There’s a Reason It’s Called Shadow Bound

There is a reason this series is called Shadow Bound, and the meaning existed long before I understood exactly what the story would become.

The idea of shadow binding comes, in part, from my own experience with trauma therapy and EMDR. I have lived through significant trauma in my life, and EMDR became one of the tools that helped me begin processing things my brain had carried for a very long time. That experience changed the way I understood memory, healing, and even the things we think we have already “moved past.”

It also gave me a safe place to begin looking at things I wasn’t always able to understand from where I was standing.

Eventually, that experience found its way into my writing.

What Is EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is an evidence-based, trauma-focused form of psychotherapy most notably used in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

During EMDR, a trained mental-health professional guides a person through a structured therapeutic process while using bilateral stimulation, which may include side-to-side eye movements, alternating taps, or tones. The purpose isn’t to erase what happened or pretend the memory no longer exists. The therapeutic process is intended to help the brain process distressing memories so they are no longer experienced in quite the same way.

I think that’s an important distinction because, in my own experience, healing has never meant forgetting.

For anyone unfamiliar with EMDR who wants a simple introduction to what the process can look like, this video offers a helpful place to begin:

EMDR Therapy Explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsh3b3pQBrI&t=2s

You can also learn more about EMDR, the research behind it, and finding appropriately trained professionals through the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA).

What We Carry

One of the things I learned through my own experience is that memory does not always behave the way we expect it to. Sometimes something can sit quietly for years. You may not consciously think about it. You may believe you already understand what happened. Then something surfaces—a memory, a feeling, a connection—and suddenly a piece of your own history looks different than it did before.

That happened to me more than once while going through EMDR. I could leave a session believing we had dealt with one specific thing, and then six months or even a year later, another piece would surface. Sometimes it was disorienting. Sometimes it made something in my present life suddenly make sense.

I don’t think of those things as secrets my brain was deliberately hiding from me. It felt more like certain pieces had been tucked somewhere until I had the space and ability to process them differently.

That became deeply connected to the idea of shadows for me.

A shadow is not always something evil. Sometimes it is simply something that follows us—something shaped by where we have been. Something we carry without realizing how closely it has stayed beside us.

Understanding Is Different Than Living in the Past

Healing, at least in my experience, is not about endlessly living in the past. It is not about spending the rest of your life pointing fingers at the people who hurt you. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to acknowledge what happened. You are allowed to recognize that something should never have happened to you.

But understanding why something affected you is different from allowing it to keep you there.

Sometimes understanding the past gives you context for who you are standing here, right now. It allows you to recognize why you respond to certain things the way you do, why particular habits formed, why some situations feel more difficult than they “should,” or why your brain learned to protect you in a particular way.

Once you understand that, you have choices.

That doesn’t mean those choices are easy. In fact, undoing something you learned through survival can require far more intentional effort than learning it did in the first place. Moving forward can become incredibly purposeful.

Sometimes you’re working through something enormous. Other times, you’re focusing on one tiny pinprick that surfaced and asking: What is this? Why is it here? What do I do with it now?

You take that piece. You look at it. You give yourself the space to digest what it means. And then you figure out how you want to move forward with what you now understand.

Why Shadow Binding Matters to the Story

That is where my personal experience begins crossing into the Shadow Bound world.

Shadow binding became a way for me to take something I understood through my own life and allow it to exist within a fictional world where characters could navigate their own versions of memory, history, pain, misunderstanding, and truth.

These characters carry histories. They carry memories. They carry beliefs about themselves and other people that were shaped by experiences they may not fully understand yet. Some things are obvious. Others exist underneath what they consciously know.

And sometimes new information changes the meaning of old information.

That matters enormously in Moons and Shadows.

The shadow does not disappear simply because you refuse to look at it. Eventually, something asks to be understood.

And Then Comes Book 2

That idea runs beneath Moons and Shadows, but it doesn’t end with the Foundational Book.

Book 2 continues exploring these ideas from different angles. As pieces of the past become clearer, the characters have to decide what that new information means for the lives they’re living now.

What happens when something you believed for years suddenly has more context?

What happens when a memory doesn’t change, but your understanding of it does?

What happens when you finally understand why someone made a particular choice?

And what do you do with that information once you have it?

Those are very Shadow Bound questions. Because confronting a shadow doesn’t mean allowing it to define you.

Sometimes it means finally understanding why it has been following you—and deciding what you’re going to do now that you can see it.