On a Vision Quest in the high desert of New Mexico with WindEagle, her teacher, Alison had a moment of deep insight: that she had spent a lifetime trying to fit herself to other people’s expectations, into society’s view of how she ought to be and behave.

Having seen this so clearly, there was no way to unsee it. Her life changed.

The word that came to her was Wilding, and with it a passion to share the wilding insight with women everywhere.  This is where this book started.

The Wilding Women’s Story

So the book has gone from just one to many writers, from a single focus on the wilding idea to a rich and generous look at what wilding means in individual women’s lives, and from looking only at how the wilding concept grew, to a much broader and parallel focus on how the community of wilding women emerged and is continually growing.

There are, at the last count, twenty-six of us women.  We live as far apart as San Francisco, Oregon and Seattle on the west coast of America, and moving east, in Connecticut, and then across the Atlantic into the UK from Edinburgh in Scotland, to Cornwall in the far south-west, encompassing towns and the city of London on the way. Over the Channel into France – Paris, Burgoyne, Haute Savoie – and further east still into Prague.  

We are architects, musicians, dancers, artists, psychotherapists, coaches, specialists in systemic constellations, writers, computer systems experts, advocates for people with Parkinson’s, poets, photographers and beekeepers.

We were each invited by Alison to contribute to her book, writing a short account of a particular wilding moment in our own lives, a moment when we saw our lives clearly, and from which everything changed.

We found that there was a hunger to reflect on our lives, and to write about them and share.

As Cedissia said:

“Encore merci à toi de nous offrir la possibilité d’écrire ces épisodes de nos vies de femmes.”

(Again, my thanks to you for giving us the chance to write about these episodes in our lives as women.)                                                                                                      

Our stories, and the threads and themes that we see in them, form an integral part of the book.  Our wilding conversations are also contributing to the book.

Clearing the Pathways

What has stopped you walking the wilding path? WindEagle asks. What are the old hold-backs? 

In the wilding metaphor, what has been blocking the light? Pot-binding my roots? Drying out and starving the soil? Cutting down the hedgerows, ploughing up the meadows and the wildflowers? Poisoning the insects and the birds?

My task is to identify these old hold-backs, the stuck attitudes and habits of behaviour, the stinking thinking, and to ask: what is their new energy, their new work? They have kept me safe in the past, and for that I must thank them and appreciate their work. Now it is time for them – for me – to let go of that old purpose, and start their new work.

What has held me back? In my journal I write a list:

“Appeasement, guilt, embarrassment, being nice (in order to be liked), low self-esteem, ducking it and procrastination, fear of missing out, dissociation.”

I go through the list, thinking back to all the times when I have used these blocks to hide behind: appeasement kept me safe when I was living in volatile situations, but often at the expense of fudging the truth. Guilt was so heavy when I picked up responsibility for other people’s behaviour as well as for my own. Embarrassment blocked me from being open and truthful to others and to myself. Being nice in order to be liked so often meant disguising what I really felt or thought. My low self-esteem prevented me from accepting compliments, or believing people when they said how good my work was. Procrastination and ducking things deflected my capacity to move with clarity and power. Fear of missing out made me jump in and offer to do things when I really had no time or space to do them properly, and so letting other people – and myself – down badly. And finally dissociation meant that I buried my true feelings deep inside me when things were bad, rather than tackling the issues head on and honestly.

It’s interesting – and heartening – how many of these I’ve been working on with some success. It’s fascinating – and no longer disheartening – how many of these are still alive and kicking.  Or were, until at the start of my Quest, I looked back up the path and said goodbye to my life up until this time, and goodbye to these barriers as well.

And I know at the same time that these hold-backs are the tip of an old and deep ice-berg.

I work my way through the list I have made, and to each hold-back in turn I give thanks for their historical role in keeping me safe. There are eight in all. Then I ask them each to find their new role with me moving forward, in growing my wilding self.

The energy of appeasement with its illusion of safe-keeping and its distortion of what-is, the reality, into what might just (but never did) stave off danger can now be used to see that reality clearly, to speak that truth openly. Mark Twain said “I always tell the truth. That way I don’t have to remember anything.” There was a time in my life when I was fearful of telling the truth because of what I thought might happen if I did.  So I fudged the truth, or lied, to whoever it was I felt I needed to appease.  I realise now that it is a long time since I have done this, and it is such a relief to feel and acknowledge the peace that comes from being free of those labyrinthine evasions. I write “Your energy can gloriously bring me into balance and serenity.”

So the energy of appeasement becomes the wilding energy of Speak-my-truth, Guardian of balance and serenity. 

The energy of guilt is something that I find I have already dealt with, and now is the time to celebrate my freedom from it.  I used to walk around with an imaginary rucksack on my back, filling it with rocks of guilt that I picked up as I went through life. Guilt for things that I had or hadn’t done; guilt for other people’s behaviours that I felt responsible for – how often had I found myself apologising for someone else’s actions, actions over which I had no control and for which I had no responsibility.  The imaginary rucksack filled with imaginary guilt-rocks weighed me down so much that I sometimes felt immobilised by the sheer bulk of it.

