It’s All Shadow Work: Grief, Colonial Christianity, and the End of the World as We Were Taught to Know It
Before Christianity became empire,before it became doctrine,before it became justification for conquest,it began as a story of liberation.
Bethlehem was not a seat of power.It was a small village under Roman occupation.A people longing not for heaven later, but justice now.
Somatic pause:Take a breath.Let your shoulders soften.Feel where this story lands in your body.
Because the version of Christianity most of us inherited did not remain in Bethlehem.
It moved…through Constantine,through empire,through colonization,into the systems we are still living inside today.
And that movement created shadow.
From Bethlehem to Constantine: When Liberation Met Empire
What began as a relational, Jewish liberation movement was absorbed by Rome in the 4th century under Constantine.
This was not just a theological shift.It was a political one.
Christianity moved from the margins into the machinery of empire.Doctrine replaced relationship.Hierarchy replaced kinship.Control replaced care.
And in order for empire to survive, something had to be suppressed.
Grief, doubt, embodied spirituality, and ancestral memory, what could not be regulated was buried.
This is how shadow is formed.
Somatic pause:Notice if your jaw tightens or your breath shortens here.That’s information.
Colonization Creates Collective Shadow
Colonial Christianity did not only steal land and culture.It trained bodies to suppress in the name of salvation.
What couldn’t be expressed became buried:
* grief
* rage
* ancestral wisdom
* communal ways of knowing
* body-based spirituality
That buried material didn’t disappear.
It became shadow.
Today, that shadow shows up as:
* perfectionism framed as holiness
* disconnection from the body framed as morality
* spiritual bypassing framed as faith
* internalized inferiority and superiority framed as divine order
This is not a personal failing.
It is the inheritance of colonial Christianity.
Somatic pause:Place one hand on your chest or belly.Ask quietly: What was I taught to bury in order to belong?
Reframe:Shadow work is not about fixing yourself.It’s about remembering what was never sinful to begin with.
From Constantine to the Doctrine of Discovery: When Faith Became Permission
Once Christianity aligned with empire, it learned how to justify domination.
By the 15th century, this theology became explicit through the Doctrine of Discovery, which declared that:
* non-Christian lands were “empty”
* Indigenous peoples were less than human
* conquest was divinely sanctioned
This was Christianity as worldview.Christianity as weapon.Christianity as permission.
The cross no longer signaled suffering under empire.It marched with empire.
Somatic pause:Feel your feet on the ground.Let gravity remind you that you are here, now—not back there.
Decolonization Is Grief Work
Liberation is not just reclaiming.It is mourning.
Decolonization asks us to grieve:
* what was stolen in the name of God
* what was never passed down because it was burned or banned
* what we had to become to survive
This grief is layered:
* personal
* generational
* collective
For many white-bodied people, this includes grieving:
* severed European indigenous roots
* Christianization as cultural erasure
* belonging purchased at the cost of memory
Assimilation was not free.Safety came with a price.
Somatic pause:If grief rises, let it.You do not need to explain it away.
Reframe:Grief is not a sign that something is wrong.It is evidence that something mattered.
Grief is not the opposite of liberation.It is the doorway out of empire theology.
From Doctrine to Manifest Destiny to Project 2025
The theological logic did not end with colonization.
It evolved.
Manifest Destiny baptized expansion.Christian nationalism reframed supremacy as morality.And today, we see the echoes clearly in Project 2025 a political theology rooted in:
* Christian dominance
* patriarchal control
* the fear of demographic “replacement”
* end-times urgency
This is eschatology weaponized.Not the end of injustice, but the end of pluralism.
Somatic pause:Notice what happens in your body when power feels justified by God.That sensation is ancient, and learned.
Shadow Work Is Collective Because Colonization Was
Colonization fractured community on purpose.
Christian empire replaced kinship with hierarchy.Individual salvation replaced collective care.
So healing cannot happen privately what was broken systemically.
Shadow work at this scale must be:
* ancestral
* communal
* embodied
This is why self-work alone will never be enough.
Reframe:Decolonization is not about becoming “good.”It is about becoming honest—with history, grief, and complicity.
Somatic pause:Ask yourself gently: Who am I trying to heal alone because community once failed me?
Closing: When One World Ends
Colonial Christianity taught us to fear the end of the world.
But what if what’s ending is not faith… but domination?
Grief exists because love exists.Love for our ancestors.Love for futures we haven’t seen yet.
Liberation does not begin with answers.It begins with acknowledgment.
And healing grows, in community.
Somatic pause:One final breath.Inhale through the nose.Exhale slowly through the mouth.
You are allowed to grieve.You are allowed to remember.You are allowed to imagine something else.
Practice Your Praxis
From Shadow to Embodied Liberation
This work is not meant to stay theoretical.Decolonization lives in the body, the home, and the systems we move through every day.
Practice your praxis slowly. There is no urgency here.
SELF: Tending the Body Where Shadow Lives
Colonial Christianity taught many of us to distrust the body, to prioritize belief over sensation, obedience over intuition.
Reclamation begins here.
Practice
* Sit or lie down comfortably.
* Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly.
* Take three slow breaths, lengthening the exhale.
* Ask quietly: What grief has my body been holding that my faith never made room for?
