From Andrea’s Halloween class on October 30th 🎃 (and if you enjoyed he pumpkin cake that Andrea made for you, check out the recipe at the bottom!)
“There was once a woman who lived in a village where everyone seemed to know exactly who they were.
They knew who was kind, who was generous, who was brave. They knew who smiled easily and who could always be counted on. And the woman had worked very hard to become someone everyone loved.
She was patient when she felt angry. She smiled when she was sad. She offered help when she was exhausted, and when something hurt her, she told herself it was nothing.
Over the years, she became very good at hiding the parts of herself she thought others might not accept. She tucked away her jealousy, her disappointment, her fear of being ordinary. She buried her anger beneath politeness and her loneliness beneath busyness. She never thought of these things as part of herself anymore. She imagined she had left them behind.
Until one autumn evening, when the village was preparing for Halloween, she received a letter with no name on it. Inside were just seven words: There is something in your house.
That night, she returned home and noticed that the door to the cellar stood slightly open. She was certain she had closed it. From below came a faint sound. Not quite a whisper. Not quite a breath. She took a candle and descended the narrow stairs.
At the bottom, she found a mirror she had never seen before. It stood against the stone wall, its surface darkened with age. She lifted her candle. Her reflection appeared. But something was wrong. Her reflection was not smiling. She lowered her candle. The woman in the mirror lowered hers. Then the reflection tilted its head and whispered: "Why did you leave me here?"
The woman stumbled backward. The candle flickered. When she looked again, the mirror showed nothing but her own frightened face. She ran upstairs and locked the cellar door. But all night, she heard footsteps beneath the floorboards. And somewhere in the darkness, someone was quietly weeping.
The following night, the woman returned to the cellar. She told herself she was being foolish. There was no one else in the house. Mirrors could not speak. Still, she carried a candle. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the mirror was waiting.
This time, her reflection was crying. "Why did you leave me here?" it asked again.
The woman felt a sudden rush of anger. "I don't know you," she said. The reflection laughed softly. "You know me very well." And then it began to speak. It reminded her of the afternoon she had swallowed her anger because she was afraid of disappointing someone. It reminded her of the time she had wanted to say no but had smiled and agreed instead. It reminded her of the nights she had cried quietly, ashamed that she needed comfort. It remembered every moment she had told herself to be better, kinder, smaller, easier to love.
The woman covered her ears. "Stop!" But the reflection continued. "You kept the parts of yourself that made others comfortable. You kept the smile. You kept the kindness. You kept the strength." Its eyes met hers. "But you decided I was too much."The woman began to tremble.
For years, she had believed that becoming a good person meant getting rid of everything imperfect within her. She had treated her difficult feelings like unwelcome guests, locking them away and hoping they would eventually stop knocking.
Now, standing before the mirror, she began to understand the terrible loneliness of being abandoned by oneself. "What do you want from me?" she whispered. The reflection placed its hand against the glass. "Stop being afraid of me." The woman stood before the mirror for a long time. At last, she placed her palm against the glass. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the reflection stopped crying. Its expression softened, and the woman saw something familiar in its face. Beneath the anger, beneath the sadness, beneath the years of silence, was the same person she had always been. Not a monster. Not a stranger. Just a part of herself that had been waiting to be acknowledged. The candle steadied. The cellar seemed a little less cold. And when the woman finally climbed the stairs, she did not lock the door behind her.
From that night onward, she began to live differently. She allowed herself to say no without explaining herself a dozen times. She admitted when she was hurt. She asked for help when she needed it. She stopped confusing kindness with the obligation to please everyone. She still felt anger. She still felt fear. Sometimes, old insecurities returned like familiar footsteps in the night. But she no longer treated every difficult feeling as evidence that something was wrong with her. She learned to listen.
And every Halloween, when the wind rattled the windows and the house grew dark, she lit a candle and descended the cellar stairs. She would stand before the old mirror and ask: "Is there anything I have left behind?" Sometimes, she saw sadness. Sometimes, she saw anger. Sometimes, she saw a frightened little girl who simply wanted to know she was loved. And she would stay. She would listen. She would offer the one thing she had withheld for so long: her own compassion. She had finally discovered something that changed the way she understood darkness.
The most frightening shadows are not always the parts of ourselves that are bad. Sometimes, they are the parts of ourselves we were taught to believe were difficult to love. Our work is not to destroy our shadows, but to stop abandoning ourselves in order to escape them. When we do that work, we discover that the thing waiting in the darkness is not a terrible monster but a wounded part of ourselves asking to come home.
A simple prayer as we move forward:
May we have the courage to meet ourselves honestly. May we have the compassion to embrace what we find, and may we have the wisdom to keep reminding ourselves that nothing within us needs to be met with harsh judgement in order to change.”
Recipe: https://www.noracooks.com/vegan-pumpkin-cake-bars/#wprm-recipe-container-6075
