back to Laura Palmer.
What made Laura a compelling character was her duality. Homecoming queen and prostitute. Good Samaritan and junkie. She was as captivating dead as she was alive. She wasn’t what we now typically see onscreen as the “Token Dark Character”, no. Laura Palmer was a class of her own.
The entire lore of Twin Peaks revolves around the balance of “good and evil” – where one cannot exist without the other. You cannot find joy in the mundane without experiencing the dark night of the soul first.
I’m not saying we should all stop trying to be kind to one another and just fuck each other over. What I’m saying is we all have a Laura Palmer within us.
In order to begin the process of embracing our darkness, we must first understand what the shadow is in the first place. For Jung, the shadow is “the thing a person has no wish to be.”
Hmmm.
All right. So let’s play.
Ahem. I am a 42 year old healer, reader, astrologer, daughter, sister, friend and woman. People know me as “the cool girl”, the one who listens to rock music and doesn’t give a fuck what you think. The bad ass who is a lone wolf and has like, 2 friends. The “wise sage” who deciphers the cosmos and has it all together cuz it’s literally my job.
But to put myself out there, here goes:
I have no desire to be mediocre, unloved, unchosen, possessive, angry, irrational, overly sensitive or insecure.
It is not necessarily a wish of mine to be the nag, the woman who needs consistency and reassurance, or the one who uses women’s intuition to spell out “you’re lying.” Neither do I want to carry the label “Pretty, Smart and Eternally Single” – as if I have leprosy.
I didn’t want to be seen as someone who chased a love because I was still begging for my mother’s acceptance, either.
…
On a professional level, I had no desire for my audience or clientele to see me fall apart. To see that I still have my own traumas, taking their bloody time healing.
It is no real wish of mine for them to see that a lot of the time, I don’t have the answers. That I too curse God and ponder on the injustice of life.
But the truth?
The truth is exactly that.
In the last 3 years, I have learned that I have more hate in my body than I am willing to admit. I have scars so deep it may seem needy and suffocating to untrained eyes. That there are people that I do not love, and that every cell of my body rejects them – even if I was taught I must love them.
That while I generally don’t care what people think of me, I am afraid of how certain people will react. That I am jealous and frustrated at people living their best asshole lives, with unconditional love, support and loyalty surrounding them.
That underneath my cool façade, I buried separation anxiety so well that I had become hyper independent and vigilant – a truth I just realized while writing this piece.
How fucking uncool, right?
Nah, bitch. How fucking BRILLIANT.
I’ll explain myself later.
This is the part where my clients squirm and silently promise never to come back to me again:
What are your shadows?
- What is it you hide? What are you afraid of people finding out?
- What do you not post on social media?
- Who do you judge and why? What about them ticks you off so much you don’t even realize you’re projecting?
- What are you ashamed of?
- What’s your porn preference and what’s the backstory behind that?
- Who are you secretly jealous of? No, bitch. You are jealous of somebody. Spit it out.
- Who are you angry with but pretend to like?
- Who do you not wish to be… but probably are?
Take your time, honey.
Take all the damn time you need.
Earlier I said that acknowledging my shadow makes me look really uncool at first, but it’s actually brilliant. Why, you ask? Because it’s an effin’ OPPORTUNITY.
Uncovering my insecurities and discovering how I used the “cool girl” mask to DENY MYSELF of who I truly am or what I truly want – was an epiphany ten years of healing work did not see coming. What I lost in the process was huge, but nothing compared to what I gained by refocusing my attention to my needs and my desires.
Remember, whatever you repress is bound to resurface – and boy, I guess that’s what my 40s are for.
Look. Shadow work isn’t easy. It is different for everyone as we all carry different baggage. It takes courage. It takes time. Honestly, it’s something most of my clients want to skip altogether but they pay me to do my job, so I do my job.
If you’re uncomfortable doing this kind of work with a therapist (although I highly suggest it), you can always bounce off with a trusted friend who is on a similar journey. It’s not going to be pleasant, but trust me: it’s worth it.
“The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is.”
– Carl Jung
Will doing shadow work fix everything? Probably not. Because if it did, we’d all be dead.
The goal isn’t to ascend to the point of not needing to live any longer. The goal is to live – fully, honestly, and with the awareness of who we really are. It’s about finding freedom in your true nature, your true path. Using our darkness to shine brighter in the light.
Besides, if David Lynch had his way, we never would have found out who killed Laura Palmer in the first place. Revealing her killer mid season two under direct orders from ABC executives who succumbed under pressure from a hungry and impatient audience, basically killed the show.
Life is a mystery, and although shadow work gets us to where we need to be, there are some things we aren’t supposed to know.
At least not yet.
ciao sweethearts,
brit
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