The central theme of the Aviva song cycle is that we can choose to find healing through adversity and that in healing our 'selves' we bring healing to the world around us. 

Our shadow-self is what we call the part that has been cancelled, relegated to the backwaters of our awareness. It often carries aspects of ourselves that were deemed not good enough during our developmental years. It is important to remember that this shadow-self carries both our darkness and our light, our pain and our potential.

Aviva is about meeting the shadow-self and finding reconciliation, guided by two other self-parts, our inner voice of wisdom, or Fate, and the Stag, our deeper, wiser Self.