Reclaim Your Wild in a World That Is Trying to Tame You.
You are pulled out of sleep by an obnoxious high-pitched beeping noise.
The dream you were having immediately begins to fade like footprints in the sand at high tide, leaving behind only a hazy residue whose wisdom is beyond your grasp. You hit Snooze. Again. And again.
You pull yourself out of bed and into the shower. You quickly put on makeup, focusing on covering those blemishes and under-eye circles. Two coats of mascara to make your eyes look brighter; no one will accuse you of not being present and accounted for.
Grabbing a large coffee to go, you hop into your car and take a deep breath, mentally preparing to sit in rush-hour traffic. You stop at the red lights and stay within the lane markers. You curse under your breath when the person with the handicapped sticker in front of you drives too slow and causes you to miss the light.
As you check the clock and see you are a few minutes late, that feeling of stress starts to creep through your whole body.
Your day is spent inside your office building, staring at a screen. Responding to emails and figuring out what really has to get done today, you procrastinate and browse Facebook, hoping your boss won’t show up behind you unannounced.
After clocking your hours, you get back in your car to sit in worse traffic on the way home. It’s too late and you are too tired to cook, so you pick up a ready-made meal and a bottle of wine. At home, you crash on the couch, numbing out to mindless television that you don’t really like, and polish off a good three-fourths of that wine before heading to bed so that you can wake up and do it all again tomorrow.
Life may go on like this for years, uninterrupted. I know mine did.
But somewhere underneath the schedule, the job, the responsibilities, and the rules, I heard another voice. A deeper calling.
She poked me in the ribs during quieter moments, when I allowed myself to simply exist, lest I forget about her presence all together. She gently caressed my hair as I gazed up at the moon with awe and wonder.
And when I set foot on lands uncultivated by the human hand, she filled my whole body with an urge to run, to escape and never look back, to live among the smell of pine with freedom flowing through my veins.
When I would yell out in frustration, “There has to be more to life than this!” she would whisper back, “There is. There is another way. A wilder way.”
She told me of a time when my schedule was set in accordance to the natural world around me. The daily rising and setting of the sun. The length of the day and the night. The subtle shift of the seasons.
She told me there was a time when I loved and revered my feminine body for its inherent beauty, strength, and sexuality. When I respected the ancient wisdom contained within these bones and muscle fibers and cells. When I did not seek to change or control it.
“Yes,” she would tell me, “there was a time when you would dance with the moon, where your cycles, ebbing and flowing, were mirrored in the nighttime sky.”
Each time I heard her voice, I would strain against the shackles of a world that was doing everything in its power to tame her. To domesticate her out of existence. As I listened more deeply and allowed the healing balm of her words to sink into my soul, I began to remember that freedom is my birthright.
The way of the wild is the way of the woman.
Now here I am, on a lifelong journey to reclaim these long-forgotten parts of myself. Learning to listen not only with my ears, but also with the feeling in my gut and the hairs on the back of my neck. Spending time each day away from screens, alarms and fluorescent lights, opting instead to feel the sunshine warm my skin and the tickle of grass beneath my bare feet. Creating a life that feels authentic and meaningful.
If you hear the call, if she whispers to you as you are sitting in rush-hour traffic or staring at your computer screen waiting for the hours to tick by, listen. She is your intuition, and she wants to save you. To free you. To open your heart to the ancient and mysterious ways of the wild woman.
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Linda Katz is a writer, Qoya teacher, Wild Feminine Life Coach and founder of Singing Bird Coaching. For the last several years, Linda has been on a journey of unearthing her own feminine soul, and now she helps guide others on their paths of becoming. By reclaiming the connection with your body, tapping into your true soul desires, and sharing your voice from a place of fullness, you will unleash your own Wise Woman. You can connect with Linda via her website, Facebook, or Instagram.