* Do not rush to answer. Sensation is enough.
Reflection Prompts
* Where do I feel grief, heaviness, or resistance when I think about religion, empire, or belonging?
* What parts of my body learned to brace in the name of being “good” or “saved”?
* What would it feel like to trust my body as a source of wisdom again?
Affirmation
My body remembers what empire tried to erase. I listen without judgment.
HOME: Disrupting Empire in the Everyday
Colonial Christianity didn’t just live in churches, it reorganized households.
It taught:
* hierarchy over mutual care
* silence over truth
* control over relationship
Decolonization at home is about shifting culture, not perfection.
Practice
* Choose one ritual this week that slows the pace of your household:
* shared meals without productivity talk
* lighting a candle for ancestors
* collective rest without explanation
* Name it aloud as an act of resistance.
Reflection Prompts
* Where does empire still shape my home life (urgency, hierarchy, silence)?
* What would collective care look like in my household?
* How can my home become a place where grief is allowed to exist without fixing?
Affirmation
My home does not belong to empire. It belongs to care, truth, and rest.
WORK: Naming and Interrupting Colonial Logics
Empire theology taught us that worth is earned, suffering is redemptive, and urgency is holy.
That logic still shapes workplaces, including justice spaces.
Decolonization at work begins with awareness, not martyrdom.
Practice
* Notice one moment this week where urgency overrides care.
* Pause.
* Ask: Who benefits from this pace? Who is harmed by it?
* If possible, name the tension aloud or choose a slower response.
Reflection Prompts
* Where does my work replicate productivity-as-worth?
* How does Christian moralism show up in expectations of sacrifice or burnout?
* What would it mean to center sustainability instead of saviorism?
Affirmation
My value is not measured by output. Liberation requires sustainability.
Reflection: Holding the Arc
Bethlehem offered a vision of liberation.Empire transformed it into domination.Colonization carried it across land and bodies.And now we are being asked to grieve what was lost and imagine something else.
Closing Prompts
* What version of faith am I mourning as it unravels?
* What new possibilities become visible when I stop rushing to resolve the grief?
* What kind of world am I willing to help build as this one ends?
Somatic Closing Pause
Before you move on:
* Take one slow breath in through the nose.
* Exhale gently through the mouth.
* Place a hand over your heart and whisper: I am allowed to grieve. I am allowed to remember.
Next in the Series:
Colonizing Bodies: How Christianity’s Control Over Gender, Sexuality, and the Body Shaped Systems of Power
Ways to Journey Deeper
Choose the ones your body has capacity for. Each offering is an invitation, not an expectation.
✨ Creating Healthy Boundaries Workbook If you are seeking ways to create boundaries for yourself this will guide you along the wayDownload here
✨ Book Leah’s Arc of Inner KnowingIf this article stirred something in you, Leah’s three-session journey is a powerful next step.It’s a space to:
* reclaim the parts of yourself empire taught you to silence,
* deepen your alignment,
* and get resourced for the road ahead. A liberatory gift to your inner world.
✨ Friday with Friends on Let’s Have the ConversationIf you want to be held in real-time community as we dismantle empire’s narratives and rebuild liberatory ones, join us live.It’s free, intimate, relational — and it’s where much of this collective healing happens. DesireeBStephens.bio and click Friday with Friendsto sign up.
✨ Table Talk Unpacked If you’re navigating gatherings, family patterns, or relational spaces shaped by obligation and inherited scripts, this somatic companion is for you.It supports you in:
* honoring your capacity,
* setting boundaries without guilt,
* grounding your nervous system when empire’s expectations show up at the table.➡️ Open the Table Talk
✨ 31 Days of Shadow Work for Liberation (App)
Step into the Season of Self with 31 guided prompts, somatic practices, and altar invitations for just $11.A sacred container to support your shadow work and liberation journey.➡️ Download the App
✨ Ebook: Dismantling Supremacy Culture (2nd edition)
Understanding and Overcoming Its 15 Pillars — a foundational guide to identify, name, and unlearn the habits of dominance within ourselves and our systems.➡️ Download the Ebook
✨ Support the Work & the Healing Homestead
If liberatory giving resonates with you, this is a place to practice it intentionally.Partner with me and LadySpeech Sankofa in building the Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead — a sacred initiative to purchase land that will serve as a community healing, education, and retreat space.
Your offerings sustain the vision of land stewardship, communal healing, and intergenerational repair.➡️ Support the Healing Homestead
✨ Direct Offerings of Gratitude
Support my ongoing journey into becoming a PsychoSomatic Practitioner(began September 15th), or simply offer gratitude for the labor and love that goes into this work. Venmo • Cash app • PayPal: SeleniteandSage@gmail.com WishLists: Desireé, Erin, Kieran, and Morrigan.Every gesture of reciprocity sustains the work of liberation and care.
✨ Explore More Tools and Resources
From e-books to guided meditations, workshops, and more — explore the growing library of liberation tools.➡️ Visit My Resource Hub
In solidarity and liberation,Desireé B. StephensEducator | Counselor | Community BuilderFounder, Make Shi(f)t HappenWriter of Liberation EducationSteward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.Where Reflection Meets Transformation
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