The Shadow Knows. . .

I have been reading a fascinating book. It's called Meeting the Shadow. Edited by Zweig and Abrams, it is a collection of writings by various philosophers, theologians, psychologists and psychiatrists on the shadow side that each of us carries.

What is the shadow? It's those aspects of our own being that we repress or disown in order to be acceptable and accepted in our world. In our culture, things sometimes inadvertently get repressed in an effort to control something else.

For example: your toddler pushes down another child and takes away his toy. You are shocked, but you are enlighted enough not to scold. Instead, you tell your child that it's not okay to treat another child that way.

But if you don't acknowledge that your child is angry and give her some ideas of how to deal with her anger, she may get the idea that it's not okay to get angry.

Anger is a not a bad emotion. It carries a lot of power to change things. The key is in how you express the anger. It was the anger of a mother that created Mothers Against Drunk Driving. So how do we teach children to acknowledge their emotions, which are part of who they are, in ways that are constructive and liberating?