Weaving with the Wild Woman
To weave with the Wild Woman you have to reclaim your wild nature. You must remember yourself back to your wild soul. Your true home. The place where you return to your deepest knowing. Where you stand equally and free with all beings under the law of nature. It is woman’s deepest nature – the ancient and vital wild essential self that inhabits nature.
The Wild Woman is the instinctual Archetype of woman as described by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in her book Women who run with the wolves. The word wild should not be misinterpreted as reckless. On the contrary, it refers to living a natural life within healthy boundaries and with innate integrity. Align with this Ian McCuallum write in his book Ecological Intelligence :
” To be wild is to be alert to the needs of the flesh and the warning calls of distress. It is to be spontaneous – to live one’s Earthiness and one’s notions of God independent of outside approval. It is to dance, to work and to play with passion…”
However, due to the conditioning of women over history, most women (like many wild animals) have lost their connection with their wildness. In trying to please others they stayed silent even though they could feel a fire raging within. Through over-intellectualising, they became sanitised and cut off from the natural rhythmic cycles of their sexuality. Leaving them powerless and tamed to fit into the acceptable form or image idealised by their culture.
Yet, the Wild Woman, the call of the female soul will keep on inviting us to not give up, trust our intuition and become who we truly are. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, called it our “moral obligation” to express what we learned in the process of connecting to our wild Self and living it. In the book, Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin, the eco-depth psychologist captures it beautifully by saying:
“what ultimately confirms your invitation is neither your experiences of an image nor the blessing of a community authority but rather the depth of fulfilment you derive from embodying your soul image…”
When you weave with the wild woman within you, you:
- Know instinctively when it is time for things to live or dies. You can discern when a job or relationship has become too small, and it is time to walk away. Or when it is time to dance with life. By incubating a new business idea or experiencing a healthy meaningful relationship.
- Stoke the creative fire within you. The art of your craft will not only support your understanding but also become a guide to those that follow.
- Thrive by being in your body with integrity and pride for her gifts of healing regardless of its “imperfections”.
- Speak your truth and start to sing the creation hymn that wants to be sung through your life. Clarissa Pinkola Estés shares that “there is speculation that the immune system of the body is rooted in this mysterious psychic landscape” and that your immune system can be strengthened/weakened by conscious thoughts. This reminds me of the book Cured wherein Dr Jeff Rediger shares a case study of, Mirae, who miraculously recovered from terminal cancer. According to her, she had a dream that shifted completely how she viewed her body. It kick-started a process of healing as she started to listen to her body more and stopped pleasing others. She dreamed of big hands, flipping through pages of sheet music she couldn’t read. The voice spoke and said “Your life is like sheets of music. The frequency of your life sings a beautiful song that your ears cannot yet hear.”
By now you may be wondering – How do you cultivate a connection with your Wild Woman? It usually requires two things: solitude and practice. In my own life and what I also witnessed in the clients, I worked with is that taking the first step is usually the hardest. You must go into the desert of the psyche. According to Bill Plotkin:
“To relinquish your former identity is to sacrifice the story, you had been living, the one that defend (denied) you, empowered you socially and limited you. The sacrifice captures the essence of leaving home. Your goal is not to discover whom you used to be, but who you are.”
Leaving home and going off into the desert usually ask of you to face your fears. In doing that you let go of what is no longer serving you and bring back to life that which was lost.
The Wild Woman is sometimes referred to as the “Life/Death/Life force” that lives in the past, present and future. It is our Self that knows the spiritual dealings of life and death. As stated in Women who run with the Wolves our meditation practice as women are:
“calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dead and disremembered aspects of life itself. The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa.”
Therefore, both beauty and loss can be a way to get a taste of the Wild Women. Other practices such as dancing, music, drumming, poetry, creating art, honouring your dreams, and spending time in nature are ways that you can allow her to come through. The more you make time to connect with your wild Self, the more it will grow and enlarge your life. Like drawing a larger circle to include all of you and life. Fully integrated with the inner fire that knows what needs to be done and does it courageously.
Reflection questions to support your inquiry into your Wild Woman:
- What around and within me must die and what must live?
- How am I creating separation in myself and life?
- What is my soul voice whispering to me?
- When was the last time I felt wild and free?
- How can I make my life come alive again?
In closing I would like to share the blessing from the book Wild Feminine by Tami Lynn Kent. You can use this to bless your beautiful form as you call on the elements of the wild.
May I be like the blessed earth: growing, nourished, blossoming, grounded.
May I be like the blessed water: flowing, clear life-giving, free.
May I be like the blessed air: Light open, inspired, essential.
May I be like the blessed fire: warm, radiant, tended, wild.