Home Depot was our last errand. We'd already been to the post office and the farmers market, and this was going to be a quick stop for a window shade. I should have remembered that the only time the words "quick" and "Home Depot" belong in the same sentence is when I'm saying, "I took a quick look at Home Depot as I drove by," but I was determined to get a new shade that day.

In the interiors department, the sole sales representative was chatting up a customer opening a charge account to pay for his substantial order. We were all so relaxed and happy, you'd have thought it was a community fair. I patiently waited as he went on about how friendly the staff was—I suspect he didn't know there's a commission for opening charge accounts. Twenty-five minutes later, the instant he'd waved goodbye, it was as if a switch flipped. The salesperson became so jumpy, cranky and impatient that I considered leaving as well, but I'd waited so long and I really wanted that shade! She unwrapped it, put it on the cutter, called a co-worker to get the code to make it function, fussed and fumed, and ultimately had no idea how to adapt the machine to my measurements. Really done now, I left in a huff.

I hate when I do that, but that's my shadow side. As Debbie Ford explains on her new 2-DVD set, The Shadow Effect, we all have the shadow side and rather than suppress it, we have to learn how to let it serve us. Guest presenter Deepak Chopra says that without it we'd be lost, that we need those opposing energies to be creative and live fully. I don't think either one was suggesting it's just fine to snap at a sales rep, but they might have approved of my going back into the store and insisting that customer service help me with my shade. In that case the part of me that is, ahem, assertive was using my shadow in a positive way.

C.G. Jung first brought the shadow to mass attention. So ashamed was he, and so uncomfortable was his family with the manuscript he wrote and illustrated over his 16-year journey into the depths of his unconscious—The Red Book—that it was guarded like a state secret for most of a century. Jung completed the book in 1930 and died in 1961, and nobody outside the family had seen the complete text until this year.

We all have a shadow side. It's normal. In fact, if you don't, there's something wrong. So no matter how pious or positive anyone seems, you can rest assured that that person wrestles with demons as much as you do.

Not everybody wins that battle. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh publicly railed against drug users, but was addicted to OxyContin. Senator John Ensign, one of the most outspoken in favor of impeaching President Clinton, has been accused not only of sleeping with his top aide's wife, but of paying hush money. Publicly, Reverend Ted Haggard was fiercely antigay, but privately he was involved with male prostitutes.

All of our individual repressed shadows bunch together in our collective shadow. While the U.S. is bailing out in the billions, 50 percent of the world is living on less than two dollars a day. Three women die every day in domestic abuse incidents. And in the average week, one American employee is killed and 25 injured in the workplace in acts of violence.

Ford's DVD-set has two parts: one offers an overview, but the brave can adventure through the second DVD, which includes exercises for self-exploration. It took Ford several stints in rehab to finally confront her own shadow, which was manifesting as addiction, so she's very familiar with the struggle. I got a little impatient with her immobile forehead (shouldn't we also embrace aging?), but that's probably my projected unhappiness—there's that shadow again—with the groove between my own brows. Ford's voice is so soothing, and she's so disarming about her own bitchiness, that I had to forgive her.

It would be a push for any one DVD-set to change someone's life, but this interactive edition would be an effective and "safe" way to begin to explore your own shadow. Then again, exploring the shadow is never really safe. Then again, you're never really safe until you do. 

Photo courtesy of Mike Baird