Lately I’ve been exploring Mindberg and doing some Jungian shadow work… and it’s been hitting deeper than I expected. I keep having this recurring dream: I find a reptile in my house—usually an iguana—forgotten, starving, filthy. I feel disgust, guilt, shame. Sometimes I try to euthanize it because it’s too far gone… but I always wake up before I can. The interpretation shook me. It’s not about a pet. It’s about a part of me I’ve been neglecting for years. Something cold-blooded. Slow. self-contained. A survival instinct that doesn’t perform warmth or people-pleasing. The part of me that can detach, be still, not care sometimes—and be okay with that. I buried it because it didn’t fit who I thought I was supposed to be. So it starved. And now when I see it, I feel disgust—but that disgust is actually shame. The wild part? In the dream, I keep trying to “humanely” kill it off. But my psyche won’t let me. It wakes me up every time. Because this part of me isn’t meant to die. It’s meant to be fed. Shadow work isn’t pretty. It’s not all love and light. Sometimes it’s realizing you abandoned pieces of yourself just to be accepted. I’m learning to sit with that. To stop performing warmth 24/7. To reclaim the parts of me that are quiet, detached, and self-protective. Not everything in you needs to be soft to be sacred.