What do these terms actually mean? And when are you a lightworker and when are you doing shadow work? And what do I do with it as a family member? I just start to write about this, and noticed it raises more questions than answers.

Lightwork is about bringing light and love, while shadow work brings the dark, unconscious parts of yourself into the light, so you can accept and integrate them. You don't have to do one without the other; shadow work is actually a tool to strengthen and further develop your own "light."

Can I remember the first time I started working with unconscious, unknown shadow sides? Hardly; I'd have to try really hard. I probably wasn't even aware of it when I was doing the three-year Phoenix coaching program. I was trying to get to know myself better, but I wasn't trying to become a coach.

Until a few years later, my brother told my parents something about my role in trying to understand, work through, and resolve family issues. I've written books about my Dutch family roots, including one for my mother and aunt. I organized a family gathering at the grave of my Indo grandparents before it was cleared after 40 years. The gravestone, incidentally, is now in my garden. Furthermore, my aunt and I felt that my deceased Dutch grandfather/her father felt—rightly—unrecognized because we didn't commemorate him enough. Yet, as a family, we annually visit the urn wall containing the ash urn of my grandmother, who died in 2007. His ashes had already been scattered in 1987. My aunt and I made sure his name was inscribed next to my grandmother's on the keystone.

These actions made me aware that I often take on certain family responsibilities. As a benevolent organizer, a gentle connector, a gritty caregiver, a judgmental executioner with a conscience ticking like a time bomb. Sometimes triumphant, sometimes exhausting, like a voice crying in the wilderness, then again destructive and severing ties. I'm starting to more clearly identify the knot in my left shoulder that I've felt for quite some time: taking on too much for too long that isn't mine.

And why did I take on these tasks anyway? Is it good for anything? What does it lead to? Am I just getting to know myself better through this? Or does all that digging and probing have a greater effect? ​​As I mentioned before: all that digging only brings up more answers. Nothing wrong with that, of course: I have eternity to explore.