narcissism isn’t the problem, forgetting your own light is
breaking ancestral chains, walking through fire, and remembering my own light
the word narcissism is everywhere these days.
it’s used to describe manipulators, charmers, the ones who drain your energy and leave you questioning your own reality. but the word itself points to something much older, a collective wound of separation.
when light forgets it is light, it searches for reflection. it reaches outward, hungry for proof of its own existence. that’s how the distortion begins.
some people learn to control and manipulate for safety. others learn to please. both are born of fear. both forget how to rest in their own radiance.
when you’ve been trained to survive through hyper-awareness, your empathy becomes a radar—constantly scanning the world for danger, approval, or love.
i grew up inside a kind of violence that taught my mind to go up and out, to leave my body and forget. for years i lived with what clinicians call dissociative amnesia: my mind sealed off certain memories so completely that i believed they never happened. at night i dreamed of flying away, always chased by dangerous men, never realizing they were the one i already knew.
when the memories began to surface, i finally understood why i had felt split for so long, why i had been hovering just above my own life, waiting for the world to feel safe enough for my body to take me back—safe enough for me to face the darkness i had buried inside myself.
besides finn, (my eternal soulmate and my rock) whose death opened the doorway to remembering, and who now guides me from the other side, i was continually drawn to people who reflected the same pattern i had survived. they were magnetic, wounded, and familiar. i mistook intensity for love and caretaking for connection. each encounter replayed the same ancient lesson: that giving my light away to heal someone else only dimmed my own. i carried the subconscious belief that i had to shrink and self-sacrifice to be loved, that my purpose was to hold the darkness of another, that receiving love required the annihilation of some vital part of myself.
i’ve known what it means to love danger in disguise. a husband whose angry hold took the air from my lungs until i passed out, leaving my own body once more. a mother who could charm a room with her laughter yet drain the life from me in private- kind on the surface, but always hungry beneath- like a dementor from the stories i read to my children.
these patterns circled me for years, each one a different mask of the same wound. they taught me how easily i could confuse pain with safety, chaos with connection. every time i offered my light hoping it might heal the darkness in someone else, i vanished a little more.
it took me a long time to understand that even these people, my mirrors and my teachers of the parts of me i was unwilling to face, were part of my awakening. they showed me where i was still living outside myself, still believing that love required pain, that being needed was the same as being loved.
for years, i thought protection meant building walls or disappearing, leaving my body the way i did as a child. but real protection isn’t separation, it’s presence. it’s staying in myself even when someone else’s chaos rises around me.
what some people call grey rocking, becoming calm and non-reactive around those who feed on drama, became, for me, a quiet kind of alchemy. it wasn’t about pretending not to care; it was about no longer offering my energy to every storm that passed through. it meant learning to remain still and rooted while others spun in their own patterns. i have had to walk away from every single one of these relationships, including going no contact with those who were once closest to me.
peace sometimes looks like distance. over time, that stillness turned into strength, and a kind of peace that no one could bait or steal.
last summer, on the solstice, i joined a fire-walking ceremony. before the fire, we were each given a wooden board and asked to draw what we were ready to release. i spontaneously drew a baby dragon, representing the part of me that had spent a lifetime carrying the pain of others. when it came my turn to break the board, i was the last to step forward. tears streamed down my face as i felt the weight of generations pressing through my body: all the chains i had carried, all the silence i had swallowed.
i raised my hand, let out a guttural cry, and brought my arm down in one clean strike. the board split straight through the dragon’s eye, exactly like the basilisk pierced by archangel michael in the medieval painting i saw in italy this summer, and the same image i once copied for my students as a waldorf teacher years ago.
in that instant i knew that something ancient had broken with it, that the line running through that painted eye was also running through my own story. i laid the pieces in the bonfire we built together and watched the flames consume them.
when the fire turned to glowing embers, i walked the full length of the coal path, ten feet of heat and light, completely barefoot, steady, unburned.
before we left that night, we were asked to write one sentence on a card.
mine still hangs on my fridge:
i, venus, have walked through fire. i can do anything.
narcissism isn’t the problem. forgetting your own light is. and every time i remember, every time i refuse to feed what drains me, every time i choose truth over illusion, i reclaim another piece of my power.
i don’t need to carry anyone’s darkness anymore.
i don’t need to hover above my body or my life waiting for safety.
i am the fire now, i am the burned ashes, and the inner light that remains.
and every time you slay your own inner dragons with your sword of sovereignty, every time you dive into your own shadows to reclaim your light, you join me on this path of fire.
know that though the path may be fierce, it is holy.
know that you were born strong enough to walk it.
together we rise.
here is a video reel i made of the fire walking ceremony.
thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.
i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞
That was beautiful my girl. You are so strong and powerful in your words and the influence you have in your writing. I truly look forward to seeing all that you do. I am hooked on your way of thinking. You just live from emotion in motion, and it is quite delightful in your mind.
Creatures of the dark can't live in the light, but sometimes our own weakness feeds them, illuminating what would be concealed without our kind hearts.
Thanks for sharing!