Where the Light Touches Down

Thirty Days of Radical Acceptance & Reclamation

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Last Updated: June 30, 2025

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Shadow work and spiritual reflection can be powerful, transformative, and deeply healing; but they are not a replacement for trauma-informed, professional care.

Please take good care of yourself. If anything you read here resonates in a way that feels overwhelming or destabilizing, pause and seek appropriate support. You are not alone.

With respect and care,

Terrance LaCrosse

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The Shadow Beneath the Vows

How Romancing the Shadow by Connie Zweig, PH.D. and Steve Wolf, PH.D. Helped Me

Journaling Chapter 6: Shadow-Dancing Till Death Do Us Part

5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see.

And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

6 And I heard a voice… saying, A measure of wheat for a penny… and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

Revelation 6:5–6

The Rider in Black doesn’t just show up in heartbreak or grief. He also visits the sanctuary of our closest partnerships. And when he does, he brings a set of scales, not to condemn, but to weigh what love costs when we don’t do our inner work.

Zweig and Wolf’s sixth chapter asks the harder questions regarding relationships. I’d long assumed the hard part of love was in the early days: finding someone who wanted the same things, who’d stay, who’d choose growth. But what this chapter showed me was something much more difficult and far more sacred: what happens when love stays long enough to see the shadow.

From My Journal (Five Years Ago)

James and I have been through it all: grief, growth, reinvention, breakdown, breakup, reconciliation. It’s not the storybook kind of love. It’s the kind where the shadow gets a seat at the table. It’s the kind where I’m reminding myself that there are four people in this relationship: him, me, the person he perceives me to be, and the one I perceive him to be. And sometimes we’re jostling over each other just to be heard.

There were moments I wanted to run. Not from him, but from the mirror he held up. From the way he reflected the parts of me I’d rather ignore.

I have learned that long-term love isn’t about finding your other half. It’s about realizing no one can carry what you refuse to hold.

And if I’m lucky, love will become less about escape and more about becoming.

Commitment Reveals What Chemistry Conceals

In the beginning, love was easy. I swam in hormones and projection. I assigned mythic proportions to his habits, charm, voice. I was not in love with him, exactly; I was in love with the part of myself I had handed over to him.

But in commitment, when it’s real, grounded, Tuesday-morning-after-an-argument kind of commitment, I met something else entirely. I met the parts of myself I didn’t know I was hiding. The unmet needs. The unresolved grief. The shame that bubbles when I felt unseen or unchosen.

Zweig and Wolf write, “We think our partner is the problem, but they’ve simply stopped carrying what we disowned.”

God, did that land.

When the chemistry faded and the projection cracked, I wasn’t looking at a failure. I was looking at truth.

Completion Through the Other

There’s a strange magnetism in opposites. I’ve always been the doer, and James was the dreamer. I felt deeply, he moved quickly. He sang to the sky; I kept our feet on the ground.

In the beginning, that balance felt divine. But over time, I grew resentful. I wanted him to feel more. He wanted me to act faster. We both projected what we hadn’t developed yet in ourselves onto the other.

That’s what the authors mean when they say we seek completion in the other. What begins as attraction becomes frustration if we don’t reclaim what we’ve given away. I had to ask myself: What would it mean to be both deep-feeling and decisive? Tender and grounded?

Until we own our own polarity, we’ll keep trying to date it. 

Family Loop

Zweig and Wolf offer one of the hardest truths of shadow work: We don’t marry our soulmate. We marry our unfinished homework.

I remember one night after a bitter argument, I found myself saying things to James I had once whispered to my stepfather in my head. That same tightening in my throat. That same need to be understood. The part of me that had learned to walk on eggshells was suddenly barefoot again, bleeding on old glass.

Long-term love has a way of pressing exactly where the wound hasn’t healed. We play out roles: the fixer, the pleaser, the punisher. And unless we recognize the script, we’ll call it fate when it’s really just repetition.

The Rider in Black held up the scales and said, Look. It’s not just about this moment. It’s about every moment you’ve tried not to feel.

From Projection to Partnership 

Eventually, if we do the work, the projection ends. That can feel devastating or liberating.

That’s when real love begins. When I stopped trying to make James my mirror, my rescuer, my missing piece, and started seeing him as… himself.

That’s where the concept of the “third body” from the book comes in: the soul of the relationship, made of more than just you and me. It’s the space between. It’s the thing we both tend to and contribute to. Our beliefs. Our baggage. Our beauty. Our shadow.

True partnership isn’t the absence of shadow. It’s conscious shadow-dancing. It’s knowing that both people bring darkness to the table and choosing to stay in the light of awareness anyway.

Eros and Psyche - Love as Initiation

In the ancient Greek tale, Psyche is told not to look upon her divine lover, Eros. But curiosity, and the whisperings of fear, get the better of her. She strikes a match and sees his face. The union is shattered. She is cast out. But what follows is not the end. It’s the beginning of her true transformation. 

Psyche’s journey isn’t about punishment; it’s about integration. Through trials and inner work, she earns not just the love of Eros, but her own divinity. In shadow terms, it’s the story of awakening: We must stop idealizing love and begin humanizing it.

True love doesn’t ask us to stay blind. It asks us to see everything and stay anyway.

🪶 Journal Prompts from An Old Journal

These prompts are rooted in partnership, but extend to chosen family, close friendship, or even the relationship with self.

1. In my closest relationship, what pattern keeps resurfacing, especially during conflict? What shadow story might that pattern be revealing?

2. When have I blamed my partner (or friend) for something that was really mine to own? How did it feel to take that piece back?

3. What qualities in my partner initially attracted me but now irritate me? Could those be traits I’ve disowned in myself?

4. What would it mean to love someone with eyes open, not just to their goodness, but to their shadow too? Can I offer the same grace to my own?

Final Reflection

The Black Horse rides through our marriages, our long friendships, our sacred partnerships, not to destroy them, but to reveal them.

He brings the scales, and the voice that says, “See that you hurt not the oil and the wine.” In Hebrew tradition, oil and wine are symbols of the sacred: ritual, joy, blessing. The message is clear: Hold the precious things with care. 

Long-term love is one of those sacred things.

And it can be a vehicle for soul work like no other, but only if we let it. If we’re brave enough to take our projections back. If we’re willing to meet our shadow without running from theirs. 

In the end, James and I are still learning to dance. Some steps are clumsy. Some steps are divine. But there’s more truth in it now. More stillness. More grace.

We remind each other that we grew up together. That we are still growing up, together.

And isn’t that what real love is? Not the fairytale.

But a sanctuary brave enough to hold the shadow.

TW

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