Rewild Yourself: Be Your Own Medicine.
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There are places in you
Where thousands of bright, tiny flowers
Open each morning to the sun
In meadows as vast as the sky.
An ancient alchemy courses through your bones.
It speaks in feathers and stones and
precious metals and the footprints of mandalas
left by the stories we tell with our lives.
Rewild yourself.
Until green tendrils sprout from your fingernails
And lichen swathes your eyebrows.
Rewild yourself.
Until your roots spread and uncoil and
Writhe down through soil and rock.
Rewild yourself.
Rise up into your magnificence and
Take your place among the constellations.
Rewild yourself.
The Earth is her own medicine.
Be yours.
“Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Sometimes the chaos, noise and haste of the human world make me long for the solace and wild spirit of nature.
I long to sleep out beneath a wheel of stars in the enchanted desert night; to walk in a verdant forest where wild creatures roam.
I hunger for real darkness, for wilderness, for lost horizons, and for the mystery, wisdom, perspective, freedom and beauty that only the natural world offers.
I long to…
“… come into the peace of wild things.” ~ Wendell Berry
I have recently been inspired by movements such as Rewilding Britain, and TreeSisters.
These collectives, and many more like them, are working to re-establish wild spaces in nature, planting trees, re-introducing indigenous species, restoring broken ecological relationships, repairing the Great Self to wholeness.
Some call this the Great Work of our times.
“Rewilding offers hope. It offers the hope of recovery, of the enhancement of wonder and enchantment and delight in world that often seems crushingly bleak… It offers us a chance to replace our silent spring with a raucous summer.” ~ George Monbiot, A Manifesto for Rewilding the World
We can all outwardly play our part in this positive story by striving towards a more harmonious, integral relationship with the natural world. But the poem is intended as a remembering that rewilding is a process which begins inside.
Rewilding is a spiritual attendance to the interconnectedness of all life, which transcends separation and fragmented notions of us/them and humanity/nature.
Desert, forest, mountain, grassland and ocean — the archetypal wildlands or Soulscapes of Mary Reynold Thompson’s deeply insightful book on spiritual ecology Reclaiming the Wild Soul — are places within all of us.
Through slowing down, listening, opening, surrendering, connecting, being and asking what really matters, we can access these places in deep and profound ways, giving rise to great journeys of the soul and enabling bold leaps of creativity, compassion and courage.
“Spend time out of doors, praise the earth, love the wild migrations of your own imagination, and be grateful for every leaf you meet. In this way, you will inevitably become part of the great rewilding of our world.” ~ Mary Reynolds Thompson
In doing this, we may reclaim the wild through our own psyches. We may become wildflowers in the wasteland. We may come fully into our power, and realize our potential to be the medicine the world needs.
Put simply, what we do to the planet, we do to ourselves, and vice versa.
Now is the time to find our way back to wildness, back to ourselves, and back home.
“Let the great rewilding of the world begin with you. Let yourself be absorbed into something larger and less tame than your isolated self.” ~ Lorraine Anderson
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Caroline Mellor lives close to the sea and the green hills of southern England with her daughter, cat, and husband. As well as being a mum, writer and massage therapist, she enjoys traveling, one-pot cookery, gardening, Yoga, and drinking red wine. When not partaking in one of the above, she is probably daydreaming about her next holiday. You can connect with Caroline through her Facebook page or her blog.
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