Adrift in the Shadow-Light: Finding Light Amidst Grief and Memory

There’s something about this time of year — late October into November — when the veil between our earthy world and the spiritual realm feels thin. You can almost feel it brushing against your skin, stirring memories, emotions, and old stories.

For me, this time always brings Sacha closer.

If you’re new here, my daughter Sacha passed away in 2023. She’s still so near that sometimes it feels like I could reach out and touch her. I see her walking through our home, feel her energy moving around me — and sometimes when I talk about it, it’s like she’s saying, “Of course you can see me, Mum.”

It’s comforting, yes, but it’s also painful. Because what I really want is her here, living beside me. There’s this ache that lives inside the love. But I also feel incredibly privileged that I can still sense her — that she’s not gone, just in another form.

Shadow-light

This time of year, we walk through what I call the shadow-light. It’s where we are both human and spirit — light, but still carrying the echoes of our experiences.

Our memories, our old stories, our regrets — they drift up like clouds, showing us the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden or judged. The moments we’d rather no one knew about. The patterns we thought we’d left behind.

And as these shadows rise, they can sting. They can feel like that moment you bump your funny bone — it hurts, but something in it also makes you want to laugh. That’s the invitation of the shadow-light: to see it, feel it, and realize it’s not really you anymore.

They’re just passing memories.
Brief shadows drifting by.

We don’t need to fix them or go digging through them. We just let them move through.

The space between

Early November always feels like a bridge — the space between who we were and who we’re becoming. The awareness grows sharper. The old stories get louder before they dissolve.

For me, that shows up in my family story — the distance I’ve had to create for my own wellbeing, the grief of what’s been lost, and the shadow of those final memories that still hover.

Sometimes I feel like two versions of myself — the one still holding the old pain, and the one standing in the light, connected to the divine. Both are true. Both exist.

But when I remember that I am not those stories — that my vibration has shifted — I can feel the energy begin to clear. Those dense memories become just particles of light floating away.

The role of the body

All of this happens through the body.

We can’t think our way through grief or release. We have to feel it.
Breathe it.
Meet it with kindness.

Our bodies hold so much — the memories, the energy, the emotional residue. When we nourish our bodies, rest, move, get sunlight, drink water, we give those memories a chance to dissolve.

We also struggle with and resist doing these easy, obvious self-care rituals, then beat ourselves up for it..

As I speak these words, I can feel my team — my spiritual family — gather around me. I feel them holding me, reminding me that these stories are not real anymore. That they’re leaving.

Divine support

The Divine Mother often comes through for me as Mother Mary — not in a religious way, but as a mother who knows what it is to lose a child.

Each of us has our own divine support — whatever form that takes. Beings, energies, ancestors, guides. They help us see our stories through the lens of love. They remind us that everything — even the shadow — is frequency.

When we see it as frequency, it can shift.
We don’t have to attach to it.
We just let it flow through and recalibrate.

Breaking Apart and Rebuilding

When I speak or transmit light language, the codes move through me — breaking apart old structures, loosening the shape of who I once believed myself to be.

It isn’t destruction. It’s the making of space.
Every fracture lets the light in a little more.

And within that open space, a truer version of self begins to rise — soft, luminous, renewed.

But even in the new light, grief still finds its way through.

Living Through Grief

There are moments when it feels like I’ve gone nowhere — like I’m right back in the rawness of losing Sacha.
Grief moves in circles, not lines. It rises, fades, and then suddenly returns, as if no time has passed at all.

But it isn’t the same. I’m not the same.
Life has unfolded. Light has entered.
And even within the ache, I can feel her — close, guiding, showing me her world through a different lens.

Sometimes it’s a whisper. Sometimes it’s a stillness that settles in my chest.
Other times, it’s a flash of her laughter or the way sunlight hits the room just right, or music suddenly playing— and I know she’s near.

Grief softens when I stop trying to move past it and instead move with it.
It becomes less about loss and more about love finding new ways to express itself.

There’s no neat healing. No end point.
Just moments — some heavy, some light — teaching me how to keep living with an open heart.

And maybe that’s what this whole shadow-light journey is really about — learning to let both the ache and the radiance exist together, without needing to choose one over the other.

Coming home

Grief can feel like floating adrift — each of us in our own little raft, seeing the others but not quite touching.

Even within my family — Bruce, Natasha, and me — we’re all navigating it so differently. There are moments it feels like we’re drifting apart. But that awareness is what brings me back — to see it, to acknowledge it, and to gently return to myself.

Coming home to self is hard when part of that home feels missing.
But it’s also the only way through.

Sacha so wanted to live. She packed more life, creativity, and joy into her years than many do in a lifetime.

Sometimes I can almost hear her say,
“I wish you could reach it, Mum.”

And I’m trying.
One breath, one step, one moment of light at a time.

Watch Me Share This Raw and Present

As I recorded a YouTube video sharing this story as it came through me — unfiltered, raw, and present. You’ll see the tears, the laughs, and the space where shadow meets light:
👉 Watch “Adrift in the Shadow-Light” on YouTube