Shadow Work

originally written: 05/10/2021

republished: 08/03/2026

Over the years, we heard the term Shadow Work appear in the wellness & spirituality spaces & communities, however, no one gave explicit instructions on what that meant beyond journaling & tarot readings. I'm here to change this. I descended into my own proverbial forbidden forest, trained by the women and men in my bloodline, and what I discovered is this work isn't open source the way it was portrayed online. It's governed by lineage, there are protocols and guidelines associated with the deeper aspects and before I knew it at the time, I was being trained to guide.

My walk, my path over 15 years can be described as the equivalent of walking into the underworld and realizing all of it is a manifestation of your own mind. The issue is, most people do not understand nor respect the necessity of death in a world that has been spell bound to solely celebrate life. I speak often about how we created balance in america. We celebrated life but Death was the ULTIMATE reason to party, I still remember my Granny telling me to this day, ‘We cry when a baby is born and celebrate when they die because they don’t have to endure this wicked world, the soul is free to fly.” Now how could a woman born to another women who didn’t have anything higher than an eighth grade education, but was a midwife - say something so profound unless the wisdom came to her, through her from the other side.

My path was ancestrally initiated, governed by the women and men in my family & they established my foundation before they left this plane. It required no dedication to anything outside of me, but it did require faith beyond what i could immediately see. It’s literally choosing to explore multiple aspects of your mind, getting clear about how you use your time and most importantly realizing when there’s a program or outdated pattern running on borrowed time.

That being said, Shadow Work cannot be intellectualized. It cannot be watered down and fit to be made into a “cute, palatable package” for sensitive ears and eyes. Truthfully....it ain’t for everybody. It has to be felt, it has to be felt, it HAS TO BE FELT. Pain, sadness, grief, anger, rage are all very real parts of life. The denial of such instantly creates a shadow, one that can be tapped, drained or trained over time. That’s why I don’t put anything past anyone, the first people I met to surrender to learning it, were some young men who crossed paths with me at that time. They made their choices to face the weight in the respective lineages, and I warned them once you’re in it, you are IN, it doesn’t stop, it cannot be “turned off,” shadow work is LITERALLY a lifestyle.One that requires dedication, resilience, endurance & finding the right balance for your lifestyle.  

 This power was always worked and wielded by women & men in the South. What was inaccurately labled a “death cult” is really the balance of life, the old must die in order for new to form. What happens when you keep putting sugar on top of shit and calling it icing? You get a society addicted to sweet, perfectly crafted, “organic” STANK lies.

Truth is something Southern Americans prided themselves on, we honored the reality of life. We couldn’t be bothered with lying because we knew it had a way of fragmenting the mind. We knew it obstructed the soul to do so, as we developed ourselves on this side of the world without greedy parasitic eyes. Again, we were never monolithic, respected the varying perspectives that fed to the richness of life. Truth is, MANY fear death. ( The whole aesthetic challenges the society we live in currently) But what do you have to fear when you’re in alignment with the reality of who you are?

Shadow Work is PROTECTIVE by it's very nature. You can’t SHAME someone into Silence when there’s no shame inside. You can’t LIE to someone who doesn’t deceive themselves, you can’t MANIPULATE someone who is always in alignment with their HIGHEST and LOWEST aspects in life, and you cannot CONTROL someone who realizes they can shatter false paradigms with Divine Fire. The majority of the world is in a vice grip of lies woven by a society built on lies accepted by people with blood ties to the land.

What happens to a place when you deny their reality, force them to build your heaven with the energy and power of their minds yet cast them off in the low places of society? Well, we saw what happened with Hip Hop. The power grew so big everyone wanted a piece of the pie.

Shadow Work is the next big thing, in terms of spirituality online, however, it’s held in a secretive balance hidden by truth, a truth EARNED by those who’s lineages has been purified by their own trials of fire. You’re reading this because you chose to enter into the dark. You’re reading this because you are tired of this false society waging war, albeit covertly challenging the very things that make you whole, your community, your family, your friends. Things that were once normal and wholesome in this society has become WARPED, by LIES. But the thing about a lie, tell the truth once, it keep spilling out, it becomes addictive, freeing, as your heart expands and your throat heals, you gain the ability to speak life...and DEATH over what no longer applies. 

Shadow Work protects you from those seeking to finesse your boundaries. Shadow Work itself IS a boundary not many are willing to cross due to their mind possibly collapsing to all of the ways people have to lie to themselves daily just to get by. Shadow work ain’t a bunch of hidden history ( although history is a pre-requisite for comprehending what happened to or in your individual bloodline) the true work began when I stopped lying to myself, stopped pretending that any of what was being pushed on me FELT right. And yes, I lost people, one friend every year for 7 years straight. I thought, I was cursed. I thought my life was worthless, but truth was, something was rotten around me, and y’all know the saying, where there is 💨, there’s a 🔥. I wasn’t being true to what I felt inside. Death has always fascinated me. I always got joy seeing people, let go, release. Tears, crying, release - that's Purifying

Screaming in the forest when the reality became too harsh to face, that’s grounding.

Death only made sense when I couldn’t embrace someone I loved the most on this plane, but She reached from beyond the Ethers to wipe tears from my face. Death isn’t final, it’s a transformation, it’s giving up the physical form to reunite, with all that lives inside, and what is inside, is a shimmering, dancing, iridescent light, surrounded by ancestral fire.

That fire surges when you see someone hurting what can be perceived to be innocent. It flares when we achieve a win collectively

Shadow work isn’t for play play. It isn’t a “love and light” hehehaha im gonna hex you, type of deal. It’s literally fighting for the right to express, to be, TRUE TO YOU, whatever that means, according to the people who walked before you. Not all they did was right, but characters, souls DO evolve over time, but you have to honor both sides (soul & spirit)

Most people like to know the inner workings of society, they love conspiracy, like mystery..but the biggest mystery is the truth about your own life.

No TV show can compare to the mystery that is Life herself. And yes, she can be a bitch at times. But that’s why our love for her transcends multiple paradigms, realities and lifetimes. She’s consistently challenging us to go higher, descend lower, spinning effortlessly out of control in a delicate dance between chaos and order.

Shadow Work, in its essence, is the responsibility to tell the truth, to LIVE the truth, to embody and manifest what is TRUE according to your own inner fires. Respecting the fires of the past allows for new fires to be lit, once again to clear the way for a generation to thrive.

And more importantly, it’s the easiest way to declare sovereignty over your OWN life.

Thank you for reading, 

Fala Ishto