If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read-Around is 7/17/25 at 5:00 PM PST

How It Works:

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

My Thoughts

At the impressionable age of 17, I discovered the work of CG Jung. I was fascinated by his concept of the psyche as both uniquely individual and a portal to world of archetypal personas rooted in a collective unconscious that we all share as humans and that could be expressed in our everyday lives. The archetype of the shadow, that we all carry a dark side that harbors suppressed, abandoned, or hidden aspects of ourselves, certainly tapped my imagination. “Shadow Work” has become a common element of many therapeutic and personal growth programs.

I was also enamored with Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet in my youth. This week’s prompt is based on an extract from poet Chelan Harkin’s The Prophetess: The Return of The Prophet from The Voice of The Divine Feminine (Hay House) on the topic of Shadows. Harkin’s prose poetry beautifully captures the perennial question at the heart of shadow work: how wide is your embrace of your self and your life? Embracing the most exiled and condemned parts within us is not an act of resignation but an act of integration. As Harkin’s says, Our hearts are hungry for a feeling of home that allows all of us back in, including our shames, our sorrows, our desperation, and our dark impulses as well as our dignity, our delights, our strengths, and our graces. All those neglected outer attributes and deep core complexes that make us, at once, particularly unique and wholly human.

Shadows

Speak to us of shadows. And The Prophetess spoke,

This world is hungry for a deep light that can only be harvested through our shadows. Our souls are hungry for a spirituality that allows the full range of our authentic being, that doesn't insist on our shallow light while cutting the depths of our sacred darkness off at the knees.

Our hearts are hungry for a feeling of home that allows all of us back in, even and especially our most exiled and condemned parts, our most lawless and impoverished and impossible to control parts, our most disheveled and devilish and unkempt parts that have never known how to put themselves together.

You were very brave to come to this world, a place where your light would not always be seen. We need to connect with the small, the contracted within us not as some laborious duty to our trauma or as a macabre idol of our past but because universes live in these places. When held in love, our shadows explode into world of new understanding….

May we cease valuing an intimidating flawlessness and become generous in sharing our sacred wound. Forget perfection. Go for messy, learning, tender, whole. Forget brand new. Embrace cracked, broken open, worn, rich with story. Forget polished. Choose rusted, textured, nuanced, real. Forget divine – Try human.

Embrace your shadows and enter a new terrain of closeness in yourself. As we learn to embrace our shadow, we become moved by an authentic goodness that embraces our wholeness and has no opposite.

—Chelan Harkin:
Excerpted from The Prophetess: The Return of The prophet from The Voice of The Divine Feminine.

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem on Shadows as expressed from your deepest wisdom (your inner prophet).

  2. Harkin describes a deep light that can only be harvested through our shadows. Journal or write a poem about the “deep light.” What is it and how can it be harvested? What is the difference between a deep light and a shallow light?

  3. There is a lot of chatter in some circles about being your authentic self. Use that topic as your prompt.

  4. Write a love letter/poem to your “most exiled and condemned parts,” your “most lawless and impoverished and impossible to control parts,” your “most disheveled and devilish and unkempt parts.”

  5. Journal or write poem about a “sacred wound.” What makes a wound sacred?

  6. Harkin says, “You were very brave to come to this world, a place where your light would not always be seen.” Write about the dangers and rewards of your light being seen.

  7. Harken suggests connecting with our shadow side need not be a laborious duty to our trauma or as idolization of the past but a pathway to new worlds and new possibilities. What new worlds or possibilities does your shadow side offer?How does embracing the shadow serve as entry to a new terrain of closeness to yourself.

  8. Write about anything in the poem or in life that inspires you.