Jane Slack-Smith was told she was noisy as a kid, so she buried her natural joy. Years later, colleagues called her "intense" at a leadership program, triggering old rejection wounds. Her husband Todd reframed intensity as neutral, and shadow work helped her see the deeper belief: that she wasn't wanted.
free and music playing and we're jumping on the lounges and we're dancing, we're dancing. And this lady, when my mom picked me up, the mother said, oh my gosh, like, Jane was like really noisy and boisterous. And, and that was a child having fun, right? And I thought, and I thought she was judging me. And I thought, oh God, I haven't been loud and let my full kind of spirit out before. God, maybe that's the wrong thing to do. And so I took that and thought I should suppress that, that joy and that's, you know, that kind of boisterous expression of myself. And then I got to university and I started my first job and I'm with this big corporate company and they chose, you know, 20 of us from internationally to go to this business school to be the next leaders of the company. And they're gonna teach us over 6 months what to do and we're doing weekends and residentials. And right at the end, and I'm like, I found my people. I can be myself. I can kind of let my full expression out. I was just like loving this up. And right at the end, we had to write on one word, on a piece of paper, one word that summed up everyone, each person. And you got those 20 pieces of paper and or 19 piece of paper. And I remember I was so excited. I was like, oh, what's people's impression of me? And 18 of the 19 said intense. And I like just went, oh my God, I thought these are my people. I thought I could be my real self. I was devastated. I went home to my now husband and said to Todd, this is, this, this has broken my heart. And he said, babe, maybe people haven't just been that interested in them before. Right. Intense is not a bad thing. And it gave me a chance through his words to reframe that. But God, I, I recognized at an age like 22, 23, I was back at the 8-year-old, and I'd been carrying that all that time. Like, how intense is that?
Yes, I take that as like, I'm too much, because I used to hear that. Like, so it's funny because after I did William's work, I realized— like, at first I thought it was, oh, I talk too much, and I just went with that. I'm like, oh, I only have, I only have one dark shadow, that's it, just one, and it's I talk too much. But look at me, I'm a speaker now. So, you know, but as I do his work even more, I realize there's more dark shadows of like, where did it show up that you're, you're not, you're not wanted here. That's why nobody invites you. And like, even now, if someone's having a party and I'm not invited, and it could be like, well, we knew that you were going to be in Africa, so like, we didn't even think about inviting you. And I'm like, okay, but I still want to be invited.
Yeah. Isn't that interesting? That childhood kind of separation experience fulfilled and validated to say you're okay, you're accepted. There's a place that you belong in other people's lives.
Right.
Interesting. Interesting. You know, it's, um, it's amazing how we carry these, you know, be they shadows or wounds or traumas or beliefs or just experiences in, into our lives. And often we don't realize that it's our 3-year-old toddler tantrum child. It's actually running our 53-year-old life.
And if we go back to what William says, yes, our thoughts and feelings are not real. Like, that thought of not being invited isn't real, and the feeling of not being invited because of the thought of not being invited, it isn't real. I've made it up because of a situation that happened when I was 10 years old, 40 years ago. 40 years ago it happened, and I'm still holding on to it as if it is my truth and it is God's word and that's how it's going to be.
