feminism

Don’t Dare Come Closer: 10 Unbreachable Boundaries of the Wild Woman.

 

Welcome to my summer garden, wayward pilgrim. Stay put. Avert your eyes, and don’t you dare mistake my boundaries for snobbery.

Here, I have rebelled against the rules of mandatory motherhood, and claimed my birthright as a wild Witch who has hand-built stone fences around her inner sanctum. Beyond these walls, my psyche is open green-space where you are free to roam. Cross these humble, moss-coated lines, and I will spread my black, feathered wings so wide I will cast a permanent shadow on your judgmental face.

I mean you no harm yet, pilgrim. Close your mouth and relax your brows. These 10 vine-wrapped boundaries are shaped like a pentagram for a reason. Here, I protect what’s mine with a ferocity only a woman who has been wounded beyond eloquent words will understand. This is my blooming land, curious creature, and I am no target for voyeuristic gawk.

I have not built for you a museum of wondrous, psychic mutations and feminist rage. You may not come and go as you please. These are my protective walls, traveler, and they will not be breached even by your needy pretense turned malicious envy.

This is my boundary of secrets; I have only a few, and you are not permitted to know them, no matter how loud you whine. Oh, how I know it irks you to not see into my depths! When the moonflowers open at dusk and you are still here begging to know who I am in my darkest moments and exactly what road I took to find my place in the world, my back will still be turned to your hungry eyes.

There are things about me you will never know, my love, and these stones are not likely to grow transparent with age.

Don’t look so disappointed, pilgrim. I didn’t ask you to come all this way. Now that you’re here, you may as well cast your gaze on these ancient stones. This is my boundary of tribal allegiance. Both my blood family and found family will always come before you and your thinly-veiled vampirism, and I know that has driven you to the brink of insanity.

The antidote to your compulsion to belong in my holiest of holies does not grow here in my garden, I promise. I have no medicine to your soul-sucking, parasitic dysfunction, but I will protect those I love with my sharp-witted howl, and strike at your ever-reaching, always open hands.

And here, here is my tallest wall. I built it long ago with snickers and insults echoing in my baby Witch ears. Pebble by pebble, I raised this fence against heartless gossip and accusations of feminine wickedness. This is my boundary of an unruined heart. No one who threatens my wild gets in, not even you.

My selfhood is stronger than your words, and, my love, you haven’t even begun to feel my wrathful magick. Go ahead and toss some insults my way; worthier people than you have dismissed me as a cold-hearted, stone-faced bitch with jagged nails.

These two walls are conjoined by a core of pure iron. This is my boundary of justice, and this is my boundary of truth. No one wearing a mask may cross, even a beauteous one made of a soft-bellied beast’s horns and perfectly combed fur. I owe you nothing in this safe space that is mine, and you cannot dig your way under these boundaries with your two-faced tools and unbridled sense of entitlement.

Over here, this is my ever-crumbling wall; I have to keep tending it, you see, for it is berated by regular cannon-fire hurled by lion tamers. This is my boundary of self-worth, and you will never break it, pilgrim. These stones have been sunk so deeply into the soft ground so long ago that even your handcrafted condemnation and fertile vocabulary cannot compromise the integrity of my Queenhood.

Speaking of the loud-mouthed, tattooed perfection that is me, this is my boundary of self-esteem, and I’ve grown this pink and poisonous ivy all around it for a reason. Go ahead and dare to stroke my vines. Get my bitter oil all over your smooth skin, and watch it bubble and burn. You cannot fuck with this Witch, and I am not buying any of your leftover inventory.

Your sales pitch is boring, and my well-earned money is better spent elsewhere.

Oh, and don’t even try to cross this crystalline wall. This is my boundary of divinity, and — listen up now, preacher — I have some seriously sanctified blood running through my youthful veins. Don’t threaten me with hellfire and demonic torture; I was raised on the wormy, unethically sourced meat of a vengeful god, and I’ve worked tirelessly to surgically carve out my childhood guilt.

I am an ethereal, dark moon Goddess embodied in the soft skin of a wild Witch, and I will not be told to sit down and a hold a candle because a woman nipped at an apple deemed forbidden by a church that burned those far less evil than me.

And this one… there is no grappling hook sharp enough to pierce this rock. This is my boundary of self-forgiveness, and any memory you can dredge up from my depths and spit in my face as evidence of my neuroses will bounce off these stones like cheap rubber. I have forgiven my wounded irrationality long ago, and there is no vision you could possibly share that will make me question my integrity.

I am a truth-teller and a ferocious far-seer. Prompt me to fear my worth, and I will pour such molten disdain all over you that your lying lips will be boiled down and recast in a softer shape that you may speak only with faintly whispered humility until the day you die.

I can’t believe you’re still here, brave visitor, but, since you are, let me tell you about the wall I’m building now. This is my most recent and final boundary, and I’m building it out of fine-veined marble. This is my boundary of shamelessness. I am over your tired threats and outmoded notions about who I should be.

I am so weary of how your wound sounds when it talks, dripping the played-out language of healing, helping, and light. I know all your one-size-fits-all new-ageisms by heart, pilgrim, and you will not shame me into wearing your robes. I will never worship at your feet. I do not want to be your follower or your friend, and I have no time for your pre-packaged spiritual bullshit.

I built this walled garden to be my sanctuary from the likes of you, and, if my boundaries threaten you so much, you best be on your way. I’m sure you will find gardens with fewer rules and open gates, but this wild Witch welcomes only the freakiest of family beyond her carefully constructed walls. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you care so much, you thirsty traveler? Do you not have a garden of your own?

Your feet were meant to touch this holy Earth too. Stay grounded, but keep moving. Come back when you have nothing to sell me, when you’re ready to talk truth, and when you know your scars well enough you don’t need to carve them into my skin. Come back when you’re ready to show me your wild, and then maybe, just maybe, I’ll show you mine. Until then, keep your distance, and don’t dare come closer.

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.
Danielle Dulsky