The Power of Wild Women
This year, I have had the absolute privilege of becoming surrounded by women, in a professional and personal capacity, whose power has inspired me, and whose wisdom has forever changed me.
I have attended women’s circles and felt an absolute love, filling me like golden light, for every stranger in that room with me. I have done yoga in the woods, pausing every few minutes to wait for the ants travailing across my mat. I have shared dinners with friends where no topic of conversation was off-limits, as we laughed together and cherished each other. I have written poetry for the first time in years. I have been held by wiser women as I held the parts of me that were hurting, and experienced transformative healing. I have turned off my camera in online meetings to hide my tears as I wept for our society’s collective traumas, and my own deep traumas. I have slowly learned to trust that it is okay to show these tears to the right people.
This year has been far from easy; indeed, sometimes the never ending onslaught of challenges has felt insurmountable. There have been many days (weeks, months) where I have longed for nothing more than to start walking into the deepest woods and not stop until I fell, exhausted, to let the earth reclaim me.
But it has been remarkable, too, in so many ways.
This has been the year when finally, at long last, I reconnected with the core of myself. I felt her pain, her sense of rejection, and I held her. I decided that, if it had to be, having myself alone was enough. The radical acknowledgement that being true to who I am was worth the risk of potential societal rejection was the key to unlocking all of the wonderful experiences I’ve relished in 2023. Somewhat unsurprisingly, accepting that I could be myself and be alone, if I need to be, has started to bloom into the beginnings of having like-minded community for the first time in my life.
It’s still work. Every day is another step forward, another chance to practice; moving from accepting my inner wild to cherishing it. The Fear is still there, and I acknowledge it, hold the parts of me that are scared, and continue anyway.
When women come together, to be their true selves, raw and vulnerable, and hold each other, it is magic. There is so much about modern society that cuts us off from what we need as human animals - so much that it would take writing a whole book to explore! - and especially as women. To push through that and reconnect with one another and with the earth in spite of everything, is radical.
This is the energy at the core of my personal and professional work; to create spaces to come together in knowledge and power. Antenatal classes where the focus is on knowing and connecting with your body, your partner, your baby. This is the groundwork for self-advocacy and an empowered pregnancy and birth experience; it is also the foundation for an empowered life.
Each day I practice, I feel the unshakeable core of me grow larger, stronger than before. I look at the wonderful, wise, wild women around me, and am moved. It is a work in progress to accept the vulnerability and fear of rejection; it will be a life’s work. I see these women also Doing The Work, and know that even if I am socially, anxiously alone, I am also so very far from alone; and so are you.
Moon Forest Flow: Wild & Cyclical Living with Carly
Internal Family Systems Therapy with Yvonne
Conscious Birthing Doulas with Kate
“It’s still a learning process to know the difference between being scrutinised and being seen.”
