Rise: The Eagle Within
- Lucinda Shore
- May 29
- 3 min read
There is a quiet call moving through this moment in time.
Not loud.
Not forceful.
Yet unmistakable.
A rising.
On a national level, the symbol has always been present.
In 1782, the eagle was chosen as the emblem of the United States, representing strength, vision, and the ability to rise above circumstance (U.S. Great Seal, 1782). Not a creature of reaction, but of elevation. Not one that engages in chaos, but one that transcends it.
And perhaps that choice was never accidental.
Because the eagle teaches something that feels deeply needed now.
The crow will land on its back and peck at its neck, persistent and provoking. The eagle does not fight. It does not argue. It does not attempt to change the crow.
It rises. Higher and higher, into thinner air, until what was clinging can no longer remain.
A powerful truth lives here.
Not everything is meant to be fought.
Some things are meant to be outgrown.
And yet, for many, the instinct has been the opposite.
There was a time when safety did not live in my childhood.
Not in the body.
Not in the nervous system.
Not in the spaces meant to nurture it.
And when safety is uncertain, something extraordinary and costly emerges… the Hero.
The one who speaks up.
The one who protects.
The one who sees what is not right and feels called to correct it.
Carl Jung described archetypes as “universal patterns… that shape human behavior” (1959). The Hero rises in moments where justice feels absent.
Yet what is often unseen is this: The Hero, when born from survival, can burn the very system it is trying to protect.
“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” -Gabor Maté
Speaking up becomes instinct.
Holding the line becomes identity.
Carrying what was never meant to be carried becomes normal.
And over time, the nervous system absorbs it all.
Hyper-vigilance.Exhaustion.
A body longing for rest, yet unsure how to find it.
“The body keeps the score… the body must be the focus of healing.” — Bessel van der Kolk, 2014
And then, a different path begins to reveal itself.
Not through fighting harder.
Not through changing another person.Not through proving what is already known deep within.
But through turning inward.
The Mirror Mirror Approach emerges as a return.
A remembering.
A sacred pause between trigger and response.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” — Viktor Frankl, 1946
That space becomes everything.
Because in that space, something softens.
The nervous system begins to regulate.
The body begins to feel safe again.
The Hero no longer needs to fight to be heard.
It learns to listen.
What once felt like a responsibility to change others begins to dissolve.
Explaining softens.
Defending quiets.
Proving releases.
Because the mirror reveals a deeper truth.
What is seen “out there” is often an invitation inward.
Not for blame.
Not for shame.
But for awareness.
And through awareness… choice.
The Hero transforms.
No longer the one who exhausts itself in battle,
but the one who holds presence.
Who regulates.
Who observes.
Who rises.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl
The eagle was never teaching avoidance.
It was teaching mastery.
A way of being that does not engage in what diminishes,
but instead expands into what elevates.
And perhaps this is the invitation now.
On a personal level.
On a collective level.
To rise.
Not through force,
but through awareness.
Not through control,
but through alignment.
Quietly.
Powerfully.
Untouched by what no longer belongs.
"Writing is my therapy!" -Lucinda
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