Haunted Haus: Part 3 - Burial and Release
Welcome back to the Haunted Haus!
Burying things when they are ready is like planting a seed, creating a powerful and rooted network of integrated support for yourself. This network grows and grows and then blooms, blossoms, releases, and pollinates everything around it.
Burying things before they are ready is like burying a zombie and hoping it stays underground.
it wont
A professor of mine once said, about the importance of addressing our feelings and experiences, “if you’re not TALKING about it, you’re BEING about it.” This “talking” doesn’t have to be verbal necessarily, but it is essential for us to, in some capacity, be engaging with our feelings, even the ugly ones. Especially the ugly ones. By dragging the darkest parts of ourselves into the light, we disarm them. We change what we can, we learn, we grow, and we accept what we cannot change. We make friends with our demons.
It’s hard work, but you don’t have to do it alone!
In Part 3 of our Haunted Haus zine, we’ll be exploring ways to move away from burial as repression and move toward burial as integration.
Poem by Mary Oliver
shadow work
As the veil between worlds thins, we can take advantage of this theme to cross the boundary between our conscious and unconsciously repressed selves. This is called “shadow work.”
Shadow work isn’t all about forcing ourselves to look at our worst qualities; it’s also about recognizing that traits we have completely rejected about ourselves might not actually be all bad. For example, if we reject selfishness entirely, we may inadvertently also reject self advocacy, appropriate prioritization of our own needs, and self care.
Shadow work is about facing the darkness, and also finding the light within it.
The best way to begin working with your shadow, is through journaling, and we’ve started you off with some prompt ideas below as well as a playlist to get you in the mood!
journal prompts for shadow work
-What quality to you judge most harshly in other people? When have you exhibited this quality yourself?
-Describe the last relationship (romantic or platonic) you chose to end. How did you know that it was time to move on?
-When was the last time you forgave yourself?
-What's something you've REALLY wanted for a long time that feels out of reach to you? Why does it feel out of reach? Is it unrealistic or do you feel like you don't deserve it?
-What animal(s) do you associate yourself with? What traits, positive and negative, do you associate with this animal?
-How have you internalized your parents' values? Are you comfortable with these?
-What emotions do you try to avoid?
-What negative emotions are you most comfortable feeling? How often and in what circumstances do these emotions show up?
-What emotions do you rarely express in front of others? What are you attempting to avoid by hiding these emotions? What would happen if you started expressing these emotions more?
-What are some things you blame yourself for? Is it really fair to blame yourself for this, or were there other factors involved? Make separate lists for elements you couldn’t control and elements you would change if the situation played out again.
-When are you the most critical of yourself? Explain what your self-talk sounds like.
get your hands dirty
Before hardening, clay is changeable and malleable, it allows you to move things around until they feel right. Life allows for this too. Think of yourself and your life as an ever-changing work, rather than something that needs to be finalized or completed. What would it be like to mold meaning and to embrace endless transformation? Get your hands on some clay and begin to construct things that represent your internal landscape.
If you’re feeling inspired by any of the shadow work prompts, choose a topic from that list to begin molding. If not, here are some other ideas of themes to explore with clay
which animal do you relate to, how do you illustrate the different qualities that make you up, how does the creature hold duality and opposites?
if you learned that there were some kind of villain responsible for all the pain in your life, what would this villain look like?
what kind of superhero could save you from exactly what you’re struggling with right now? mold what this superhero looks like
with a paper plate and clay, create an “island” that represents your internal world. are you full of rolling hills? forests? streams? caves? what else inhabits the world that is you?
“I had always buried things, even when I was small; I remember that once I quartered the long field and buried something in each quarter to make the grass grow higher as I grew taller, so I would always be able to hide there. I once buried six blue marbles in the creek bed to make the river beyond run dry. ‘Here is a treasure for you to bury,’ Constance used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright ribbon; I had buried all my baby teeth as they came out one by one and perhaps someday they would grow as dragons. All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.”
feelings funeral
It is possible to be done with a thought process or a feeling or a behavior, and yet have a difficult time letting go. Sometimes, even if a part of us knows that a certain experience is no longer serving us, another part holds tightly to this experience; it can be scary to say goodbye to what’s familiar. One way to help yourself along this path of release is to ritualize laying to rest the emotions that are no longer serving you; to have a “feelings funeral.”
STEP 1: CHOOSE A CASKET
Choose an object to be the container for emotions that you are ready to put to rest. (Memories, painful experiences, regrets, any feeling you’re ready to be done with.) Ideally this object would be something you can find in your natural environment (a rock, leaf, branch, pinecone, acorn, etc.)
STEP 2: FILL THE CASKET
Hold this object in your hand as you think about the feelings you are ready to release. Imagine these feelings flowing through your hands and into this object, which soaks them up like a sponge. Spend several minutes engaging in this activity until you feel a sense of peace and a readiness to move forward.
STEP 3: CHOOSE A RESTING PLACE
Choose a spot in nature that feels peaceful to you.
STEP 4: BURY IT
Dig a hole in the earth and place this object inside. Bury it. If you would rather not disrupt any earth simply place the object on the ground in an area where it is unlikely to be disturbed and leave it there.
After this ritual, when and if the feeling comes up again, remind yourself that you already laid it to rest and refocus your attention on what you would rather be experiencing.
Thanks for reading! We hope you’ll be back next week for our fourth and final part of this Haunted Haus zine.
