Subscribe and Receive:

  • Customized Shadow Work Journal designed to Illuminate your Martyr Shadow.
  • The Manifestor Spirit Kit who Speaks to Your Shadow with Compassion
  • Three Complimentary Admissions to our Intimate and Interactive Online Mirror Darkly Journaling Workshops.
Benefits of Journaling in Creative Expression

Do you find yourself constantly stuck in self-judgement?

“It’s all my fault.”

“I can’t do anything right.”

“It’s too good to be true.”

Is your inner critic causing limiting beliefs that hold you back from better career opportunities, friendships, and love?

If you are looking for solutions like “How to create a positive mindset,” consider that the way to having a positive mindset is by first addressing the negative one.

This negative self-talk is a shadow known as “The Perfectionist.” The Perfectionist is constantly looking for what’s not good enough because the subconscious script is “I’m not good enough.”  Thus it tends to turn things that are positive into negative by focusing on all that’s not right in a given situation. Since reality is a mixed bag of good and not good, the perfectionist will selectively focus on and put too much emphasis on what’s bad rather than what’s good in every given picture or scene. This is a type of self-defeating and self-destructive behavior and what others refer to as “toxic” behavior.

On the other hand, the Perfectionist’s twin spirit is “The Free Spirit.” The Free Spirit is focused on turning negative into positive thinking by shifting the focus in every given scene or picture. The Free Spirit is based on love, compassion, forgiveness, and process. Once you can identify that you are both shadow and light, you will have a firmer foundation to begin the necessary shadow work to free yourself of the perfectionist shadow.

You can’t snuff or stuff the shadow of the perfectionist, but you can certainly illuminate it and integrate with it. How you stop the negative self-talk is first by acknowledging it. The Love Story’s program offers shadow work through expressive writing. Elements of writing such as free writing and future self-journaling are all integrated into our program.

This isn’t positive thinking. This is negative illuminating. The paradox of becoming a positive person is to first acknowledge the parts of you that are not. This authentic self is the beginning of true healing. The truth involves both shadow and light. May the truth set you free.

More on Shadow Work

Shadow Work Breaks Toxic Patterns

Advantages of Shadow Work

  • Shadow Work empowers choice.
  • Discover the hidden feelings you’ve suppressed by processing it in expressive writing.
  • Validate your past experiences so that the ghosts of your past will be heard.
  • Lower the frequency and intensity of downward spirals by journaling truth inside fiction.

Features of Shadow Work

  • Connect with other kindred Journal-Artists so that your experience may be heard, felt, and seen.
  • Validate your experiences by expressing truth inside fiction within a vibrant and intimate Journal-Artist community.
  • Discern Shadows based on truth and Shadows based on life-lies through the power of resonate-editing.

Benefits of the Shadow Work

  • Activate your subconscious through simple and clear directions to leverage content with creation.
  • Return the power of truth back into your conscious mind by allowing the subconscious to speak to you in expressive writing.
  • Increase self-respect, self-confidence, and self-esteem through the disciplining of validating your feelings, your pain, your experiences and helping others validate theirs.

The Love Story's Three Introductory Programs

The Three Progressions of Shadow Work

The Love Story offers three Shadow Work Expressive Writing Programs designed to help you transform the pain of Suppressed Expression into Creative Expression. The aim of each Shadow Work program is to move you towards the Shadow Integrated state of knowing both your shadow and your light while having compassion for the shadow and having love for your light. Each Program reflects the progression of Shadow Work and is staggered and custom-tailored to the intensity and frequency of how deep and how urgent you want to reveal, feel, and heal.

We believe pain can be transformed into creative expression through Artist-Inspired Expressive Writing. To reveal our tragedy is to transform it. Shadow Work is the beginning of bringing the unconscious to the surface. It is only when we have self-awareness that the power of choice is once again returned to us.
We believe connection, compassion, and catharsis can be created through an intimate community of kindred Journal-Artists as apprentices, mentors, pen-pals, and producers.
We believe that the mystery of love will heal the deepest parts of ourselves that have been repressed and suppressed. We believe that expression will transform depression, that anchor will transform anxiety, that narrative drama will transform trauma. We are a community of Artists & Journal-Artists committed to the act of revealing, feeling, and healing.  
Meet The Journal-Artists

We explore truth in fiction, while illuminating our shadows.