Now I ask: “Is this mine to deal with?” and if it isn’t, I put it down and walk away. And if it is mine to deal with, then I make amends, I apologise, and – most importantly of all – I figure out how not to repeat the behaviour that has caused the guilt in the first place. I have taken out the guilt-rocks that don’t belong to me, and walked easier for it; I have made amends for things I have done/not done, said/not said and gradually emptied the rucksack. And now I deal with any wrong I do as soon as I realise it. Keep the rucksack empty.

 The energy of guilt becomes the wilding energy of Own-my-own, Guardian of discernment

The energy of embarrassment is so close to the energy of guilt. In my journal I write: “Nine times out of ten the embarrassment will be in my own head only, but for that tenth time it is worth taking the risk, catching myself at it, and laughing at the absurdity of it all.”

 The energy of embarrassment becomes the wilding energy of Laughter, Guardian of absurdity.

 The energy of being nice, wanting to be liked, is a longstanding condition that for me still lingers. As Alice Munro says “There is no seduction like that of being thought a good girl”. Reluctance to speak out, to ‘make a fuss’, to go against what is expected – however harmful (and it sometime/often is), takes courage, takes practice, and above all takes a conviction that I am a person with ideas, with thoughts worth paying attention to, with needs and with personal and societal boundaries. That I am, in fact, a remarkable woman. Niceness, I write in my journal, “is more likely to repel people than attract them.” The energy of being nice hides layers of fear and anxiety, so I call on this energy to transform itself into the energy of true warmth from the heart, from the soul: the energy of abundance.

The energy of being nice to be liked becomes the wilding energy of Soul-warmth, Guardian of abundance.

The energy of low self-esteem has blocked me for many years in my art work, my writing, my professional and academic life, and when I spoke to it, it spoke straight back to me: “Stand in your own power!” The moment when I finished my Viva (the oral defence of my PhD thesis) was one such moment. At that moment I knew more about my subject than anyone else in the world, and I knew that I knew. I can tap into that quiet confidence whenever I feel off-balance or diminished. 

So the energy of low self-esteem becomes the wilding energy of Stand-in-my-power, Guardian of grace.

I asked ducking it and procrastination to transform its considerable energy, energy which has over the years added so much extra guilt about things not done, into “doing-it” energy; to move, as I wrote, “From ducking it to doing it. And to do what is mine to do, not anyone else’s.”

So the energy of ducking it becomes the wilding energy of Quiet action, Guardian of timeliness and peace.

The fear of missing out has ruled my life for years, the urge to be helpful, to be invasively pro-active, to jump in at the deep end where angels fear to tread – to mix a number of metaphors. The feeling that everything that was worth doing was round the next corner, and the next, and the next, just glimpsed and always elusive. Again, I write: “Is it mine to do?” There is a quiet joy in waiting for the moment of inspiration, and a wild ecstatic joy in moving when inspiration, not just anything, happens.

So the energy of fear of missing out becomes the wilding energy of Inspiration, Guardian of Inspiration – and the repetition soothes and comforts me.  This Guardian is placed mnemonically with Pedernal, an inspiring and quiet presence.

The energy of dissociation had sent me deep inside myself when things were bad, burying my feelings so far down that I lost all sense of what was real, and what was happening. I realise that – mostly – I am living in a real present, and – mostly - tackling issues head on and honestly when they arise.

I call on the energy of dissociation to transform into the wilding energy of Powerful presence, Guardian of connection.

There are more, the more I think about it.  Hypervigilance, for example. There have been times in my life when I have lived under a controlling situation.  Hypervigilance helped me to keep safe, to tell by the sound of a footstep or the closing of a door just what might be coming next, and to get out of the way or prepare myself for it.  But hypervigilance has become a block, where I over-interpret what I am perceiving. I mistake simple things for sinister intent, and start to project into a future that may never happen.  Now I can thank it for keeping me safe in difficult times and appreciate its emerging new role – a hyper-awareness of the beauty of the world around me.  As my lovely friend WindSong says: “If you’re not in awe, you’re not paying attention.”  Hypervigilance now connects me to the natural world, to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary, noticing how the dust motes play in the air, or the shadows dapple my path as I walk through the trees on my way to my studio, or the texture of the ground beneath my shoes, or the taste of a single honeysuckle flower plucked on my way past a bush. 

In my closing ceremony on the last night of my Quest I speak the name and the new power of each Guardian, and I give each one a place on the land, anchoring them in my memory. Speak-My-Truth is in the tree that guards the entrance to my Quest site, my Wilding Place. Own-My-Own is in the juniper tree opposite. Soul-Warmth is with Grandmother Tree. The others are with the roots of trees, with my altar, with the sundial, and with Pedernal herself. The final Guardian, Powerful-Presence: Guardian of Connection, is held in the whole Wilding Place.

These Guardians are special gifts of my Quest, the shift in my spirit and my soul that I can call on when my Wilding self is faltering. They set out principles of living that transcend the pull of personalities. They are strong, powerful women that stand forward to hold me in my power and strength: balance and serenity, discernment, absurdity, timeliness and peace, abundance, grace, inspiration, connection.

As I meet them each morning, and thank them each night, their power grows in me.