The key to shadow work is understanding that we are not expelling these negative or ‘bad’ aspects of ourselves, instead we are recognizing them and learning to live with them.

As I sit here on a Saturday prospect park day, I see a little baby boy learning how to walk. He falls down and looks back — his face and body preparing for a hard cry. But his dad swoops in and helps him get up,  he smiles it off and waddling, he tries again.…

Growing up, my immigrant mother from Colombia, always stressed the importance of taking care of my skin. I, like her, had been graced with skin that was low maintenance and easy to work with. My mom really enforced the law of sunscreen in our household from a young age; rainy day? Sunscreen. Sitting inside all day? Sunscreen. I was raised with a tenement of skincare I hold holy to this day; sunscreen is essential.

For the next three days, I find myself having crying spells. Unprompted, heavy, crying spells, and every time I find myself doing one particular thing to soothe the pain. I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze. A pandemic is hard enough without the death of a close family member, especially when you feel like you’re on an episode of Black Mirror and you see all the mini fires surrounding you.

Like a lot of you, I am battling with the fact that school has relocated to the same place I’ve spent the last few months, home. Home has become a blessing, but I have caught myself having a bittersweet connection with it. We have had to rework our understanding of what home means to us and how we thought we were going to experience this fall.