I Chose the Monster: Maybe it was never about the monster
One of the questions I get asked most often is why I keep writing about monsters. Demons. Fallen angels. Creatures that exist somewhere between mythology, psychology, and fantasy. The answer is surprisingly simple: I've never been particularly interested in monsters. I've always been interested in people. My I Chose the Monster series isn't really about darkness, evil, or being seduced by forbidden things. It's about projection. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about what makes someone worthy of love, acceptance, and existence. For years, shadow work has fascinated me, especially through the lens of Jungian psychology. We often imagine the shadow as something terrifying that has to be defeated or integrated, but I sometimes wonder if we've been asking the wrong questions. What if the real tragedy isn't that we have a shadow? What if it's that we've become convinced our ordinary human self isn't enough? Fairy tales usually tell us that hu...