We fortify our faith through the sword of the spirit in the written word.

We are the Journal-Artist Producers—sharply spoken and broken open.

Testimonials About Expressive Writing

“You have the ability to just be like, ‘you know, this is my truth and if anybody doesn’t like it that’s fine because as far as they are concerned, everything that I’m saying is not real.’ It’s really helpful to know that people aren’t gonna to know what’s real, what’s not real, with what you write. You can release things and nobody will be the wiser about it.”

Chelsea Wolfe
Journal-Artist

“I want to go back and explore. Why did it happen when it happened. …Women often suppress their emotions…we think, ‘if I just swallowed that back, it’ll go away,’ and it’s like ‘Nope! Still here.’ and so I think I’m starting to really figure, I can’t swallow that back. I need to let things out.”

Dorothy England
Journal-Artist

“The point of journaling is to really just look inside and be like, ‘okay, what is this? Why am I feeling it? And what do I do with it?’ And that’s sort of what you have to ask yourself when you are journaling.”

Kali Paszkiewicz
Journal-Artist
Integrating Shadow and Spirit
When you repress the shadow, it will become louder and stronger. When you try and destroy the shadow, you will hurt yourself (who is shadow, soul and spirit) in the process. The only way to master the Shadow is to Integrate it with the Spirit. We call this, “Shadow Integration,” and this is the aim of our Expressive Writing Program, also known as “The Producer’s Playbook.”
The Journal-Artist
The aim of a Journal-Artist is to illuminate and integrate one’s Shadow and Spirit so that the Power of Choice is once again returned to the Soul. The Producer’s Playbook is a creative and interactive expressive writing program designed for the Journal-Artist to transform one’s life tragedy into a divine comedy by first revealing the tragedy (the Shadow) in three acts, told in fiction, based on a true story.
As a Journal-Artist, you will journal your past and present through journaling sessions, peer-to-peer mentorships, and workshop lessons so that your shadows begin revealing itself in creative expressions. This is designed to help you discover scenes of your past to inform your present and to help you hope for a better future. It is designed to reveal the duality of your desires, designs, and destinies so you may become inspired and encouraged to choose the desire, design, and destiny of the Spirit that always aligns with love.
Acting in the Spirit
The Shadow’s root is fear and the Spirit’s root is Faith.
We all have a shadow to contend with, but it is illusive.
Shadows by nature are shape shifters, both seductive and secretive.
It does not want to be found because its nature is to remain hidden while creating insidious havoc in our lives.
Act One is designed to illuminate the Shadow’s cry.
Rather than fighting or feeding the shadow, our goal as Journal-Artists is to have compassion for and to accept our shadows.
Love works in paradoxes.
The way out is in.
The way for the pain to move away is when we are willing to move through it.
The way we can master our shadows is to become mindful of it.
Only through acceptance and grace can we integrate both Shadow and Spirit together so that the Power of Choice is once again returned to the Soul.
The Soul is the Soul-Journer, the Journal-Artist who chooses.
The Mirror Darkly
The way of illuminating a shadow is through a mirror. We all serve as mirrors because we all have shadows to contend with. While it is difficult to see our own shadows, it is relatively easier to see our shadow in another person. Illuminate the Shadow so that our Spirit may integrate with it.

Become a Journal-Artist

Increase Emotional Intelligence

Increase Emotional Intelligence: Becoming self-aware gives you the power to break toxic habits, make positive changes, and mature.

Gain Self-Respect

Gain self-respect: Self-respect is earned through watching yourself set healthy boundaries, knowing what you like and don’t like, becoming confident in who you are through self-acceptance.

Gain Self-Confidence

Grow Self-Confidence: Owning your shadow and learning how to integrate it will effectively increase your self-confidence and boost self-esteem through knowing and accepting oneself.

Subscribe and Receive:

  • Customized Shadow Work Journal designed to Illuminate your “Martyr” Shadow.
  • The “Manifestor” Spirit Kit who Speaks to Your Shadow with Compassion
  • Three Complimentary Admissions to our Intimate and Interactive Online Mirror Darkly Journaling Workshops.