The evening sun set a glow on the open vastness of what could be considered as desert terrain. What at first glance seems lifeless and barren with an overgrowth of tumbleweed and brittlebush hides an expansive environment teeming with life. This is the landscape through which the inception of Embrace Your Shadow came from. 

The sound of a SUV trunk opens, followed by a stampede of 3 canines, 2 German Shepherds and Shadow, rushing out to meet a wilderness that feels more natural to them than the concrete jungle they normally inhabit. 

The trails twist and turn culminating in several miles of barely tamed wilderness that make it hard to ever walk the same exact path twice. 

I am with my sister and we chat amongst ourselves as we walk down the paths together while the dogs run, play, chase, and most importantly, bond. 

Amidst this play, a game is discovered. Coordinating between the three of them they learn that within the bushes along the miles of dunes and desert, life exists. Moles, voles, ground squirrels, and rabbits. 

There’s an old saying “you learn a lot watching things eat.” 

However, an argument could be made that you learn even more watching things hunt. The strategy, coordination, and undying will to see a task to its ultimate end, a determination ingrained deeper than anyone or anything can recollect its origin, to survive. 

From this game, a strategy emerges. One of the shepherds begins to ‘test’ these bushes by stomping at their outer edge, trying to spook anything within. Each stomp produces visible excitement between the other two canines, as they encircle each bush and burrow, as if they are strategizing together on possible exit routes and cutoff points.

To Shadow this is much more than a game, for this delicate dance is engrained in her DNA, because she is part wolf. 

All of the sudden, a stomp produces a rustle. 

There is a pause, and Shadow shifts downwind and gets low on a small ridge. 

Stomp. 

A rabbit bursts out of the bushes. 

Right exactly where Shadow was waiting, anticipating, planning, hunting. 

A chase ensues, but is short-lived. Shadow had been waiting for this moment all her life. 

It all happened so fast, but to Shadow it all seemed to happen in slow motion. The next moment Shadow has this rabbit in her mouth, crunching its spine, killing it instantly.

There is a small moment of sheer silence, in which my sister and I are trying to process what we had just witnessed. 

Amidst the rush of the moment, I look over, and there is a certain look of horror on her face. A remorseful expression for what had just taken place, a look of guilt, confusion, and overall dismay. 

Where she had witnessed a scene of revolt, what I had just witnessed was something I can only describe as beautiful and awe inspiring. 

I had raised Shadow since she was 10 weeks old, and I had increasingly seen signs of her prey drive over time ranging from slowly stalking birds and squirrels that would burst out in full blown chases time and time again. Her inner wolf coming to the surface. 

I look down and see this rabbit laying at her feet, and she looks up at me, with a look I struggle to fully describe with words. It was as if in this one moment she had realized true and complete fulfillment of her soul's purpose. An ecstasy of understanding exactly what she was and exactly what drove her and being able to see that pursuit to its end and final result. To survive. 

It is within this juxtaposition between my sister's reaction and my own that Embrace Your Shadow was born. 

I’ll never be able to describe the love I felt in that moment for her, the way she looked up at me, grateful for the opportunity to complete and exercise the ethos ingrained deep within her DNA.

Where she saw horror, I saw beauty. Where she saw death, I saw life. While there is a darkness in death, it also gives life. I knew that something within that moment would also give my life purpose.

Embrace Your Shadow was born out of this moment. To face the pursuit that your soul calls for with unrelenting and unwavering pursuit, and to embrace and love your own darkness with an understanding that to be complete, one needs to integrate the dark and the light within themselves, and to know their function, to better yourself, your family, and those you love.

To most this is called shadow-work, but I hope this story can give some further credence to this practice. 

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” - William Shakespeare