A Lantern in the Woods
IFS-informed Shadow Work Coaching and intuitive guidance to support you in your journey through the forest to find clarity and healing to live fully, passionately, and intentionally.
ILLUMINATE YOUR PATH
Jennifer Hinckley Baglia, ACC, and founder
“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost…”
Opening lines to the Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Midway upon our journeys, many of us start to question what it is we want to contribute to life, and to get from it. Maybe we’ve realized that the straightforward pathway hasn’t been lost, but we’re no longer so interested in staying on it. I’m here for those ready to forge their own paths through the uneven, meandering terrain of that forest journey…what lanterns are you ready to light? What parts of you have been smoldering but are ready to erupt into flame? As one of my teachers said, are you ready to stop living the half-lived life and to embrace possibility? To live life fully with fervor and passion?
I’m here for the trailblazers, the renegades, the healers, and the artists: those who know they want to do more with their lives than just survive, or aren’t content to just coast through the rest of it. How do you want to light things up? What ripples are you creating? The world needs all of us to contribute our gifts. Let’s take a look at those shadowy parts of yourself that might be dimming your light and lost in old stories, and figure out how to bring them into it so they can help you leave the well-worn path behind.
A lot of what people call coaching can be like trail markers or an outdated map, focusing on external “hacks” instead of uncovering the underlying roots that keep tripping you up before you can even reach the next trail marker. None of this will “stick” until you start illuminating what has been hiding in the shadows.
We all feel at times like we’re wandering in a dark wood and could use a lantern to light our way.
Fear, self-doubt, and other deeply rooted beliefs and behaviors often keep us from living up to our full potential and our most fulfilling lives. The fear of change, loss, and rejection makes it consciously and subconsciously hard to do something outside of what family, society, or religion expects of us. There are parts of ourselves in direct conflict with other parts; some pulling towards “safety” and others pulling towards expansion and growth, making it very difficult to move forward. When we have a divided will, we’re not tapping into our full power and ability to create the life we truly want.
I use a combination of Internal Family Systems (IFS)-informed parts work and other modalities to find the roots of limiting beliefs sown by childhood wounds, religion, society, family, and other sources that keep us from changing our lives in the ways we dream of.
These are tools for introspection, radical self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-love—a powerful combination that results in lasting change.
When we try to eliminate unwanted aspects of our personality (our shadow), we inadvertently strengthen them, causing them to work even harder and keep us even more “stuck.” Instead, when we learn how to embrace all aspects of ourselves, we can work with them to ultimately accept and release the stories and wounds that they carry, and find new ways of being. This self-awareness and self-love become a way of living, but deep work on our own is difficult; we need someone to facilitate our journey inward and to guide us in uncovering the intricate roots of our internal forest.
This is for you if:
You know you’re not living your truth or your full potential and are ready to figure out what is holding you back.
You feel like you’re stuck in place and can’t figure out what your next steps are.
You feel like your decisions have been ruled by fear and anxiety, yet you feel there’s another way.
You feel like something’s missing in your life, but you can’t figure out what that is.
You know there are choices, but you don’t know what they are or how to make them.
You’re looking for support in seeing things more clearly and developing trust within yourself.
You want to learn how to connect to and trust your intuition and inner knowing.
This is not for you if:
You aren’t open to imaginal, creative methods of working with yourself and the parts of your personality.
You don’t want to be honest with, or take responsibility for yourself.
You don’t want to do the work outside of the coaching session.
You’re looking for a magic fix.
You don’t like cats. ;-) Just kidding, I’ll still work with you.
When we work directly with the parts of ourselves that hold the limiting beliefs and befriend and embrace them, we can integrate them as allies within our internal system. We can also gain greater access to Self, which can also be described as the soul, the “watcher”, one’s divine nature, or true spirit untainted by the accumulated wounds, conditioning, and stories of our past; an intrinsic guide always there, ready to help light our way forward.
“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.”
Do you feel like you’ve been wandering in a dark wood and have somehow lost the path?
Or maybe you’re on one that seems to keep looping around in circles, continually crossing over itself and running into the same fallen trees blocking your path, over and over again?
Or are you ready to get off the one that’s worn and dusty from overuse?
What are limiting beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are the thoughts we have about ourselves, our abilities, and what is possible in our lives. They can stop us from growing, succeeding, or being our true selves. These beliefs can make us feel inadequate or pressure us to fit a certain mold, keeping us aligned with the stories we were told growing up about the “right” and “wrong” path to follow. These beliefs can leave us feeling ashamed, stuck, unhappy, and unfulfilled when our lives don’t look like that; or, even when they do, we still know we’re missing something vital and feel stuck in a life we think we can't change.
This is our shadow, the parts of ourselves we think are unacceptable, unlovable. By facing and embracing our shadow, we can integrate it into the whole of our being, confront the beliefs that have been running our lives, and begin living intentionally and making conscious choices as the evolved adults we are. We keep getting to truly know ourselves. It’s a lifelong process of revealing layers, expanding our concept of who we are and what we are capable of. As we create space and trust ourselves, we learn how to better take care of ourselves. This gives us the opportunity to heal old wounds and stories that can affect us physically, mentally, and emotionally. Ultimately, we start living more from joy, curiosity, love, and compassion instead of projecting our frustration and pain back onto ourselves or out onto others.
Amelia Leonards