One of the most powerful ways to practice wholeness is learning to see both the light and the shadow in everything.
We humans tend to swing toward extremes.
We label things as all good or all bad, healing or stuck, success or failure.
But the truth is—there’s always a healthy version and a distorted version of every path. It’s when we go too far into extreme that we enter the shadow.
Even Mother Nature teaches us the literal shadow of extremes. When the sun is at its most intense, the shadows stretch the longest. And when night is at its deepest, even a small flashlight can cast sharp, dramatic shadows. It’s the moderate dance of light and dark that lets us see clearly— but it’s the extremes of either side that warp what’s true.
On a recent coaching call, my mentor Alyssa Nobriga named this beautifully. She said:
“The shadow side of therapy is that we can get stuck in healing. The shadow side of coaching is that we can get stuck in becoming.
I felt that truth deeply because I’ve lived both of those shadows.
Many seasons of my life have been all about becoming. Self-improvement, goal setting, performance, productivity. There was always a better version of me I hadn’t reached yet.
And other seasons have been dedicated to healing. I poured myself into trauma work, inner child work, nervous system regulation. There was always one more layer to uncover.
Both of those paths, in their light, offered support. But in their shadow, they fed the same lie:
That who I am right now isn’t enough.
There’s always something to fix— either to heal something that happened in the past, or to become someone more worthy in the future.
But here’s a truth you may not have noticed before:
When you are truly present, there’s nothing to fix.
Presence pulls us out of the extremes. It anchors us in the now—where there’s no pressure to be better, no story that says we’re behind, no constant reaching.
Presence is what I feel:
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In Shavasana at the end of a yoga class
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In the woods as the seasons shift quietly around me
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Around the dinner table when my family is laughing, sharing inside jokes, and just being
In those moments, I’m not trying to become. I’m not trying to heal. I’m simply here.
When you are truly present, there’s nothing to fix.
Read that again.
When you are truly present, there’s nothing to fix. This doesn’t mean there’s no place for growth or healing. Those paths are beautiful. Necessary, even. But presence is what keeps them out of the shadow.
When we stay connected to presence, our becoming is guided by curiosity instead of shame. Our healing is grounded in self-compassion instead of urgency.
This is what it means to practice wholeness.
So here’s today’s gentle inquiry:
🌿 What parts of your inner work still carry the energy of fixing? 🌿 How does that energy change when you allow yourself to be just as your are?
The energy your inner work originates from makes all the difference.
Remember:
You are loved. All parts of you. Just as they are—right now. No fixing required.
In presence,
brooke
P.S. I realize that for some of us we have no idea how to do inner work if it’s not coming from a place of fixing. This used to be wildly foreign to me too. To hear someone say I need to accept myself just as I am sounded lazy because it zapped my motivation. And there’s the clue. Because my motivation was fixing (shadow), authentic becoming or healing wasn’t what I was really after. I didn’t know how to live from that type of presence and acceptance. I had to learn it. So that is what these emails are all about. How to practice wholeness. 💕