Through Shadows, Into Light

You Can’t Manifest What You Can’t See: Trauma, Shadow Work & the Path to Clarity

There’s a direct line between unhealed trauma and the struggle to manifest the life you want.
Trauma acts like a pair of dark glasses, distorting your view, dulling your hope. No matter how bright the future may be, you simply can’t see it from where you're standing. And when your Law of Attraction practices don’t conflict with your current beliefs, you might see some small shifts. But without doing the deeper work, you’ll always feel like there’s a wall, too high to see over, too wide to go around, between you and the life you want.
I know that wall well.
I grew up with an alcoholic father and a mother who was constantly unwell. There wasn’t a nurturing environment in our home, just a kind of emotional wilderness. I couldn’t imagine a joyful, stable future because I had never seen one. It was like walking through life blind. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, not knowing whether I was about to fall off a cliff or take flight.
Back then, before the internet or Instagram therapy, I sought help wherever I could. Sweat lodges. Bio-energetics. Rebirthing. Primal scream. Free-form energy work. Even Werner Erhard’s early transformational work. I didn't have a plan or a clear goal, I just knew I needed to feel better. I was searching for something I couldn’t yet name: peace, maybe. Or wholeness.
What I came to realize is that the real work begins when you start looking in the dark places. This is shadow work: the brave act of sitting with your triggers, your shame, your unhealed pain. It means revisiting the most uncomfortable moments in your life, not to relive them, but to release them. That process isn’t neat or pretty. It demands that you get honest, that you have uncomfortable conversations, sometimes with others, often with yourself.
But this is the threshold. This is where the shift begins.
When you do shadow work, when you dismantle the emotional patterns and belief systems you inherited or built for survival, you begin to see what’s possible for you. That’s when manifestation starts to work. Not just in theory, but in real, tangible ways. Life begins to flow. You start making decisions that feel aligned. You stop grasping and start allowing. That’s clarity. And with clarity comes freedom.
Let me tell you a story.
My youngest son, who lived with me off and on over the years, came home again. He often did, every six months or so. I think this place felt safe to him. One morning, he had a grand mal seizure. It turned out he had stage 4 metastatic melanoma. He died 11 months later, right before the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Grief is normal. But I wasn’t consumed by it. That’s not to say I didn’t hurt or rage. I did. I still do sometimes. But the trauma didn’t take over my life. Thanks to the work I had done, through shadow work and Neuro Emotional Release, I had the tools to move through the grief without becoming it.
That’s what clarity gives you: space. Space to breathe. To grieve. To let go. To let others walk their own path, even when it’s heartbreaking. You stop trying to fix everyone else, and you start living your life from a place of grounded, calm presence. You begin to trust that everyone finds their way in their own time.
And now? My life is simpler. I choose how I work. I give my energy to things that nourish me. I ask better questions. Sometimes I don’t ask anything at all, I just allow people to be who they are. That’s the gift at the end of the dark tunnel: a life that feels light, spacious, and quietly joyful.
The bonus? Doing this deep work has made me a bit of a manifesting pro. When you clear out the noise, energy flows. Your desires aren’t blocked by fear or old wounds. You get clearer, faster, and more aligned results—not because you’ve become better at visualizing, but because you’ve become better at being.
So if you're stuck, if you're trying to manifest and nothing is shifting, don’t blame the universe. Look inward. Start asking different questions. Get comfortable with discomfort. That’s where your freedom lives.
And that’s where the magic begins.

If any part of this spoke to you, if you feel like you’re walking blind or hitting the same wall over and over again, I want you to know: you don’t have to keep doing it alone.
Neuro Emotional Release (NER) is the work I now offer to others because it’s the tool that changed everything for me. It helps you identify the emotional patterns keeping you stuck and gently clear them, without having to relive the pain.
If you're ready to step into the life that’s been waiting for you on the other side of that wall, now is the time. Don’t wait until things get unbearable. Reach out. Let’s begin the work.
You can email me at [email protected] or call/text 250-460-7900 to book a session or learn more.
You’ve carried it long enough. Let’s set it down together.